News
by Our Readers | Sep 29, 2011 | News
Casino Rationale Disingenuous It saddens me to see casinos legalized in this state. What’s happening here? Have we gone mad? I have to hear how we need the jobs. Come on. We had a Massachusetts Miracle not long ago. This valley was crawling with jobs. What...
by Our Readers | Oct 20, 2011 | News
Wall Street Occupation a Work in Progress The pundits and mainstream media analysts may be viewing the Wall Street Occupation with myopic intent, perhaps because the “news cycle” is so limited in its scope and imagination, and the protesters are not yet...
by Stephanie Kraft | Sep 29, 2011 | News
The Census Bureau just informed us that in 2010, we had 46.2 million people living in poverty—the highest number since 1959, when the census began keeping track of economic status. The figure is up .8 percent (14.3 percent to 15.1 percent) from 2009, and...
by Our Readers | Oct 20, 2011 | News
Racing to the Bottom In poker, the winners don’t always have the best hands. They get an edge by having good information and knowing not to chase after a big score when the odds are against them. In proposing casinos and slot machine ventures, Gov. Patrick and...
by Stephanie Kraft | Sep 29, 2011 | News
When he saw the airplanes flying into the Twin Towers, Mike Gravel went into a three-day depression. “It wasn’t because of the loss of life, though that was bad enough,” he says. “My concern was what this would do to the American psyche.”...
by Stephanie Kraft | Oct 20, 2011 | News
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont has done it again: exposed simple facts that show how the American financial system works, and how it needs to be corrected. Most recently an audit of the secretive Federal Reserve, requested by Sanders and others but most vocally...
by Maureen Turner | Sep 29, 2011 | News
This was not an easy summer for Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno. The season started with a tornado that ripped through his city, wiping out homes and schools and businesses, some of which are unlikely ever to be rebuilt. The city’s murder rate continued to...
by Stephanie Kraft | Oct 27, 2011 | News
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster has been replaced in the headlines by other news, but its effects are still playing out in Japan, where contamination of fruit, vegetables and water is a constant concern and 80,000 people are still living a rootless existence in...
by Stephanie Kraft | Oct 6, 2011 | News
As former U.S. Senator Mike Gravel works to get an initiative calling for a new investigation of the events of Sept. 11 passed in Massachusetts (“A Deeper Inquiry,” September 29, 2011), revelations from Florida add another mystery to the pile of unanswered...
by Maureen Turner | Oct 27, 2011 | News
In the days right after Hurricane Irene wreaked havoc on so many Valley farms, the folks at South Deerfield’s Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture, or CISA, rushed to offer what help they could. The nonprofit worked to help farmers affected by the storm...
by Our Readers | Oct 6, 2011 | News
Vermont Yankee: Why Prolong a Troubled History? As a resident of Northfield, just a few miles downstream from the Entergy Vermont nuclear power reactor, I have followed with interest the efforts to shut it down by March 2012, at the end of its 40-year license. The...
by Maureen Turner | Oct 27, 2011 | News
For a few days after the Sept. 20 preliminary election, it made sense to me that Jose Tosado would lie low. After all, Tosado’s bid to become Springfield’s mayor took a serious hit that day, and even the most cocksure of candidates—which Tosado,...
by Tom Sturm | Oct 6, 2011 | News
Every politician from Barack Obama to Rick Perry realizes that “jobs” is the number one issue on the minds of struggling Americans. The former may pad his job creation numbers with temporary, government-spawned census jobs and the latter may neglect to...
by Our Readers | Oct 27, 2011 | News
Another Farmers’ Market Thank you for the recent article, “Are you Paying for Organic Gourmet Chic?” in which Margaret Christie and Stephanie Kraft explain the operational and economic differences between large-scale growing for supermarkets and...
by Tom Sturm | Oct 11, 2011 | News
A group calling itself The Other 99 Percent has been snowballing its effort to “Occupy Wall Street.” In the weeks since it began on Sept. 17, the occupation—an actual campout that’s roughly centered in lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti...
