News
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...
by James Heflin | Dec 8, 2011 | News
In early November, many buildings in Wilmington, Vermont’s small downtown bore posters warning “Limited Entry.” Step into what appeared to be a bakery, and you’d be met with midday gloom. Traffic roared by, but nobody was around, and everything...
by Stephanie Kraft | Dec 8, 2011 | News
In a move that may bring radioactivity closer to beautiful Dimmock Pond and nearby homes in Springfield’s Indian Orchard, the UniFirst company at 295 Parker Street is planning to acquire more than half an acre of Hubbard Park, which lies just outside...
by Maureen Turner | Dec 8, 2011 | News
In 2009, Americans bought 438 million new computers, televisions, phones, tablets and other consumer electronics, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In many cases, those new items replaced older models left obsolete—or, at least, no longer...
by Tom Vannah | Dec 8, 2011 | News
Elizabeth Warren spoke to a group of newspaper publishers in Boston last week, giving an important speech to people with the power to influence media coverage of her Senate race against Republican Scott Brown. The Massachusetts Newspaper Publishers Association held...
by Tom Sturm | Dec 8, 2011 | News
Lynn Margulis, noted biologist and professor at UMass-Amherst’s Department of Geosciences, died Nov. 22 at the age of 73. A widely respected pioneer in the field of microbiology, Margulis was a fierce proponent of symbiotic theories of evolution that often went...
by Tim Cavanaugh | Dec 15, 2011 | News
With Hollywood hipster clothing boutiques declaring “Broke Is the New Black,” establishment media outlets circulating the tired phrase “new normal” to describe America’s four-year-old economic stagnation, and producers trying to capture...
by Our Readers | Dec 15, 2011 | News
Recycling Electronics The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) urges consumers to dispose properly of end-of-life electronics through its recycling locator at www.GreenerGadgets.org [“Where Old Computers Go to Die,” December 8, 2011]. This list only...
by Maureen Turner | Dec 15, 2011 | News
The Obama administration has dealt a blow to women’s reproductive rights, in a move that smells of election-season posturing. Last week, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius took the unprecedented step of overruling a recommendation by the...
by Stephanie Kraft | Dec 15, 2011 | News
It’s no wonder that the 2012 defense reauthorization bill passed by the House threatened the historic fabric of American civil liberties. For a while now, legislation coming out of the House has been a brew that might have been whipped up in a caldron by...
by Stephanie Kraft | Dec 15, 2011 | News
In an age when so many politicians are invisible under the expensive facades created by their handlers, it’s painful to think how much we will miss Barney Frank, now 71, who just announced that he will not run for reelection to his U.S. House seat next year....
by Maureen Turner | Dec 20, 2011 | News
Last week, the Springfield City Council took a decisive step toward trying to stop a controversial wood-burning power plant proposed in the city. At a special meeting on Dec. 7, the Council voted, 9 to 2, to appeal the building permit issued last month to the would-be...
by John Bonifaz | Dec 20, 2011 | News
America is at a crossroads. Shall we be governed by people or by corporations? If you thought we had already answered that question more than two centuries ago, you’re right. The framers of our Constitution were clear that we were to be a government of, for and...
by Pete Redington | Dec 22, 2011 | News
The Occupy Movement recently received support from a new organization of professional economists, a number of whom are based in the Pioneer Valley. “We are economists who oppose ideological cleansing in the economics profession,” the Economists’...
by James Heflin | Dec 22, 2011 | News
[Editor’s note: During its reporting on the likely impact casinos will have on the Valley arts scene, the Valley Advocate submitted questions via email to Iron Horse Entertainment Group owner Eric Suher, a man long thought to have an interest in developing a...
by Maureen Turner | Dec 22, 2011 | News
McKnight is one of the smallest neighborhoods in the city of Springfield, but also one of its liveliest, with an engaged neighborhood council, active crime watch and community police programs, and a historic district filled with beautiful old Victorian houses. It also...
by Tom Vannah | Dec 22, 2011 | News
Part of me wishes I could be as easily impressed as all those in the media chorus who jumped last week to salute the governor’s choice for gaming commissioner. Here, for example, was the effusive praise the Springfield Republican showered on Stephen Crosby, dean...
by Our Readers | Dec 22, 2011 | News
High on Textosterone Every day we hear of yet another traffic “accident” resulting from road rage, teenagers speeding through curves or the average citizen being in a hurry to go nowhere. Now we are seeing how cell phones/texting devices compromise the...
