Mass Murders are Good for Business

By Walter Brasch

      Shortly after the mass murders at Umpqua Community College near Roseburg, Ore., President Obama predicted the extreme right wing would crank out press releases declaring the nation needs fewer gun control laws and more guns.

      The pro-gun lobby didn’t disappoint him.

      Shortly after the mass murders in a Charleston, S.C., church in June, NRA board member Charles Cotton, an attorney who fired his first shot when he was four years old, had claimed if the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, a state senator “had voted to allow gun owners to carry their own weapons [into churches], eight of his church members  . . . might be alive.”

       After the shootings in Oregon, Cotton said had the students been carrying guns, there would have been no mass murder. “How carefree do you have to be with all of the mass shootings that are going on throughout America to not have something as simple and convenient as a small knife when you go to class, let alone a gun with which to protect yourself?” Cotton asked.

      The Republican presidential herd called for even more guns in a culture that has made Americans inured to violence. Presidential candidate Jeb Bush said, “Stuff happens.”

      The absurdity of arming all of America is that there are no requirements that anyone with a gun needs to know how to use that gun. The possibility of any one person with a hand gun being able to react faster than the shooter, be more accurate than the shooter, or not accidentally wounding or killing others is high. Heavily armed police, better trained in weapons than most Americans, did not kill the shooter, who wore body armor; the shooter killed himself.

      The shooter’s mother, who said she got all her knowledge about guns from her son, acknowledged he was autistic and a head-banger. In their house were 20 guns, including semi-automatic assault rifles; the killer used six of those guns at the college.

      Those who believe in no gun regulation say the solution is better mental health counseling. That may be a small part of the solution, but there are numerous questions. If a mother recognizes there may be a problem with her son but does nothing, who is responsible for compelling someone to see a counselor? Should the government step in to order counseling? Could this violate certain Constitutional rights? If the gun-proponents want the government to intercede, how do they reconcile their conflicting belief of limited government intervention in all matters against mandatory mental health counseling? Equally important, if they believe in more mental health counseling, why have they refused to vote for or approve funds for more mental health clinics? One fact is not accepted by the gun-rights absolutists.  “Only 3%-5% of violent acts can be attributed to individuals living with a serious mental illness,” according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and those with mental illnesses “are over 10 times more likely to be victims of violent crime than the general population.”

      There are more than 310 million guns in civilians’ possession in the United States. That’s one for every person from birth to death, and the highest per capita gun ownership rate in the world. During the past decade, there have been about 301,000 Americans killed by guns; that is about 4,250 times greater than all deaths from terrorists in the United States.

      In 1996, Congress blocked funding for the Centers for Disease Control to collect and analyze data about gun violence; it extended that ban this past July. In 2013, Congress had refused to pass common sense proposals to reduce gun violence. About 85 percent of all Americans want universal background checks, according to a non-partisan Pew Research poll in July. A majority of Americans want a limit on the size of ammunition magazines, and bans on assault weapons and civilians owning armor-piercing bullets. The politicians’ greed and loyalty to gun manufacturers is greater than their responsibility to their constituents and, more important, to discovering the truth

      The gun manufacturers, which receive about $6 billion in income each year, help fund the NRA and other pro-gun organizations. It’s simply a business decision. Nothing more.

Last year, the NRA spent $37 million on campaign donations and lobbying. In 2012, the NRA spent about $14 million trying to defeat President Obama in his successful run for a second term, according to The New York Times. Failing to stop the President from a second term led to even more gun sales. “It’s been off the chart, Gary Jessup of UT Arms in Kansas, told the Kansas City Star. About 4.7 million background checks were recorded in November and December 2012, according to the FBI, as the extreme right-wing descended into a cavern of fear, swathed by delusional paranoia.