by Tom Vannah and Mark Roessler | Oct 27, 2011 | News
The complete transcript to the debate can be downloaded here as a Microsoft Word document. Below are a selection of questions from the transcript that were not included in print. Note: This is the raw transcript from a two hour interview. Only limited effort has been...
by Stephanie Kraft | Oct 13, 2011 | News
Koch Industries, the financial power behind the Tea Party, is a protean multinational that makes a lot of things you may be using, from Lycra to Brawny paper towels. It’s in forest products, fibers for fabrics, ranching, chemicals, petroleum refining,...
by Mark Roessler and Tom Vannah | Nov 3, 2011 | News
To someone from outside Northampton, it may be hard to see much difference between the two candidates vying for mayor. On policy, the differences between acting mayor David Narkewicz and former city councilor Michael Bardsley are, for the most part, nuanced. In recent...
by Mark Roessler | Oct 13, 2011 | News
A proposed $40 million redevelopment of the Three County Fairgrounds in Northampton is at the center of a battle brewing between abutters and state and city officials who have supported and promoted the project. That battle, in which some city residents claim to be...
by Maureen Turner | Nov 3, 2011 | News
Holyoke is enjoying an impressive renaissance these days, with new energy focused on high-tech development and a revived arts scene breathing new life into its downtown. That energy comes from a mix of small businesses, creative-economy types, community organizations,...
by Maureen Turner | Oct 13, 2011 | News
More than a dozen years ago, the nonprofit MotherWoman got off to a deceptively modest start, with a drop-in support group for mothers in Amherst. Annette Cycon, who founded the organization with a friend, told the Advocate a couple of years ago that they started the...
by Our Readers | Nov 3, 2011 | News
The War on Hunger No one should go without food in our region and across our Commonwealth of Massachusetts, not to mention the entire country, with all the wealth and resources that we possess as a nation. Yet more than 108,000 people rely on emergency food from the...
by Maureen Turner | Oct 13, 2011 | News
In January, a police officer in Toronto addressed a group of York University students at a forum on public safety. Among his advice for avoiding sexual assault? “Women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized.” The comment was met...
by Maureen Turner | Nov 3, 2011 | News
Last year, she offered Massachusetts voters a progressive choice for governor. Now Jill Stein, a physician and leader in the Massachusetts Green-Rainbow Party, is jumping into the 2012 presidential race, running to the left of Barack Obama. Stein announced her...
by Tom Vannah | Oct 13, 2011 | News
When I first heard about the images at the center of a controversy in Holyoke, I felt conflicted. After all, the Valley Advocate has a long tradition of defending the right to free expression. Whenever free speech comes under attack, particularly in our own back yard,...
by Stephanie Kraft | Nov 3, 2011 | News
Money is moving out of the country’s largest banks and into credit unions and smaller institutions. It’s rather ironic that the last straw was the relatively small fee, $5 a month, that Bank of America came up with for customers who use their debit cards...
by Maureen Turner | Oct 13, 2011 | News
Richard Gardner knows as well as anyone the complaints and frustrations of people who use public buses. He drives for the PVTA, on a route that passes through the center of Springfield into Indian Orchard and then Ludlow. Bus drivers are on the front line in mass...
by Maureen Turner | Nov 3, 2011 | News
Turnout at Springfield’s Sept. 20 preliminary election was dismally low: just 14.7 percent of voters cast ballots that day to narrow the field of three mayoral candidates to two, and the field of 13 at-large city councilor candidates to 10, in advance of the...
by Pete Redington | Oct 13, 2011 | News
Earlier this month, an estimated 700 Occupy Wall Street protesters were arrested while attempting to cross New York’s famed Brooklyn Bridge. It was one of the largest demonstrations to date by the amorphous “Other 99 percent” representing the...
by Our Readers | Nov 10, 2011 | News
Pregnant in Prison I had occasion to read a recent article in the Valley Advocate entitled “Birth Behind Bars,” dated September 22, 2011 and written by Maureen Turner, and I felt compelled to set the record straight. I am a 28-year veteran of the...
