News
by Stephanie Kraft | Jan 21, 2013 | News
With every blow of the hammer on Boston’s Big Dig—the project that overhauled the Central Artery and constructed a new harbor tunnel—voices warned that the project would overwhelm Massachusetts’ transportation budget for 40 years to come. As...
by Kathleen Broadhurst | Jan 23, 2013 | News
When we think of Iran and Israel, we think of war, we think of nuclear bombs, cultural eradication, mutual hatred. We are fed a message of hate, but with the Internet at our fingertips, every day people are taking peace into their own hands. There is more to the story...
by Maureen Turner | Jan 29, 2013 | News
Last April 30, a few days before the first anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden, John Brennan, President Obama’s chief advisor on counterterrorism and his nominee to be the new head of the CIA, spoke at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for...
by Stephanie Kraft | Jan 29, 2013 | News
Fifteen thousand guns a year are stolen from retailers in the U.S. The problem of gun theft and inventory security in gun stores was discussed in this column in “Guns in the Wrong Hands” (January 17, 2013). That problem isn’t just accidental. The gun...
by Stephanie Kraft | Feb 18, 2013 | News
Since November, the Ecuadorian government has been moving to auction off oil blocks on 10 million acres of still-wild, roadless tropical rain forest in the Amazon region. Ecuadoran leaders hope to attract $1 billion in investments with the tender; they want contracts...
by Maureen Turner | Jan 29, 2013 | News
In August of 1971, Lewis Powell, Jr., an attorney working for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, wrote a private memo to the group in which be bemoaned the lack of respect accorded business interests in the halls of political power. “[A]s every business executive...
by Maureen Turner | Mar 18, 2013 | News
In the late 19th century, the Lyman Street area of downtown Holyoke underwent a significant change. Once home to Irish immigrants, who’d arrived in the city in the 1840s to work on its dams and canals, the neighborhood now began to be dominated by Polish...
by Our Readers | Jan 29, 2013 | News
Fluoride a Neurotoxin Your readers in the fluoridated towns of Amherst, Holyoke and Longmeadow may like to know that an analysis from the Harvard School of Public Health has confirmed that fluoride in drinking water is a neurotoxin, and that ingesting it lowers the IQ...
by Tom Vannah | Feb 18, 2013 | News
I understand why Gov. Deval Patrick received big accolades for his decisive statewide travel ban during last week’s bizzard (or snowstorm, depending on where in the state you found yourself at the time). I understand why plaudits came from legions of state and...
by Maureen Turner | Jan 29, 2013 | News
As if U.S. drug policy weren’t controversial enough, consider the widening inconsistency between the federal government’s hard-line stance on marijuana and the more liberal policies being adopted by many states—an inconsistency that’s creating...
by Our Readers | Mar 4, 2013 | News
“The Biggest Single Issue” Seven buses left Northampton Saturday night, February 16 for a 50,000-person rally in Washington, D.C. to bring attention to the devastation caused by tar sands extraction and the Keystone XL Pipeline, and to climate change and...
by Stephanie Kraft | Jan 29, 2013 | News
Once upon a time, what a young woman needed to get her college bills paid was a daddy. That was 30 years ago and more, before tuition went through the roof. Now what more and more coeds are looking for to help them pay for that bachelor’s degree is something...
by Maureen Turner | Feb 18, 2013 | News
Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno took a break last week from managing his city’s latest weather-related crisis to announce that both the casino developers courting the city will advance to the next round of the competition. The administration will now begin...
by Stephanie Kraft | Jan 29, 2013 | News
Where will the next gas pipeline explosion be? Let’s hope it won’t be at or near 1277 Main Street in Warren near the Xtra Mart convenience store, where a National Grid pipeline has been leaking for several months, according to property owner Vincent...
by Stephanie Kraft | Mar 18, 2013 | News
According to the White House, children will be the big losers as the federal budget sequester—a set of automatic cuts—hits Massachusetts this year. If money for these key programs isn’t restored, here’s a rough guide to what will happen: *...