by James Heflin | Dec 22, 2011 | News
It’s all but a done deal: a casino will soon be part of the landscape somewhere in Western Mass. With casinos come big-name entertainers—primarily musicians and comedians—and competition for audiences and discretionary dollars. In a region full of...
by Advocate Staff | Dec 29, 2011 | News
Like most of the country he was elected to lead, President Barack Obama finds himself in purgatory, expiating his sins while reckoning with the sins of others—the sins of a cynical, short-sighted political and industrial culture dominated by an increasingly...
by Stephanie Kraft | Dec 29, 2011 | News
Whatever shabby deals the corporate news media make with the financial and political powers that be, NBC and other major networks have been doing a service lately by bringing into our living rooms the faces that illustrate the most appalling side of the current...
by Our Readers | Dec 29, 2011 | News
Casinos: Gateway to the Future? Reading recent letters to the Advocate opposing casino gambling in Massachusetts makes me wonder what future, if any, this state can expect. Absent intervention by a few gatekeepers, including the writers of those letters, the citizens...
by James Thindwa | Dec 29, 2011 | News
Newt Gingrich’s recent utterances about poor children—they “have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works”—reflect not only the inability of conservatives to talk seriously about poverty, but a mean-spiritedness that,...
by Stephanie Kraft | Dec 29, 2011 | News
Retro music, films and fashions are one thing. Retro behavior, like paying debts and saving money, is something else. But Americans seem to be rediscovering the financial practices of their grandparents these days: paying down debt, saving money (even at miserably low...
by Chris Lehmann | Jan 3, 2012 | News
Wall Street has been overrun with loutish, preening boors, heedless of civility and public order. They belong to an idle class of feckless layabouts who indulge every passing destructive impulse, regard any allusion to serious social obligation as a personal slight,...
by David L. Deen | Jan 3, 2012 | News
This year there has been a lot of talk about the benefit of the multi-agency Connecticut River Atlantic Salmon Restoration Program. The discussions have focused almost solely on the mistaken notion that low numbers of salmon returns are the only test of the success or...
by Maureen Turner | Jan 3, 2012 | News
Massachusetts voters are likely to find a question about legalizing medical marijuana on their ballots at the November election—and a new poll suggests that supporters of the question have reason to be optimistic. MassCann, the commonwealth’s chapter of...
by Mark S. Mellman | Jan 5, 2012 | News
During Newt Gingrich’s surge I was reminded that despite the egos in the little community of political consultants, candidates count a lot more than advisors and staff. Gingrich languished at the bottom with his all-star team in place, only to rise without them....
by Our Readers | Jan 5, 2012 | News
Cell Phone Use Hazardous in Cars Recent letters have suggested that hands-free cell phone use is safer than hand-held use while driving. Studies show that the two are equally dangerous, as dangerous as driving drunk. This isn’t just because your attention is...
by Stephanie Kraft | Jan 5, 2012 | News
Pearl Harbor: the “Day of Infamy.” The archetypal unprovoked aggression. The sneak attack that killed more than 2,300 unsuspecting Americans. But was it really unprovoked? Not so unprovoked as most Americans have believed for 70 years. The U.S.had actually...
by Maureen Turner | Jan 5, 2012 | News
A local candidate was in the running to be named Scrooge of the Year for 2011 by a national labor group, but lost to that most dreaded of villains: a Wal-Mart executive. Each December, Jobs With Justice invites the public to vote for a person or corporation deemed to...
by Stephanie Kraft | Jan 12, 2012 | News
Sometimes we don’t notice the news we should be reading. Last week an item not placed in the most visible position in the local papers announced a likely sudden, drastic reduction in the availability of cod. It seems that a report from three years ago showing...
by Mark Roessler | Jan 12, 2012 | News
“Hey, you can’t just stand up there, taking pictures,” a man yelled up at me. “The police are watching you.” No shit. Where there had been an encampment of protesters only weeks ago, there were now dozens of cops and their vehicles...
by Our Readers | Jan 12, 2012 | News
More on Pearl Harbor Stephanie Kraft’s article “The Art of Selling War” [January 5, 2012] is historical revisionism at its worst, perpetrating the dishonest myth that the Japanese were the innocent victims of World War II. One wonders how the souls...
by Maureen Turner | Jan 12, 2012 | News
A year of seemingly endless catastrophic weather ended on a bright note for several Valley farms. Last month, South Deerfield’s Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture, or CISA, issued the first loans from its Emergency Farm Fund. CISA created the revolving...
by Maureen Turner | Jan 12, 2012 | News
Like elected bodies around the Valley, the Easthampton City Council held its first meeting of the new year last week, when the councilors were sworn in to their new terms. But the meeting wasn’t all celebratory and ceremonial; the Council’s first order of...
