TransCanada Seizes Land In Texas By Eminent Domain by Walter Brasch

Image by 350.org via Flickr

by Walter Brasch
Writer, Dandelion Salad
www.walterbrasch.com
May 19, 2013

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.

Only You Can Prevent Fracking by Peter Rugh + Frack Fact by Walter Brasch

Dandelion Salad

Image by e izzo via Flickr

by Peter Rugh
SocialistWorker.org
First published at Waging Nonviolence, May 7, 2013
May 9, 2013

SMOKEY THE Bear thought he smelled a fire in the woods. But as he approached the clearing and saw a giant derrick jutting out into the sky, he realized that what his nose had picked up was the scent of hydrocarbons. It was another piece of evidence that the increasingly widespread method of oil and gas extraction known as fracking was poisoning the environment that he and his human friends depend on. He decided something must be done.

Pennsylvania: You Are Fracked by Walter Brasch

Image by Marcellus Protest via Flickr

by Walter Brasch
Writer, Dandelion Salad
www.walterbrasch.com
April 22, 2013

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.

You Can’t Wash Away Fracking’s Effects by Walter Brasch + Fracking Hell?

by Walter Brasch
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.walterbrasch.com
February 23, 2013

Image by Marcellus Protest via Flickr

José Lara just wanted a job.

A company working in the natural gas fields needed a man to power wash wastewater tanks. Clean off the debris. Make them shining again.

And so José Lara became a power washer for the Rain for Rent Co.

“The chemicals, the smell was so bad. Once I got out, I couldn’t stop throwing up. I couldn’t even talk,” Lara said in his deposition, translated from Spanish.

The company that had hired him didn’t provide him a respirator or protective clothing. That’s not unusual in the natural gas fields.

Labor Day: The Unknown Holiday by Walter Brasch (repost)

by Walter Brasch
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.walterbrasch.com
Originally published September 7, 2009
Sept. 3, 2012

Image by Kheel Center, Cornell University via Flickr

It’s Labor Day, and that means millions of Americans are celebrating. Most Americans have no idea what Labor Day is, other than self-serving political speeches, hot dogs, burgers, a pool party, and the last day of a three-day holiday. Few even know that Labor Day exists to allow people to remember and honor the struggles for respect, dignity, and acceptable wages and working conditions for the rank-and-file employees.

Shooting live pigeons in a confined area isn’t a sport by Walter Brasch

by Walter Brasch
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.walterbrasch.com
August 2, 2012

Image by dragontoller via Flickr

Shortly before the Pennsylvania House of Representatives was scheduled to vote on an amendment last December that would ban pigeon shoots, the Pennsylvania Flyers Association sent out a bulletin it marked as “urgent.”

“We must act now to preserve our sport,” the Flyers screeched. In a separate letter, the Flyers told its members they “should be very proud that your association has been able to keep the sport alive in PA [sic] for the last 27 years.” For added support, the notice referred to an NRA release, which called pigeon shooting a “Pennsylvania Sporting Tradition.”

Pennsylvania Politics Continues to Override Humane Actions by Walter Brasch

by Walter Brasch
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.walterbrasch.com
June 1, 2012

Image by Focx Photography via Flickr

A national animal welfare organization has filed an ethics complaint against a Pennsylvania district attorney.

SHARK (Showing Animals Respect and Kindness) charges Bucks County DA David Heckler with conflict-of-interest, favoritism, and failure to fulfill his professional responsibilities. The ethics complaint was filed with the Disciplinary Board of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

Fracking: Corruption a Part of Pennsylvania’s Heritage, Part 3 by Walter Brasch

Detail of Tower for drilling horizontally into the Marcellus Shale Formation for natural gas (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

by Walter Brasch
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.walterbrasch.com
March 21, 2012

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 land in rural and agricultural areas for mineral rights, increases employment, usually in a depressed economy, strips the land of its resources, creates health problems for its workers and those in the immediate area, and then leaves.