by Tom Vannah and Mark Roessler | Oct 20, 2011 | News
On a rainy morning in mid-October, the two candidates for mayor in Northampton arrived at the Advocate’s office before 8 a.m. Each man came alone—no campaign staff, no audience. For the next two hours, City Council president and acting mayor David...
by Stephanie Kraft | Nov 10, 2011 | News
Contrary to rumor, the U.S. Post Office in its day-to-day operations is not running in the red. It’s only hard up at the moment because in 2006, Congress passed a rule that forced it to pay decades ahead into a retirement health care fund for its...
by Tom Vannah | Oct 20, 2011 | News
I asked Mark McAuliffe point blank: Is he worried about the potential for voter fraud or some form of election irregularity at the ballot box in Chicopee this November? “Yes, sir,” said McAuliffe, who is running for City Council against four-term incumbent...
by Mark Roessler | Nov 10, 2011 | News
On October 20, 2011, Northampton’s acting mayor David Narkewicz delivered former city councilor Maria Tymoczko an envelope with printouts of several email correspondences between the city’s economic development director and members of the Three County...
by Tom Vannah and Mark Roessler | Oct 20, 2011 | News
David Narkewicz and Michael Bardsley managed to get through nearly two hours of a debate without getting prickly with each other. But the last few minutes of their exchange got heated. The disagreement began when Narkewicz complained that Bardlsey misquoted him:...
by Stephanie Kraft | Nov 10, 2011 | News
A lovers’ quarrel leading to a breakup can be dangerous. In the worst case scenario, violence may break out and leave someone dead or seriously hurt. In an older time, that scenario was common enough that so-called “crimes of passion” often went...
by Stephanie Kraft | Nov 10, 2011 | News
Just as the Massachusetts Legislature approves plans to bring casinos to the state, we get this headline from the Associated Press: “Casino workers fear falling from middle class.” The headline tops a report from Atlantic City about proposed cuts in pay...
by Maureen Turner | Nov 15, 2011 | News
The details sound awfully familiar: public employees doing private kitchen renovation projects and vacation-home projects on the taxpayers’ dime. Receipts for publicly funded travel expenses that don’t add up. Employees helping themselves to money and...
by Maureen Turner | Nov 15, 2011 | News
Do you know any first-graders who are in love with a stripper—or at least like to sing about it? Then you’re in luck. On the shelves this Christmas you’ll find the “I Am T-Pain Mic,” a toy microphone marketed by Grammy-winning rapper...
by Stephanie Kraft | Nov 17, 2011 | News
The Springfield postmark we see on mail sent from just about anywhere in the Valley is there because mail in this area is sorted at the U.S. Postal Service’s Processing and Distribution Center on Fiberloid Street in Springfield. That’s one reason...
by Pete Redington | Nov 17, 2011 | News
Last week, as the Patriots prepared for a nationally televised Sunday Night Football game against their rival Jets for first place in the AFC East, the Red Sox continued to interview candidates for their vaunted managerial position, and the defending Stanley Cup...
by Our Readers | Nov 17, 2011 | News
Post Office Consolidations Hurt Small Businesses Thank you for your insightful article [“You’ve Got Mail,” November 10, 2011] on the post office and its financial woes (and see this week’s related story, “Postmark Hartford”). Not...
by Maureen Turner | Nov 17, 2011 | News
Last Wednesday morning, about 40 people gathered on Middle Street, in Springfield’s Liberty Heights neighborhood, to try to save Sellou Diaite’s home. Diaite and her then-husband bought the house in 2006 for $214,900. The couple split up last year, and...
by Mark Roessler | Nov 17, 2011 | News
Local independent reporter Mike Kirby recently published a two-part story on his blog (kirbyontheloose.blogspot.com) investigating whether Northampton’s Fire Chief Brian Duggan has been fulfilling his duties as the city’s second-highest paid official, or...
by Stephanie Kraft | Nov 22, 2011 | News
The movement to withdraw deposits from the country’s largest banks has made a difference. Between the end of September and November 5, which was designated by some activist groups as Move Your Money Day, $4.5 billion was moved out of Bank of America, Citibank,...