by Tom Sturm | Jan 12, 2012 | News
Northampton Community Television executive director P. Al Williams has reason to feel good about his most recent hire. Jeromie Whalen, who paid his dues as an NCTV intern before getting the thumbs up for full-time employment, helped bring the station some national...
by Tom Vannah | Jan 12, 2012 | News
Alexandra Dawson made her words sting. She listened to a question, then she snapped her answer back. There often seemed to be a hint of irritation in her tone, not necessarily directed at any one person or situation but at the state of things in general—the...
by Maureen Turner | Jan 19, 2012 | News
In the early morning hours of Nov. 6, four Springfield police officers pursued a Pontiac Grand Am that had been reported stolen from a Boston Road gas station the day before. The car was driven by 18-year-old Tahiem Goffe of Springfield, who had two teenage...
by Tom Vannah | Jan 19, 2012 | News
A lot of Democrats have had fun watching the Republican primary season ramp up. The cavalcade of cartoon candidates— Bachmann, Perry, Paul, Gingrich, Santorum, Huntsman and Cain—has been enough to give even the shakiest Democrat partisan confidence in...
by Stephanie Kraft | Jan 19, 2012 | News
The U.S. Post Office, saddled with an artificial deficit caused by its mandate to pay years ahead into its worker benefits funds, continues with plans to shut down 3,700 post offices and 252 sorting facilities throughout the country. The changes were scheduled to get...
by Mark Roessler | Jan 19, 2012 | News
Although the Hampshire Choral Society is busy rehearsing and a symphony has been hired and sent parts to practice, a week before the Society’s upcoming performance at Smith’s John M. Greene Hall, none of the performers has yet heard the score. Ralph...
by Mark Roessler | Jan 19, 2012 | News
Hampshire Superior Court Justice Cornelius J. Moriarty ruled last month that correspondence between former Northampton economic development director Teri Anderson and the Three County Redevelopment Corporation were not exempt from public records laws. As the Valley...
by Stephanie Kraft | Jan 19, 2012 | News
President John Kennedy in June, 1963 gave a speech on peace—a peace, said Kennedy, that would not be “a pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war.” “Our diplomats,” he added, “are instructed to avoid unnecessary...
by Pete Redington | Jan 19, 2012 | News
This Friday, Jan. 20, Springfield’s U.S District Courthouse will be the site of an Occupy The Courts demonstration against corporate personhood. A day before the two-year anniversary of the Citizens United vs. Federal Elections Commission (FEC) Supreme Court...
by Maureen Turner | Jan 19, 2012 | News
Springfield has lost an engaged and engaging political and community activist with the death of Alan Howard. The 52-year-old Howard, a native of the city, died on Dec. 30 and was buried last week. It’s hard to think of an important issue in recent Springfield...
by Maureen Turner | Jan 26, 2012 | News
When state lawmakers set about reconfiguring legislative districts last year, one of their goals was to create more “minority-majority” districts around Massachusetts. One of the results: the boundaries of the Hampden State Senate district, now represented...
by Stephanie Kraft | Jan 26, 2012 | News
The state of Vermont has lost a court fight to force Entergy, the owner of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant near Brattleboro, to close the plant this March, when its 40-year license expires (the reactor has been in operation since 1972). The state had sued to...
by Our Readers | Jan 26, 2012 | News
A “Shut It Down” Birthday Celebration January 18 was a chilly and blustery day, although sunny. Along with 13 other women in the Shut It Down Affinity Group from Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts, dressed all in black and wearing white death masks,...
by Stephanie Kraft | Jan 26, 2012 | News
In a time when social and economic mobility in the U.S. are not what they used to be—for some time now, studies have shown that Americans are less likely than Canadians or Europeans to better their personal finances by as much as their parents...
by Tom Vannah | Jan 26, 2012 | News
As the saying goes, you can’t fight city hall. In Northampton, that old adage took on special meaning recently when the city’s new mayor attempted to hire a new city solicitor. The lawyer Northampton mayor David Narkewicz wanted came highly recommended,...
by Our Readers | Jan 26, 2012 | News
Follow the Money On Jan. 21, the nation marks the second anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, a decision that enabled corporations and unions to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence federal...
by Stephanie Kraft | Feb 2, 2012 | News
PIPA, the Protect Intellectual Property Act, and SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, bills designed to crack down on piracy on the Internet, were sent back to the drawing boards recently following an outcry from Internet providers—including large...