       The NRA isn’t protecting the legitimate hunters and target shooters. Several former NRA presidents and board members in a delusional descent into paranoia, have said the NRA and gun-toting Americans are what keep the federal government from invading the states and seizing authority. Former NRA president David Keene told the Daily Caller that the Second Amendment “was not written to protect squirrel hunters.” Fred Romero, an NRA field representative, said the Second Amendment, which NRA and gun-rights organizations cling to as if it was Linus’s baby blanket, “is not there to protect the interests of hunters, sports shooters and casual plinkers [but] as a balance of power. [It is] a loaded gun in the hands of the people held to the heads of government.” Former NRA president Sandy Froman believes, “We are at war” within America and “my fellow NRA members are at the heart of national defense.” Most of the NRA staff and members of the board believe the president of the United States is a tyrant—some compare him to Hitler—who wants to disarm all Americans. It is this kind of thinking that forced former president George H.W. Bush to renounce his life membership in the NRA when the leadership declared federal agents to be “jack-booted thugs.”  It is this paranoid fear that allows gun manufacturers to create more guns, where every shooting spurs profits at local gun stores, and which helps the NRA and similar organizations to throw money at politicians to assure that fear, re-elections, and profits are what matter, not lives.

      Instilling fear into the people is what sells guns and buys politicians. Candi Kinney, owner of a gun store near Umpqua Community College, said the murders helped spur sales of guns, and ordered even more AR-15 semi-automatic assault rifles. “There’s always a rush on them after a big shooting,” she told the Guardian.  

      As World War II was coming to an end, and as the Allies began liberating the concentration camps where the Nazis murdered and tortured more than six million Jews, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered his troops to bring the civilians from nearby villages to the camps. He wanted the villagers to see those who lived, whose possessions and gold teeth were torn from them, and whose flesh now barely hung on their bones. He wanted the civilians—most who falsely claimed they didn’t know about the genocide—to see the crematoriums, whose smoke they had to have seen, whose odors they had to have smelled.  He wanted the civilians to go to the edge of forests, where Nazis murdered hundreds of thousands of Jews, and where the nearby villagers gleefully watched their soldiers and collaborators shoot pistols and automatic weapons that would end the lives of infants and grandparents, shopkeepers and mill workers, and some of the world’s most brilliant artists, writers, musicians, and scientists. Decades later, extreme right-wing militant Americans foolishly claim if the Jews had guns, the holocaust would never have occurred.  

      Let’s now require all politicians, and all those who believe fewer gun laws and more guns will solve the murder problem, to go to the crime scene. Let every politician and gun-rights advocate within 25 miles of a mass murder walk where the victims once walked. Let them see the blood and bodies shredded by copper, steel, and lead. Let them witness the police and medical personnel trying to do their jobs, while doing their best to hide their own tears and rage. Let them hear the cries of the families and friends. Make them go to the morgue and watch autopsies on bodies that can talk only to medical examiners. Make them go to the funerals, to again hear the crying of the families and friends, who talk about lives lost decades too early.  

      The only thing most politicians want to do after every mass shooting is to say their thoughts and prayers are with the families of those killed and wounded. But, their words are as hollow as their logic. Let the truth ring true, that the politicians were bought and paid for by the gun industry, and that is why common-sense gun reform was voted down, and the violence continues.

      [Assisting on this column was Rosemary R. Brasch. Walter Brasch is an award-winning author/journalist, whose latest book is Fracking Pennsylvania, a look at the health, environmental, political, and economic issues affecting the American population.]

America’s Real Traitors

by Walter Brasch

      The Tea Party wing of the Republican party thinks House speaker John Boehner is a rhino.

      Not the thick-skinned horned mammal that lives in Africa. This rhino is an R-I-N-O . . . Republican in Name Only.

      The Tea Party thinks Boehner, by sometimes listening to both sides and occasionally, but rarely, agreeing with some Democratic ideas, is a traitor. They believe anyone who disagrees with them is evil. A traitor. A RINO.

      The extreme right-wing is also delusional.

      John Boehner is as much a RINO as the one-ton plant eaters are Chihuahuas.

      The latest dust-up between the Speaker and the right-wing came when they wanted to block funding for the Department of Homeland Security. The Tea Party congressmen wanted to attach a condition to the funding. That condition would be to get rid of President Obama’s immigration policies. Vote to do that, and there would be consent among the right-wing to pass the Homeland Security budget. Disagree with them, and 30,000 federal workers would be laid off; the rest would be required to work without pay.

      That would include the Coast Guard. The Secret Service . The security guards at all airports. FEMA. And, ironically, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency. You know, the agents who are the ones who enforce border protection and send undocumented workers back to their home countries.

      The Tea Party politicians are the ones who don’t want to help individuals – especially if it involves money. Let disabled veterans suffer–their mantra is they don’t want any new taxes.