by Mark Roessler | Nov 22, 2011 | News
A day after New York’s mayor Michael Bloomberg sent his own occupying force of policemen into Zuccotti Park to force protesters out, area radical Andrew Huckins followed up with the Advocate. Asked whether the park was critical to the movement and if its loss...
by Stephanie Kraft | Nov 24, 2011 | News
Why haven’t people been going to jail for the financial misdoings that drained the economy and necessitated huge bailouts? The answer often given by the government is that, first, some of those actions technically violated no criminal laws, and second, civil...
by Stephanie Kraft | Nov 24, 2011 | News
In spite of defense attorney Raipher Pellegrino’s attempt to blame the government for Michael Armitage’s diversion of federal transportation funds for his own personal use, Armitage is headed to prison Jan. 12. The developer and entrepreneur who...
by Maureen Turner | Nov 24, 2011 | News
Last week, after almost a year of anxious waiting, Massachusetts’ new Congressional district map was approved by the state Legislature. The plan—which will go into effect with the 2012 election—was driven by the results of the 2010 Census, which...
by Tom Vannah | Nov 24, 2011 | News
By Friday, nearly a week after the storm, I was fed up. I told people it wasn’t the creature comforts that we missed. I said we’re a hardy lot, veterans of many cold and rainy camping trips. I told people it was the interruption of the routine that made...
by Stephanie Kraft | Nov 24, 2011 | News
When farmers sell those piles of glowing tomatoes, squash, apples and pears at the farmers’ markets, and customers buy them, there’s an economic as well as a nutritional return, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Earlier this month the USDA...
by Mark Roessler | Nov 24, 2011 | News
A few hours after midnight on Tuesday, November 15, Andrew Huckins woke to a text message alerting him that hundreds of police in riot gear had descended on the Occupy Wall Street protesters sleeping in Zucotti Park in downtown Manhattan. As a member of the...
by Tom Vannah | Dec 1, 2011 | News
“I never have had a moral objection to gambling,” Governor Deval Patrick said after signing the casino bill last week. “I respect those who have a moral objection, but I am not one of them.” I’ve never had a moral objection to gambling...
by Stephanie Kraft | Dec 1, 2011 | News
John O’Brien isn’t camping out on the streets of New York with Occupy Wall Street, but he might as well be. O’Brien, the embattled register of deeds for Southern Essex (Salem), has been carrying on his own fight with the big banks, which, he says,...
by Our Readers | Dec 1, 2011 | News
Weighing In on the Post Office If the Post Office worries about the dropoff in items of mail posted each day (and the drop in revenue), just wait ’til our overnight delivery system turns into two days or more (“Postmark Hartford?”, November 17,...
by Maureen Turner | Dec 1, 2011 | News
Last year, there were 12,233 foreclosures in Massachusetts, a 32 percent climb from the previous year but not quite as many as in 2008, when a record 12,430 owners lost their properties. So far this year, there have been 10,610 foreclosure petitions filed in the...
by Our Readers | Dec 1, 2011 | News
On the End of First-Class Sorting in Springfield I can see the logic of closing tiny post offices in small communities because the revenue they generate doesn’t pay expenses (“Postmark Hartford?”, November 17, 2011). One could also argue that...
by Stephanie Kraft | Dec 6, 2011 | News
Another front in the battle between the United States as a promoter of the common good and the United States as a machine churning out profits for large banks is the matter of the prepaid bank cards now widely used to pay unemployment benefits. Once again the issue is...
by Our Readers | Dec 8, 2011 | News
Occupy. Occupy. In your feature “The Commuting Anarchist” [November 24, 2011], Mark Roessler’s question, “How does what’s happening on Wall Street translate to someplace else, like the Pioneer Valley?” went largely unanswered. When...
by Maureen Turner | Dec 8, 2011 | News
Every year on the day after Election Day, after I’ve pored over the various candidates’ totals, I grimly turn to the voter turnout figures. It’s like pressing a bruise to see if it still hurts: I know I’m going to be annoyed by the numbers, but...
