Commentary

Some Old Letters

People send me the damnest stuff. Here's the first of what I'm sure will be a series of samples from my famous vaults.

I wish that libertarians would overthrow the current leadership of the Republican Party. But since that doesn't seem to be happening (yet) I wish I could find a political home in the Libertarian Party. However, the people who actually run under the Libertarian banner sometimes give me pause. Here's an example:



From : Robert Underwood rjunderwood2000@yahoo.com
Sent : Monday, March 20, 2006 1:28 AM
To : Tom Devine baystateob@hotmail.com
Subject : Vandalism

Mr. Devine

The recent vandalism at Central is an on-going problem of vandalism throughout the city.

I had about $5000 vandalism done to my house, by Irish vandals. Unlike yourself, they had not evolved to the point where they could use bricks or simple tools they used their feet to kick in latices work, and tore the roof off the garage next door using their hands. Their Irish grandmother thought they had to right to vandalize the neighborhood. Their family also worked for the city. So both their family and Irish police proved useless. As a matter of fact Irish police were quick to protect them. Since my neighborhood has become Puerto Rican vandalism has plummeted.

Every time I had a run in with some Irish low-life they always had ties to the police department or the DA’s office. Besides worthless parents the Irish cops are very much to blame for the crimes against property that is very common in Springfield.

I caught one person ( Irish ) selling things at his tag sale that he had stolen out of my basement. Once again Irish cops found excuses to not arrest him.

In your case your mother was quick to correct your behavior, and you yourself did not actually intend to destroy anything useful. I had one neighbor with whom I traded allowances with. Our kids would accidentally break windows and we would make them pay it out of their allowances. We probably broke even. The main beneficiary was ABC glass. What we were really doing was teaching the kids that they should think before they act because actions have consequences.

Rooke is grandstanding. He is well aware that the police and DA has tolerated vandalism, and even protected the vandals from arrest when they were Irish. Only a moron would think that the city will ever be able to collect $100,000 from the vandals. The idea of jail time is unrealistic because there are people who have done worse and not gone to jail. Rooke is also associated with officials who have been soft on vandalism when it was done by Irish.

The “white” kid that everyone is talking about who had his picture posted in the paper has a polish name.

Now we have Hurley who apparently was allowed to drive around drunk and hit a car full of Puerto Ricans and severely disabled a two year old kid. Within days the press was largely blaming the Puerto Ricans for not wearing seat belts. Within weeks legislation was filed making it mandatory to wear seatbelts, levying fines for failure to do so, and making state money available to fund a largely Irish bureaucracy to check cars for seat belts. They also picked the largely Puerto Rican North end to enforce the law.

Springfield government has been soft on vandalism because much of it was committed by politically connected people. Some of the vandals are also dealing in drugs and locking them up would cost revenue.

Robert “condom” McCollum has in the past, been totally useless in controlling the lawless element in the schools. But He and the pro-vandal element have a point also, the vandals are getting singled out because they are not Irish. Blacks do not tend to see the various ethnic groups among Europeans.

Now there is a movement to take up a collection to pay for the damages so that they will not go to jail. That shows that the way to get attention is to smash a piano. If you want to go the medical school, you are on your own.

In many ways the voters themselves have contributed to the vandalism. They are the ones who elected their smiling city councilors and legislators who have created a system that pretty much assures us that dogs and juveniles can do whatever they want and get away with it. The whiners voted to create a court system that does nothing until the damage gets to be so much that nothing can be done about it. My guess is that this was not the first thing that these people have done. Rooke the grandstander was just reelected, as was the rest of the city council. In all likelihood the legislature will also be re-elected.

Robert Joseph Underwood
Libertarian Candidate for State Representative

I once wrote a biographical essay, now out of print, about the time I was caught breaking a window at the World Famous Thomas M. Balliet Elementary School. People wrote in sharing their own perspectives on vandalism.



From : Tim Fenton timf312@msn.com
Sent : Monday, March 20, 2006 3:15 AM
To : baystateob@hotmail.com
Subject : Back in the day

Hey Tom,

I can relate to the Balliet story. I've done my share of stupid stuff. We might have been better off with the computer and video games.

Anyway, my tale begins at Cathedral HS back in 75,' I was a senior and had a cute girlfriend and would take a drink under extreme social pressure. One of the things we used to like to do was sneak into the dances they had in the cafeteria. If I remember they cost a buck. I had the money, it was just fun to sneak in.

One friday night near the end of high school we parked in the back lot where there was the loading dock for the school supplies. You could climb up on the roof and get up on the roof of the first floor. Then you ran to where the second floor began and I think we used to climb the windows and then down the other side and jump into the chapel court yard where kids would go out and smoke. YES! They could SMOKE! Hell I should stop right here, but I won't.

So a whole bunch of us started to jump into the courtyard and some of us got caught. One of them was me. We got taken to the office where I learned we were probably going to be charged with B+E. I had no idea what this was except I believed it was a law you didn't want to break.

Well, as the night went on the priest who I'd like to name because he was a psycho found out that of all the kids there, maybe 10 or so, I had a dad who was the Chief of Police at the time. He beamed at his capture! The proud priest let everyone else leave with their parents. My two best buddies got to go home together. One of the parents couldn't be located in the days before cell phones so they let Bobby go home with Joe's dad. Not me though, I was a hostage.

The "priest" wanted to know where my dad was. I said he was out with my mom. Where, he demanded to know? I don't know. they went out to dinner. The guy called all these restuarants and finally found them and ruined their night. While I waited there was one kid left in the office with me. Poor Eddie. His big Irish father punched him right in the face and his head smashed into the wall behind him. He had been seated in a chair at the time. As Eddie got scraped off the floor I waited for what I was sure would be a similar fate.

They got there shortly after and I wanted to tell my father that what they did to me was not fair, they discriminated agianst me, but that didn't fly with him. I thought I'd get hit but the old man made me feel worse than any beating and my mother was, disappointed to say the least. That's all she really had to do. Anyway, I guess there was really no B+E, so I got a month detention and had to do janitorial work every day. No one came to my defense. There was no collection taken by anyone. I had to stay in for a month of weekends after that. Never snuck in anywhere again.