      But, they have yet to oppose mass funding for defense, even if some of the funding went to projects the Pentagon decided wasn’t fiscally sustainable or necessary.

      And so, the Tea Party extremists threw their temper tantrum, threatening to block all funding for Homeland Security if they didn’t get their way.

      The President called for a clean bill. Authorize funding for Homeland Security. Deal with the immigration issues later. It made sense.

      Except to the right-wing.

      John Boehner, aided by moderate Republicans and Democrats, brought a clean bill to a vote. The House–with 52 Republicans opposed–passed the bill. The President signed it 10 minutes before the deadline.

      And for protecting the people of America, the Tea Party Republicans call the House speaker a RINO.

      Over in the Senate, 47 right-wingers, in violation of the federal Logan Act that bars interference in foreign affairs during negotiations, sent a vicious letter to Iran, trying to undermine the President’s legal and constitutional authority. Even the conservative New York Daily News condemned these senators, four of whom may become presidential candidates, none of whom believe in the Constitution and in the country.

      It’s not hard to see just who the real traitors are to America.

      Maybe it’s time to call those right-wingers who don’t believe in the country to call them what they are likely to become if they keep up their obstruction–extinct.

      [Dr. Brasch is a social issues journalist, and the author of 20 books. His latest book is Fracking Pennsylvania, an in-depth look at the health, environmental, political, and economic effects of fracking throughout the country.]

Practicing Subsidized Un-Medicine

by Walter Brasch

     Clutching newspaper clippings in one hand and a medical bag loaded with seeds in the other, my ersatz friend Dr. Franklin Peterson Comstock III, knocking down pregnant ladies, students, the elderly, and two burly construction workers who were waiting for a bus, rushed past me, leaving me in a close and personal encounter with the concrete.

     “Medical emergency!” Comstock cried out. “Gang way!”

     “You’ve returned to medicine?” I shouted after him.

     “I’m going into un-medicine!” he shouted back. “I’m getting the big bucks not to operate!” This was a story too good to let by, so I gave up any hope of the 7:11 “D”-line bus arriving by 7:30, and chased after him.

     “Slow down!” I panted. “You’ll kill yourself!”

     “No time to slow down,” he said, leaving a trail of broken bodies. “There’s money to be had!”

     “If you kill yourself before you get to the hospital, you’ll never see a cent from the insurance company.” That stopped him, giving me time to catch up and catch my breath.

     “I’m not operating,” said Comstock.

     “If you’re not operating, what’s the medical bag?”

     “That’s so I can get money from the Department of Agriculture,” he replied. I’m planting lots of stuff on lots of non-productive acres, and I’m waiting for the market to drop.”

     “You want the market to drop?” I asked suspiciously.

     “That way I can take advantage of crop insurance. Here! Read!”

     A newspaper clipping revealed that Congress approved $90 billion over the next decade to assist farmers whose crops didn’t yield previous production quotas. It was a sleight-of-hand change from a program that gave farmers subsidies not to grow certain crops. However, in this case, the crop insurance program primarily benefitted large corporate agribusiness industry. About 10,000 corporations are receiving more than $100,000 each, with some receiving over $1 million, according to the Environmental Working Group. Local farmers, however, are receiving less than $5,000 a year, and mostly when their crops are wiped out by floods. Also in the budget is more than $1 billion to insurance companies for “administrative” expenses.

     “When the public finds out which corporations are getting all this tax-funded bonuses, they’ll be outraged!” I said.

     “That’s the juicy part,” said Comstock. “Congress slipped in a non-disclosure clause in the bill, and who gets the bucks is secret.”

     “So, you’re entire income will be from not being a successful farmer?” I said, outraged.

     “Absolutely not! I’m not putting all my eggs in one basket. I’m also going to get money for not operating.”

     “You mean, like the farmers got for not planting crops?”

     “Exactly. And you can thank a congressman for this brilliant stroke of fortune.” With that, he handed me another newspaper article. In this article, Rep. Mike Kennedy, a Republican from Utah, in opposition to Obamacare, said, “Access to health care can be damaging and dangerous.” Elaborating, he claimed that as many as 1.5 million people die in hospitals, “and it’s access to hospitals that’s killing these people.”

