Ben Downing

Let’s Buy A Farm

Mickey Friedman
December 17, 2011

If there’s one thing I learned from hearing “Oklahoma” eight million times it’s that the cowboys and the farmers should be friends. We’re short of cowboys and growing short of farmers around these parts. Which is all the more reason to help those farmers we’ve got left.

Shaw Farm From Seekonk Road - Photo: David Scribner

It’s really not the fault of our farmers that they’re forced to consider selling or leasing their land to others. For solar farms or real estate developments. We’ve allowed the corporatization of farming to overtake the small farms that for so many years were a critical part of life in New England. In the 40 years I’ve been here I’ve seen one small dairy farm after another disappear.

My conservative friends never tire of proclaiming the evils of government, and the army of corrupt bureaucrats who over- and incompetently regulate us. Yet they have remained silent as corporations gained one unfair advantage after another with lower taxes, taxes they don’t pay, and enormous government subsidies. Real and fair competition, the bedrock of Adam Smith’s theory of capitalism, has long disappeared.

READ MORE >>

Sen. Downing’s ‘Tips Bill’ & Fundraising Raise Questions

By Bill Shein
October 31, 2011

There’s at least one thread that runs through the many-flavored Occupy Wall Street protests: Big money from a narrow economic elite, flowing into and around our political system, has distorted participatory democracy to create an economic system that’s unfair and unjust. Concentration of wealth, historic income and wealth inequality, and forced belt-tightening for working people are hallmarks of our age.

A bill, S.922, filed by State Sen. Ben Downing (D-Pittsfield) at the request of the owners of Cranwell Resort & Spa, would have gutted legal protections for workers that rely on tips.

Those were also hallmarks of the Gilded Age of the late 19th and early 20th century, the time of robber barons, overt political corruption that would lead to Progressive Era reforms, and, here in western Massachusetts, the construction of enormous Berkshires estates.

One of those properties, inhabited by a succession of wealthy owners beginning in the 1850s, is now the luxury Cranwell Resort, Spa, and Golf Club in Lenox.

According to the resort’s website, “Over the years, Cranwell has served as a home to wealthy industrialists, clergy, writers, students, golfers, and culture lovers in Massachusetts … The history of Cranwell is entwined with many stories of the opulent period between 1880 and 1920 that is known as the Gilded Age.”

This month Cranwell is at the center of a story that reveals, very specifically, what’s broken about our political system in what many consider a new Gilded Age. It came to light when conflicting statements from State Sen. Ben Downing (D-Pittsfield), along with information about his fundraising receipts and expenditures that may be related to a campaign for Congress, raised questions about why he filed – and then withdrew – blatantly anti-worker legislation. READ MORE >>

Red Crow Everywhere

  • RSS Feed
  • Facebook

Follow Red Crow News on Twitter

Support Red Crow

Donate to Red Crow News and support an independent source of news and commentary in western Massachusetts.

RED CROW NEWS

An online newsmagazine based in the Berkshire Hills of Western Massachusetts, Red Crow News covers what's happening and what we hope will happen.

Along with our slightly unconventional news coverage, you'll find musings and scribblings, and comments about what we care about.

Highly subjective, our C/V/ultures will be writing about culture or the lack thereof.

As always, we're guided by our founding principle: It's News To Us!

And if It's News To You, or you want to add your comment to any of our stories, please use our CONTACT RED CROW form on the left sidebar and send it along.

“A Red Family: Junius, Gladys & Barbara Scales” by Mickey Friedman

"An extraordinary set of reminiscences, beautifully put together by an extremely sensitive, even gifted interviewer. It is a jewel." --Glenda Gilmore, author of Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919-1950

"Junius Scales is a fascinating character whose experiences tell us so much about his period, and Friedman's family approach opens up new angles on the story." --James R. Barrett, author of William Z. Foster and the Tragedy of American Radicalism

You can purchase the paperback edition of A Red Family for $25.00. Just click on the buy from amazon.com button:


CALENDAR

May 2013
M T W T F S S
« Apr    
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031  

Red Crow News

Meta