Walter Brasch: It’s Father’s Day, and that means the Great White Republican Hierarchy in Washington smells burnt charcoal and is ready to barbeque some Democrats.
About Walter M. Brasch
Walter M. Brasch, Ph.D., is an award-winning journalist and author. He is a former multimedia writer-producer, newspaper and magazine reporter and editor, and is professor emeritus of mass communications from the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education. His latest book is Fracking Pennsylvania, which looks at the health, environmental, geological, and economic impact of natural gas horizontal fracturing. He also investigates political collusion between the natural gas industry and politicians. Among his 18 books--most of which integrate history, politics, and contemporary social issues--are The Press and the State, Before the First Snow: Stories from the Revolution, Sinking the Ship of State: The Presidency of George W. Bush, The Joy of Sax: A Look at the Bill Clinton Administration, and Social Foundations of the Mass Media.
He is also the author of dozens of magazine articles, several multimedia productions, and has worked in the film industry and as a copy writer and political consultant. He is the author 16 books, most of them focusing upon the fusion of historical and contemporary social issues, including America's Unpatriotic Acts: The Federal Government's Violation of Constitutional and Civil Rights (2005); Sinking the Ship of State: The Presidency of Geroge W. Bush (2008), Black English and the Mass Media (1981); Forerunners of Revolution: Muckrakers and the American Social Conscience (1991); With Just Cause: The Unionization of the American Journalist (1991); Brer Rabbit, Uncle Remus, and the 'Cornfield Journalist': The Tale of Joel Chandler Harris (2000); The Joy of Sax: America During the Bill Clinton Era (2001); and Sex and the Single Beer Can (3rd ed., 2009). He also is co-author of Social Foundations of the Mass Media (2001) and The Press and the State (1986), awarded Outstanding Academic Book distinction by Choice magazine, published by the American Library Association.
Fracking America’s Food Supply
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Walter Brasch: Fracking — the process the oil and gas industry uses to extract fossil fuel as much as two miles below the ground—may directly impact the nation’s water supply, reduce water-based recreational and sports activity, and lead to an increase in the cost of food.
Circumventing Transparency: Pennsylvania’s Latest Shell Game to Protect Big Energy
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Walter Brasch: The failure to maintain records in an easily searchable method continues to allow the DEP to withhold public information from the public by burying the requested data within piles of irrelevant documents, most of which need interpretation from scientists.
Standing Tall for Landowner Rights
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Walter Brasch: “The gas companies pay a one-time fee for your land, but you lose the right to utilize it as anything more than grassland forever. . . . You can never build on those easements. They took my retirement away by eminent domain.”
‘A’ Is for Average
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Walter Brasch: Because of grade inflation, students avoid professors who believe the grade of “C” is the average grade and who set up standards that require students to do more than show up, read a couple of hundred pages, and answer a few questions.
Oh, That’s What the Boy Scouts Mean by Being ‘Morally Straight’
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Walter Brasch: If there was a Pathfinder merit badge, the Scout leadership would be unable to earn it—they’ve been wandering the wrong trail for many years.
Pennsylvania: You Are Fracked
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Walter Brasch: It is important that the people push a weak-willed Congress, inflated by Big Energy political contributions, to force the natural gas industry to be accountable for all laws that protect the public health and environment.
NRA Liars and Congressional Cowards
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Walter Brasch: Until the members of Congress develop that one iota of courage that President Obama asked for, the United States will continue to have the highest number of guns per population of 178 countries—and also rank among the world’s top 10 countries in the rate of deaths per population from guns.
Mitch McConnell’s ‘Whack-a-Mole’ Dirty Politics Campaign
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Walter Brasch: Bound in a political black hole from which truth never escapes, McConnell and his staff launched a “scorch-earth” attack to divert the public from the facts on the leaked tape was the far greater sin than what was said.
The Politics Behind the Killing of Americans
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Walt Brasch: Fifteen states, dominated by Republican governorships and legislatures, by declaring they won’t allow Medicaid expansion, are on record as placing political interests before the health of their citizens.
No Merit Badge for Courage for Boy Scouts
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Walter Brasch: Gays are part of every business, trade, profession, and even the military. Only the most paranoid, homophobic, and ignorant see any problem.