     “That’s even dumber than subsidizing corporate farmers,” I said.

     “Not dumb. Just helping the medical profession earn a reasonably high six-figure wage. Even if we get them through surgery, they’ll die in the hospitals anyhow! Isn’t that wonderful!” Wonderful wasn’t exactly the word I had in mind.

     “Doctors are supposed to make people healthier,” I brazenly said.

     “I guess we can do that while we’re making money,” said Comstock, thoughtfully stringing out his scheme. “In the old days, we surgeons knew there was more money to be made in surgery than in pushing pills, so we rushed everyone into X-Ray, MRI, and CT scans—got a nice chunk of kick-back change for that—then into  surgery, and finally into the recovery ward where they sometimes actually recovered.” He paused a moment, grinning. “But, that congressman thinks access to hospitals is dangerous, so that means fewer patients. Fewer patients means we need to have subsidies. Just like the farmers.”

     “You’re going to demand Congress, which has already wasted millions of dollars and tried more than 50 times to wipe out Obamacare, pay doctors for not having enough patients?”

     “Doctors deserve no less than the MBAs running corporate farms,” he patriotically declared.

     “Most doctors aren’t as greedy as you,” I explained.

     “Most doctors aren’t as rich as me either,” he retorted. “Besides, it makes no difference. I’m sure the AMA would be thrilled I’m not doing surgery.” I had to agree with him, but I had another question.

     “What happened to your franchised Doc’s Gas self-service stations? I thought you became a multi-millionaire because of that.”

     “Lost a ton of money. It’s all Obama’s fault.”

     I knew Comstock blamed the President for everything wrong in the country—and a few things that were just made up by Fox News commentators who had too much air time and not enough time to do any fact checking. “How is it President Obama’s fault?” I asked.

     “Gas prices plummeted this year,” said Comstock. “Cost me a lot of money. But that Black socialist Muslim Kenyan dictator refuses to give me a subsidy for having too much gas in my system.”

     Yes,” I said sarcastically, “that does seem to be a problem. But, at least you’ll be getting tax-dollars for running an unproductive farm and may get money for not operating.”

     “Not enough,” said Comstock. “It’s always not enough.”

     And, with that, I thought I had enough, and ran after the 7:11 D-line bus, which, on time, showed up at 7:32.

     [Walter Brasch, an award-winning social issues columnist and satirist, is the author of 20 books. His latest book is Fracking Pennsylvania, an in-depth investigation of the health, economic, and environmental effects of fracking throughout the country.]

AIDS Advances May be Compromised by Legislative Inaction

  by Walter Brasch

      Researchers at Temple University in Philadelphia may have found an entry-way to the cure for AIDS.

      Once the HIV virus enters the body it can lie dormant for years. It can also evolve into AIDS.  But, until now, it could never be removed. 

      It’s far too early to claim an AIDS cure—there still has to be several years of clinical trials— but this may be as close to a solution as scientists have come.

      There can be a lot of politics in medical science, but the researchers at least have the wisdom to know they must work together and focus upon the people not the politics.

      Even if there is a cure for AIDS, even if there are significant advances in the treatment and cure of other communicable diseases, it may not mean much if patients can’t get the medical treatment they need because obstructionists are doing their best to separate the people from the solution.

      Two hours west of Philadelphia is Harrisburg, the Pennsylvania state capital. This is where Gov. Tom Corbett and his well-oiled legislature shut down 15 of 60 public health clinics, have plans to shut down nine more to “save” about $3 million a year, and laid off 73 nurses and support staff. In July, the state Supreme Court issued an emergency injunction to prevent the state from shutting down more health clinics, and is reviewing a petition to force the administration to reopen the other clinics. Under the Corbett administration, Pennsylvania ranks 43rd of 50 states in per capita public health spending, according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The governor also vetoed a budget item to spend $2 million a year from tax revenue generated by oil and gas companies to do research about the effects of fracking upon the people’s health, to provide health care information, to treat those who may have been affected by air and water pollution from fracking, and to establish a health care registry that would help identify problems. But he was more than willing to give all kinds of tax breaks to oil and gas companies, including Royal Dutch Shell, a foreign corporation, which he handed a $1.7 billion tax credit. If the state taxed gas extraction companies at a rate at least that of other states, there would be at least another $500 million a year that could be used to help protect the people’s health and their environment.

