Circumventing Transparency: Pennsylvania’s Latest Shell Game to Protect Big Energy

by Walter Brasch

        David  M. Jacobson wanted a transcript of a public hearing conducted by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), May 2. The public meeting was to allow persons to discuss a proposal by National Gypsum and En-Tire Logistics to build a tire burner plant in Union County that would burn about 100 million pounds of shredded tires each year, and convert part of that to electricity to benefit National Gypsum, with the rest taken to landfills. Jacobson is a member of Organizations United for the Environment (OUE), which objects to the plant because of the amount of pollutants that would be sent into the atmosphere.

        The DEP was happy to provide the transcript. All Jacobson had to do was drive the 25 miles from his home in Lewisburg to the Williamsport regional office between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m., Monday through Friday. The transcript was not available online, nor would DEP send him a print copy.

        He could view the transcript only at the regional office. He could take notes. But he couldn’t copy it, photograph it, or scan it because, said Dan Spadoni, community relations co-ordinator, the transcript was copyrighted. State law allows individuals to copy, scan, and photograph public documents, and to request copies. Agencies, if requested, must provide documents by electronic means if possible, and may not charge more than 25 cents per page for a printed copy.

        Jacobson says Spadoni, who  had conducted the hearing, told him the DEP “has a master contract” with Sargent’s Court Reporting Service of Johnstown; Spadoni had requested Sargent’s to record the public meeting. However, Spadoni claimed he didn’t know any of the details of that contract.

        The DEP has two levels of transcript payments—a higher payment by DEP to Sargent’s, which allows DEP to publish the transcripts and make them available to anyone who wishes a copy; and a lower fee, where Sargent’s retains all rights. For the May 2 meeting, DEP paid the lower fee.

        Sargent’s, which has a good reputation for accurate transcriptions, quoted Jacobson a fee of $192.85 for the 70 page transcript—about $2.75 a page.

        Jacobson then called Spadoni back. “It didn’t set well with me that DEP would give up ownership to that transcript,” says Jacobson. Spadoni abruptly responded, says Jacobson, “That’s the way it works.” Spadoni did not return several calls to explain reasons for the Department’s policies.

        Sargent’s provided a copy of the transcript to the press at no charge—“It’s at my discretion,” said Sally Sargent, owner of the company. It later provided a copy by email at no charge to Jacobson because, “We decided to make a special exception and give you a free copy.” On the cover of both transcripts is the warning: “Access to this email by anyone other than the intended addressee is unauthorized.” The next day, Sargent’s told Jacobson he could distribute the transcript without restriction. The issue, however, is that the DEP—not Sargent’s—established the system that restricted free access to what should be a public document.

Terry Mutchler, executive director of the state’s Office of Open Records (OOR), says in the five years since the creation of the OOR she has “never had a case in which an agency” contracted with a private company to take transcripts of a public meeting, and then, with the agency’s approval, copyright the transcripts, limit its distribution, and charge fees higher than the state requirements for a public agency. “If this case comes to us,” she says, “we’ll have to examine it.”

Jacobson could file a Right-to-Know request. From filing to final determination by the OOR, the process could take almost three months. Even if the OOR rules against a public agency, it can take the issue into court, using taxpayer-funded attorneys to challenge the Right-to-Know request, and can appeal to the state supreme court unfavorable decisions from county and state appeals courts.

        The delay in being able to get proposals for building or waivers of rules is also a problem. Individuals who wish to view a company’s proposal must first give DEP a two week notice, and then go to the DEP office during regular business hours. Those proposals are not online. Although DEP has posted a lot of information online, DEP told Jacobson, president of American Technology Partners, it will be 10 years before DEP completes plans to put all company proposals online. Jacobson says he asked several persons at DEP why the files were not available, and the most common answer was that the proposals were too many pages to convert files on the web. “If the proposals are too long,” says Jacobson, “why not just split the large file into multiple smaller files; there are even free programs that will automatically split large files.” He wonders, “why are we wasting money paying for the storage space for all these documents?”

        Vera Scroggins and Iris Marie Bloom, both of whom are active in researching and analyzing oil and gas company filings and DEP documents, also question the DEP’s reluctance to scan documents and make them available online in an easy to search and understand manner.

        Scroggins, who was one of the first to demand specific information from inspectors’ reports that could connect fracking operations with water pollution, says to get some of the information she has to drive more than two and a half hours from her home in Susquehanna County to the DEP Williamsport office—and, even then, finds much of the critical information buried in paper files.

        Scroggins and Bloom say it was easier to get information from the DEP prior to Tom Corbett becoming governor in 2011 and proclaiming he wanted to see Pennsylvania become the Texas of the natural gas industry. Bloom, executive director of Protecting Our Waters, Philadelphia, calls DEP actions, “incredibly inappropriate and incredibly frustrating.”

        The DEP also routinely includes the data of only certain possible contaminants,  not all contaminants, in reports it provides to homeowners who question water pollution on their property. Bloom has worked with numerous people who “told me they often waited a year or more just to get results, or just partial results; in many cases, there wasn’t even a response.” Environmentalists have questioned DEP’s research methods and attacked the agency for this lack of transparency.

        The DEP has also refused to meet with any group it doesn’t agree with or like. The DEP refused to send representatives to a hearing scheduled in February by State Reps. Jesse White (D-Cecil) and Mike Sturla (D-Lancaster ) to discuss DEP’s water testing policies. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, in an editorial published two days after the hearing, observed: “By refusing to attend, DEP merely confirms its own arrogance in the minds of some, divides Pennsylvanians further and encourages the suspicion that the agency may be not only a poor enforcer of regulations but also too cowardly to face its critics.”
The DEP had scheduled and then cancelled a meeting with 11 organizations that focus upon water issues. Bloom says the DEP cancelled the meeting because it wouldn’t discuss anything if representatives from Clean Water Action, one of the nation’s largest and most effective environmental groups, were present. No meetings have been scheduled since the November request.

        Like Scroggins, Bloom, and many others, the media have also found recent DEP information policies to be difficult and frustrating. CNN reporter Erica Fink says DEP refused several requests for interviews. To get any information “required a visit to the regional DEP office [in Williamsport, Pa.], which had to be scheduled weeks in advance” and the information was “largely in legal and technical language.”