by Pete Redington | Feb 4, 2013 | News
Proponents of unregulated free market capitalism argue that a company’s success is determined by its appeal, or lack thereof, to consumers in the marketplace. Thanks to a new app, it looks like consumers will now more effectively be able to decide whether or not...
by Maureen Turner | Feb 18, 2013 | News
It wouldn’t be a new legislative session without a battle over the fate of Massachusetts’ bottle bill; it’s like the Die Hard of public policy, albeit with fewer explosions and less money—though still a significant amount—at stake. This...
by Maureen Turner | Feb 4, 2013 | News
The UMass-Amherst program in Social Thought and Political Economy kicks off this week with a series of brown-bag lunch discussions with notable Valley activists. It begins Wed., Jan 30, with a talk by Lois Ahrens, director of Northampton’s Real Cost of Prisons...
by Stephanie Kraft | Mar 4, 2013 | News
In New England, Maine governor Paul LePage is the lone healthcare holdout, refusing to take advantage of the expanded Medicaid program that will be offered under the Affordable Care Act beginning next year. LePage still intends to turn his back on $3 billion in...
by Pete Redington | Feb 4, 2013 | News
Arriving home early in the morning a couple of weeks ago, with his team heading to the Super Bowl after roundly defeating the Patriots, Baltimore Ravens linebacker Brendan Ayanbadejo experienced an impassioned “Jerry Macquire” moment. Reflecting on the...
by Maureen Turner | Feb 20, 2013 | News
Officials from the Mass. Department of Public Health will be in Western Mass. next week to hear from local people about the state’s new medical marijuana law. The Feb. 27 informal hearing, scheduled for 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. at Holyoke Community College’s...
by Maureen Turner | Feb 4, 2013 | News
It’s been 19 years since the debut of Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues, in which she looked at the many aspects of women’s sexuality, including the problems of rape and abuse, using interviews with real women as her raw material. The play, which...
by Stephanie Kraft | Mar 18, 2013 | News
It’s always news when the Nuclear Regulatory Commission turns down a request from a nuclear energy company, because the agency so seldom does that. But recently the NRC denied an appeal from French nuclear operator Electricite de France S.A. to proceed with a...
by Maureen Turner | Feb 4, 2013 | News
Of all the Massachusetts communities in the running to host a casino—there are 11 proposals for projects across the commonwealth, four of them in Western Mass.—is any counting on a casino’s potentially transformative powers as much as Springfield is?...
by Our Readers | Feb 25, 2013 | News
Gun Violence an Epidemic I disagree with Robert Underwood (Letters, February 14, 2013). Gun violence meets all the technical definitions of an epidemic. Ironically, the gun nuts who complain about a lack of statistics are those very same individuals and...
by Our Readers | Feb 4, 2013 | News
Arts Center Seeks New Home While agreeing with this article (“Finding the Center,” January 24, 2013) about the need for full support of the arts in Northampton, I do wish to correct any idea that First Churches Northampton is part of the problem. We...
by Stephanie Kraft | Mar 4, 2013 | News
The folks who deal with waste and recycling for the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection work quietly, but their mill grinds on, cranking out plans to reduce Massachusetts’ mountains of garbage. The state’s landfill space has shrunk to...
by Stephanie Kraft | Feb 4, 2013 | News
The deep underground water supplies in the U.S. are in danger—in danger of depletion because of increasing use, and in danger from pollution because of lax federal regulations that assumed that many deep-lying reservoirs would never be needed. But they may,...
by Ted Rall | Feb 25, 2013 | News
“Your dearest wish is for our state structure and ideological system never to change, to remain as they are for centuries. But history is not like that. Every system either finds a way to develop or else collapses.” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote that in...
by Pete Redington | Feb 4, 2013 | News
To paraphrase New Deal President Franklin Roosevelt, what good is political equality when there is still economic inequality? Answer: not much, as an Oxfam International report released earlier this month suggests. Timed to coincide with the World Economic Forum held...