The Paul Ryan Magical Mystery Chop, Dice, and Slice Budget
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Walter Brasch: The American people broadly rejected Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan in 2010. They need to now reject Ryan’s so-called new budget that proves the Republicans are nothing more than the lackeys of corporate greed at the expense of the rest of us.
Sequester: Holding the American People Hostage
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Walter Brasch: The Congressional Budget Office says the sequester could cut more than 750,000 federal jobs. Republicans like that idea, especially since most federal employees are also members of unions. But, those jobs include public health officials, social service workers, teachers, air traffic controllers, and others in critical jobs.
Universal Neglect: A Failure to Protect Americans’ Health
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Walter Brasch: The new Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which goes into effect next year, moved the United States closer to universal health care, already enjoyed by the citizens of 28 industrialized countries. But, it doesn’t cover dental care.
America’s Culture Is Signing on the Dotted Line
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Walter Brasch: When you’re looking at a four-column picture of a smiling athlete at a signing ceremony, ask yourself why do we wring our hands, furrow our brows, and complain about low educational scores.
You Can’t Wash Away Fracking’s Effects
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Walter Brasch: Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett is ecstatic that a side benefit of destroying the environment and public health is an improvement in the economy and more jobs—even if most of the workers in Pennsylvania now sport license plates from Texas and Oklahoma.
Weathering a Blizzard of News Media Bravado
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Walter Brasch: There is absolutely no need to put someone onto a deserted street with a hill of snow and wind to tell us there is a hill of snow and wind, and to stay off the roads.
The No News News Media
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Walter Brasch: Subway is accused of making foot-long hoagies that are 11 inches. The media seized this major fraud and, ignoring anything Congress or Wall Street was doing, slathered layers of hype on a story that should have died with three paragraphs in one day.
The Problem with the Bahmas
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Walter Brasch: When I last saw Fishbottom, he was calmer, chatting with a couple of dozen of his Congressional colleagues, not planning to do anything other than convene a hearing that he hoped would lead to the end of recorded music—and an impeachment.
Confessions of a Juiced Journalist
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Walter Brasch: I must confess now. While Stephen King, Aaron Sorkin, Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle, and thousands of other great writers used coke or pot to get high and produce great works, I used steroids.
America’s Uncivil Phone Manners
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Walter Brasch: More and more we see a loss of civility by people and organizations that may think they’re just too important to deal with the people.
Fiscal Chicken
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Walter Brasch: The obstructionists in Congress need to realize this isn’t a deserted two-lane highway, and Americans don’t want the Republicans playing chicken with our nest eggs.
America’s Gun Culture This Year
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Walter Brasch: There were 12 mass murders so far this year. There will be 33 more deaths from gunshot wounds today. There will be 33 more tomorrow. And the day after that and the day after that.
Dissolving a Stain Painted by Henry Ford
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Walter Brasch: It’s possible my family, and thousands of other Jewish families, may some day buy a Ford. The stain the company’s founder painted onto his product has faded.
Walmart: Discounting Lives to Maximize Profits
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Walter Brasch: Imitating Sgt. Schultz of “Hogan’s Heroes,” Walmart executives claimed they knew nothing—NOTHING—about working conditions in a garment factory in Bangladesh where 112 workers died and more than 150 were injured in a fire.
Truckin’ to Treason: The Hot Air of Secession
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Walter Brasch: The Civil War—known as the War Between the States among Confederate sympathizers—is still being fought. Almost 25,000 Pennsylvanians have now signed petitions to have the Keystone State secede from the union.
University Governance Doesn’t Represent the People
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Walter Brasch: About 800,000 Pennsylvanians are members of labor unions, and the state has a long history of union rights and activism, but neither of the two largest university systems has a labor representative on its governing board.
Intruding Upon the Constitution by the Religious Right
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Walter Brasch: 28 percent of Americans, according to a First Amendment Center poll in February, don’t believe there is a Constitutional separation of church and state.
I Have Questions; The Candidates Don’t Have Answers
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Walter Brasch: Most of the questions—and responses—in the three presidential debates had been asked—and answered—several times during the campaign. But there are critical questions that were not asked.
BREAKING NEWS: AP, Media Fumble News Story
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Walter Brash: Reporters who socialize with the power elite—and this happens far more than it doesn’t happen—often fail to do their primary job: challenge authority, as the Founding fathers so eloquently asked.
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