Divesting America of Ozone-Destroying Energy Sources

by Walter Brasch

    Long before the price of gas and oil began to plummet, socially conscious churches, universities, non-profit organizations, and local governments began to divest themselves of fossil fuel stock and shock the fossil fuel industry to understand the environmental and public health concerns.

    The World Council of Churches, which represents about 590 million Christians in 520,000 congregations, decided in July that to continue to hold fossil fuel stock would compromise its ethics, and recommended that the 349 member denominations consider divesting oil and gas stock.

     Six of the eight Anglican dioceses of New Zealand and Polynesia, and four dioceses in Australia divested their portfolios of fossil fuel stock.

     In the United States, the United Church of Christ and the Unitarian Universalist churches became the first denominations to begin to divest themselves of fossil fuel stock. Both denominations have a long history of fighting for social justice.

     Also divesting are Quaker, Episcopal, and several other denominations. Several synods of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America have passed resolutions asking the national board and local churches to divest themselves of fossil fuel stocks.

     The Union Theological seminary, with a $108.4 million endowment, became the nation’s first seminary to divest itself of fossil fuel stock. The Rev. Dr. Serene Jones, the seminary’s president, explained the decision: “It is ever clear that humanity’s addiction to fossil fuels is death-dealing—or as Christians would say, profoundly sinful.”

     Several religious groups that have shares in Chevron asked the corporation in 2011 to go “above and beyond regulatory requirements” to protect the environment and public health. Chevron flippantly dismissed the request. The corporation claimed, it “is already committed to meeting or exceeding all applicable laws and regulations [and the suggestions] would merely duplicate Chevron’s current efforts and thus would be a waste of stockholder money.”

    College students, staff, and faculty have been active in pushing their institutions to eliminate fossil fuel stocks from their portfolios. The result has been an awareness of a social issue that was not seen since students pressured their colleges to divest funds in tobacco companies and in corporations that dealt with the apartheid government of South Africa.

    “If we don’t deal with climate change now, we consign our grandkids to an unlivable planet,” said Unity College president Dr. Stephen Mulkey. Unity, which became the nation’s first college to divest its endowment portfolio of fossil fuel stock, specializes in environmental and natural sciences.

    Among three dozen colleges and universities that have committed to divesting their portfolios of fossil fuel stock are Foothill–DeAnza Community College, Green Mountain College, Humboldt State University, San Francisco State University, the University of Dayton, and Hampshire College, which in 1977 in protest of apartheid policies, was the first U.S. college to eliminate all stocks related to South Africa.

    Pitzer College, a liberal arts college in Southern California, divested about $4.4 million of its $5.5 million in fossil fuel stock in December, and pledged to work to eliminate most of the rest of the stock in fossil fuel industries. The college has about a $124 million endowment.

    Stanford University announced in May it would no longer hold stock in the coal industry, but did not include divesting oil and gas stock in its $18.7 billion endowment fund. About 300 Stanford University professors published an open letter to the administration this month to request the university divest itself of all fossil fuel stock. Among the signers were Drs. Elizabeth A. Hadley, senior associate vice-president; Donald Kennedy, former Stanford president; Roger Komberg, Nobel Prize winner in chemistry; and Douglas Osheroff, Nobel Prize winner in physics.

    However, Harvard University, whose $32.7 billion endowment is the largest among educational institutions, doesn’t plan to eliminate fossil fuel stocks from its portfolio. Harvard President Dr. Drew Gilpin Faust told the New York Times that in spite of wide-scale student protests, eliminating fossil fuel stocks is not “warranted or wise,” and that the university’s portfolio is “a resource, not an instrument to impel social or political change.”

    David Crane, CEO of NRG, one of the nation’s leading energy providers, said he didn’t “relish the idea that year after year we’re going to be educating a couple million kids from college, who are going to be American consumers for the next 60 or 70 years, that come out of college with a distaste or disdain for companies like mine.”

    The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, founded on income from oil exploration and development, declared in October it would divest fossil fuel stock. Stephen Heintz, president of the $860 million philanthropic foundation, said his executives had already divested its portfolio of coal and tar sands stocks. Heintz said the Foundation will invest in more renewable energy companies.