        The Times-Tribune of Scranton, Pa., had requested the DEP to provide records that could disclose water contamination from fracking operations of natural gas companies. The DEP, reported Laura Legere, “repeatedly argued in court filings . . . that it does not count how many determination letters it issues, track where they are kept in its files or maintain its records in a way that would allow a comprehensive search for the letters, so there is no way to assess the completeness of the released documents.” The Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court in July 2012, almost 11 months after Legere and her newspaper first requested DEP records, ruled the DEP must provide that information; the DEP, after the Court rejected its argument for reconsideration, eventually complied. Judge Anne E. Covery, in writing the court’s majority opinion, dismissed DEP’s argument that getting the requested data was burdensome. “[T]he burden on DEP comes not from some vast array of documents requested by Legere,” wrote Judge Covery, “but from DEP’s method of tracking its records.” The court determined that “an agency’s failure to maintain the files in a way necessary to meet its obligations under the RTKL [Right to Know Law] should not be held against the requestor. To so hold would permit an agency to avoid its obligations under the RTKL simply by failing to orderly maintain its records.” 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.

      Eric Shirk, Gov. Corbett’s director of communications, and Kevin Sunday, DEP deputy press secretary, did not return several phone calls inquiring about DEP public disclosure policies.

        [Dr. Brasch is an award-winning journalist, a syndicated columnist, radio network commentator, author of 17 books. His latest book is Fracking Pennsylvania, available at amazon.com, greeleyandstone.com, or your local bookstore.]

Standing Tall for Landowner Rights

by Walter Brasch

    Julia Trigg Crawford of Direct, Texas, is the manager of a 650-acre farm that her grandfather first bought in 1948. The farm produces mostly corn, wheat, and soy. On its north border is the Red River; to the west is the Bois d’Arc Creek.

    TransCanada is an Alberta-based corporation that is building the controversial Keystone Pipeline that will carry bitumen—thicker, more corrosive and toxic, than crude oil—through 36-inch diameter pipes from the Alberta tar sands to refineries on the Gulf Coast, mostly to be exported. The $2.3 billion southern segment, about 485 miles from Cushing, Okla., to the Gulf Coast is nearly complete. With the exception of a 300-mile extension between Cushing and Steele City, Neb., the rest of the $7 billion 1,959 mile pipeline is being held up until President Obama either succumbs to corporate and business pressures or blocks the construction because of environmental and health concerns.

    When TransCanada first approached Crawford’s father in 2008, and offered to pay about $7,000 for easement rights, he refused, telling the company, “We don’t want you here.” He said the corporation could reroute the line, just as other pipeline companies in oil-rich Texas had done for decades. TransCanada increased the offer in the following years, but the family still refused. In August 2012, with Dick Crawford’s daughter, Julia Trigg Crawford now managing the farm, TransCanada offered $21,626 for an easement—and a threat. “We were given three days to accept their offer,” she says, “and if we didn’t, they would condemn the land and seize it anyway.” She still refused.

    And so, TransCanada, a foreign corporation exercised the right of eminent domain to seize two acres of the farm so it could build a pipeline.

    Governments may seize private property if that property must be taken for public use and the owner is given fair compensation. Although the exercise of eminent domain to seize land for the public good is commonly believed to be restricted to the government, federal law permits natural gas companies to use it. To get that “right,” all TransCanada had to do was fill out a one-page form and check a box that the corporation to declare itself to be a “common carrier.” The Railroad Commission, which regulates oil and gas in Texas, merely processes the paper, rather than investigates the claim; it has admitted it has never denied “common carrier” status. In the contorted logic that is often spun by corporations, TransCanada then declared itself to be a common carrier because the Railroad Commission said it was, even though the Commission’s jurisdiction applies only to intrastate, not interstate, carriers.

    On Aug. 21, 2012, the day before Judge Bill Harris of Lamar County rendered his decision on Crawford’s complaint, the sheriff, with the judge’s signature, issued a writ of possession giving TransCanada the right to seize the land. The next day, Harris issued a 15-word decision, transmitted by his iPhone, that upheld TransCanada’s rights. In Texas, as in most states, the landowner can only challenge the settlement not the action.

    Crawford’s refusal to sell is based upon a mixture of reasons. The Crawford Farm is home to one of the most recognized Caddo Nation Indian burial sites in Texas, and the 30 acre pasture that TransCanada wants to trench represents the southern most boundary of this archeological site. Both the Texas Historical Commission and TransCanada’s archeological firm concur that the vast majority of this 30 acres pasture in question qualifies for the National Registry of Historic Places. An archeological dig undertaken after TransCanada showed up to seize the land recovered 145 artifacts in just a 1,200 foot by 20 foot section, and three feet deep. But the executive director of the Texas Historical Commission recently sent a letter stating that no new artifacts had been found in the slice of land TransCanada planned to build.

    Another reason Crawford refused to be bought out was that she didn’t want TransCanada to drill under the Bois d’Arc Creek “where we have state-given water rights.” That creek irrigates about 400 acres of her land. “Any leak, she says, “would contaminate our equipment, and then our crops in minutes.” It isn’t unreasonable to expect there will be an incident that could pollute the water, air, and soil for several miles.

    During the past decade, there were 6,367 pipeline incidents, resulting in 154 deaths, 540 injuries, and $4.7 billion in property damage, according to the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. A report released a year ago by Cornell University’s Global Labor Institute concludes that economic damage caused by potential spills from the Keystone pipeline could outweigh the benefits of jobs created by the project. In the past three years, there have already been 14 spills on the operational parts of the Keystone Pipeline.

    Crawford and her attorney, Wendi Hammond, have challenged TransCanada’s right to seize public property, arguing not only is TransCanada, which had net earnings of $1.3 billion last year, a foreign corporation, but it also doesn’t qualify as a “common carrier” since the benefit is primarily to itself. However, the Texas Court of Appeals may not rule until after the pipeline is laid down and covered. And even if it does rule for Crawford, TransCanada is likely to appeal. “They have far more lawyers and funds than we have,” says Crawford, who held a music festival last month to help raise funds. Additional donations have come from around the world, many from those who aren’t immediately affected by oil and gas exploration, transportation, and processing, but who understand the need to fight a battle that could, at some time, affect them.