From : Sheila McElwaine sheila.mcelwaine@comcast.net
Sent : Monday, March 20, 2006 1:16 PM
To : "Tom Devine" baystateob@hotmail.com
Subject : Vandalism Essay

Nice job, Tom.

I agree with your observation our lack of community consensus on whether vandalism is an impulse control problem or a symptom of racial crippling. It is shameful that our black politicians and leaders here are so eager to exploit the racial angle of every indicident that hits the papers, turning delinquents into victims. No wonder the minority community needs Bill Cosby to come down here from Shelburne Falls and talk sense! You'd think our 'leaders" would learn from his example.... They appear to be slow learners.

Is that Balliet principal John Murphy the same one who was principal at the Washington School in the 1980s and early 90s? If so, by then, he was a rigid s.o.b. who ran the school for the convenience of the staff. (When I went over to observe the kindergarten in 1985, the teacher, who, to impress me, played The Good Ship Lollipop on the piano using what must have been original sheet music, was drinking her coffee from a cup with the slogan "I'd rather be in bed.")

Keep up the good work.

Sheila

Sometimes I find kindred spirits in unexpected places. Here an 85 year old writes in calling for the legalization of drugs.



November 24, 2005

Dear Tom

A way to greatly reduce crime and violence: Make drugs available to all over 18, just as Congress did when they ratified the 21st Amendment in 1933 which permitted the sale of liquor.

Let's talk about the real world. Born in 1920, my adopted parents both drank although it was illegal; as a child I recall four locations, North End, South End, Eastern Avenue and Pine Point, where they purchased whiskey.

My father worked for the City of Springfield and lost very little time from work, this was a period when even those who were well educated were unemployed. It was a time when I'd see a man eating a sandwich on my back steps, many would walk to the next city looking for work. My mother had no fear of the man, the screen door had no hook. The wooden door had a ten cent skeleton key one could purchase in any five and dime store. Compare that with the thousands many spent today on security systems for their homes, cars and business property.

Unfortunately my mother was an alcoholic, both parents lost their driver's license, but that was no problem. She called a taxicab and many times took me with her while she drank and conversed at a speak-easy. At home there was always plenty of food in the icebox and fresh fruit. When she was drinking meals were not prepared so as a child I just took whatever I could reach to eat.

One way police knew a car was carrying a load of whiskey was the trunk would be way down on the springs. Many in law enforcement in decades past (as currently) were on the take. Those who were in the business made plenty of money, as it is now with drugs! Therefore there will be thousands throughout the world who would lose millions of dollars and be unequivocally opposed to legalizing the sale of drugs.

Is there a conspiracy tied into all this?

Unfortunately drugs have been in this world for many centuries. This old woman (85) has not lost her mind, no I live in the real world. This problem isn't going away.

Mildred B. Dunbar
Springfield, Ma.



I'm saddened by the news of the death of Yolly Nahorniak (above). She really was Ms. Pine Point, at least politically, although she wasn't particularly ideological. She was in favor of whatever was good for the Point, and wherever on the political spectrum that put her there she stood. Her late son Joseph once had a band called "Destiny's Defeat" that played all around the Point. I think it was Pine Point's first real live rock n' roll band, and Yolly was their manager. Among the band members was Mark Walker, who I lived with along with his brother Paul for much of the 1980's. When Mark Walker died in 2005 of an accidental drug overdose, Karl Mayfield of Martian Highway fame sent me this email:

From : elle drek muzikmachfrei@yahoo.com
Sent : Wednesday, August 31, 2005 10:31 PM
To : baystateob@hotmail.com
Subject : one(circle) to one(boulevard) breckwood boys

dear tom, please tell paul that i extend my condolences to him concerning his sibling. as you may remember mark was a guitar hero of mine. one morning at balliet i asked paul if he heard a song that went like so "i wahnitiwahnitiwahnit"(for those too jugend oder alt...musik was such an influence on all of us during this time. we are the beneficiaries of turmoil. we were born into an atmosphere of creativity ...born of chaos and the resultant electrictranscendence.) paul said something about his older brother knowing so ...after school he took me to where his bro's band was practicing and they were kind enuff to blow my mind with a rendition of "magic bus" which had only been on WHYN for a day or so (member that was the station when top 40 was the shit and not shit.) i felt honored to know him. tom you will remember that i have always had a bad habit of expressing optimism with a vengeance. mark at one point was kinda depressed and i was relentless in my praise of his playing, you know the deal..under certain chosen circumstances a tune a tone aflickofthewrist can reveal the universe......MARK!!!you did that for me, you are just one more of those i hold guilty of influencing my addiction to electrically administrated reality. VECTOR OF TRANSMISSION......guitar....mark r.i.p. .........................karl martian



The Fountainheads

I haven't seen the fountains turned on in the campus pond at UMass for so many years that I'd completely fotgotten about them, until they suddenly appeared in use yesterday.



I don't know whether those are new fountains, or the old fountains returned to use.



Too bad the UMass Collegian is closed for the summer. They would tell us.

Today's Video

You have to have been a teenager in the 70's to grasp the full ramifications of this video. You also have to be a white person.

On Owsley

A Bear of a Man

Today in downtown Amherst, this Grateful Dead bear mandala was waving outdoors.



The uninitiated see those bears and say, "Oh, how colorful and cute." What they don't know is that the bears are the secret symbol of the most famous manufacturer of the drug LSD in history. According to Slog:



As part of their coverage of the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love, the San Francisco Chronicle’s Joel Selvin tracked down Owsley “Bear” Stanley during a recent visit to the Bay Area. Stanley is the first person to mass produce LSD in the mid-’60s—an estimated 1.25 million hits. He’s notoriously private, Selvin writes, rarely allowing his photo to be taken and spending the last couple decades living in isolation on the tropical coast of Queensland, Australia, waiting out the ecological disaster he believes is impending.

