News
by Our Readers | Jul 20, 2011 | News
The Challenge of Our Era: Consuming Less Although there have been many challenges mankind has faced in the past, such as disease and world war, we have managed to get them under control for the most part. I think it’s very clear that the era we are now entering...
by Our Readers | Jul 21, 2011 | News
More Springfield Arts Coverage, Please I read your paper weekly, and in my opinion, your writings do this Valley a tremendous service—the arts, political advocacy and minority communities in particular. It’s great to have such a great news source here! I...
by Stephanie Kraft | Jul 21, 2011 | News
Michael Armitage, whose company EV Worldwide had proposed to develop an energy-saving battery to power electric buses, last October pleaded guilty in federal court to 10 criminal counts of fraud and tax evasion related to the battery venture. Now a partner of...
by Stephanie Kraft | Jul 21, 2011 | News
A U.S. diplomatic cable from December 14, 2007, released by Wikileaks, opens a window on the way our State Department personnel abroad quarterback for corporate interests, in this case biotech companies. The classified cable was sent to U.S. Trade Representative Susan...
by Markos Moulitas | Jul 21, 2011 | News
Less than two months ago, Democrats scored a dramatic special-election victory in a solidly Republican congressional district in New York. The defining issue? Medicare, and how Republicans were dead set on destroying it. There are nearly 100 Republican-held House...
by Maureen Turner | Jul 21, 2011 | News
Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno announced last week that the city has found a developer to take over the former School Department headquarters at 195 State Street. College Street Management, or CSM North, the New Haven-based company selected as the preferred developer...
by Maureen Turner | Jul 21, 2011 | News
Last December, just a few days before Christmas, federal officials confirmed the news that had been expected for months: starting with the 2012 election, the commonwealth of Massachusetts will lose one of its 10 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives....
by Tom Vannah | Jul 26, 2011 | News
Is Michael J. Albano, the disgraced ex-mayor of Springfield, getting ready to make a comeback? On July 12, Albano, who left office amid a federal corruption probe that sent dozens of his staffers and political allies to jail, filed a newly organized political...
by Maureen Turner | Jul 28, 2011 | News
The slow but steady progress of marriage equality laws around the country—six states and the District of Columbia now invest in officiants the power to pronounce couples husband and husband, and wife and wife—is an encouraging sign of evolving notions of...
by Maureen Turner | Jul 28, 2011 | News
The Springfield City Council moved last week to establish stringent anti-foreclosure laws in the city. At its July 18 meeting, the Council voted unanimously in favor of two ordinances that would make it tougher for lenders to rush to foreclose on residences, and force...
by Stephanie Kraft | Jul 28, 2011 | News
A federal court has dealt a setback to Entergy, the owner of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant near Brattleboro, in its bid to keep the plant open while it sues the state of Vermont. Entergy is suing to keep the reactor operating for 20 years after its scheduled...
by Our Readers | Jul 28, 2011 | News
Making Life With Cancer “A Little Bit Easier” We would like to give a special thanks to the Valley Advocate, Chief Soundworks and Maximum Capacity for sponsoring the Sy’s Fund First Annual Music Benefit this past June. We would also like to thank the...
by Maureen Turner | Jul 28, 2011 | News
The NAACP has a venerable history: founded 102 years ago by a multiracial group that included legendary figures like W.E.B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells, the organization has led the charge against voter discrimination, segregation and lynching, and for civil rights and...
by Stephanie Kraft | Aug 2, 2011 | News
Eye on the Market, an investor newsletter from J.P. Morgan, reported in mid-July that profit margins for Standard and Poor 500 companies rose about 1.3 percent between 2000 and 2007. Those margins, said the publication, had reached levels “not seen in...
by Our Readers | Aug 4, 2011 | News
Corporate Welfare Cheats It is about time someone discussed the issue of corporate welfare and the oligarchs who crowd out the interests of the common man in the lobbies of Congress. Stephanie Kraft (“Rising Margins, Falling Wages,” July 28, 2011) mentions...