    “The company basically goes to court, files condemnation petitions, says, ‘We are common carrier, have the power of eminent domain, we are taking this property.’ And that’s all there is to it,” says Debra Medina, of WeTexans, a grassroots organization opposed to the seizure of private land by private companies.

    At least 89 Texas landowners have had their properties condemned and then seized by TransCanada. Eleanor Fairchild, a 78-year-old great-grandmother living on a 300-acre farm near Winnsboro, Texas, also protested the seizure of her land. She and her husband, a retired oil company geologist now deceased, bought the land in 1983. TransCanada planned to bisected her farm, which includes wetlands, natural springs, and woods.

    In October, Fairchild and activist/actor Darryl Hannah raised their arms and stood before bulldozers and heavy equipment that were about to dig up the farm. Both women were arrested and charged with criminal trespass. Hannah was also charged with resisting arrest.

    TransCanada isn’t the only oil and gas company that uses and bends eminent domain laws.

    Chuck Paul, who lost about 30 of his 64 acre horse farm because of required easements by the natural gas industry, told the Fort Worth Weekly, “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.”

    In Arlington, Texas, Ranjana Bhandari and her husband, Kaushik De, refused to grant Chesapeake Energy the right to take gas beneath their home, although Chesapeake promised several thousand dollars in payments. “We decided not to sign because we didn’t think it was safe, but the Railroad Commission doesn’t seem to care about whose property is taken,” Bhandari told Reuters. Chesapeake seized the mineral rights and will capture natural gas beneath the family’s homes. Between January 2005 and October 2012, the Railroad Commission approved all but five of Chesapeake’s 1,628 requests to seize mineral rights, according to the Reuters investigation.

    The Texas Supreme Court, in Texas Rice Land Partners and Mike Latta v. Denbury Green Pipeline–Texas (2012), had previously ruled, “Even when the Legislature grants certain private entities ‘the right and power of eminent domain,’ the overarching constitutional rule controls: no taking of property for private use.” In that same opinion, the Court also ruled, “A private enterprise cannot acquire unchallenged-able condemnation power . . .  merely by checking boxes on a one-page form and self-declaring its common-carrier status.” However, Texas has no public agency to set standards for seizing property by eminent domain.

    Texas isn’t the only state that has a broad eminent domain policy that allows Big Energy to seize private property.

    Most states’ new laws that “regulate” fracking were written by conservatives who traditionally object to “Big Government” and say they are the defenders of individual property rights. But, these laws allow oil and gas corporations to use the power of eminent domain to seize private property if the corporations can’t get the landowner to agree to an easement, lease, or sale. In Pennsylvania, Act 13 allows the natural gas industry to “appropriate an interest in real property [for] injection, storage and removal” of natural gas.

    Sandra McDaniel, of Clearville, Pa., was forced to lease five of her 154 acres to Spectra Energy Corp., which planned to build a drilling pad. The government, says McDaniel, “took it away, and they have destroyed it.” According to Reuters, “McDaniel watched from the perimeter of the installation as three pipes spewed metallic gray water into plastic-lined pits, one of which was partially covered in a gray crust. As a sulfurous smell wafted from the rig, two tanker trucks marked ‘residual waste’ drove from the site.”

    In Tyrone Twp., Mich., Debora Hense returned from work in August 2012 to find that Enbridge workers had created a 200 yard path on her property and destroyed 80 trees in order to run a pipeline. Because of an easement created in 1968 next to Hense’s property, Joe Martucci of Enbridge Energy Partners said his company had a legal right to “to use property adjacent to the pipeline.” Martucci says his company offered Hense $40,000 prior to tearing up her land, but she refused. Hense says she had a legal document to prevent Enbridge from destroying her property; Enbridge says it had permission from the Michigan Public Service Commission.

    This week, heavy machinery rolled onto Julia Trigg Crawford’s farm. Crossing an easement and into a barbed wire enclosure that separates the land TransCanada seized from the rest of the farm, the bulldozers and graders are peeling away the topsoil of a 1,200 foot strip. Hundreds of wooden ties, now stacked like matchsticks a story high, brought by 18-wheelers crossing the agricultural land that Crawford and her family work, will be placed as tracks for more equipment.

    On the farm is an old and creaky windmill, ravaged by time and a few shotgun shells. “But it’s still standing there,” says Crawford who may be a bit like that windmill. She’s a 6-foot tall former star basketball player for Texas A&M who is now standing tall and proud in a fight she says “began as a fight for my family,” but has now become one “for the people, for the landowners who wanted to stand up and fight for their rights but didn’t think they could.”

          [Dr. Brasch is an award-winning syndicated columnist and professor emeritus of mass communications and journalism. Some of the information in this column appears in Fracking Pennsylvania, an in-depth overview of the effects of the fracking process upon health, the environment, agriculture, and worker safety; the book also has a broad discussion of the collusion between the energy industry and politics, and presents the truth about the economic effects.] 

Environmental Justice: One Illegal Bid at a Time

by Walter Brasch

    On April 21, the day before Earth Day, Tim DeChristopher was released from custody by the Department of Justice. He had served 21 months for having committed an act of civil disobedience against a government bureau that had violated the law.

    In his mid-20s, DeChristopher, who graduated from high school in Pittsburgh, was in Utah to work as a wilderness guide with at-risk and troubled youth.

    The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), in the last month of the George W. Bush presidency (December 2008), decided to auction 149,000 acres of public land in southern Utah; most of the land was near national parks. Big Energy was there to scoop up what it could at bargain basement prices in order to drill for gas and oil. Environmentalists protested, and filed suits to block the sale, but didn’t have the money to outbid the gas and oil companies.

    DeChristopher, an economics student at the University of Utah, didn’t have the money, either. But, on a spontaneous decision after he entered the auction, he got a paddle and bidder number 70. After watching energy companies take parcel after parcel of pristine land at prices as low as $40 an acre, he bid on parcels to inflate the price, eventually winning bids on 14 of those parcels, totaling 22,500 acres. His winning bids, about $1.7 million, would have given him prime federal land for about $77 an acre.

