Walter Brasch: President Obama and Secretary Clinton could not allow government action against the filmmakers, as the protestors wanted. The Founding Fathers demanded freedom of speech, the press, and religion.
Grade Inflation; Education Degradation
By
Walter Brasch: A recent UCLA study revealed that although students are studying less than ever, grades of A- and A in high school classes are the most common grades.
Don’t Count Out the Labor Movement
By
Walter Brasch: It’s a time to honor the working class, and the unions that gave them the rights of collective bargaining. They may be struggling but they are far from dead.
Romney Tax Return Provides a Window to His Soul
By
Walter Brasch: What does matter is that by stonewalling, obfuscating, and refusing to give full disclosure, he appears to have something to hide.
Vouchering an Educational Adventure
By
Walt Brasch: Had to. He was at the top of the salary schedule. Besides, he was teaching about the rise of the middle class and how unions helped get better wages and benefits for the masses. That’s just downright unpatriotic. He refused to be a team player.
Baffled, Befuddled, and Bamboozled: Penn State Trustees and NCAA Are Sinking
By
Walter Brasch: When we last left the baffled and befuddled Penn State trustees, they were trying to figure out what happened in the Great NCAA Sanctimonious Sanction.
Olympians Medal in London; NRA Meddles in Harrisburg
By
Walter Brasch: While 11,000 athletes from 205 countries continue to excel at the Olympics in London, 75 pretend hunters and faux sportsmen are at the Wing Pointe club near Hamburg, Pennsylvania, this weekend where they are shooting more than 10 times the number of pigeons killed at the 1900 Olympics.
Sunshine Still Blocked at Penn State
By
Walter Brasch: Apparently, the Board believes that “discussions” without a vote aren’t covered by the Sunshine Act, so it was free to hold yet another unpublicized secret meeting. The Board, as has been so often the case, was wrong.
The Fluff Factor: Today’s Journalism
By
Walter Brasch: Today’s news co-hosts, known as anchors, are usually a tandem of a wise middle-aged older man and his pretend trophy wife, both of whom spend more time in Make-up and Hair Dressing than they ever spent in journalism classes.
Pennsylvania Politics Continues to Trump Health and the Environment
By
Walter Brasch: Why do Pennsylvania Republican leaders support a state law that discriminates against the rural counties, while supporting a special exemption that protects the the urban and suburban counties where many of the state’s most powerful and wealthiest constituents live.
More Jokes From the Penn State Trustees
By
Walter Brasch: The Penn State Trustees, clueless as most college trustees are, could have learned about the allegations and taken action to protect the university and children.
American Patriotism in Hyper-Drive
By
Walter Brasch: Many of the hyper-patriots are insensitive to the problems of the 700,000 Americans, about 70,000 of them veterans, who are homeless on any given day.
Splitting Hairs in a Multi-Cultural School
By
Walter Brasch: Students can only have “natural hair color.” They can dye their hair honey blonde or raven, and highlights and lowlights in female hair are also acceptable. But a blue streak? No way.
The Snipers of Jersey Shore
By
Walter Brasch: Trailer park residents – most elderly, disabled, or living slightly above the poverty line – are evicted. Bloggers mock them siding with the corporate landowner.
Pigeon Shoots: Pennsylvania Politics Continues to Override Humane Actions
By
Walter Brasch: Although Pennsylvania legislators, police, and DAs may publically say how much they detest animal cruelty, they have shown their cowardice to do what is right by their failure to prosecute cruelty charges against pigeon shoots.
Memorial Day 2012: A Lesson Not Yet Learned
By
Walter Brasch: Going into the Memorial Day weekend, the war in Afghanistan cost 3,011 American and allied lives. The American wounded, some of whom will have permanent disabilities or may die lingering deaths from those wounds, is now at 15,322.
Time to Retire the 99 Percent
By
Walter Brasch: It’s time to retire the 99 percent. Not the people, but the slogan that identifies the Occupy Movement.
Mission Impossible: Finding a Mini-Van Made in America by Union Workers
By
Walter Brasch: We can wave flags and tell everyone how much more patriotic we are than them, but we still can’t buy a minivan made in America by unionized workers—even when the price is lower than that of the non-unionized competition.
The Trayvon Martin Case: A Lesson Still to Be Learned
By
Walter Brasch: Mistrust and distrust, often fueled by the mass media with their own agendas, may lead some to irrationally believe that entire demographics of people — White, Black, Hispanic, gay, Jew, Muslim — may pose threats to their own safety, leading them to react as if the threats were real rather than imagined.
Reality, News Perception, and Accuracy
By
Walter Brasch: Adequate reporters get their facts from people in authority; the great reporters know truth is probably known by the secretaries, custodians, and other workers.
Fracking: Collateral Damage in the Marcellus Shale
By
Walter Brasch: The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania—armed with an industry-favorable law recently rammed through by the Republican-controlled legislature and eagerly signed by a first-term Republican governor who received more than $1,6 million in campaign contributions from the energy industry—has decided that fracking the earth, threatening health and the environment, is far better for business than taking care of the people. Here’s how that approach hurts Pennsylvania’s average Joes.
The Late Great Commonwealth: Catching Up to the Republican Primary
By
Walter Brasch: Because of an inner need to believe they matter, the media predict who will win the nomination, changing their predictions as quickly as a fashionista changes shoes.
Fracking: Corruption a Part of Pennsylvania’s Heritage
By
Walter Brasch: Mixed into the state’s energy production is not only a symbiotic relationship of business and government, but a history of corruption and influence-peddling.
Fracking: Health, Environmental Impact Greater Than Claimed
By
Walter Brasch: What is the connection between fracking, the environment and health? Research “strongly implicates exposure to gas drilling operations in serious health effects on humans, companion animals, livestock, horses, and wildlife.”
Fracking: Pennsylvania Gags Physicians
By
Walter Brasch: A new Pennsylvania law endangers public health by forbidding health care professionals from sharing information they learn about certain chemicals and procedures used in high volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing.
Fewer Words; Less Filling
By
Walter Brasch: The solution to the “newspaper-in-crisis” wailing, with innumerable predictions that print newspapers will soon be as dead as the trees that give them nourishment, may not be in cutting staff, and replacing the news product with fluff and syndicated stories that fill pages, but are available on hundreds of websites, but in giving readers more.
Labor Pains: A Fable for Our Times
By
Walter Brasch: “As long as the product is cheaper, our people will gladly go to large non-union stores and buy whatever it is that we tell them to buy.”
Sanctimonious Hypocrites Can’t Diminish Warmth for Joe Paterno
By
Walter Brasch: When journalism turns into history, it will be written that Joe Paterno had done more than was expected, in every part of his life. The people, not the governor or the trustees who will quickly be forgotten in the cold, will keep Joe Paterno warm.
Outsourcing America’s Health Care
By
Walter Brasch: “Megabucks/U.S. closes its auxiliary operations, and then contracts with Mexican companies for a fifth of the cost in the U.S. They do the work, ship it back to the U.S., and Megabucks bills Blue Cross the full rate as if it was done locally.”
Making Sport of Our Future
By
Walter Brasch: Those who are elected to our city councils, state legislatures, Congress, and the Presidency do have an impact upon us. And we deserve a lot better than the arrogance of the news clan reporting the contests as if they were sporting events.
PCL offers monthly Open House Events on the 2nd Saturday at 2pm and 3rd Thursday at 6pm. Click here to learn more.
Recent Comments