      More than 50 times, the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives has tried to wipe the Affordable Care Act (ACA) off the books. This quixotic mission will continue to fail for two reasons. First, the Supreme Court of the United States, which has a majority of conservatives, ruled the Act is constitutional. Second, all evidence shows the Act has led to better health care and at least 2.3 million Americans covered who couldn’t get insurance prior to the passage of the ACA. More than eight million Americans have already signed up for ACA coverage, and are now receiving better health care at lower insurance rates. Further, because of the ACA, more than 5.5 million senior citizens and disabled have saved about $4.5 billion on prescription drugs in the past three years, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Fourteen “red” states have chosen not to be a part of the ACA, their legislatures adamantly refusing to agree to anything that President Obama has proposed, even if it means the people suffer. The impartial Rand Corp. estimates these states will spend about $1 billion more taxpayer funds than if they expanded Medicaid under ACA provisions. Because of their refusal to agree to the ACA, almost four million residents of their states will continue to be uninsured, forcing the state and hospitals to pay for emergency medical care for low-income individuals. (In Pennsylvania, with a Republican governor and legislature, if the state agreed to implement the ACA, the savings would be about $600 million the first year.) However, the rabid Right Wing has continued to sling a barrage of lies and half-truths, usually picked up, channeled, and reported by the mass media. The time and money devoted to this political gesturing by Right Wing politicians could better be spent on funding research to find cures for Ebola, multiple sclerosis, numerous forms of cancers, and dozens of other life-threatening diseases.

      This is the same Congress that had blocked funding to improve the VA system, while spending $3 million this year alone to investigate what they have created as the Benghazi Scandal. It’s already been investigated and re-investigated. Senior military commanders and impartial diplomats have already told the truth, but the House still wants to throw out its chest and throw a junior-high tantrum. Think of what that $3 million can do to help the nation’s homeless, about one-fourth of them veterans.

      Members of Congress believe they have to travel all over the world on what they call “fact-finding tours.” These tours often find facts in tropical island nations.  And now, thanks to a decision by the apparently misnamed House Ethics Committee, members of Congress don’t even have to report if their trips were funded by lobbyists. Think of what several million more dollars can do to help improve the health of the impoverished rather than help members of Congress get sun tans.

      It’s just politics. But, how many more will suffer and die from our misguided priorities.

      [Dr. Brasch’s latest book is Fracking Pennsylvania, which looks at the health, environmental, economic, and political effects from fracking.]

Passing Gas to the Consumer

by Walter Brasch

      Gas prices at the pump during the July 4th extended weekend were the highest they have been in six years. This, of course, has little to do with supply-and-demand economics. It has everything to do with supply-and-gouge profits.

    Over the past decade, the five largest oil companies have earned more than $1 trillion in profits. Last year, the Big Five—BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil, and Shell—earned about $93 billion in profits. Their CEOs last year earned an average of about $20 million. Included within the profits is $2.4 billion in taxpayer subsidies because it’s hard to make a living when your hourly wage, assuming you work every hour of every day, is only $2,283.

    “We have been subsidizing oil companies for a century. That’s long enough,” President Obama said more than a year ago. The Senate disagreed. Forty-three Republicans and four Democrats blocked the elimination of subsidies. Although the final vote was 51–47 to end the subsidies, a simple majority was not enough because the Republicans threatened a filibuster that would have required 60 votes to pass the bill. A Think Progress financial analysis revealed that the 47 senators who voted to continue subsidies received almost $23.6 million in career contributions from the oil and gas industry. In contrast, the 51 senators who had voted to repeal the subsidies received only about $5.9 million.

      For a couple of decades, the oil industry blamed the Arabs for not pumping enough oil to export to the United States. But when the Arab oil cartel (of which the major U.S. oil companies have limited partnerships) decided to pump more oil, the Americans had to look elsewhere for their excuses. In rapid succession, they blamed Mexico, England, the Bermuda Triangle, polar bears who were lying about climate change so they could get more ice for their diet drinks, and infertile dinosaurs.

      This year, the oil companies blamed ISIS, a recently-formed terroristic fringe group composed primarily of Sunni Muslims, who have opposed Shia Muslims for more than 14 centuries. Think of the Protestant–Catholic wars in Ireland. Because ISIS was laying a path of destruction through Iraq, the oil companies found it convenient to declare that oil shipments were threatened, and then raise prices, salivating at their good fortune that terrorists had come to their financial assistance during the Summer holidays.