    Several dozen U.S. cities and counties, as early as 2012, have begun the process to divest themselves of fossil fuel stocks and to urge their independent pension boards to divest. San Francisco in April 2013 began divesting about $580 million of fossil fuel stock, and by 2019 will stop purchasing stock of any company associated with fossil fuel exploration and development. Seattle, Wash., Mayor Mike McGinn in December 2013, a month before leaving office, asked the city’s pension board, which oversees a portfolio of about $1.9 billion, to “begin exploring options for moving existing investments from fossil fuel companies.” The city had $17.6 million invested with ExxonMobil and Chevron.

    Investing in renewable energy, especially with the increase in jobs in those industries and the rapid decline in the costs of solar and wind energy to consumers, appears to be the better investment strategy—and one that sends a message that protection of public health and the environment, combined with stopping the destruction of the ozone layer, is far more important than destroying the Earth.

   [Dr. Brasch, an award-winning social issues journalist, is author of 290 books, including Fracking Pennsylvania, an in-depth look at the effects of high volume horizontal fracturing.]

The Fascist Socialist Kenyan Muslim Libtard President

  

by Walter Brasch

      Rep. Randy Weber (R-Texas), like many Americans, was upset that President Obama did not go to Paris to personally show his solidarity with France, and publicly mourn the 12 journalists and the four French citizens killed in terrorist attacks.

      Like many Americans, both liberal and conservative, Rep. Weber made his views publicly known. However, he crossed the line of decency when he tweeted, “Even Adolph Hitler thought it more important than Obama to get to Paris. (For all the wrong reasons.) Obama couldn’t do it for the right reasons.”

      The response to the tweet led Weber to issue a retraction and apology. “I now realize that the use of Hitler invokes pain and emotional trauma for those affected by the atrocities of the Holocaust and victims of anti-Semitism and hate,” he said in his official apology.

      As comparison attacks go, Weber’s was not the most offensive. Six years into Barack Obama’s eight-year presidency, others have directly linked him to Hitler. In Tea Party rallies, it isn’t unusual to find pictures of the President with a Hitler-like mustache. On uncountable messages and rants posted in social media or written for online and print media, the reactionary right wing call the President a dictator, a fascist, and a Nazi.

      When they’re not comparing the President to Hitler, they say he isn’t a citizen. Apparently, they believe Hawaii is a foreign country. They fail to recognize that his mother was a U.S. citizen, making Obama an American. They called for his birth certificate. And so he showed a birth announcement from a Hawaiian newspaper and a long-form birth certificate—which they promptly dismissed as fraudulent. But, the only fabrication was a fake Kenyan birth certificate, widely accepted by the right-wing but easily proven to be a fraud. Nevertheless, with flimsy evidence, they filed suits to get his election victories thrown out, claiming he was really born in Kenya. However, every court has thrown out the suits filed by the “birthers.”

      When not challenging his birth, they have called him a Muslim, stressing his middle name “Hussein” as evidence and slyly trying to tie him to the now-deceased Iraqi dictator. But, the right-wing, clinging to the flag and the Constitution, desecrate the former by not understanding the latter. Even if President Obama is a Muslim, he could be president. He could also be a Jew, a Hindi, a Heathen, or an atheist. The Constitution specifically allows anyone who is an American citizen, over the age of 35, and who lived in the U.S. for at least 14 years to be president. A person’s religion—or lack of one—has no basis to deny a person the Constitutional right of the presidency.

      Many, with no proof other than what they hear on right-wing talk radio, have called him an Arab, stupidly believing that the worst thing is to be an Arab Muslim born in Kenya. Believing that also deflects criticism that they are attacking the President for being Black.

      Even being an Arab Muslim Kenyan dictator isn’t good enough. And so, they dig into the Cold War era, toss in “Commie” and “Pinko,” and then sprinkle it with “socialist.” Of course, that would make him the only Muslim socialist in the world, a distinction so ludicrous that would bring tears of laughter to the terrorists of al-Qaeda and ISIS.

      When not attacking the President, the right-wing attacks liberals, who are believed to be the earthly incarnation of the Devil. To the extreme right-wing, liberals are DemocRATS, DIMocrats, and libtards. The left-wing merely shakes their heads at such juvenile terminology.