Some of Stanley’s words to take to heart: “What I did was a community service, the way I look at it. I was punished for political reasons. Absolutely meaningless. Was I a criminal? No. I was a good member of society. Only my society and the one making the laws are different.”

Bear was also one of the pioneers of modern concert acoustics.

Less well known are Bear's contributions to rock concert sound. As the original sound mixer for the Grateful Dead, he was responsible for fundamental advances in audio technology, things as basic now as monitor speakers that allow vocalists to hear themselves onstage.

Says the Dead's Bob Weir: "He's good for a different point of view at about any given time. He's brilliant. He knows everything."

He also is famous for his belief that one should eat nothing but meat.

When he was younger, Bear read about the Eskimos eating only fish and meat and became convinced that humans are meant to be exclusively carnivorous. The members of the Grateful Dead remember living with Bear for several months in 1966 in Los Angeles, where the refrigerator contained only bottles of milk and a slab of steak, meat they fried and ate straight out of the pan. His heart attack several years ago had nothing to do with his strict regimen, according to Bear, but more likely the result of some poisonous broccoli his mother made him eat as a youth.



Death Deja Vu

The information coming out about the high drug intake of Michael Jackson, and the role it probably played in his untimely death, is a reminder of a similar accidental drug death by the great actor Heath Ledger. In his case, as it may turn out to be with Jackson, it was not any one drug he took, but rather the synergetic effect of several mixed together, none of which are necessarily dangerous by themselves.

According to RxList the deadly drug cocktail taken by Heath Ledger included:



Oxycodone, also known under brand name OxyContin, a potent painkiller
Hydrocodone, an ingredient in Vicodin, and other painkillers.
Diazepam or Valium, an antianxiety drug prescribed as a muscle relaxant
Alprazolam or Xanax, prescribed for anxiety and panic attacks
Temazepam or Restoril, prescribed for insomnia
Doxylamine, an antihistamine sleep aid sold in the U.S. as Unisom

The death of the 28-year-old Australian-born actor, known for his starring role in Brokeback Mountain and other movies, should serve as a caution for consumers not to mix prescription drugs on their own or change the dose without consulting their doctor, says Maria Fernanda Gomez, MD. Gomez is an associate professor of psychiatry at Montefiore Medical Center in New York. She is not involved in the investigation but reviewed the drugs noted in the cause-of-death report for WebMD.

The problem is not with the medications, she says, but rather the combinations. "These medications have been used for years." And if they are prescribed appropriately, in proper doses, they are effective and safe, she says.

The problem, according to Gomez, was the cumulative effect. "All these drugs are central nervous system depressants," she says. "There is drug-to-drug interaction. The additive effects of all these medications is what causes a serious problem. If you have two narcotics [the painkillers Ledger was prescribed] and two antianxiety drugs, the risk of overdose is high."

The lesson: Always be careful when taking multiple drugs that you know how they interact when used together.

Liberation Front

I like this funny ad for the this year's Boston Freedom rally.



Celebrity Mailbox

When cutting through Bartlett Hall at UMass the other day I saw that they were throwing away what apparently used to be the faculty mailbox for the journalism department. U.S. Rep. Richard Neal teaches a "course" there, and you can see his name below on the dismantled mailbox.



I'm surprised that he didn't have it addressed simply to "The Congressman."

Pointer Nostalgia

Today's hot weather brought out this brother and sister team of sugar pushers in Amherst.



75 cents? I remember my sister and I had a lemonade stand one hot summer day and sold it for a nickle a glass. Even then, sales were slow until my Uncle Steve came over and threw down a five dollar bill, grabbed our entire pitcher of lemonade and gulped down every drop. Thus being completely sold out of our product, we had no choice but to go immediately to Russell's on Boston Road and have cheeseburgers and butterscotch sundaes.

Young people have been flocking to UMass for student orientation, and this morning on the bus I found a new student coming to Amherst from Pine Point. How do I know he was a Pointer? Because he was proudly wearing his Our Lady of the Sacred Heart t-shirt!



OLSH could never compete with The Thomas M. Balliet Elementary School (nothing could) but it was none the less a fine institution and growing up I had many friends who went there. It is indeed a happy discovery that a Pine Pointer will be a member of the Class of 2013.

Today's Video

Northampton resident Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth was holding auditions in his cellar when the members of Amherst's Dinosaur Jr. suddenly appeared.

eBay Scam

Fake Bids Raise Prices



One of the wonders of the internet is the online marketplace eBay, where anyone can sell anything anyone might want to the highest bidder. The great virtue of the website is that it teaches people who use eBay the laws of economics and free markets through first-hand experience, something many educational systems do poorly or which is otherwise forbidden by socialist governments. Ebay has the potential to teach everyone in the world how to be a capitalist.

But what if some of the Ebay bidders are actually the owners of the item for sale, using a phony account name to push up the prices on their own products? An article on Stuff reveals how a person in Australia discovered the "rampant" dishonesty:



An in-depth investigation by an Australian retiree has revealed that fake bids are "running rampant" on Australian auction site eBay, forcing users to pay inflated prices for items on the auction site.

Philip Cohen, 69, from Brighton-Le-Sands in Sydney, found several instances of shill bidding - where phoney eBay accounts are used to bid up the price of items on the auction site to inflate the final price paid by buyers.

He places the blame squarely on eBay, saying that its anti-shill security systems are flawed or non-existent. He says that shill bidding has been encouraged by a new policy from eBay to hide from other users the usernames of people bidding on items.

Of course since the internet is international, what can be done in Australia can be done anywhere. However, eBay itself denies that the practice of fake bidding is widespread.



eBay Australia spokesman Daniel Feiler said bidding users' account names were hidden to avoid another type of nasty eBay scheme, whereby people who did not win an auction are contacted - often by scammers - with offers to buy the item or something similar from another seller outside eBay.

He noted that shill bidding was becoming less of a problem as half of the items listed on the site were now sold for a fixed price as opposed to the auction format.

"We've had systems for [detecting] shill bidding since eBay's earliest days," Feiler said.

"This person has found a couple of isolated incidents ... there's over 100 million listings on eBay at any one time, so there's bound to be a handful that are problematic, but in the scheme of things it's very, very small."