by Tom Sturm | Aug 4, 2011 | News
While all eyes are on the massive hosts arrayed in the U.S. Capitol, hope for any retaking of power on behalf of the typically powerless may still lie with the voters of Madison, Wisconsin. It’s going on nine months since the war in Wisconsin began—since...
by Mark Roessler | Aug 4, 2011 | News
In some ways, politicians are a lot like beer. In days of yore, when beer was brewed in small batches for drinkers the brewer knew, each brew had a distinct flavor. These days, though, with most beer made by a handful of corporations with global reach, the products...
by Stephanie Kraft | Aug 4, 2011 | News
If you want to understand a world of things that are under the radar of most of us, but that contribute to many of the worrisome outcomes we’re seeing today, you can hardly do better than read Cornell professor Suzanne Mettler’s paper Reconstituting the...
by Mark Roessler | Aug 4, 2011 | News
Previously: The Medicine Hunter and his team of hardy international adventurers went in search of a fabled medicinal root, Tongkat Ali, which could enhance virility and libido in both men and women. He’d first heard of this rare root from a foreigner outside a...
by Maureen Turner | Aug 4, 2011 | News
Don’t be alarmed if you hear a giant sucking sound on Aug. 6—it’s just the sound of contented babies taking part in the national Big Latch On. The Big Latch On is the culmination of the 20th annual World Breastfeeding Week, Aug. 1-6, an international...
by Stephanie Kraft | Aug 4, 2011 | News
Are there political prisoners in the United States? Officially, the answer is no. But look very closely and it’s not that simple, according to Vermont Action for Political Prisoners and kindred groups across the country. There are people in prison for offending...
by Daniel Platt | Aug 11, 2011 | News
The driveway leading from the main road out to the Elks Pavilion in West Springfield is long, patchy, and potholed, and as I motored over it on my way to the Western Mass Republican Picnic on July 15, my car bounced up and down like a moon buggy. I passed a row of...
by Senator Bernie Sanders | Aug 11, 2011 | News
A $2.5 trillion deficit-reduction deal brokered by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker John Boehner, and President Barack Obama is grotesquely unfair. It also is bad economic policy. In the midst of a terrible recession, it will cost hundreds of...
by Markos Moulitsas | Aug 11, 2011 | News
You know the best way to shrink the deficit? Get Americans to work. When people have paychecks, they pay taxes. Yet, after weeks of hysteria in D.C. over the debt ceiling, the two political parties have done nothing that would actually get people back to work....
by Our Readers | Aug 11, 2011 | News
Double Edge’s Odyssey I was pleased and gratified to read Chris Rohmann’s account of several local artists creating sets and large-scale art installations for Double Edge Theatre’s Odyssey in “Wool Sails in the Sunset,” August 4, 2011. I...
by Maureen Turner | Aug 11, 2011 | News
After years of hard work and political agitation, in 2007, reformers in Springfield achieved a sweet victory: voters approved, by a three-to-one margin, a plan to expand the City Council from its existing nine members, all elected at-large, to include eight members...
by Our Readers | Aug 18, 2011 | News
A Windfall for Biomass? When a crisis occurs, it is important that decision makers take a moment to think before reacting in order to move forward rationally rather than making poor decisions based on fearmongering and opportunism by vested interests. Currently we are...
by Stephanie Kraft | Aug 18, 2011 | News
U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has been on the warpath lately about the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Congress’ lone socialist, officially known as an Independent, was so indignant early this summer when he learned that the NRC had taken a secret vote...
by Stephanie Kraft | Aug 18, 2011 | News
Trucks: they bring us everything we use day by day, and they use 20 percent of the fuel consumed by transportation (which is more than two-thirds of fossil fuel used in the U.S.). They also spew 20 percent of vehicle emissions. Now, for the first time, the country has...
by Stephanie Kraft | Aug 18, 2011 | News
The Valley’s two representatives in Congress, both Democrats—John Olver (Amherst) and Richard Neal (Springfield)—refused to vote for the debt ceiling and deficit reduction bill that passed Congress last week. So did all the other Massachusetts...