      However, because the oil companies have laid a thick propaganda shield upon the America people to make them believe that fracking the environment and destroying public health, while yielding only temporary job growth, will lead to less dependence upon the Arab nations and lower costs to Americans, the Industry has to come up with some excuses to drill the taxpayers.

      Through deft journalistic intrigue and a lifetime of investigative reporting, I was able to obtain insider information from the ultra secret Gas and Oil Unified Greedy Excuse Maker sub-committee (GOUGEM). I have not been able to verify the transcript, but in the developing tradition of 21st century journalism, that doesn’t really matter.

      “We have a problem,” declared the GOUGEM Grand Caliph “We have run out of excuses. Last year, we had to find excuses not only for the Summer vacations, but also to justify our surreptitious funding of the Benghazi investigation.”

      “There must be a hundred different ways to nail Obama for this year’s increase,” declared the Sunoco representative.

      “What if we claim that Obamacare caused gas prices to go up for ambulances,” said a newly-appointed representative from the Hess Corp.

      “Tried it last year, but we couldn’t get much traction,” said the Grand Caliph. “Only Fox, Limbaugh, and some guy broadcasting through a tin cup from his room at Bellevue picked it up.”

      “Afghanistan!”  shouted the Marathon representative. “We’ve gotten good mileage from blaming the war for the cost of gas.”

      “Yeah,” said the Tesoro rep sarcastically, “while we’ve been reaping enough excessive profits to build a water park at every one of our executives’ McMansions. I’m afraid the American people after 13 years have finally caught on to that scam.”

      “If not Iraq and Afghanistan,” how about a new war? We invade Switzerland,” the ConocoPhillips rep suggested, “and claim we’re protecting the world from weapons of mass Swiss Army Knives. Every Republican and a few Democrats will back us on that.”

      “It only works if there’s oil in Switzerland,” said the Shell rep, “and since we haven’t developed the technology to frack the Matterhorn, we’ll have to find another reason to raise gas prices.”

      The BP rep suggested that the oil companies claim gas price increases were necessary because the price of Dawn detergent, used to clean oil-slicked marine mammals, went up.

      The Chevron  rep said they could blame the Treasury Department for their underhanded tactics in locating the companies’ tax-free stash in the Caymans.  “How could anyone complain about us needing more income to pay our lawyers?” she declared.

      The Valero rep wanted to blame the Veterans Administration. “We say we had to wait so long to get permission to raise gas prices that we had to do it ourselves,” he brightly said, and tagged that suggestion with the explanation that the companies could then claim they were being self-sufficient and not dependent upon the government. “The conservatives will love us,” he righteously declared.

       After a few moments of idle chatter, something committees have perfected, the Exxon Mobil rep spoke up. “We don’t need an excuse.”

      “You been inhaling too many fumes?” the Shell rep asked.

      “Slip on a grease spot in one of your garages?” asked the Murphy Oil rep.

      “We’ve always had an excuse,” the Shell rep whined. “Without an excuse, the motorist might not buy our gas.”

      “Oh, they’ll buy,” said the Exxon Mobil rep confidently. “We’ve bought out and eliminated most of the alternative fuel sources, public transportation is in the pits, and no one walks. That leaves cars, and they all run on what we decide they run on.”

      “So what’s your point?” asked the BP representative.

      “It’s as simple as 1-2-3,” the Exxon representative stated. “One. We’re Big Business. Two. We’ve already bought the Republican-controlled Congress. Three. We don’t need to justify anything.”

      By unanimous agreement, the gas bag cartel declared there would be a 10-cent a gallon hike by the end of Summer—and no excuse.

      [Dr. Brasch’s latest books are the critically-acclaimed Before the First Snow, a journalistic novel; and Fracking Pennsylvania, an in-depth investigation of the health, environmental, economic, and political effects of horizontal fracturing.]

The Good Wife v. The Bad Congress

by Walter Brasch

      For almost a year, the people of the critically-acclaimed and popular CBS drama, “The Good Wife,” kept a secret, one so powerful that viewers were shocked by the abruptness of what happened on screen, March 23.