So what is this scam - "rampant" or "very small"? Since it is impossible to catch all such mischief, each customer will have to look out for themselves. Do some research into what the item you are bidding on should cost, so you know if the price is entering territories beyond what the product is worth. In cyberspace, like in every other marketplace on Earth, the same adage applies:

Let the buyer beware.

Obama Falling



It looks like the sagging economy and excessive government spending is having a negative effect on the popularity of President Obama. According to Politico:

In a potentially alarming trend for the White House, independent voters are deserting President Barack Obama nationally and especially in key swing states, recent polls suggest.

Obama’s job approval rating hit a — still healthy — low of 56 percent in the Gallup Poll on Wednesday. And pollsters are debating whether Obama’s expansive and expensive policy proposals or the ground-level realities of a still-faltering economy are driving the falling numbers.

But a source of the shift appears to be independent voters, who seem to be responding to Republican complaints of excessive spending and government control.

“This is a huge sea change that is playing itself out in American politics,” said Democratic pollster Doug Schoen. “Independents who had become effectively operational Democrats in 2006 and 2008 are now up for grabs and are trending Republican.

“They’re saying, ‘Costing too much, no results, see the downside, not sure of the upside,’” he said.

At Dawn

I was in downtown Northampton bright and early this morning to make pancakes for the street people. On my way I spotted this car on State Street crusading for a cause you don't hear much about anymore.



In Northampton the old crusades never die.

On a State Street porch a young artist left their masterpiece outside overnight.



Flowers bloom across from this old State Street home.



Years ago that house used to be a funky antique shop. However, downtown Hamp has become the Valley's most expensive real estate market, meaning you can make a killing converting anything you own into housing.

But there are still plenty of State Street businesses, such as the Hungry Ghost Bakery. The baker's bike was parked in front but at the hour I passed by the bakery wasn't open yet, although the air was delicious with the smell of freshly baking bread.



Oh no! Someone robbed the homeless frog again!



What kind of lowlife steals from the poor?

An alien visitation at Bridge Street School.



Free Music

Hey everybody, whatcha doin' after work? Come score some free tunes in Pulaski Park (next to the Academy of Music) and start your weekend off right!


Today's Video

Do you know there are people Out There who are unhappy with the way that we care for the Earth....

Raipher on Trial

Should he go to Hell?



In the 1990's youthful Attorney Raipher Pellegrino seemed like one of the rising stars of Springfield politics. The son of a popular judge, Raipher was elected to the City Council on his first try. However, he soon became, like so many of the bright young talents associated with the administration of former Springfield Mayor Michael Albano, identified in the public's mind with some of the sleazier aspects of that era, causing him to be removed from office by the voters. His defenders at the time argued that Pelegrino was unfairly singled out for criticism, that he was no worse than many others who were slithering through the political scene at the time, and in some ways better.

In any case, Pellegrino doesn't appear to have suffered much from his political demise, as he continues to work for one of Springfield's most lucrative law firms. Pellegrino also deserves great credit for the work he did on State Street restoring a historic building at mostly his own expense that had fallen into seemingly hopeless disrepair.



However it is Pellegrino's legal career, rather than his political one, that has caused him to surface on the vengeful website People You'll See in Hell. This is a website for people who want to publicly indict others as deserving to spend eternity in Hell. To me that sounds like a website begging to be sued out of existence, but it has escaped that fate thus far. Among those indicted on the website is Raipher.

Categories of indictment include Envy, Gluttony, Greed, Insanity, Lust, Pride, Sloth and Wrath. Raipher is indicted under the categories of Greed and Lust. The charges involve a weird case Pellegrino won involving a person accused of entering the Calvin Coolidge dorm at UMass and sexually attacking a student. The accused claimed that they were walking in their sleep at the time they committed the crime and should therefore be found innocent. With Raipher's help the defendent was acquitted. The case provided the basis for Pellegrino being nominated for Hell:



If you thought there could not be another reason to lose sleep at night, Raipher D. Pellegrino is there to defend that which goes bump or more like “boink” in the night. For 156 years jurors had more than enough common sense as to believe that someone could commit a major crime while sleepwalking. In 2002, with the magic word “somnambulism” (the medical term for sleep walking), Raipher defended a multiple raper – someone was able to stay asleep while sexually assaulting multiple women in the Coolidge Dorm at the University of Massachusetts in 2001. The sleepwalking rapist was 19 – I would believe it a bit more if instead the perp was 91. I’ve aced a few classes I’ve slept through, but I wake up for sex because sex is definitely more interesting than Algebra, Geometry English, etc…

Seems crazy? OK I have done a few crazy things half asleep. But when someone says “no” and fights back, how does one sleep through that? I have a hard enough time getting into my own house awake, never mind going into someone else’s “asleep”. I did have a friend who woke up in the cellar of a strange building, but he had been drinking.

So, if somnambulism means sleep walking, what’s the term for sleep entering, sleep boinking and sleep sexual assaulting?

As of Oct 28th 2008 Attorney Pellegrino has now made it legal to enter a neighbor’s house and grope 19-year-old women as long as one can say they were asleep the entire time in the state of Illinois. This POS was a college athletic director, someone who is going to tell others how to manage their bodies and yet have no control over his!

So now Attorney Pellegrino is the first defense lawyer to successfully use this defense twice. I am more than sure his rates have increased. I also wonder what defendant number three is going to be able to claim they snoozed through.

Ouch! Following this indictment by someone anonymously calling themselves "The Nibbler" readers are invited to become jurors and vote on Raipher's fate. Does Raipher D. Pellegrino, Attorney at Law, deserve Hell? So far this is the jury's verdict.



Yes (51.0%, 116 Votes)
All Lawyers belong in Hell (29.0%, 65 Votes)
No (21.0%, 47 Votes)

Hey, doesn't look too good so far for Atty. Pellegerino, but note that at least one in five say Raipher should be spared the fire and brimstone. Unfortunately, besides voting jurors can also leave comments, and many of these make the original indictment seem tame. For example:

Only in America can you sexually assault someone, then hire a guy who looks like a coke addict who helps you beat the case with a sleepwalking defense. Or in this case sleepfucking.

