Author Archives: Walter Brasch

About Walter Brasch

Columnist, author, journalism professor. Latest book is BEFORE THE FIRST SNOW: STORIES FROM THE REVOLUTION, a look at the couterculture from 1964, as seen through the eyes of a "flower child" who is now middle-aged--and of the reporter who covered her story. The book is available through Amazon.com . . . Check out website, www.walterbrasch.com for further info. Or, just write me: walterbrasch@gmail.com

No Merit Badge for Courage for Boy Scouts

  By Walter Brasch | March 29, 2013 8:03 am - 8:03 am | , , , ,
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by WALTER BRASCH   Sometime in May, the Boy Scouts of America will decide whether they will allow gays to be members, volunteer leaders, or be employed on the professional staff. The decision may have more to do with funding than with any other policy. Contributions from individuals, major corporations, and at least 50 United Way agencies stopped because of the Scouts’ anti-gay policy. Among corporations that have not made annual six-figure donations are Intel, Merck, CVS, Chase Manhattan Bank, Verizon, Google, UPS, and Levi Straus. Stephen Spielberg, an Eagle Scout, in protest of the policy against gays dropped off the national advisory council. The national council was also losing funds because of a drop of about 22 percent in … Continue reading →

The Paul Ryan Magical Mystery Chop, Dice, and Slice Budget

  By Walter Brasch | March 22, 2013 6:34 am - 6:34 am | , , , , , ,
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  By Walter Brasch   In 2011, before he was the Republican nominee for vice-president, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) proposed a federal budget. He called it, “The Path to Prosperity: Restoring America’s Promise.” Two years later, now in his second year as chair of the House budget committee, he dusted off and polished his old proposal. He calls this one: “The Path to Prosperity: A Responsible Balanced Budget.” His plan is to cut the federal deficit by $4.6 trillion in four years, reducing the deficit to about $12.1 trillion. While the Republicans blame President Obama and the Democrats for wild tax-and-spend policies that led to the huge deficit, they conveniently overlook the reality that Bill Clinton left George W. Bush … Continue reading →

Holding the American People Hostage

  By Walter Brasch | March 15, 2013 8:27 am - 8:27 am | , , ,
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by Walter Brasch   Judges who wish to assure that a jury has no outside influence will sequester them. Legally, a sequestered jury is seized by authority and isolated from all outside influences. The jurors are escorted into and out of the courtroom. They aren’t allowed to read newspapers, listen to radio news, or watch TV news, ’lest they could be influenced by the media. They are escorted to and from meals, and isolated from other customers. They can’t discuss the case with family or friends. They can’t even go home at the end of the day; they’re housed in hotel rooms. In the summer of 2011, a bipartisan “super-committee” was supposed to come up with a reasonable budget to … Continue reading →

Universal Neglect: A Failure to Protect Americans’ Health

  By Walter Brasch | March 9, 2013 8:41 am - 8:41 am |
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I received a letter from a friend this past week. It was a letter he should never have had to write, yet did so out of desperation. He is 80 years old, living off occasional writings and Social Security. He has Medicare, but no dental insurance, and that’s the problem. He needs dental work. A lot of dental work. Some $10,000 worth of dental work. Many dental insurance plans for individuals are so expensive, and give relatively few benefits, that many dentists suggest the premiums just aren’t worth it. Without the dental work, my friend, like many people in the country, will suffer significant additional problems. Infection is one. Poor nutrition is another. There are even links to diabetes and … Continue reading →

America’s Culture is Signing on the Dotted Line

  By Walter Brasch | March 3, 2013 7:12 am - 7:12 am | , , ,
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by Walter Brasch The signing season has begun. Look through your local newspaper for the next few weeks, and you’ll see a lot of posed pictures of high school athletes. Everyone will be at a desk or table. Around each one will be their parents and their coach. In some cases, add in an athletic director, a principal, and someone representing a college the young athlete is planning to attend. It makes no difference if it’s a Division I or Division II school; sometimes it’s even a Division III school. Star athletes at the end of their high school careers get photos and applause. They can even get special financial aid and scholarships just for being able to play a … Continue reading →

You Can’t Wash Away Fracking’s Effects

  By Walter Brasch | February 22, 2013 9:24 am - 9:24 am | , ,
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José Lara just wanted a job. A company working in the natural gas fields needed a man to power wash wastewater tanks. Clean off the debris. Make them shining again. And so José Lara became a power washer for the Rain for Rent Co. “The chemicals, the smell was so bad. Once I got out, I couldn’t stop throwing up. I couldn’t even talk,” Lara said in his deposition, translated from Spanish. The company that had hired him didn’t provide him a respirator or protective clothing. That’s not unusual in the natural gas fields. José Lara did his job until he no longer could work. At the age of 42, he died from pancreatic and liver cancer. Accidents, injuries, and … Continue reading →

Weathering a Blizzard of News Media Bravado

  By Walter Brasch | February 14, 2013 7:40 am - 7:40 am | , ,
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Ginger Zee is an ABC News weather person. She’s 32 years old, has a B.S. in meteorology, and says even in high school she wanted to be a TV network weatherperson. Not a scientist in a lab studying and analyzing weather, but a TV weather person. For more than a decade, she worked local and regional markets, mostly in Michigan and Chicago. Her other qualifications are that she is photogenic, has a somewhat bubbly personality, wears a size 4 dress, weighs 125 pounds, and was her high school homecoming queen. If she wasn’t on TV, she says she’d have loved to be a bartender. It’s entirely possible she’s competent. But, it’s also possible that TV execs bypassed thousands of other … Continue reading →

The No News News Media

  By Walter Brasch | January 27, 2013 9:53 am - 9:53 am | , , , , , , , , ,
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There was a lot of news this past week. Some of it was even reported by the news media. First, there was a football player from Notre Dame who either did or didn’t know that his girlfriend was or wasn’t real, but died sometime during the season. Six column headlines for several days announced the fraud. Network news and talk show hosts rehashed it almost daily. Two weeks ago, Lance Armstrong admitted he was a dope. Or maybe he just took dope. The news media kept sending urgent flashes all week of what he was going to tell Oprah. And then he told Oprah, and now we’ll be reading stories about it until Schwinn adds a jet engine to a … Continue reading →