      Will Gardner (portrayed by Josh Charles), one of the major characters, was killed by his client during murder trial. Within seconds, even before the show’s conclusion, viewers were texting and tweeting, shocked and confused and angry and upset and sad, all at the same time. There was no hint in the entertainment media that Will would be killed off.

Delayed Deliveries Are Not a Crisis

by Walter Brasch

      It’s been about two weeks since the news media began smothering the nation with stories about UPS and FedEx delivering packages late during the holiday season.

      A short shopping season of less than 30 days between Thanksgiving and Christmas, combined with extraordinary numbers of deliveries and extreme weather problems caused thousands of packages not to be delivered by Christmas. For some media, this was the top story.

      FedEx says it delivered more than 275 million packages in that one month period. UPS doesn’t say how many it delivered or how many were late. But it does say that if customers sent their packages by ground and hoped they would arrive by Christmas, the cut-off date was December 11. For air service, UPS temporarily added 29 planes to its fleet.

      Understandably, there are several hundred thousand senders and receivers who are unhappy their packages were not delivered by Christmas. However, people got their gifts, even if a day or two late. 

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.

The No News News Media

by Walter Brasch

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.

The Problem with the Bahmas

by Walter Brasch

          His face flushed, his cheeks puffing half-syllables of super-heated air, Sen. Porkbelly Fishbottom was about to swallow an aneurysm.

          I threw water on his face, trying to cool him. It just sputtered and sizzled.

          I tried quietly talking to him, trying to calm him down. He wasn’t listening.

          After five minutes, I was about to call 911 to report a stroke victim, when he said his first two-syllable word.

          “Bahma!”

Fiscal Chicken

by Walter Brasch

Talk show hosts and other bloviators have spent hours giving their versions of the fiscal cliff. In fewer than 750 words, I’ll explain the truth.

Taxes and the deficit are intertwined. If Congress can’t come up with a plan to solve those problems, the U.S. will jump into the abyss of a deeper recession than existed under the latter years of the Bush–Cheney administration.

Let’s first look at taxes.

            The Bush tax cuts expire at the end of this year.

            The idea of the cuts was to spur the economy and give what is loosely called the “jobs creators” a slight push to hire more people.

            But, the millionaire “jobs creators” held onto their money. They continued to downsize and outsource jobs, making even more money—which they used to buy whatever trinkets that rich people spend money on.

Republicans Lie About ‘Support Our Troops’

by Walter Brasch

For a decade, Republicans have been screaming at Americans to “support our troops.”

            But, they don’t really support our troops. Their constant chanting originally was code to support the Republican administration and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

            If the Republicans truly wanted to support the troops, they would have demanded—early in the wars—better armament and vehicles for the troops.

Death by Healthy Doses

by Walter Brasch

           

            They buried Bouldergrass today. The cause of death was listed as “media-induced health.”

            Bouldergrass had begun his health crusade more than a decade ago when he began reading more than the sports pages of his local newspaper, subscribed to his first magazine, and decided TV news could be informative if it didn’t mention anything about wars, famines, and poverty.

            Based on what he read and saw in the media, Bouldergrass moved from smog-bound Los Angeles to a rural community in scenic green Vermont, gave up alcohol and a two-pack-a-day cigarette habit, and was immediately hospitalized for having too much oxygen in his body.

To burn off some of that oxygen, he joined America’s “beautiful people” on the jogging paths where the media helped him believe he was sweating out the bad karma. In less than a year, the karma left his body which was now coexisting with leg cramps, fallen arches, and several compressed disks. But at least he was as healthy as all the ads told him he could be.

            To make sure he didn’t get skin cancer from being in the sun too long, he slathered four pounds of No. 35 sunblock on his body every time he ran, and went to suntan parlors twice a week to get that “healthy glow” advertisers told him he needed. He stopped blocking when he learned that suntan parlors weren’t good for your health, and that the ingredients in the lotions could cause cancer. So, he wore a jogging suit that covered more skin than an Arab woman’s black chador with veil—and developed a severe case of heat exhaustion.

            From ultrathin models and billions of dollars in weight-reducing advertising that told him “thin was in,” he began a series of crash diets. When he was down to 107 pounds, advertising told him he needed to “bulk up” to be a “real man.” So, he began lifting weights and playing racquetball three hours a day. Four groin pulls and seven back injuries later, he had just 6 percent body fat, and a revolving charge account with his local orthopedist.