Fracking: Health, Environmental Impact Greater Than Claimed, Part 2 by Walter Brasch

Detail of Tower for drilling horizontally into the Marcellus Shale Formation for natural gas (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

by Walter Brasch
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.walterbrasch.com
March 20, 2012

The natural gas industry defends hydraulic fracturing, better known as fracking, as safe and efficient. Thomas J. Pyle, president of the Institute for Energy Research, a pro-industry non-profit organization, claims fracking has been “a widely deployed as safe extraction technique,” dating back to 1949. What he doesn’t say is that until recently energy companies had used low-pressure methods to extract natural gas from fields closer to the surface than the current high-pressure technology that extracts more gas, but uses significantly more water, chemicals, and elements.

Fracking: Pennsylvania Gags Physicians, Part 1 by Walter Brasch

by Walter Brasch
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.walterbrasch.com
March 18, 2012

A new Pennsylvania law endangers public health by forbidding health care professionals from sharing information they learn about certain chemicals and procedures used in high volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing. The procedure is commonly known as fracking.

Fracking is the controversial method of forcing water, gases, and chemicals at tremendous pressure of up to 15,000 pounds per square inch into a rock formation as much as 10,000 feet below the earth’s surface to open channels and force out natural gas and fossil fuels.

Journalistic Novel Provides Blueprint for Understanding Occupy Movement By Corey Ellen

By Corey Ellen (Carmichael, Calif.)
Book review for Walter Brasch
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.walterbrasch.com
February 9, 2012

If you have trouble understanding the issues surrounding natural gas fracking in Pennsylvania or reasons for the Occupy movement, a good start might be Walter Brasch’s critically-acclaimed novel, Before the First Snow.

Skillfully mixing humor with tragedy, Brasch tells the story of Apryl Greene, a folksinger and photographer for labor unions and social causes. She’s a ’60s “flower child” who is trying to build a school for peace and the arts on 40 acres of land she owns along the Susquehanna River in rural Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania Legislators Shoot Down Pigeons—Again by Walter Brasch

by Walter Brasch
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.walterbrasch.com
December 17, 2011

Image by Focx Photography via Flickr

If the first year gross anatomy class at the Penn State Hershey medical school needs spare body parts to study, they can visit the cloak room of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. That’s where most of the legislators left their spines.

The House voted 124–69, Dec. 13, to send an animal welfare bill back to committee, in this case the Gaming Oversight Committee. The bill, SB 71, would have banned simulcasting of greyhound races from other states.

The High Cost of Freedom from Fossil Fuels by Walter Brasch

by Walter Brasch
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.walterbrasch.com
Nov. 11, 2011

For a few hours on the afternoon of Nov. 1, the people of southern California were scared by initial reports of an alert at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. An “alert” is the second of four warning levels.

Workers first detected an ammonia leak in a water purification system about 3 p.m. Ammonia, when mixed into air, is toxic. The 30 gallons of ammonia were caught in a holding tank and posed no health risk, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Agency (NRC).

Banning the First Amendment by Walter Brasch

Image by anirvan via Flickr

by Walter Brasch
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.walterbrasch.com
September 28, 2011

Parents demanded it be banned.

School superintendents placed it in restricted sections of their libraries.

It is the most challenged book four of the past five years, according to the American Library Association (ALA).

“It” is a 32-page illustrated children’s book, And Tango Makes Three, by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson, with illustrations by Henry Cole.

Former Editor Sues Philadelphia Police for Constitutional Violations in Her Arrest by Walter M. Brasch

Image by Cheryl Biren via Flickr

by Walter Brasch
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.walterbrasch.com
September 23, 2011

A former managing editor for the online newspaper, OpEdNews, has sued the city of Philadelphia and eight of its police officers for violating her Constitutional rights.

Cheryl Biren-Wright, Pennsauken, N.J., charges the defendants with violating her 1st, 4th, and 14th amendment rights. The civil action, filed in the U.S. District Court, Philadelphia, is based upon her arrest during a peaceful protest Sept. 12, 2009, at the Army Experience Center (AEC) in the Franklin Mills Mall.