      President Obama and his party aren’t the only ones who have been attacked in history.

      During the first decades after the Revolutionary War, the Federalists and Anti-Federalists were vicious in their attacks upon each other. “If ever a nation was debauched by a man, the American nation has been debauched by Washington,” wrote Benjamin Franklin Bache editor of the widely-read Aurora. In retaliation, Federalists destroyed the Aurora office and beat Bache, Franklin’s grandson. The Federalists, uniting behind Alexander Hamilton and John Adams, and the Anti-Federalists, uniting behind Thomas Jefferson, spewed lies and hate, often through newspapers.

      The 1828 presidential election put incumbent John Quincy Adams against Andrew Jackson.  Mudslinging by supporters of each candidate continued to drag the four-decade old country into a deeper campaign war of name-calling and personalities rather than ideas.

      Abraham Lincoln—another tall skinny president—was called a monkey, and portrayed in numerous editorial cartoons as an ape. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, born into a WASP culture, was demonized as a “secret Jew,” with his critics emphasizing his name as “Roo-sevelt.” Protestant candidates vilified Catholic opponents; Catholics maligned Protestants. And everyone despised the Jews and other minorities.

      The hatred and disrespect shown by the Tea Party wing of the Republican party may not be unique or unusual. But it emphasizes that when you can’t argue on principles and policies, you resort to name calling.

      [Dr. Brasch is an award-winning social issues journalist and the author of 20 books. His current book is Fracking Pennsylvania, an in-depth look at the effects of horizontal fracturing throughout the country.]

     

A Textbook Case of Willful Distortion

by Walter Brasch

      HarperCollins says it’s sorry. It says it regrets not including Israel on a map of the Middle East in an atlas it published and distributed in the Middle East. It says all remaining copies of the atlas will be pulped.

      The Collins Primary Geography Atlas for the Middle East with a map that omitted Israel was described by the publisher in sales information as “an ideal school atlas for primary school geographers.” A fact checker, says a security officer for HarperCollins—the company refused to allow anyone from its Editorial, Marketing, or Media Relations offices talk to reporters—was “disciplined.” But, this was not a case of a bumbling fact checker who didn’t check the facts. This was a willful and deliberate decision by executives of the HarperCollins subsidiary, Collins Bartholomew, which concentrates on maps, to wipe Israel off the map—literally.

      The reason, said the company, was because of “local preferences.” In this case, “local preferences” means, said a representative for Collins Bartholomew, to include Israel on a Middle East map would be “unacceptable” to certain Middle East countries. “Unacceptable” translates solely as a loss of sales.

      The omission was discovered by Bishop Declan Lang and reported in The Tablet, a Catholic news weekly published in England. Lang told the Tablet that the publication of the atlas with Jordan and Syria covering the space of Israel “will confirm Israel’s belief that there exists a hostility towards their country from parts of the Arab world [and] will not help to build up a spirit of trust leading to peaceful coexistence.” Dr. Jane Clements, director of the Council of Christians and Jews, told the Tablet, “Maps can be a very powerful tool in terms of de-legitimising ‘the other’ and can lead to confusion rather than clarity.”

      Only after the Tablet’s news story was published—and HarperCollins subsequently received extensive condemnation from throughout the world—did the company issue a one-paragraph apology, which it posted on Facebook, and remove the atlas from sale.

      In 2001, HarperCollins stopped distribution of a book by Michael Moore, although there were 50,000 copies in its warehouse about to be released to bookstores. The company demanded that Moore kill three chapters of the book and pay the company $100,000 for print costs of the revised book. The chapters attacked President George W. Bush and raised questions about corporations and the government. HarperCollins is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, which also owns Fox News.

      These aren’t isolated instances of a publisher using the power of the press to change facts and suppress truth. Ever since 1948, when Israel was declared a country, publishers in countries hostile to Israel have not only refused to acknowledge Israel but have excluded it from maps and travel routes.

      Majority cultures write the histories, and their texts often reflect their biases and political agenda. During the twentieth century, Japanese texts overlooked the slaughter of thousands of Chinese civilians; Soviet texts under the Stalin regime failed to include the work of Leon Trotsky or mention America’s massive economic and humanitarian assistance to that country; and the texts of all countries reported little about the Holocaust.