            Several years earlier, Bouldergrass had stopped eating veal as part of a protest of America’s inhumane treatment of animals destined for supermarkets. Now, in an “enlightened” age of health, he gave up all meat, not because of mankind’s cruelty to animals, but because the media revealed that vascular surgeons owned stock in meat packing companies. Besides, it was the “healthy” thing to do.

            He gave up pasta when he saw a TV report about the microscopic creepy crawlers that infest most dough.

            He gave up drinking soda and began drinking juice, until he read a report that said apple juice had higher than normal levels of arsenic.

            He ate soup because it was healthy and so Mmm Mmm Good, until he learned that soup had more salt than Lot’s wife. When he found low-salt soup, he again had a cup a day—until last month when he gave it up because a Harvard study revealed that soup cans contained significant amounts of Bisphenol-A-, which can lead to cancer and heart disease.      For a couple of years, lured by a multi-million dollar ad campaign and innumerable articles in the supermarket tabloids, Bouldergrass ate only oat bran muffins for breakfast and a diet of beta carotenes for lunch, until he found himself spending more time in the bathroom than at work. He eliminated the muffins entirely after reading an article that told him eating oatmeal, bran, and hood ornaments from Buick Roadsters were bad for your health.

            Bouldergrass gave up milk when he learned that acid rain fell onto pastures and was eaten by cows. When he learned that industrial conglomerates had dumped everything from drinking water to radioactive waste into streams and rivers, he stopped eating fish. For awhile, based upon conflicting reports in the media, he juggled low-calorie, low-fat, and low-carbohydrate diets until his body systems dropped into the low end of inertia.

            At the movies, he smuggled in packets of oleo to squeeze onto plain popcorn until he was bombarded by news stories that revealed oleo was as bad as butter and that most theatrical popcorn was worse than an all-day diet of sirloin.

            When he learned that coffee and chocolate were unhealthy, he gave up an addiction to getting high from caffeine and sugar, and was now forced to work 12-hour days without any stimulants other than the fear of what his children were doing while he was at work.

            Unfortunately, he soon had to give up decaffeinated coffee and sugarless candy with cyclamates since both caused laboratory mice to develop an incurable yen to listen to music from the Grand Funk Railroad.

            He gave up pizza when the media reported that certain “health care investigators” claimed pizza was little more than junk food. But, he began eating several slices a day to improve his health when Congress, fattened by lobbyists campaigns, last month declared frozen pizza was a vegetable. He figured it made sense, since three decades earlier the Reagan administration had declared catsup to be a vegetable, and five years ago the Department of Agriculture decided butter-coated french fries were a vegetable.

            Left with a diet of fruits and vegetables, he was lean and trim. Until he accidentally stumbled across a protest by an environmental group which complained that the use of pesticides on farm crops was a greater health hazard than the bugs the pesticides were supposed to kill. Even the city’s polluted water couldn’t clean off all the pesticides. That’s also when he stopped taking showers, and merely poured a gallon of distilled water over his head every morning.

            For weeks, he survived on buckets of vitamins because the magazines told him that’s what he should do. Then, after reading an article that artificial vitamins shaped like the Flintstones caused dinosaur rot, he also gave them up.

            The last time I saw Bouldergrass, he was in a hospital room claiming to see visions of monster genetic tomatoes squishing their way toward him. He was mumbling something about cholesterol and high density lipoproteins. Tubes were sticking out of every opening in his emaciated body, as well as a couple of openings that hadn’t been there when he first checked in.

            In one last attempt to regain his health, Bouldergrass enlisted in Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move army. But the only movement he was doing was when the nurses flipped him so he wouldn’t get bed sores.

            Shortly before he died, he pulled me near him, asked that I write his obit, and in a throaty whisper begged, “Make sure you tell them that thanks to what I learned from the media, I died healthy.”

            [Walter Brasch, a robust figure of health, doesn’t follow anyone’s advice on what is or is not healthy. His latest book is the critically-acclaimed Before the First Snow, a social issues mystery novel. Brasch says the book is a great Christmas or Chanukah gift, and increased sales will improve his own mental, if not physical, health.]