by Maureen Turner | Mar 18, 2013 | News
The company that owns the Mount Tom power plant is keeping mum about the implications of its recent decision to go off line for a year. But environmental groups are celebrating the move as a step toward the long-overdue closing of the coal-burning plant, and one more...
by Tom Vannah | Feb 11, 2013 | News
February 6, 2013: It’s a sunny day with a temperature in the upper 20s. Berkshire East Ski Resort in Charlemont feels extra busy for a weekday (although there are no lines at the lifts), thanks mainly to the hustle and bustle of afternoon school programs and...
by Maureen Turner | Feb 25, 2013 | News
A report released last week by a coalition of environmental and public health groups found that many children’s nap mats used in daycare centers and preschools contain hazardous chemicals linked to cancer and other health problems. The report,...
by Our Readers | Feb 11, 2013 | News
Ask biz Vizz Before Buying As a consumer, I vote with my feet. I prefer to give my business to companies that I perceive as improving, or being less detrimental to, first the local community, then this region, then the health of the planet (“App Rates Out...
by Maureen Turner | Mar 4, 2013 | News
There’s a lot at stake in Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno’s ongoing negotiations with the two casino companies that hope to build in his city. As Sarno’s administration works to draft host community agreements with the companies—MGM, which...
by Maureen Turner | Feb 11, 2013 | News
On Jan. 29, 2009, nine days after he was inaugurated for his first term, Barack Obama signed off on the first new law of his presidency: the Lilly Ledbetter Act, which made it easier for American workers to pursue unequal pay complaints. “It is fitting that with...
by Our Readers | Mar 11, 2013 | News
Are We Stuck? If China can modernize by being more capitalistic, we can modernize by being more socialistic. I love the “Democracy at work” movement. We all like democracy, right? Why not give subsidies to worker-owned and -run businesses? How about the...
by Maureen Turner | Feb 11, 2013 | News
By last week, the already truncated campaign season to fill John Kerry’s recently vacated Senate seat was beginning to feel shorter by the moment, as the GOP struggled to find a candidate to compete in the June 25 special election. Indeed, as the Republicans...
by Maureen Turner | Mar 18, 2013 | News
Remember the old days, when we had election seasons and then fallow periods, when politicians could take a break from campaigning and fundraising and, oh, say, do the work of government? The 24-hour news cycle, and the accompanying interests of advertisers and ad...
by Stephanie Kraft | Feb 11, 2013 | News
John Kerry brings more to the post of Secretary of State than a willingness to be a presidential administration’s mouthpiece. His passion for foreign affairs has been lifelong. In delivering the class oration when he graduated from Yale in 1966, Kerry, the son...
by Maureen Turner | Feb 25, 2013 | News
When Jim Santiago was a child, his family moved from upper Manhattan’s El Barrio—also known as Spanish Harlem—across the Hudson River to Jersey City. That city, Santiago said, had a lot in common with his adopted hometown of Holyoke. Both are...
by Tom Sturm | Feb 11, 2013 | News
Environmentalists are generally enthusiastic about Massachusetts Senator John Kerry’s appointment to the cabinet post of Secretary of State. Historically, Kerry probably has the most stellar voting record on environmental issues of anyone who’s served in...
by Maureen Turner | Mar 4, 2013 | News
When Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture, or CISA, established its Emergency Farm Fund in 2011, the immediate goal was to help local farmers hurt by Hurricane Irene. But the group knew that Irene was not an isolated event and that farmers would continue to...
by Stephanie Kraft | Feb 11, 2013 | News
Springfield’s Alliance to Develop Power has been chosen to compete for a possible $150,000 in prize money with 73 other nonprofit groups that create jobs in their own communities. The JobRaising Challenge is sponsored by Huffington Post and the Skoll Foundation;...
by Stephanie Kraft | Mar 11, 2013 | News
A bill to ban fracking in Massachusetts has gained the support of more 20 state legislators, including, from Western Massachusetts, Ellen Story (D-Amherst), Peter Kocot (D-Northampton) and John Scibak (D-South Hadley). Also backing the bill, H707, is Lori Ehrlich, the...