However Raipher does have his defenders, even his admirers:

I’d be okay with hiring this guy. If I’m going to hire a lawyer, I want the greasiest, most unethical, slimiest motherfucker money can buy. This guy can do it with a smile on his face – is he in the Yellow Pages?

However one thoughtful commenter seems to feel that the case in question is more an indictment of the legal system than of Raipher personally.



I don’t know about this one. I graduated from law school and had an opportunity to spend some time on both sides of the fence. Honestly, my final reaction was that the system is just in terrible shape. Period. It’s not defense attorneys any more than it is judges or DAs.

The courts are crowded and my general impression was that your crime doesn’t matter to anyone – DAs included – unless it’s a really big deal. There are no Law and Order show downs between prosecutors and defense attorneys. Sure, some have personal problems with each other and overall they stayed away from each other, but not always. There was definitely a lot of laughing across the aisle while waiting for a judge. They’d talk about family or vacations, argue for a bit over a case and walk out of the courtroom chatting again.

The point is that, in my humble opinion, the entire system is in shambles. most people just take the plea and there’s no real individualized assessment, no real look at how dangerous a particular person may be if they get the oh-too-often probation offer. Sentences have become so seemingly random that it’s maddening. Sure, some defense attorneys are worse than others. but some judges are terrible and some DAs are jaded and disinterested. It’s all just so, so messed up.

To read the full indictment and comments click here. What I'm wondering is why, instead of picking on Raipher, no one has written up an indictment to Hell for former Springfield Mayor Mike Albano, whose administration helped corrupt a whole generation of young (and not so young) local politicians.

Green Street Lamps

One of the worst aspects of Springfield's decline was that at one point they had to turn off street lamps in order to save money, not a good idea in city already struggling with high crime. Shut off by Mayor Albano, the street lights were quickly restored by moneysaving measures introduced by Albano's successor, Charles V. Ryan.

But to make sure that never happens again, maybe the city should consider investing in these new solar/wind powered street lights!



The innovative wind and solar powered hybrid street lamp concept can not only produce light by using renewable energy, also it’s a boost to an everyday object that can operate completely off-grid. This concept was derived from the effort of designers to create a more sustainable future that integrates a range of reusable energy technologies into everyday life objects. These lamps comprise a solar array connected with a wind turbine, and can produce up to 380W of power.

These wind/solar powered street lamps are fitted to locally made, usual galvanized steel poles and can be easily swapped with previous street lamps. The turbines can be either a horizontal axis wind turbine or a 2nd generation 300W vertical axis wind turbine. Two solar panels are mounted on the side of the pole that is capable of producing up to 80W of power.



With the Control Board now gone, maybe buying these lamps would be one way of proving that the city can come up with ways to save money on its own.

New Road

The main drag in downtown Amherst is getting repaved.



I don't know whether it's one of those "stimulus" projects or just something Amherst had planned to do all along. I guess if it was a stimulus project it would have one of those stupid signs Jim Polito took offence to.



Can you believe those signs cost 300 dollars apiece? Just like the government to waste our money while telling us what they're wasting our money on.

What is former WGGB man Polito doing these days? Still doing radio up in Worcester. Here he is surrounded by WGBY producer Tony Dunne and Magi Bish, mother of the tragic Molly.



Anyway, the construction didn't seem to have any effect on this sidewalk sale.



Despite the economy being in a seemingly unstoppable downward spiral, Antonio's Pizza has a Help Wanted sign.



However, that may have less to do with an uptick in the economy than that their normal source of help - college students - have split for the summer.

Today's Video

If you get confused listen to the music play.

Phelps Last Laugh

Kelloggs Gets Burned

Massachusetts residents knew something was up when Olympic god Michael Phelps showed up at a Boston Celtics home game.



What the fans didn't know was that Phelps was in the Bay State that day to film a commercial for Subway Sandwiches at the pool at Boston University. Here's a Boston Globe picture of Phelps warming up at the Boston University Fitness and Recreation Center, or "FitsRec" as the students call it.



Of course this is the same Michael Phelps who was dropped last year by Kelloggs Cereal Company despite having received sportsdom's highest honor by appeared on the front of Kelloggs' Corn Flakes.



The reason? Phelps was photographed huffing on a bong at a college party. Kelloggs felt that such an evil act as bonging made Phelps unfit to be a public role model. Yet apparently that is not what the American people feel, or that is what Subway is hoping. As Dan Neil writes in the L.A. Times:

Super-swimmer Michael Phelps returned to big-time advertising Sunday with a TV spot for Subway titled "Be Yourself." Oh, the irony.

Surely Phelps -- 14-time Olympic gold medalist and endorsement juggernaut -- was being only himself, only human, when he was photographed in November hitting a bong at a party at the University of South Carolina. That photograph, first published by the British tabloid News of the World in January, resulted in a three-month competition ban and cost Phelps a reported $500,000 deal with Kellogg. The swimmer promptly issued a sniveling apology, copping to "regrettable," "inappropriate" and "youthful" behavior (doesn't the latter want to excuse the former?). Phelps, 24, has more or less cheerfully dined on PR ashes ever since, in interviews with Matt Lauer, among others.

Interestingly, the apology from the world's fittest stoner infuriated proponents of legal weed, who saw the episode as a missed opportunity to advance the cause. After all, if Aqua-Man smokes bud, how bad can it be?

This is the greatest Olympian of all time, a man chandeliered with gold medals on the cover of Sports Illustrated. His achievements mock the moral hysteria that traditionally rains down on marijuana.

The Subway ad itself is nothing special. It's a compare-and-contrast between Phelps' glamorous life as a sports superstar and that of Jared Fogle, Subway's former-fatty mascot. Jared prefers the low-fat sweet-onion Chicken Teriyaki sandwich, while metabolic dynamo Phelps dares to eat the foot-long Meatball Marinara with Jalapeño, containing 1,060 calories and more than 3,000 milligrams of sodium.