by Stephanie Kraft | Aug 18, 2011 | News
The Verizon workers that took to the streets last week in Valley towns and elsewhere in the Northeast have more to deal with than just their employer. “The Verizon Strike: Tone-Deaf,” an editorial that appeared August 10 in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review,...
by Eve Ottenberg | Aug 25, 2011 | News
The human costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are high—and hidden, due to advances in combat medicine, and this masks the ferocity of these conflicts. In Broken Bodies, Shattered Minds: A Medical Odyssey from Vietnam to Afghanistan (History Publishing,...
by Tom Sturm | Aug 25, 2011 | News
Harvard Law Professor and former Obama Administration official Elizabeth Warren announced last week that she will test the political waters for a possible U.S. Senate run against incumbent Republican Scott Brown. She expects to make her decision shortly after Labor...
by Our Readers | Aug 25, 2011 | News
Tasty Picnic A light touch by Dan Platt was the Right touch on the GOP picnic (“Grand Old Picnic,” Aug. 11). Dan earned his free sundae. Charles V. RyanVia email * Dan Platt’s piece on the Western Mass. Republican picnic was an excellent article;...
by Tom Vannah | Aug 25, 2011 | News
Sure, the weather here might occasionally leave a visitor from, say, California pining for a sunny day in Sausalito. And for a devoted Coloradan, the hills of Western Massachusetts, even those slightly taller mounts in Vermont and New Hampshire, just don’t...
by Stephanie Kraft | Aug 30, 2011 | News
Can the extremes of drought and flood that we increasingly experience be mitigated to even things out (see “Water: Too Little, Too Much,” June 3, 2011)? It seems that environmentalists, hydrologists and government agencies in the West have been working on...
by Stephanie Kraft | Sep 1, 2011 | News
Behind one news story after another is the intensifying conflict between our need for water and our need for energy. Spot-on information and commentary about this elemental clash comes from Alec Prud’homme’s The Ripple Effect, a book that manages to...
by Chris Lehmann | Sep 1, 2011 | News
Remember social equality? Of course you don’t. Back when America was still under the sway of the New Deal, few questioned that it was a good thing for our civilization to strive to provide citizens with roughly equal access to social goods such as a decent...
by Our Readers | Sep 1, 2011 | News
Bravo for Beavers What a great article [“The Flood Control Squad,” August 25, 2011]! And perfect timing, as beavers are being discussed as an excellent tool for salmonid recovery! Just last week Brock Dolman [director of the Occidental Arts and Ecology...
by Cristina Marcos | Sep 1, 2011 | News
While the headlines earlier this summer about Boston Globe journalist Sally Jacobs’s new book, The Other Barack: The Bold and Reckless Life of President Obama’s Father, focused on the startling revelation that the president’s parents might have...
by Tom Iacobucci | Sep 1, 2011 | News
The number of people who are unemployed in America is almost equal to the number of people who belong to a labor union. Both groups are being blamed for the faults in our economy. Don’t have a job? Are you one of the 40 percent of jobless Americans who are...
by Stan Cox | Sep 8, 2011 | News
By the time Hurricane Irene hit New York City on August 27, climate experts, talk-show hosts, bloggers, politicians, and environmental activists had already staked out their usual positions. Irene was either another sign of human-induced climate change or just another...
by Stephanie Kraft | Sep 8, 2011 | News
If you’re fascinated by the mechanics of the tax avoidance game as played by our large corporations, you’ll love Executive Excess 2011, the Institute for Policy Studies’ 18th annual report on executive compensation. Take, for example, the practice of...
by Maureen Turner | Sep 8, 2011 | News
The photos on Alex Morse’s mayoral campaign website are, for the most part, garden-variety campaign shots: the candidate in posed conversation with residents on the street and on the steps of Holyoke City Hall. The candidate before a backdrop of an iconic city...
by Our Readers | Sep 8, 2011 | News
Vermont Needs You There are times when it’s important for people who feel strongly about something to stand up and be counted. For those of us who feel strongly that the people and elected officials of a community, state, or region should have the right to...
