My Turn
At a time when workers are struggling to find decent jobs and local legislators are debating whether to strip public sector workers of their rights to form unions, we would do well to consider that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his life standing up for better jobs and workers' rights. As was entirely consistent with his stand for peace and justice, he roundly condemned "right-to-work"…
January 16, 2012
My Turn
By ARNIE ALPERT If Manhattan's Wall Street symbolizes the unrestrained greed and social irresponsibility that crashed the economy three years ago, Concord's Wall Street represents the opposite. As the location of the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund, 7 Wall Street is a center for conscientious lending oriented toward creating affordable housing, supporting nonprofit enterprises…
October 15, 2011
My Turn
New Hampshire legislators may have produced a balanced budget, but they have left the state with deficits in other areas that will be harder to close than a fiscal gap. Starting from Gov. John Lynch's budget, which cut state spending by 5 percent, the House and Senate cut deeper. By the time they were done, state spending levels were cut by somewhere between 11 and 13 percent, depending…
June 20, 2011
My Turn
After the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, millions of young American men went off to war. Don Booth went off to peace. An introspective young man when he received his draft notice, Don thought that some aspects of military life sounded appealing but concluded that he could not bring himself to kill another person. "I've seen too much of the present turning of energies both national…
February 6, 2011
My Turn
To U.S. Sen. Judd Gregg: The recommendations from Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, co-chairs of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility, released last Wednesday, include some interesting ideas. But they stray from the major factors which drove up the deficit over the past decade. As you and the other members of commission complete your work in the next two weeks, we…
November 14, 2010
My Turn
The ruling of a district court judge doesn't carry the legal weight of one from a higher court, but a five-year-old decision in the Jaffrey-Peterborough District Court in a controversial criminal trespass case caught the attention of the state's highest law enforcement officer, Attorney General Kelly Ayotte. Its implications resonate today in the wake of Arizona's passage of a law…
May 4, 2010
My Turn
When Kurt Ehrenberg phoned to say Barack Obama would pay a lunchtime visit to the Eagle Square Deli, Martha Yager, Erin Placey and I hustled right over for some lunch and politics, New Hampshire-style. It was Feb. 12, 2007, a typical day in the long buildup to the New Hampshire Primary. On Obama's second visit to the state he was already a political phenomenon. But Eagle Square…
April 26, 2010
Letter
Commenting on the declaration of bankruptcy by FairPoint, the Monitor notes that "utilities are classically required to provide universal service." Telephone service, now known as "landlines," reached our home some time in the 20th century. But 10 years into the 21st, there is still no DSL, no fiber optics, no FIOS. The cable TV company says they would hook us up for $3,249. Living…
November 4, 2009
My Turn
On what would have been the first day of sixth grade after Christmas break, my father woke me up early to tell me my grandfather had been murdered.
Going into his hardware store late at night, my grandfather had surprised a burglar who had entered through a skylight. The burglar grabbed a hammer, hit my grandfather in the head, and Charlie Alpert was dead.
January 4, 2009
Letter
My objection to the death penalty has always been based in a belief that it is wrong for the state to decide who should live and who should die. But I have become increasingly convinced that the death penalty fails on many other grounds, including the excessive expense which is the topic of the Monitor's Nov. 20 editorial ("No justice is spending a fortune on execution").
At a time…
November 23, 2008
Letter
I suppose standards for sports journalism are different from those for other sections of the paper, and that it is common for sportswriters to cheer for the local team.
It may be understandable, then, that the Monitor's Dave D'Onofrio is a cheerleader for the New Hampshire Motor Speedway, a private business owned by a Texas-based corporation. His recent column was a plea for local…
June 27, 2008
Letter
In January 2004, when 504 American soldiers had already died in Iraq, the American Friends Service Committee launched its Eyes Wide Open project on the human cost of the war. The project is an exhibit using a pair of military boots for each soldier who has died. Each pair of boots is labeled with the name, age and rank of the deceased soldier.
March 31, 2008
Letter
The Monitor's Feb. 6 editorial on the death penalty says most of what needs to be said on the topic.
The death penalty is wasteful of public resources, including tax dollars and the time of public servants. The outcome of capital trials can be affected by human error, prejudice and faulty memories of witnesses. Execution is not reversible, brings no crime victims back to life and…
February 10, 2008
Letter
Neither the Dec. 8 article nor the Dec. 11 editorial on the candidates and the national debt make mention of what may be the biggest culprit: runaway military spending.
December 14, 2007