Eating these will not make you an Olympic swimmer. A floating island, maybe.


Actually Phelps is a marketeer's dream come true. Listen to how flawlessly and sincerely he recites his no doubt totally rehearsed lines at this press conference. Also, maybe it's just the echo of the scandal, but some observers have noted that Phelps appeared to be sorta stoned.



So while Kelloggs foolishly squandered their Phelps connection, Subway is cashing in royally. Is it possible that Subway is even trying to exploit the Phelps' cannibus controversy? Some critics have noted that the address of the website for their ad campaign is:

http://www.subwayfreshbuzz.com/



Walk This Way



Every morning, even in the bad weather above, I walk the woodland way into downtown Northampton. I'm pleased to see that once again science says that I am staying fit by doing so. According to Yahoo News:

CHICAGO – Walking or biking to work, even part way, is linked with fitness, but very few Americans do it, according to a study of more than 2,000 middle-aged city dwellers.

In what may be the first large U.S. study of health and commuting, the researchers found only about 17 percent of workers walked or bicycled any portion of their commute.

Those active commuters did better on treadmill tests of fitness, even when researchers accounted for their leisure-time physical activity levels, suggesting commuter choices do make a difference.

For men in the study, but not women, the active commuters also had healthier numbers for body mass index, blood pressure, insulin and blood fats called triglycerides. Women walked or biked shorter distances and they may have done so less vigorously, the authors speculated.

Lazy chicks! Well, I for one intend to keep on truckin' to good health. And don't forget that bicycling is almost as good.



Shrinking?

On King Street in Northampton I passed this Springfield Republican newsbox and saw that the paper in it dates back to June 20th.



As a matter of fact I've noticed that a lot of Republican newsboxes seem abandoned these days, although I see others that are still being updated daily. Has the paper cut back on it's distribution again?

Amherstopoly

The old fashioned variety store A.J. Hastings in downtown Amherst has been open every single day without fail since 1914. On blizzard days it may only open for an hour or two, but it has never been completely closed for a single 24 hour period in all those 95 years.



Of course 95 years does not compare to 250, which is how long Amherst itself has been around since it broke free of the town of Hadley. To commemorate the anniversary, Hastings is selling a specialty version of the monopoly game.



I wonder what game piece stands for Larry Kelley - the flag? How about Augusten Burroughs - the scissors? How about J. Mascis - the brontosaurus?

Today's Video

Break your chains, count your change and try to walk the line.

Doing Nothing

The Virtues of Inaction



Despite the promise from the White House and Democrats in Congress that if we passed the massive spending and bailout bills that unemployment would not rise above eight percent, it is now at 9.5 percent with no sign of going anywhere but up. Yet apologists for the spending still claim that despite the growing evidence of failure that action has to be taken because something simply had to be done. But did it really? As Jeffrey Miron explains in the latest copy of Reason, there was always the option of doing nothing:

The first thing to note about the financial crisis is that the federal government never had any business intervening in the personal decision of whether you want to own a home. There is no rational economic argument, or any argument I know of, that says the market of buying and selling homes is imperfect in some way, requiring government action. Construction firms have plenty of incentive to build homes and sell them. People who have the wherewithal have plenty of incentive to buy homes if they so choose. For the government to intrude into homeownership was an off-budget, nontransparent, backdoor attempt at redistributing income. And when the policy became a way of transferring income to people who couldn’t afford those homes, it was doomed to failure.

When people try to pin the blame for the financial crisis on the introduction of derivatives, or the increase in securitization, or the failure of ratings agencies, it’s important to remember that the magnitude of both boom and bust was increased exponentially because of the notion in the back of everyone’s mind that if things went badly, the government would bail us out. And in fact, that is what the federal government has done. But before critiquing this series of interventions, perhaps we should ask what the alternative was. Lots of people talk as if there was no option other than bailing out financial institutions. But you always have a choice. You may not like the other choices, but you always have a choice. We could have, for example, done nothing.

By doing nothing, I mean we could have done nothing new. Existing policies were available, which means bankruptcy or, in the case of banks, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation receivership. Some sort of orderly, temporary control of a failing institution for the purpose of either selling off the assets and liquidating them, or, preferably, zeroing out the equity holders, giving the creditors a haircut and making them the new equity holders. Similarly, a bankruptcy or receivership proceeding might sell the institution to some player in the private sector willing to own it for some price. With that method, taxpayer funds are generally unneeded, or at least needed to a much smaller extent than with the bailout approach.



Bailouts took money from the taxpayers and gave it to banks that willingly, knowingly, and repeatedly took huge amounts of risk, hoping they’d get bailed out by everyone else. It clearly was an unfair transfer of funds. Under bankruptcy, on the other hand, the people who take most or even all of the loss are the equity holders and creditors of these institutions. This is appropriate, because these are the stakeholders who win on the upside when there’s money to be made. Distributionally, we clearly did the wrong thing.

From the perspective of long-run efficiency, the question is also relatively straightforward. By the end of 2005, it should have been apparent that the U.S. economy was fundamentally misaligned. We had significantly overinvested in housing and significantly underinvested in factories, plants, and equipment. In effect, we needed a recession: a period to readjust the balance between the different types of capital.

More broadly, failure is an essential aspect of free markets. Failure shows capitalism is working, because it means resources are moving from bad uses to good uses.

It is becoming obvious that the government's spending programs are actually making things worse, and have had the effect of prolonging the recession, not ending it. Yet there is growing talk in Congress of yet more stimulus spending, which is just more of the same bad medicine.



Homeless Chic

Thanks to the bad economy created by bad government policies, there are a lot of people in the area living in tents, as revealed in this photo montage by Paolo Mastrangelo of a tent encampment in the woods of Northampton.



Living in a tent might be fun for a weekend, but it's got to suck for much longer than that. No running water? No electricity? No thanks. However, perhaps the electrical problem can be solved thanks to this new tent using the latest in solar technology.