      Publishers in America, trying to reap the widest possible financial benefit by not offending anyone, especially school boards, often force authors to overlook significant historical and social trends. For more than a century, books which targeted buyers in the North consistently overlooked or minimized Southern views about the Civil War; other books, which targeted a Southern readership, discussed the War of Northern Aggression or the War Between the States.

      Almost all media overlooked significant issues about slavery, the genocide against Native Americans, the real reasons for the Mexican-American War, the seizure of personal property and subsequent incarceration of Japanese-American citizens during World War II, the reasons why the United States went to war in Vietnam, the first Gulf War and, more recent, the war in Iraq.

      Textbook publishers, choosing profits over truth, often glossed over, or completely ignored until years or decades later, the major social movements, including the civil rights, anti-war and peace movements of the 1960s and the emerging environmental movement of the 1970s. It was the underground and alternative press that presented the truth that the establishment press under-reported or refused to acknowledge, timidly accepting the “official sources.”

      To establish standards for the study of history in the public schools and to correct some of the nation’s textbook wrongs, the National Endowment for the Humanities, under Congressional mandate, gave $1.75 million to UCLA’s National Center for History in the Schools to bring together a wide range of academics to study the problems and to recommend a model text that would present history as it was, rather than what we hoped it was. The concept was good; the execution was abysmal.

      The Center rightly determined that texts were “sugar-coating” and distorting American history, that there was an over emphasis upon a recitation of facts and in recounting the deeds of a few people, mostly white males, but far too little discussion about major trends and social issues that defined the American republic.

      But, the Center did exactly what it condemned. In a 271-page document at the end of 1994, it presented a distorted overview that the formation of the United States was a convergence of Islamic, African, and European influence, and discounted western European influence. It claimed the nation’s history is little more than struggle, conflict, and the abuse of the rights of people. It barely discussed the historic role of a free press and of free speech, mentioned the Gettysburg Address only briefly, and relegated the complexities of the “cold war” as merely a “quarrel” among imperialistic nations.

      The Committee’s proposed guidelines, although rightly adding many civil rights leaders, left out Eli Whitney, Thomas Edison, and the Wright Brothers among many other scientists; it overlooked Daniel Webster and other major diplomats and politicians; and it gave few lines to innumerable creative artists. However, the emperor of an ancient African civilization was praised, as were numerous individuals, often female or of minority cultures, who were merely footnotes in America’s 300-year history.

      Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels correctly argued that if someone tells a lie long enough and with enough intensity, it becomes the truth. But, poet John Milton gave a greater truth three centuries earlier. “Let her [Truth] and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?” he rhetorically asked.

      Publishers may whitewash certain facts or movements. They may even eliminate certain truths in order to increase sales. But, eventually, truth will emerge.

      [Dr. Brasch is the author of 20 books, all of which were fact-checked. His latest book is Fracking Pennsylvania, an in-depth look at the economic, health, and environmental effects of horizontal fracking throughout the country. He is an award-winning journalist and professor emeritus of mass communications.]

Setting America’s Priorities for 2015

by Walter Brasch

      Marci Rosenberg, a senior speech language pathologist at the University of Michigan, earns about $73,000 a year.       

      Desmond Patton, who studies the problems of gang violence, is a professor at the University of Michigan. He earns about $80,000 a year.

      Patricia Reuter-Lorenz, who works with cerebral palsy children, is a professor at the University of Michigan. She earns about $136,000 a year.

      Ursula Jakob, a molecular biologist who is working on proteins to unlock new disease cures, is a professor at the University of Michigan. She earns about $112,000 a year

      Dan Habib works with children who have disabilities; Martha Bailey is doing research on the correlations between living in disadvantaged neighborhoods and criminal behavior; Jason DeBord, a musician, was an orchestra conductor for several Broadway plays. All are faculty members at the University of Michigan. They, like most of their colleagues, earn between $75,000 and $150,000. Several, most of whom teach in the schools of law and medicine, earn as much as two and three times the average wage of a University of Michigan professor.

