Two Pa. politicians have soent 2 years praising fracked gas as the future of the state. So, why are they now praising coal?

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Strip Mine by University of Kentucky
 

by Walter Brasch

Two Pennsylvania legislators who have taken money from--and enthusiastically supported--the natural gas industry have teamed up to now praise coal.

State Sen. Gene Yaw (R-Williamsport), chair of the Environmental Resource and Energy Committee, and Rep. Tim Solobay (D-Canonsburg, Pa.) are co-chairs of the newly-established Coal Caucus.

It's a strange move on their part, since both have praised natural gas as the economic future of Pennsylvania.

Yaw, in his first run for the Senate in 2008 accepted only $3,700 in campaign contributions from energy companies; the largest were $1,000 donations from Anadarko Petroleum and Chesapeake Energy. In his first re-election campaign in 2012, he received no contributions from the shale gas industry. He didn't need it. Yaw leased 148 acres in Lycoming County to Anadarko, and was receiving royalty checks.

In March 2013, now in his second term, Yaw introduced two bills to expand natural gas usage in the state. When asked by WNEP-TV about a possible conflict-of-interest, Yaw replied he had signed his lease with Anadarko in 2006 before he was elected to the Senate; but in 2011, he renewed that lease for an additional five years.

"Conflict of interest is the most easily-thrown-about concept when you can't think of anything else to say," said Yaw.  However, Eric Epstein of Rock the Capital, a watchdog on state government, countered Yaw's cavalier attitude. "You can not simultaneously promote and regulate an industry, if you have the ability to pass and sponsor legislation that will increase your quarterly dividend."

A week later, outside a meeting closed to the public to discuss issues related to Anadarko's request to drill in Loyalsock State Forest, Jim Hamill of WNEP-TV again asked Yaw to discuss his ties to the shale drilling industry and about his possible conflict of interest. "No, and I don't know what part of N-O you don't understand. Last week we talked and you turned it into a totally negative article, something that should have never been done," Yaw testily replied.

  Among Democrats, Solobay received the most money from Big Energy, $60,325, according to Common Cause.

Act 13, which pretends to regulate the natural gas industry and the recently-developed process of hydraulic horizontal fracturing, better known as fracking, was signed on Feb. 14, 2012, by an enthusiastic Gov. Tom Corbett. It was a Valentine's Day gift to Big Energy. The law is largely based upon language created by the conservative lobbying group, American Legislative Exchange Council  (ALEC), and supported by Big Energy, the Republican-controlled state legislature, Gov. Corbett (who had taken more than $1.8 million in campaign donations from Big Energy),  and the state's conservative Chambers of Commerce. It was largely opposed by the Legislature's Democrats, environmentalists, and persons in the health professions.

Fourteen months after Act 13 was passed, and with citizen protests increasing against fracking, Solobay declared he was frustrated "when people spin and challenge every bit of information and action out there with the sky-is-falling mentality." He said the protestors "enjoy spreading fear and uneducated comments," and erroneously stated, "A majority of the negative voices out there are paid activists [who] do nothing but spread false rumors and scare people." He could easily have been talking about Big Energy, which has developed a massive public relations campaign that is adept at use of the mass media to spin the benefits of fracking while overlooking its health and environmental effects.

Some of those "false rumors" Solobay had claimed were spread by environmentalists might have come from the coal industry, which had been the primary provider of fuel for more than a century before being challenged first by nuclear energy and then by natural gas when horizontal fracking allowed gas extraction and distribution to became profitable in the Marcellus Shale.

Because of all the praise and attention state legislators were giving the gas industry and the attacks upon coal, coal executives had to believe they were now relegated to the role of an orphan in a Dickens novel. But they still had some influence, and that influence soon became apparent.

Never missing opportunities to seize votes and political contributions--and possibly realizing that the Marcellus Shale was becoming less profitable--Yaw and Solobay spun around and founded the Coal Caucus. First praising the gas drillers, Yaw then gushed, " Since the Industrial Revolution, coal has also fueled our economy having created hundreds of thousands of jobs. Collaboratively, we can change the dynamic of coal as an energy resource. . .  . This Coal Caucus will serve as a champion for increased investment in coal and coal-driven technology."