    His actions voided the auction, but succeeded in holding up the sale until a federal court the following month issued a temporary injunction, ruling that the BLM violated federal environmental and historic protection laws. A month later, the Obama administration revoked the sale of 77 parcels totaling more than 100,000 acres. The sale price of those parcels averaged about $60 an acre. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said the Department had “rushed ahead to sell oil and gas leases at the doorstep of some of our greatest national icons, some of our nation’s most treasured landscapes.”

    Although DeChristopher and hundreds of thousands of activists succeeded in reversing the BLM sale and kept the land from being carved up by drillers, they didn’t succeed in obtaining justice. The federal government continued its pursuit of DeChristopher who now increased his activism, further enraging the prosecution. In April 2009, four months after the auction, he was indicted for fraud and violation of the Federal Onshore Oil and Gas Leasing Reform Act.

    On the night before his trial at the end of February 2011, hundreds gathered at the First Unitarian Church.

    Four days later, after nine postponements requested by the Department of Justice, DeChristopher was convicted. The court had refused to allow the defense to present evidence that the auction was illegal or that other successful bidders reneged on their commitments and were not prosecuted. “The injustice in this case wasn’t that I was facing a trial,” said DeChristopher, “It’s that the jury was denied the information to decide if my actions were justified.”

    During the next four months, the Department of Justice ran an extensive investigation on DeChristopher, and recommended he be sentenced to probation, with no jail time. DeChristopher and his attorneys had previously rejected a plea bargain that would have given him a 30-day jail sentence and probation.

    However, Judge Dee Benson disregarded the Department of Justice recommendation, and ordered DeChristopher to pay a $10,000 fine and serve a two year sentence.

    During the trial, the prosecutor had argued that DeChristopher could have halted the auction in other peaceful ways or that he could have appealed the awarding of land. During the sentencing hearing, DeChristopher pointed out, “it had become common practice for the BLM to take volunteers from the oil and gas industry to process those permits [for land]. The oil industry was paying people specifically to volunteer for the industry that was supposed to be regulating it, and it was to those industry staff that I would have been appealing.”

    He also referred to a New York Times investigation that, said DeChristopher, revealed “a major scandal involving Department of the Interior regulators who were taking bribes of sex and drugs from the oil companies that they were supposed to be regulating. In 2008, this was the condition of the rule of law, for which Mr. Huber [the federal prosecutor] says I lacked respect.”

    Judge Benson openly acknowledged, “The offense itself, with all apologies to people actually in the auction itself, wasn’t that bad,” and stated he might not have imposed a prison sentence—but that DeChristopher’s “continuing trail of statements” and activism following his arrest was not acceptable. Thus, a federal court ruled that exercising a First Amendment right was a factor in sentencing, a decision the Appeals court later affirmed on technicalities.

    Within two hours of sentencing, several dozen people in Salt Lake City protested, linking themselves together and blocking traffic. Police arrested 26, according to the Salt Lake City Tribune. Dozens of peaceful demonstrations occurred at federal courthouses throughout the country, the people energized and angry that the government pursued charges against an activist who had help prove the auction he had stopped was illegal.

    Robert Redford, actor/director and environmental activist, summed up the hypocrisy of the prosecution: “He just did what he thought was his constitutional right. In the meantime we have all these guys on Wall Street sending this country into the tank. And no one’s going to jail. No one’s even being brought to justice.”

    Not long after his arrest, DeChristopher formed Peaceful Upraising, an organization devoted to protecting the environment.

    In September, DeChristopher will enter the Harvard Divinity School on a full scholarship; after three years of study, he will earn a master of divinity degree, with the intent to be ordained as a Unitarian minister.

    On Earth Day this year, the day after DeChristopher was released, among thousands of activities throughout the world, 50 venues broadcast Bidder 70, a compelling 73-minute documentary by Beth and George Gage. They had spent three years researching and producing the story of a man who helped uncover illegal activities by the government, yet was imprisoned. Henry David Thoreau, who had been jailed for refusing to pay taxes that supported the illegal Mexican–American War, 1846–1848 (known by Mexicans as the American Invasion) would be proud.

    [Walter Brasch is an award-winning journalist, whose latest book is Fracking Pennsylvania, an overview of the environmental, health, worker safety effects of fracking, and which peels away the industry claims of the economic benefits.]

‘A’ is for Average

by Walter Brasch

      About 1.8 million students will graduate from college this year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. At least one-third of them will graduate with honors. In some colleges, about half will be honor graduates.

      It’s not that the current crop is that bright, it’s that honors is determined by grade point average. Because of runaway grade inflation, the average grade in college is now an “A.” About 43 percent of all college grades are “A”s, according to a recent study by Stuart Rojstaczer and Christopher Healy, and published in the prestigious Teachers College Record.  About three-fourths of all grades are “A”s or “B”s.

      Throw out the universal curve that applies to everything from height to house prices. That curve is reality. College grades are not.

      At one time, the universal curve applied to college grades: “A”s were about 10 percent of all grades; “B”s were about 20 percent; “C”s were about 40 percent; “D”s were about 20 percent; and “F”s were about 10 percent. That grade break-down, which could be more or less, depending upon a number of factors, isn’t even ancient history—it’s more like an ethereal ghost that no one understands.

      Drs. Rojstaczer and Healy report that in 1940 about 15 percent of all grades were “A”s. While grades of “B” have remained stable at about 35 percent for the past six decades, grades of “C” have dropped sharply from 35 percent to about 15 percent.  Grades of “D” have dropped by half over the past six decades, while grades of “F” apparently are issued only to those students who didn’t show up for class or whose brain is bottled in formaldehyde in a science lab.

      Several studies show a high correlation between high grades issued by professors to students and high evaluations of professors by students.

      Why that matters is that professors are pragmatic. College administrations have taken an easy way to evaluate professors’ teaching abilities by having students fill out a multi-question survey at the end of the semester. Professors know that 19-year-olds will typically rate “likable” and non-demanding professors higher. Add those evaluations to a few meaningless professional papers delivered to a couple of dozen yawning academics at boring conferences and a list of university committees the professor was appointed or elected to, and opportunities for tenure and promotion increase.