by Ted Rall | Sep 8, 2011 | News
They say everything changed on 9/11. No one can dispute that. But we didn’t learn anything. The attacks on New York and Washington were a traumatic, teachable moment. The collective attention of the nation was finally focused upon problems that had gone...
by Maureen Turner | Sep 8, 2011 | News
When Alan Ingram, the beleaguered superintendent of the Springfield school system, announced earlier this month that he would leave the job at the end of the academic year, it was really Antonette Pepe’s kill. Earlier this summer, Pepe, a School Committee member...
by Tom Vannah | Sep 13, 2011 | News
If I believe the news reports, Massachusetts officials will soon hammer out a deal to bring casino gambling to the Bay State. Yes, I’ve been reading similar reports for more than 15 years, but that doesn’t mean I doubt their veracity this time around. In...
by Chip Pitts | Sep 13, 2011 | News
Responding to terror perpetrated by 19 men with box-cutters a decade ago, the U.S. government has now put hundreds of millions of innocent Americans into countless military, intelligence and law enforcement databases without suspecting them of any crime. The National...
by Our Readers | Sep 15, 2011 | News
Amending Rall Among other things, Ted Rall rails against “‘Made in USA’ labels on missiles shot into the Gaza strip from U.S.-made helicopter gunships sold to Israel” [“9/11: What We Didn’t Learn,” September 8, 2011]. A...
by Stephanie Kraft | Sep 15, 2011 | News
September 24 will see a climate carnival in Accra, Ghana; a bicycle rally in Milan; a faux rugby game in Wellington, New Zealand with renewables versus fossil fuels; an alternative energy “Show and Tell” event in Albuquerque; a plastics-free design contest...
by Stephanie Kraft | Sep 15, 2011 | News
As floods tore apart roads and loosened the foundations of houses in Vermont last week—as people saw their personal property and businesses wash away in muddy waves—Republicans’ determination to hold hurricane victims hostage to their insistence on...
by Maureen Turner | Sep 15, 2011 | News
Among the people who wrote to the judge in the public corruption trial of Sal DiMasi, who was asking for leniency for the convicted House Speaker? None other than former Springfield Mayor Mike Albano, reports Channel 22. Given the number of Albano’s pals and...
by Maureen Turner | Sep 15, 2011 | News
Not long after her election to the Springfield School Committee in 2003, Antonette Pepe began pushing for mandatory uniforms in the city schools, a trend that was being adopted by many public school systems. According to the U.S. Department of Education, in the...
by Our Readers | Sep 22, 2011 | News
Footnotes on the War of 1812 Thanks, Mark Roessler, for giving us a heads-up regarding the new documentary, The War of 1812 [“When American Forces Burned Toronto,” September 8, 2011]. And it’s going to be interesting to see how far this more nuanced...
by Tom Vannah | Sep 22, 2011 | News
Never have I been prouder, more impressed with myself, more assured of my self-worth. Nah, I didn’t win anything—not yet, anyway. But now that I know what it takes to win, you’d better watch out. I’m not ready to announce my plans quite yet,...
by Maureen Turner | Sep 22, 2011 | News
Last year, the National Women’s Law Center and the Rebecca Project for Human Rights issued report cards for each state, evaluating their policies regarding incarcerated mothers. The states were evaluated in several categories: prenatal care for pregnant inmates,...
by Tom Vannah | Sep 22, 2011 | News
As even people who reside far from Paradise City may have noted, Clare Higgins left her job as mayor of Northampton on Friday, Sept. 9, handing off the job to City Council president David Narkewicz. Higgins will become the new executive director of Greenfield-based...
by Rachel Dougherty | Sep 29, 2011 | News
Forget Generation Y: college graduates today are starting to be known as the Boomerang Generation. “Boomerang” refers to the trend in which young people in the U.S. are leaving their parents’ homes for college, achieving a few years of independence,...
by Andrew Potter | Oct 20, 2011 | News
If by their heroes you shall know them, then there is plenty of sport to be had at the expense of the Occupy Wall Street protests that have spread across the United States into Canada and countries across the sea. Conceived at the culture-jamming HQ of...