      Among the faculty are 25 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 27 members of the National Academy of Engineering, and 76 members of the American

Academy of Arts and Sciences. In the arts, several have won Grammys and Emmys. Their salaries, justifiably, are more than the average wage in the country.

      Jim Harbaugh, the newly-anointed head football coach at the University of Michigan, got a $2 million signing bonus, and will be paid $5 million a year for the first three years of a five-year contract. In the fourth and fifth years, he will receive $5.5 million; after the fifth year, he will earn another 10 percent salary boost, giving him about $6 million a year. In addition to his base salary and benefits, he will receive incentive bonuses. If his team becomes a Big 10 champion, he will earn an additional $250,000. A national championship guarantees him $500,000. He will probably earn at least several hundred thousand dollars more from endorsements.

      Most faculty have doctorates; Harbaugh has a B.A. in communications from the University of Michigan. But, he has something no other faculty member has—he was a top college and NFL quarterback; when his playing years ended, he became one of the NFL’s most successful coaches. That, according to the administrators of one of the nation’s finest universities, assures him of a salary greater than any earned by a professor or university research scientist—at Michigan or anywhere else in the country.

      But, even with his $5 million base salary, Harbaugh is still not as well-compensated as Nick Saban, head coach at the University of Alabama, who earned about $7.2 million last year or Mark Dantonio, head coach at Michigan State, who earned $5.6 million. Harbaugh’s $5 million base pay puts him in a tie for third place with coaches for the Universities of Oklahoma and Texas and Texas A & M, according to data compiled by USA Today. The lowest salary of any of the 128 Division I football teams goes to Appalachian State’s Scott Satterfield who earned a paltry $225,000 this season, about three times the average salary of all the nation’s professors.

      Penn State’s James Franklin earned $4.3 million base salary this year, eighth highest in the NCAA. It was about nine times greater than the final salary of legendary coach Joe Paterno, who thought $500,000 a year was about right for a Division I coach whose teams were often in bowl games, many which were in the Top 10 by the end of the season, and who had one of the highest graduation rates of any college coach.

      Collegiate football players don’t receive salaries. They can earn money from work-study jobs, usually in the recreation or athletics departments, that average about 10 hours a week and pay about minimum wage. But, few first- and second-string players work during the Fall semester; their hours are filled with football and, sometimes, classes.

      Almost every Division I player is on a scholarship. Tuition at the University of Michigan is $13,486–$18,000 a year for undergraduates, depending upon which school the student attends. Room and board, if living on campus, ranges from $16,928 to $27,116, depending upon accommodations. Add in a couple of thousand dollars more for books and study/research materials. The average debt of a graduate is about $26,000, according to the university.

      The salaries of football coaches pale by comparison to what professional athletes and megacorporation executives earn. Basketballer Kobe Bryant earned $23 million last year. Of 412 pro basketball players, 340 earned more than $1 million a year. The minimum salary of a major league baseball player is $500,000; the average salary is $3.4 million, more than 15 times the average wages of board-certified family physicians. Zack Grienke, a pitcher, topped the charts with a $24 million salary. In pro football, eight quarterbacks each earned at least $18 million last season, with Aaron Rogers topping the NFL charts with a $22 million salary.

      But even the sports stars’ salaries don’t match those of the Scrooge McDuck CEOs. The average CEO salary is about 380 times that of the average worker’s salary, according to data compiled by CNNMoney. This is the greatest wage gap in the world.

      At least 80 CEOs each earned at least $20 million in wages and compensation last year, with the CEO of Cheniere Energy earning $141.9 million.

      The average salary of a firefighter is about $43,000; for teachers, it’s about $45,000; for licensed clinical social workers, it’s about $51,000; for registered nurses, it’s about $56,000. For physical therapists, it’s about $65,000. For child care workers, it’s about $18,000, according to payscale.com.

      What we pay our workers reflects what we, as a nation, consider to be our priorities. And our priorities certainly aren’t in the categories of helping or teaching others.
     [Dr. Brasch is professor emeritus of mass communications from the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education. He is a syndicated columnist and radio commentator, and the author of 20 books. His current book is Fracking Pennsylvania, an in-depth look at the effects of high volume horizontal fracturing.]