      Although there are thousands of excellent professors who excel in all areas of teaching and scholarship, many professors, even those with a string of academic letters after their names, may not even be aware they are not as rigorous as they should be. After all, their own professors, wanting to be liked and promoted, may not have demanded significant academic sweat, so they aren’t aware of what reasonable criteria should be for their own students. There is also the reality that collegial “get-togethers” and participation on useless college committees—and being liked by one’s colleagues—may be an easier route to tenure and promotion than doing rigorous scholarship and demanding the same from students.

      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. Fewer students in classes usually results in questions from administrators who may claim they believe in academic rigor and integrity, but who have the souls of Ebenezer Scrooge.

      Some departments traditionally grade tougher than others. Science and engineering departments tend to have lower overall grade averages than those in social sciences and humanities. Education programs tend to have the highest grade averages. It’s not unusual for the average grade in elementary education courses to be an A-minus, and in secondary education to be a B-plus. That means either our future teachers are brighter than the light from a supernova—or that some of the profs who are teaching our future teachers don’t know there are more than just two letters in the alphabet.

      In some classes, at all educational levels, we don’t even require students to know anything more than hand signals, preparation of crib sheets, and techniques of paraphrasing five different articles and calling the result a research paper—assuming the professor even requires that much. The one class in which most students can legitimately earn a grade of “A” without cheating is Cheating.

      Add into the slurpy mix of academics a few inconvenient pressures. Athletics coaches want to make sure their pack of future draft picks stay academically eligible. A significant minority of students spend more time trying to plea-bargain the professor into raising the grade than they do studying for the exams. And when plea-bargaining fails, hovering overhead are the helicopter parents who want to make sure professors truly understand how brilliant their darling children are, and how (horror!) a B-minus not only is the wrong grade, but can damage their darling little Boo-Boo’s fragile psyche and chances to become a Fortune 500 CEO. Besides, the parent reasons that buying a college degree is like buying a car—if you pay the money, you should get a car.

      If the professor doesn’t yield to parental pressure, there’s always some administrator with jelly for a spine, and a pencil-brain that equates quality of education with how many children she or he can capture and put into brick-and-mortar buildings. The pursuit in college has been of achieving a critical mass of students who earn high enough grades to stay in college, sometimes for six years, rather than in developing knowledge and critical thinking skills—traits that administrators all claim they believe but don’t do more than pay “lip service.”

      The problem of runaway grade inflation is that the exceptional student receives the same grade as the above average student, and the mediocre student can slide into a degree. Until professors stand up for academic rigor, even against the prattling of their administrators and the practices of their more “likable” peers, and are willing to push not only themselves but their students beyond their limits, there is no reason for students to expect academic rigor—and every reason for them to expect to be able to graduate with honors.

      [Dr. Brasch is an award-winning journalist, former newspaper and magazine reporter and editor, and professor emeritus from a Pennsylvania state university. His latest book is Fracking Pennsylvania, an in-depth investigation of the health and environmental effects of deep earth drilling in the Marcellus Shale.]

     

     

Oh, THAT'S What the Boy Scouts Mean by Being ‘Morally Straight

 United Church of Christ

by Walter Brasch

Harry Strausser III owns a successful small business with 25 employees in Bloomsburg, Pa. As an undergraduate, he was a national champion in several forensics categories, and represented the Boy Scouts of America in national competitions sponsored by the Reader’s Digest. As a graduate student, he coached a college forensics team. He has never been arrested or suspected of any crime.

Strausser is an Eagle Scout.

He is also gay.

The National Council of the Boy Scouts of America says he doesn’t have the right “core values” to be a Scout leader.

Denny Meyer, who lives in New York City, wasn’t a Scout, but often tagged along with his older brother to Scout meetings. During college, Meyer, the son of Holocaust refugees, enlisted in the Navy in 1968 “to pay my country back for my family’s freedom.” After four years, he had quickly advanced to Petty Officer Second Class (E-5), got a job as a civilian with the Department of the Army, and enlisted in the Army Reserve, rising to the rank of Sergeant First Class (E-7). He later worked in international sales and office administration.

Meyer had to pass rigorous background checks to serve in two branches of the Armed Forces, but he can’t pass the background checks to become a Boy Scout leader because he’s gay.

Gregory Bourke is a mainframe computer programmer and analyst in Louisville, Ky. He had been a Scout for almost three years. His 15-year-old son is a Life Scout who has finished most of his requirements to be an Eagle Scout. His 14-year-old daughter is a Girl Scout. He has been a leader in her troop for eight years; he had been an assistant Scoutmaster for five years. Last September, he received a special Legislative Citation from the Kentucky House of representatives honoring him for his community involvement and dedication to Scouting.

Bourke is no longer with the Boy Scouts. His local Council, against strong opposition from his troop and the Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic church, which sponsors both the Girl Scout and Boy Scout troops, ordered him to resign because he’s gay, and threatened to pull the church’s Scouting charter if Bourke didn’t resign. The Girl Scouts, like the 4H Club, the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, and numerous other organizations, has no discriminatory policies, and Bourke’s church is pleased he continues as Girl Scouts leader

In contrast, the Boy Scouts have a long history of allowing local councils to discriminate against racial, ethnic, and religious minorities. It wasn’t until 1974 that the national organization finally ended racial discrimination. In 1991, with the emergence of a “family values” conservative movement, the Boy Scouts formalized a policy to exclude gays from membership and leadership positions. The existing position is that the BSA believes “homosexual conduct is inconsistent with the requirement in the Scout Oath that a Scout be morally straight and in the Scout Law that a Scout be clean in word and deed, and that homosexuals do not provide a desirable role model for Scouts.” Nine years later, the Supreme Court, by a 5–4 vote largely along political lines, said that the Boy Scouts of America was a private organization and had every right to discriminate.

Several Fortune 500 corporations—including Alcoa, Caterpillar, CVS, Dow Chemical, General Electric, General Mills, Intel, Levi Strauss, 3M, UPS, and Verizon—have suspended funding to the BSA.

Although local United Way agencies have the autonomy to decide whether or not to continue to provide funds to the BSA, the national organization has reaffirmed its principle that “embraces inclusiveness, diversity, and equal opportunity as part of our core values, Code of Ethics, and human resource policies.” Keri Albright, president of the Greater Susquehanna Valley United Way (Pa.), like more than 50 other United Way local organizations, has suspended Boy Scout funding, and argues that “accepting gays is not in conflict with having good values.”