Solobay--who had received room and transportation from Consol Energy to the SuperBowl in 2011, not long after he had announced a grant to Consol for $529,156--was equally effusive in praising the coal industry: "Coal is critically important to our effort to reduce dependence on foreign fuels. In addition to being a major employer in Pennsylvania, the industry provides consumers with protection from energy shortages and price spikes." Substitute "gas" for "coal" and you have almost a duplicate of Solobay's views before he became the co-chair of the Coal Caucus.

Dory Hippauf, whose "Connecting the Dots" series details political and financial ties between politicians and the oil and gas industry, says Pennsylvanians have been shoved onto a Fossil Fuel Carousel and are now supposed to believe that the "dirty" coal energy that politicians said would be replaced by "clean" natural gas energy isn't so dirty any more.

What is really dirty is the hypocrisy of politicians who fly like moths to the nearest financial light.

[Dr. Brasch's latest book is the critically-acclaimed Fracking Pennsylvania, a look at the economics, health, and environmental effects of fracking, and the connections between the oil/ gas industry and politicians.]

Authors Website: http://www.walterbrasch.com

Authors Bio:

Walter Brasch is an award-winning journalist and professor of journalism emeritus. His current books are Before the First Snow: Stories from the Revolution , America's Unpatriotic Acts: The Federal Government's Violation of Constitutional and Civil Rights, and 'Unacceptable': The Federal response to Hurricane Katrina, available at amazon.com, borders.com and most major on-line bookstores. BEFORE THE FIRST SNOW is also available at www.greeleyandstone.com (20 discount)

Walter Brasch, a deeply valued Senior Editor at OpEdNews passed from this world on February 9, 2017, age 71, his obituary follows:

Walter M. Brasch, Ph.D., age 71, of 2460 Second Street, Bloomsburg (Espy), died Thursday, Feb. 9, 2017, at Geisinger Medical Center, Danville surrounded by his family.

He was an award-winning former newspaper reporter and editor in California, Iowa, Indiana, and Ohio; professor emeritus of mass communications and journalism at Bloomsburg University; and an award-winning social issues journalist and book author.

Walter was born March 2, 1945, in San Diego, the son of Milton Brasch and Helen (Haskin) Brasch and was a 34 year resident of Espy.

In his early years he was a writer-producer for multimedia and film companies in California, and a copywriter and political analyst for advertising and public relations companies. For five years during the late 1990s, he was the media and social issues commentator for United Broadcasting Network. He was also the author of a syndicated newspaper column since 1992 and the creative vice-president of Scripts Destitute of Phoenix.

Dr. Brasch was a member of the Local Emergency Planning Committee and was active in the Columbia County Emergency Management Agency. He was vice-president of the Central Susquehanna chapter of the ACLU, vice-president and co-founder of the Northeast Pennsylvania Homeless Alliance, a member of the board of the Keystone Beacon Community for healthcare coordination, and was active in numerous social causes. He was co-founder with his wife Rosemary Brasch of The Oasis, a biweekly newsletter for families and friends of personnel stationed in the Persian Gulf. Later, during Operation Iraqi Freedom, they published The Oasis 2, for families of persons in combat zones. They were supported by the Bloomsburg Chapter, America Red Cross and Geisinger Medical Center, Danville.

He was the author of 20 books, most which fuse historical and contemporary social issues. Among his books are Black English and the Mass Media (1981); Forerunners of Revolution: Muckrakers and the American Social Conscience (1991); With Just Cause: The Unionization of the American Journalist (1991); Sex and the Single Beer Can: Probing the Media and American Culture (1997); Brer Rabbit, Uncle Remus, and the 'Cornfield Journalist': The Tale of Joel Chandler Harris (2000); The Joy of Sax: America During the Bill Clinton Era (2001); Unacceptable: The federal Response to Hurricane Katrina (2005); America's Unpatriotic Acts: The Federal Government's Violation of Constitutional and Civil Rights (2006); Sinking the Ship of State: The Presidency of George W. Bush (2007);  and Before the First Snow (2011). He was co-author of The Press and the State (1986), awarded Outstanding Academic Book distinction by Choice magazine, published by the American Library Association.

His last book is Fracking America: Sacrificing Health and the Environment for Short-Term Economic Benefit (2015), a critically-acclaimed novel that looks at what happens when government and energy companies form a symbiotic relationship, using "cheaper, cleaner" fuel and the lure of jobs in a depressed economy but at the expense of significant health and environmental impact.

