WAMC Northeast Report on WAMC

This month Governor Andrew Cuomo announced his veto of the Environmental Protection Fund Enhancement Act, which would have added $56 million of existing Bottle Bill revenues to the Environmental Protection Fund  over six years. The veto caused some to question whether or not the Governor was an environmentalist.
 Capital Region Bureau Chief Dave Lucas reports.
 

In the weeks following the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn, politicians and pundits across the country have been searching for a solution to help prevent a similar tragedy from occurring in the future – and in the neighboring state of Massachusetts, lawmakers and advocates are hoping that a discussion on mental health issues can be made a priority in the next legislative session. WAMC's Berkshire Bureau Chief Lucas Willard has more...

So as years go, 2012 may not have been our finest.  But, alas, and mercifully, it is coming to a close.  Yet generally time is not the best aid to remembrance nor perspective.  And with that we look back on the year that’s nearly past, not with an acute vision on recent events but with a more reflective eye on this year’s whole body of work.  In other words, sometimes it’s hard to remember something that happened even a month ago, much less 10 or 11.

After a housing authority in Southern Vermont failed to pass an inspection by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development earlier this year, the agency must now submit a corrective plan to federal authorities to address its inadequacies. WAMC’s Lucas Willard reports…

The Bennington Housing Authority was initially notified by mail this month that it was designated as “substandard”, and now has until December 30th to submit a corrective plan to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development Region 1.

Liz Montaquila is a spokeswoman for HUD…

Many observances are taking place today to mark one week since the school shooting in Newtown Connecticut.  A student initiated vigil was held at a high school in Springfield Massachusetts. WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief Paul Tuthill reports.

New York City will convey title to a large piece of property located in Greene County to New York State for expanded recreational use. Capital Region Bureau Chief Dave Lucas reports the move will ensure water quality protection while giving tourism a boost.  

Your WAMC regional weather summary with  meteorologist Garett Argianas.

The Vermont Veterans Home in Bennington will receive stricter state oversight, following a controversy earlier this year that nearly cost the home millions in federal funding. WAMC’s Berkshire Bureau Chief Lucas Willard reports…

Your WAMC regional weather summary with  meteorologist Garett Argianas.

The ultra-Right Wing Rat-Pack, who masquerade as role models for an America, they say was founded by an elite corps of individualists, to glorify Christian ideals of morality and promote Capitalist ideas for profitable corporate conquest, has revived an old bugaboo to bamboozle the American electorate into acceptance of their unseemly and unjustified efforts to force it into eternal captivity.  They’ve re-raised the specter of ‘Socialism’!  In the face of truly dire threats like air and water pollution, climate change and global warming, plus mounting numbers of dead and wounded victims of the unchecked and irresponsible sale and use of guns and ammunition, these imperturbable profiteers have resurrected the baseless badge of ‘Socialist’ to pin on any who dare to bare their truly self-serving shenanigans.  From the outset of its pretentious inaugural, as the savior of a special way of life for a special class of societal scions, dedicated to preservation of social separation (the elitist upper-crust – from the ordinary ‘others’) corporate potentates have used every ruse to elaborate the pronounced difference between Capitalists as the creators and dispensers of earnings opportunity and eventual wealth… and those who serve them as the eventual receivers of residual benefits, thus justifying the levying of taxes on their receipt.  In defense of this Capitalist canard, corporate captains have employed legions of legal virtuosi, whose sole goal is to rationalize and define this assertion as fact.  Behind this licit disguise, they have devised and practiced the most flagrant forms of corporate welfare imaginable.  Anything else to the contrary, they have branded as “SOCIALIST!”