Faced by significant income loss, the Boy Scouts last Summer rethought their position about excluding gays from membership. A backlash by the right-wing, which also threatened to pull funding and membership, slapped them back into their policy of discrimination.

A petition with 64,000 signatures opposing the Boy Scout policy of exclusion was delivered to the United Way; several petitions, with about 1.4 million signatures opposing the Scouts’ anti-gay policies, were delivered to its national headquarters in Irving, Texas.

And so the flip-flopping Scouts decided to survey its members and sponsors. From surveys filled out by more than 200,000 Scouts and their leaders, 50,000 alumni, 270 councils, and about 100 religious and community organizations, the surveys revealed, according to the National Council, that “a majority of adults in the Scouting community [about 61 percent] support the BSA’s current policy of excluding open and avowed homosexuals [but] younger parents and teens tend to oppose the policy.” The Los Angeles Area Council, and several others in Southern California, proposes to disregard National policy and to admit to membership and leadership roles anyone who meets Scouting standards, whether gay or straight.

Among those who oppose inclusion of gays as members or leaders are several churches. Franklin Page, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, says he’s “gravely distressed” that the Scouts are even considering revising their policy, and if they allow gays as members his churches are likely to sever ties with the Scouts. The Latter Day Saints and Roman Catholic churches also oppose removing barriers to permit gays to become Scouts and leaders. In contrast, the United Church of Christ, United Methodist Church, and the Unitarian Universalist Association, among other religions that sponsor Scout packs and troops, demand discriminatory policies be eliminated. About two-thirds of all Scout groups are sponsored by religious organizations.

The 70-member executive committee is now recommending to the 1,400 voting members of the National Council that gay youth under 18 be allowed to be Scouts, but to continue to exclude gay adults from becoming leaders.

This Swiss-hole plan, which could be approved by the National Council, May 20, perpetuates the Scouts’ image as an organization that openly discriminates. It would allow a gay youth to pass the rigorous tests to become an Eagle Scout, including a requirement to “serve six months in a troop leadership position,” yet not be allowed to become an adult leader. Such a decision perpetuates stereotypes and shows that the national leadership is buried in a morass of homophobic fear.

The proposed policy revision implies that youth are still exploring their worldviews and beliefs, and that being gay is a choice that gay youth make, and one they can “outgrow” if they wish to have the BSA “core values.”

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.

[Dr. Brasch’s latest book is Fracking Pennsylvania, a look at the impact of fracking upon public health and environment. Rosemary R. Brasch assisted on this column.]

Pennsylvania: You Are Fracked

by Walter Brasch

SPECIAL NOTE: This is a special Earth Day edition of my weekly social issues column, Wanderings. The information is from my latest book, Fracking Pennsylvania, an overall look at the nature and consequences of high-pressure horizontal hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking.  Even if you are not a Pennsylvanian or living in the recent boom in the Marcellus Shale, fracking is going on across the country, and is about to expand into the urban and agricultural areas of central California. If you don't want your wine, lettuce, or hundreds of other fruits and vegetables to be methane-tinged or to hold traces of radioactive and toxic waste, you might wish to oppose the development of fracking in California.

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The history of energy exploration, mining, and delivery is best understood in a range from benevolent exploitation to worker and public oppression. A company comes into an area, leases or buys land in rural and agricultural areas for mineral rights, increases employment, usually during a depressed economy, strips the land of its resources, creates health problems for its workers and those in the immediate area, and then leaves.

It makes no difference if it’s timber, oil, coal, nuclear, or natural gas. All energy sources are developed to move mankind into a new era; all energy sources are developed to bring as much profit to corporations as quickly as possible, often by exploiting the workers.

Before the settlement of Pennsylvania in the 1680s, more than 20 million acres of forests covered almost all of the land. During the latter half of the nineteenth century, the lumber industry had clear-cut several million acres, leading Pennsylvania into an era that rivaled even the Gold Rush in California. By World War I, the companies had stripped the land, taken their profit, and then moved on, leaving devastation in their wake. Only when the people finally realized that destroying the forests led to widespread erosion and flooding did they begin to reforest the state. Almost a century after the lumber companies denuded the forests, the natural gas industry, with encouragement from the state, have leased more than 150,000 acres of forests for wells, pipelines, and roads.

Between 1859, when an economical method to drill for oil was developed near Titusville, Pa., and 1933, the beginning of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal,” Pennsylvania, under almost continual Republican administration, was among the nation’s most corrupt states. The robber barons of the timber, oil, coal, steel, and transportation industries, enjoying and contributing to the Industrial Age of the 19th century, essentially bought their right to be unregulated. In addition to widespread bribery, the energy industries, especially coal, assured the election of preferred candidates by giving pre-marked ballots to workers, many of whom were immigrants and couldn’t read English.

When the coal companies determined underground mining was no longer profitable, they began strip mining, shearing the tops of hills and mountains to expose coal, causing environmental damage that could never be repaired even by the most aggressive reforestation program. Pennsylvania is the only state producing anthracite coal, and is fifth in the nation in production of all coal, behind Wyoming, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Texas.

John Wilmer, an attorney who formerly worked in the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), in a letter to the editor of The New York Times in March 2011, explained that “Pennsylvania’s shameful legacy of corruption and mismanagement caused 2,500 miles of streams to be totally dead from acid mine drainage; left many miles of scarred landscape; enriched the coal barons; and impoverished the local citizens.” His words are a warning about what is happening in the natural gas fields.

Every method of extracting energy from the earth yields death and injury to the workers and residents. More than 100,000 coal miners were killed, often from structural failures within the mines, gas poisonings, explosions, and roof collapse. Long-term catastrophic effects from mining also include pneumoconiosis, also known as Black Lung Disease, the result of the inhalation of coal dust within the mines. Worker and resident protection often don’t occur until decades after a new energy source is mined. For coal mining, although there were several protections brought about by the United Mine Workers, it wasn’t until 1969 when the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act became law that health and environmental protection advanced. Congress improved the Act in 1977 and 2006.