During the past two decades, he won more than 150 regional and national media awards from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, Society of Professional Journalists, National Federation of Press Women, USA Book News, Independent Book Publishing Professionals Group, Pennsylvania Press Club, Pennsylvania Women's Press Association, Pennsylvania Associated Press Broadcasters Association, Penn-writers, International Association of Business Communicators, Pacific Coast Press Club, and Press Club of Southern California. He was recognized in 2012 by the Pennsylvania Press Club with the Communicator of Achievement award for lifetime achievement in journalism and public service.

He was an Eagle Scout; co-recipient of the Civil Liberties Award of the American Civil Liberties Union, 1996; and was honored by San Diego State University as a Points of Excellence winner in 1997. In 2000, he received the Herb Caen Memorial Award of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. For the Pennsylvania Humanities Council he was twice named a Commonwealth speaker. He also received the meritorious achievement medal of the U.S. Coast Guard.

At Bloomsburg University, he earned the Creative Arts Award, the Creative Teaching Award, and was named an Outstanding Student Advisor. He received the first annual Dean's Salute to Excellence in 2002, a second award in 2007, and the Maroon and Gold Quill Award for nonfiction. He was the 2004 recipient of the Martin Luther King Jr. Humanitarian Service Award. For 22 years, he was Editor-In-Chief of the awarding-winning Spectrum Magazine, part of the journalism program of the Department of Mass Communications, Bloomsburg University until his retirement in 2010.  The community magazine was published twice a year by students for residents of Columbia and Montour counties in northeastern Pennsylvania and one of the few to be inducted into the national Associated Collegiate Press hall of fame. The magazine was also a consistent award winner in competition sponsored by the Society of Professional Journalists, Columbia Scholastic Press Association, and the American Scholastic Press Association. He primarily taught magazine editing and production, public affairs reporting, feature writing, newspaper editing; every Fall, he taught a 250-student section on mass communications and the popular arts.

 Dr. Brasch was co founder of the qualitative studies division of the Association for Education in Journalism, president of the Keystone State professional chapter and for three years deputy regional director of the Society of Professional Journalists, from which he received the Director's Award and the National Freedom of Information Award. He was president of the Pennsylvania Press Club, vice-president of the Pennsylvania Women's Press Association, and founding coordinator of Pennsylvania Journalism Educators. He was a featured columnist for Liberal Opinion Week, senior correspondent for the American Reporter, senior editor for OpEdNews, and an editorial board member of Journalism History and the Journal of Media Law and Ethics.

He was a member of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, Author's Guild, National Writers Union (UAW/AFL-CIO), The Newspaper Guild (CWA/AFL-CIO), and the Society of Environmental Journalists. He was a life member of the service fraternity Alpha Phi Omega, and was indicted into the national scholarship honor societies Phi Kappa Phi (general scholarship), Kappa Tau Alpha (journalism), Pi Gamma Mu (social sciences), and Kappa Tau Alpha (sociology.) He is listed in Who's Who in America, Who's Who in the East, Contemporary Authors, Who's Who in the Media and Who's Who in Education. Dr. Brasch earned an A.B. in sociology from San Diego State College, an M.A. in journalism from Ball State University, and a Ph.D. in mass communication/journalism, with a cognate area in both American government/public policy and language and culture studies, from The Ohio State University.

He is survived by his wife of 34 years, the former Rosemary Renn the most wonderful thing that happened in his life and whom he loved very much; two sons, Jeffery Gerber, Phoenix AZ and Matthew Gerber and his wife, Laurel  (Neyhard)  of Bloomsburg, a sister, Corey Brasch of Sacramento, Calif; a niece, Terri Pearson-Fuchs, Calif, numerous cousins; and his beloved dogs Cabot and Remy.

Funeral services will be held on Wednesday, at 2:00 p.m. at the Dean W. Kriner Inc. Funeral Home & Cremation Service,  325 Market St., Bloomsburg with family friend, Nathaniel Mitchell officiating. Interment in Elan Memorial Park, Lime Ridge.

Friends may call at the funeral home on Tuesday from 6 - 8 p.m. or Wednesday from 1-2 p.m.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be sent to the Walter M. Brasch Scholarship Fund,

c/o First Keystone Community Bank, 2301 Columbia Blvd, Bloomsburg, PA 17815 or to

Mostly Mutts, 284 Little Mountain Rd., Sunbury, PA 17801