by Maureen Turner | Feb 18, 2013 | News
It was looking dicey for a while there, but finally—to the great relief of both Massachusetts’ small but stalwart Republican party and voters of all stripes who enjoy the notion of a healthy democracy—we have a bona fide Senate race. After...
by Tom Vannah | Mar 18, 2013 | News
The plagiarizing prosecutor? So said the Boston Globe last week about Michael Sullivan, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate and a former U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts. Sullivan reportedly lifted website material from fellow Republican Richard Tisei, a failed...
by Pete Redington | Mar 4, 2013 | News
The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education recently issued directives pertaining to the rights of the state’s transgender public school students, including the right to use bathrooms, or play on teams, that are appropriate to the gender...
by Stephanie Kraft | Feb 25, 2013 | News
The place to be on Saturdays in Amherst is the winter farmers’ market, which recently featured accordionist Sophie Crafts “playing down her student loans” and charming children with her dress-alike puppet. SNAP cards were welcome at the market, where...
by Stephanie Kraft | Mar 11, 2013 | News
A story you can’t afford not to read is Time’s “Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us” by Steven Brill, a special report published March 4. There aren’t many of us who can’t identify, either through our own experience or that of friends,...
by Our Readers | Mar 18, 2013 | News
Do Nonprofits’ “Gifts” Help the Community? Stephanie Kraft’s article in Imperium Watch, “Beware of Corporations Bearing Gifts” (February 28, 2013), was interesting but overlooked an aspect of corporate “philanthropy”:...
by Andrew Lam | Mar 18, 2013 | News
A meteor estimated by NASA to weigh 10 tons exploded the morning of Feb. 15 over Russia’s Ural region, and its shock wave caused injuries to more than 1,000 people. It took out windows and walls in the city of Chelyabinsk. And it temporarily shifted the...
by Stephanie Kraft | Feb 25, 2013 | News
This month General Motors donated $400,000 for breast cancer research. That’s a good thing, as far as it goes. And that act of giving is not tainted by the same irony as, for example, British American Tobacco’s donations to enhance the wellbeing of people...
by Stephanie Kraft | Mar 11, 2013 | News
Unless something stops the state Department of Environmental Protection in its tracks, next year Massachusetts will become the first state in the U.S. to require restaurants and other establishments that serve or process food to compost their organic waste rather than...
by Pete Redington | Mar 18, 2013 | News
Bread and Puppet Theatre lends its legendary hand in the effort to close Vermont Yankee by leading a parade through Brattleboro on March 30 with the Safe and Green Campaign. The march marks the one-year anniversary since the nuclear facility continued operation...
by Maureen Turner | Mar 25, 2013 | News
For Penn National, landing Peter A. Picknelly as a local partner in its plan to build a casino in Springfield was a significant coup. Picknelly is the chairman and CEO of Peter Pan Bus Lines—the Springfield-based company that was founded by his grandfather and...
by Our Readers | Feb 25, 2013 | News
Understanding the Gender Wage Gap No law yet has closed the gender wage gap—not the 1963 Equal Pay for Equal Work Act, not Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, not the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act, not affirmative action (which has benefited mostly white...
by Maureen Turner | Mar 11, 2013 | News
Reports of an economic recovery notwithstanding, many families in the U.S. are struggling on the most basic level. One example: last year, 18.2 percent of Americans told Gallup polltakers that at some point over the previous 12 months, they “did not have enough...
by Pete Redington | Mar 18, 2013 | News
Outdoor gear supplier Adventure Outfitters, a mainstay in the Valley for over 30 years and a regular recipient of the Advocate’s Best Of Award, is going out of business. One of the few independent outdoor retailers remaining in the Valley, owner Michael Zabre...
by Our Readers | Mar 25, 2013 | News
Gun Violence Will Get Worse Before It Gets Better The death of the assault weapons ban (which has only been delayed by Harry Reid’s change of heart) provides a stark illustration of two basic principles of American politics. “An interested and active...