The nation’s first commercial nuclear power plant to develop peaceful uses of energy was the Shippingport Atomic Power Station, along the Ohio River in Beaver County, Pa., about 35 miles northwest of Pittsburgh. The plant went online in December 1957 and stayed in production through October 1982. During the last four decades of the twentieth century, the nation built 132 nuclear plants, with politicians and Industry claiming nuclear energy was clean, safe, efficient, and would lessen the nation’s ties to oil. Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Fukushima Daiichi, and thousands of violations issued by the Nuclear Regulatory Agency, have shown that even with strict operating guidelines, nuclear energy isn’t as clean, safe, and as efficient as claimed. Like all other energy industries, nuclear power isn’t infinite. Most plants have a 40–50 year life cycle. After that, the plant becomes so radioactive that it must be sealed. Pennsylvania is second in the nation, behind Illinois, in production of electricity from nuclear reactors.

In the early 21st century, the natural gas industry follows the model of the other energy corporations, and uses the same rhetoric. The Heartland Institute, a think tank which says it exists to “promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems, claims, “Shale extraction has proven remarkably safe for the environment and the newfound abundance of domestic natural gas reserves promises unprecedented energy prosperity and security.”

Well-paying jobs have become plentiful; however, most are temporary, ending when the gas companies declare a site no longer profitable. But, high-pressure horizontal fracturing (known as fracking), the process the companies are using to get to the gas more than a mile beneath the surface, is leaving in its wake health and environmental issues that could be as serious as those that surrounded the timber, coal, oil, and nuclear industries.

But there is one major difference. Several federal environmental protection laws don’t apply to the natural gas industry.

Dick Cheney, whose promotion of Big Business and opposition to environmental policies is well-documented, as vice-president had pushed for Big Energy’s exemption from the Safe Water Drinking Act. His hand-picked “energy task force,” composed primarily of industry representatives, had concluded that fracking was a safe procedure. Cheney had been CEO of Halliburton, one of the world’s largest energy companies; the exemption became known derisively as the Halliburton Loophole. That legislation, says Al Gore, “put the whole industry in such a privileged position, it disadvantages the advocates of the public interest, which was the intention.”

Among other federal environmental laws that the natural gas industry is exempt from are National Environmental Policy Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, and the nation’s SuperFund law, which requires companies that pollute the environment to take a fiscal responsibility.

The first Earth Day was in 1970. The people demanded, and eventually got, Congress to enact legislation not only to protect the air and water, but to create a federal agency to enforce those regulations. Today, more than four decades later, it is important that the people push a weak-willed Congress, inflated by Big Energy political contributions, to do what is right, eliminate all loopholes and exemptions, and force the natural gas industry to be accountable for all laws that protect the public health and environment.

[Fracking Pennsylvania is available through Greeley & Stone, Publishers . . . amazon.com . . . or your local bookstore.]

     

NRA Liars and Congressional Cowards

 by Walter Brasch

President Obama cast off his “No Drama Obama” garb, and became the fiery leader of hope and change that Americans first elected in 2008. At a speech in Hartford, Conn., the President, frustrated by Republican obstructionism, demanded of his audience, “If you believe that the families of Newtown and Aurora and Tucson and Virginia Tech and the thousands of Americans who have been gunned down in the last four months deserve a vote, we all have to stand up.” He demand, “If you want the people you send to Washington to have just an iota of the courage that the educators at Sandy Hook showed when danger arrived on their doorstep, then we’re all going to have to stand up.”

He wanted the people to let Congress know it was “time to require a background check for anyone who wants to buy a gun so that people who are dangerous to themselves and others cannot get their hands on a gun.” He wanted the people to let Congress know, “It’s time to crack down on gun trafficking so that folks will think twice before buying a gun as part of a scheme to arm someone who won’t pass a background check.” He asked the people “to tell Congress it’s time to restore the ban on military-style assault weapons, and a 10-round limit for magazines, to make it harder for a gunman to fire 154 bullets into his victims in less than five minutes.” He pleaded that the people “have to tell Congress it’s time to strengthen school safety and help people struggling with mental health problems get the treatment they need before it’s too late.”

But, what he really wanted was a vote. A simple up-or-down vote. The people, said the President, at the very least “deserve a vote” not more obstructionism. 

Smirking with NRA drool slathering his five-term Senate body, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) wasn’t about to let that happen. He didn’t want a vote, even a watered down version that would have all the ferocity of a baby canary.

McConnell said he would filibuster all proposed legislation.

The Senate Republicans, who believe they’re the “law and order party,” have rolled over and allowed the NRA to pet them on their pork-bellied tummies. For more than three decades, the NRA and explosives manufacturers successfully lobbied Congress the to prohibit the use of taggants in explosives. These taggants would identify bombs before detonation and enable agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and explosives (ATF) to trace manufacturer and sale of the explosives after explosion. For six years, the NRA blocked the appointment of any nominee to head the ATF. With NRA paranoia guiding their own actions, the Republicans have also forbidden the ATF from creating a computerized database to better analyze and evaluate applications for firearms, and have left the ATF underfunded and undermanned. This would be the same ATF that, with fewer resources, now plays a major role in the Boston Marathon murders.

Five weeks after the murders in Newtown, the McConnell for Senate campaign told the voters they were “literally surrounded” by those who want to take their guns away. In a robocall to his constituents, he parroted the NRA erroneous claim that, “President Obama and his team are doing everything in their power to restrict your constitutional right to keep and bear arms.”  This would be the same senator who, in 1991, supported Joe Biden’s bill that led to a 10 year ban on semi-automatic and automatic weapons. This is the same senator who, in 1998, voted to support Barbara Boxer’s bill that required trigger locks for the purchase of every hand gun. In less than a decade, McConnell turned to the extreme Right and became little more than an NRA lackey, willing to wrap himself in a faulty interpretation of the Second Amendment and block the will of 90 percent of the American people, including a majority of all NRA members and gun owners.

Republic political strategist Karl Rove told journalist FoxNews reporter Chris Wallace, “People want this issue to be discussed, they want it to be decided and we don’t need to block everything in the Senate.” By a 68–31 vote, with 16 Republicans joining 52 Democrats, the Senate agreed to allow discussion on proposed gun control bills.