The Orange Company today revealed their vision for the tent of the future. Utilising cutting edge eco-energy technology, the Orange Solar Concept Tent will allow campers to keep in touch and power their essential camping gadgets. Latest research shows that by weaving specially coated solar threads into conventional fabric, revolutionary new ways of capturing the sun’s energy could soon become a reality. These radical advances mean that rather than relying upon familiar fixed panels, designers were free to conceive how a tent of flexible solar fabrics might look.

Providing the homeless with an electric tent may be expensive and inadequate, but it may also be more affordable than other short term solutions. I predict the electric tent will become a useful tool in the struggle to provide housing for all.

Everybody's a Comedian

Massachusetts Senator and failed 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry is not known for his sense of humor. In fact, his generally unfunny manner was blamed in part for the failure of voters to warm up to him in 2004. So it is a surprise to find this funny little blurb attributed to him in a Men's Journal article on jet lag:



“I can’t say my past experiments with jet lag remedies have been very scientific. When I’m flying, I usually take an Ambien and listen to one of my own speeches on my iPod. I’m out in seconds. But it doesn’t always work, and sometimes you’ll have some funny moments from being overtired. There was an incident in New Orleans, at Mardi Gras, in 1997. But the video has been destroyed and I gave the beads back.”

- Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Daddy?

Speaking of Kerry, the first photo has surfaced of former Senator (and Kerry's 2004 Democrat Vice Presidential nominee) John Edward's alleged love child. He admits he had an affair with the child's mother, but claims the kid isn't his. What do you think?



While the photo is not a dead ringer that Edward's is the dad, it also offers nothing to disprove it. Interesting that Edwards's won't just submit to a blood test, which would settle the matter once and for all. But maybe that's because he already knows how the test would come out.

Time

Once upon a time people would rely on bells ringing around town to help them keep track of time. This old bell tucked away under a staircase in the Northampton courthouse was made in 1823 by the foundry founded by Paul Revere.



We moderns rely on things like the clock at the corner of Main and King Street in downtown Hamp. Unfortunately it hasn't been very reliable lately, either turned off or with so many bulbs out in the numbers that you couldn't be sure what it said. Now that's changed with a brand new digital version that doesn't rely on light bulbs!



Nothing preserves time like photographs. Blogger and music dude Jim Neill apparently had a normal Valley upbringing (if there is such a thing) with the exception that he had the sense to take pictures. Here he is in Northampton's Pulaski Park in 1982.



This is an undated photo he released recently of the old Funhouse at the former Mountain Park in Holyoke.



I love the motto on the front, "It's fun to get lost!"

I think I had too much of that kind of fun, and I ain't talkin' about Mountain Park.

Today's Video

No comment.

Journalism Fiasco

How Springfield's Paper Failed the Community

Here's a reprint of a classic, long out of print Boston Globe article that provides a priceless journalistic snapshot of Springfield politics at the dawn of the 1990's.



Originally published in the Feb. 19, 1990 issue of The Boston Globe.

SCOOPED IN SPRINGFIELD

By Stephen J. Simurda

SPRINGFIELD--When veteran reporter Don Ebbeling returned home from a vacation in Florida two weeks ago, he found a fat envelope stuffed in his door. Inside were articles that had appeared in The Boston Globe while Ebbeling was away. The articles published on Jan. 21, 22 raised questions about the relationship between Hampden County District Attorney Matthew J. Ryan Jr. and reputed organized crime leaders.

As he read the articles, "It kind of extended my vacation a couple of hours," says Ebbeling, who has written about organized crime, politics and the courts for more than 20 years at the Springfield Newspapers. "I was pleased that finally something was published in a widespread newspaper" about Ryan's behavior, says Ebbeling.

But if the reporter was happy to see the articles, he and others at his newspaper were not so happy to see them in a paper based more than 75 miles from the Springfield office where Ryan has served since 1959. Federal court reporter Kevin Claffey expressed the reaction of many. "It was both embarrassing and gratifying," he said, "Embarrassing because of where it appeared and gratifying because it confirmed what I and others had been saying over the years."

His editors were less gratified. "I felt a certain amount of anguish," admits Wayne Phaneuf, managing editor of the Springfield Union-News. Adds executive editor Carroll F. Robbins, "I felt we'd been scooped. I was embarrassed and hurt."

In the days following the Globe stories, the Union-News struggled to catch up. But even as they worked to pursue what had become the biggest story in years in western Massachusetts, a variety of sources (including current and former reporters, editors and community leaders) questioned why many of the allegations concerning Ryan had not already appeared in the Springfield Newspapers.

At the root of the issue for most people is a perception that the Newhouse-owned daily paper has favored Ryan and other powerful officials or specific issues for years, despite evidence of serious wrongdoing in some cases.

"The record is quite clear that there has been no aggressive reporting on (certain) people over the years, and we've done lots of tough stories on other subjects," says one reporter. "We're all very frustrated here," says another. A former editor adds that in pursuing certain stories, "You were constantly aware that there were obstacles" within the newspaper.

As one high-ranking law enforcement official says, "If I knew something that was going on and had to be covered, I wouldn't go to the Springfield Newspapers."

Coverage of Matty Ryan, the crusty district attorney who has yet to respond to charges about his links to the mob, appear to support this feeling. A few examples:

--Editor Phaneuf admits he was aware in 1985 of rumors that Ryan played a weekly racquetball game at the YMCA with reputed mob boss Al Bruno, but could not substantiate it. Reporter Claffey says he had the story and submitted it. Phaneuf denies this and doesn't respond when asked why he didn't simply send a reporter to the YMCA to get the story. It eventually broke in the Boston Herald in 1986.

--The Globe's Jan. 21 story on Ryan began with an incident involving a Milton Bradley Co. executive who implicated himself through a wiretap in a fencing operation and later saw the case dropped by Ryan. Francis Bloom, the former top assistant DA who figured prominently in the Globe stories, says he tried twice to give this story to Springfield Union-News reporter Cynthia Simison.

Simison says she went to her paper and the decision was made not to run the story because the paper did not have a copy of the indictment. "Editors of the paper were definitely involved" in making the decision not to pursue the story, Simison said. A decision was also made not to seek the indictment as a public document. "Why (the decision) was made, I don't know," says Simison, "And people here don't seem to remember me going to them."