The first of several Senate bills, Wednesday, resulted in a 54–46 vote to expand background checks for gun purchases to include all internet and gun show sales, strengthen penalties for gun trafficking, and help fund additional school security. The bill, known as a compromise proposal, was sponsored by Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), both of whom carry “A” ratings by the NRA. Five Democrats voted against the bill; four Republicans voted for it.  However, because of the 60-vote rule invoked by the NRA-fed obstructionist Republicans, and agreed to by the Democrats, it failed. The NRA, exercising its usual fear-mongering tactics, spread a $500,000 robocall campaign the day of the vote, and claimed the bill would lead to a national gun registry; provisions in the bill specifically excluded that possibility. President Obama would later say that the “gun lobby and its allies willfully lied about the bill.”

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, on behalf of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, representing more than 900 American cities, called out the 46 senators who voted against the bill. “Today's vote is a damning indictment of the stranglehold that special interests have on Washington,” said Bloomberg. “More than 40 U.S. senators would rather turn their backs on the 90 percent of Americans who support comprehensive background checks than buck the increasingly extremist wing of the gun lobby.” Gov. Dan Malloy (D-Conn.) said the minority “who voted against this proposal should be ashamed of themselves.” aid the Senate had “ignored the will of the American people,” adding that those senators who voted against the expanded background checks chose to “obey the leaders of the powerful corporate gun lobby, instead of their constituents.” Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who has spent two years in recovery from an attempted assassination, said the failure to pass meaningful legislation was “based on political fear and on cold calculations about the money of special interests like the National Rifle Association.”

In rapid succession, a ban on assault weapons, a ban on high-capacity gun magazines and a bipartisan compromise to expand background checks for gun purchasers all failed to get the 60 votes needed. Even a bipartisan amendment to impose stiff penalties on gun traffickers was defeated, receiving 58 votes.

New York, Colorado, and Maryland have all recently passed common-sense gun safety reforms without violating anyone’s Second Amendment rights. The people of this democracy demand better controls over who can own guns. But 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

 

by Walter Brasch

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was mad. Not the kind of mad you get when your favorite team blows a big lead and loses its eighth straight game, but Red-Faced-Exploding-Blood-Pressure Mad.

This is what you get from the political Left in America,” McConnell bellowed to the media. “That is what the political Left does these days.”

McConnell’s campaign manager, Jesse Benton, added his opinion—“We’ve always said the Left would stop at nothing to attack Sen. McConnell.” They demanded the FBI launch a criminal investigation. The FBI response to the media was, “[W]e are looking into the matter.” Not long after, McConnell approved a campaign slogan, exhorting voters to “Stand with McConnell against the liberal media’s illegal and underhanded tactics.”

What McConnell and Benton were furious about was a leaked tape that revealed possible tactics they would use against movie star Ashley Judd if she were to oppose McConnell in the 2014 Senate race.

 McConnell had no evidence there was any liberal plot or that the tape was the result of a bug deliberately planted in campaign headquarters, but tried to spin in circles to make people believe it was a liberal invasion of his soul.

David Corn of Mother Jones, which this week published a transcript of the tape that was made  Feb. 2, said the tape was not the result of any bugging operation. It is entirely possible that the tape was made by someone in that room, not unlike the videotape of Mitt Romney who told a fundraising meeting of wealthy supporters that 47 percent of Americans were takers. However, unlike McConnell’s fury, Romney took the high road and tried to dance around his words rather than blame the liberals for leaking the tape that may have been the turning point in the campaign.

But the tactics of a five-term senator and his senior staff may be just as damaging to their campaign as the “47 percent tape” was to Romney’s. McConnell said he and his campaign should launch a “whack-a-mole” campaign—“when anybody sticks their head up, do them out.” In this case, McConnell’s team planned to attack Judd’s mental health, her political activism, her loyalty to President Obama, and that she is an “out of touch” Hollywood liberal.

“She’s clearly, this sounds extreme, but she is emotionally unbalanced,” said one of the staff, emphasizing the campaign could go after Judd for past bouts of depression that led to her being hospitalized. Laughter about her depression could be heard on the tape. Judd readily acknowledged that time in her life, even including it in her autobiography, All That is Bitter and Sweet.

A staff aide called Judd “critical . . .  of traditional Christianity [and] anti-sort-of-traditional American family.” What the aide meant was that Judd opposes sexism in the Christian church, supports the Affordable Care Act, is pro-choice, believes in the rights of gays to marry, is an animal rights advocate who spoke against Sarah Palin’s campaign to eradicate wolves by shooting them in their dens, and opposes the use of coal and other fossil fuels to try to avoid climate change that could destroy the earth’s ozone layer.

McConnell and the staff also didn’t say that while McConnell has led the “Party of No” into blocking almost all major appointments and meaningful legislation, Judd is a recognized humanitarian who has worked vigorously to expose the wrongs committed against society’s most vulnerable. They also didn’t mention she is a Phi Beta Kappa honors graduate of the University of Kentucky, and earned a master’s in public administration from Harvard. They seemed more focused upon sliming her personal life and the fact her cell phone has a San Francisco area code.

In a subsequent story, Mother Jones revealed that some of the staff in the room when the recording was made, and that others who did the research about Judd, were Senate staffers. If they did the work on their own time, did not use any federal resources (including telephones and other communications devices), and did not do their work in any federal office they would not have violated the Senate’s own ethics standards. However, as Mother Jones reported, the three senior McConnell staffers they contacted “did not respond.”

Bound in a political black hole from which truth never escapes, McConnell and his staff launched a “scorched-earth” attack to divert the public from the facts on the leaked tape was the far greater sin than what was said.

Innumerable politicians, especially in the past decade, have proven that dirty politics has become the politics of choice. By attacking how the information was obtained and disseminated, unable to defend his own words and tactics, McConnell has made it obvious that truth and decency no longer have a place in either his campaign or his elected position.

[Dr. Brasch’s current book is Fracking Pennsylvania, an in-depth investigation of the controversial practice of hydraulic horizontal fracking. The book looks at the health, environmental, worker safety, and economic impact of fracking, and also discusses the collusion between politicians and Big Energy.]