--Last September, Union-News political reporter John Appleton had written an article about a possible investigation of Matty Ryan by the state Board of Bar Overseers. Although Appleton thought the story was solid, his editors say they wanted corroboration from the judge that they believed brought the complaint (something that would have been highly unusual). As the story sat in the Union-News computer, the Boston Herald broke it.

--Reporter Ebbeling says he has written a number of stories critical of Matty Ryan over the years that were not published, going back as far as the late 1960s, when he connected Ryan to a private client who was a known gambler. In 1984, Ebbeling was taken off the political beat and given what he viewed as a demotion to covering district courts. Although he won't link the action to stories about Ryan, he admits that was the perception in the paper's newsroom.

Reporters and others says it's not just Ryan who seems to get favored treatment from the newspaper. They point out that first-term congressman Richard E. Neal, a former Springfield mayor, has long received good press. This continued even after Neal was connected to a lucrative health insurance contract he gave to a campaign supporter in the final days of his mayoral administration.

An investigation was initiated by the city council and an interim report concluded "further investigation would be fruitful," and did not rule out impropriety. The city council, under severe financial constraints, decided against paying more money for the probe.

Less than two months later, on Jan. 4 of this year, the paper editorialized that, "The only reason anyone would want it (the investigation) to continue would be an attempt to embarrass Neal."



Carroll Robbins says the paper is continuing to investigate the story, however. "We consider that a current story," he said. Reporters argue that "it was dead," however, until the Globe series on Ryan appeared. One reporter says his editors became concerned and revived the story after learning that the Globe might also be investigating this story.

There's no question that evidence points to what one newsroom source called a "narrow but deep blind spot" at the Springfield Newspapers. Reactions to that blind spot and explanations of the reason for it vary widely.

Publisher David Starr denies it exists. "It simply isn't so. We cover Matty Ryan the way we cover anything in our town." To some, there is a great irony in these words.

"This paper dedicates itself to mediocrity," says George Nasser, a Springfield attorney who ran against Ryan in 1978 and was endorsed by one of the two Springfield Newspapers that existed at the time. (The Morning Union and afternoon Daily News merged to become one all-day paper--the Union-News--in June 1987.)

"What this paper needs is a Gorbachev," says Al Giordano, a reporter who covers Springfield for the Valley Advocate, a weekly tabloid, "They need to bring in somebody to restore order and journalistic excellence." Until the Globe stories, Giordano had been something of a lone voice in Springfield, writing several stories lambasting Ryan for questionable behavior.

Reporters looking for symptoms of the problem at the Union-News often point to a practice of killing stories that deal with issues that are viewed as sensitive. Current and former reporters say the "deep-sixing" of stories that seem to touch a raw political nerve is commonplace. Both Robbins and Union-News editor Arnold S. Friedman deny they have ever killed stories that were written and ready to go in the paper, for political or other reasons. But several reporters disagree.

The most recent example, according to reporter Brad Smith, occurred last month when a story he wrote about a controversy dealing with the decision to fill a vacant seat on the city's school committee "went into Robbins' desk and ... just died." He and others claim the paper have a clear preference for who they would like to see in the school committee position.

When asking people in Springfield for reasons why the newspaper may appear to protect certain people, one unusual connection comes up regularly. Paul Robbins, son of executive editor Carroll Robbins, is a political consultant in Springfield whose clients have included Matty Ryan, Richie Neal and Mayor Mary Hurley. As one reporter said, "There's a natal connection there."

Both father and son strongly deny that their jobs influence each other. "I'm afraid to call my dad at the newspaper to ask him what time dinner is at his house on Sunday," says Paul Robbins. "I can't tell my son how to direct his career," adds his father.

But many people in the city echoed the sentiments of Vincent Dimonaco, former president of the city council and unsuccessful candidate for mayor, who feels that in hiring Paul Robbins, one gets the newspaper in the bargain. "My feeling was that if I had hired Paul Robbins, I would have walked away with the election" last fall, he said.

It's this close connection to the city's power structure that many point to as the reason for many apparent journalistic lapses at the Springfield Newspapers. Publisher Starr has served for years as head of a private downtown development group, for example. There's a feeling that he and others at the paper sometimes work to set the city's agenda, rather than cover it.

Former city councilor Mitchell J. Ogulewicz Jr. recalls his first meeting with Starr in which he claims the publisher told him the newspaper was "going to manipulate and cajole the voters" into electing the paper's chosen candidate for the city council. Starr denies this. Ogulewicz and other speak of attempts by Friedman to influence councilors votes on a variety of issues. Freidman denies this. Reporters are generally unsurprised by the allegations. Even if they are untrue, the perception that they are true is strong.

Carroll Robbins and Wayne Phaneuf say they have been trying to change these perceptions since the newspapers have been merged. Robbins acknowledges the papers "have had a conservative tradition. We weren't crusading newspapers." But, he notes,

"I would like to be."

Phaneuf and others in the newsroom point out that one of the most chilling effects of the perception of the paper's shortcomings has been a self-censorship by reporters who have long ago learned to read certain signals from their editors. These signals may be changing. The editors admit that the embarrassment felt after the Globe stories on Matty Ryan has spurred them toward more aggressive coverage of some issues.

"The problem," notes Robbins, "is to pursuade our staff that we have some integrity in the way we go after stories. That we're not afraid of any story. That we don't protect anybody."

Staff members applaud the sentiment, but many feel they need to see more before they'll believe it.

Absolutely Awful

I'm speechless with sadness about the tragic death of Army veteran Mark Ecker, of East Longmeadow, who lost his legs while on duty in Iraq, and was killed this weekend in an Interstate 93 rollover accident. I met Ecker once in 2007 at a Jefferson Starship concert in Northampton, a portion of the proceeds of which went to local veteran groups. Here's a picture of Ecker addressing the audience that day.



Although Ecker does not appear in it, here is a video by Jeff Ziff of scenes from that concert, held at the Northampton Fair grounds.