Here’s the Bakersfield Californian’s account:

Brown launched a no-nonsense defense of hydraulic fracturing on “Meet the Press” Sunday, dismissing host Chuck Todd’s concerns that the practice uses too much water and could be dangerous. Brown noted California oil companies have been fracking for decades, safely, and that the practice does not use excessive amounts of water. He also reminded Todd that California imports 70 percent of its annual oil consumption, and banning it would hardly make a dent in consumption but force the state to import yet more oil on rail cars.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, in sharp contrast, has accepted the contention of greens that fracking is a grave environmental threat. That California’s governor parts with Cuomo and sides with energy companies led liberal bloggers Jerry Roberts and Phil Trounstine to vent on their Calbuzz blog. This is from an item entitled, “Say It Isn’t So: Is Jerry Brown Really A Fracking Whore?”

On the one hand, he calls for – and even leads – a “crusade to protect our climate”; on the other he allows oil companies to engage in a practice that science and common sense insist is destructive, wasteful and unsafe to the environment and to Californians.

So, more in sadness than in anger, we must ask: Why is Brown acting a fracking whore?

Quid Pro Quo? Oh No. Surely, it can’t be that Occidental Petroleum gave $500,000 in 2012 to help Brown pass his crucial Proposition 30, which raised taxes on wealthy Californians and increased spending on public education. That would seem oh too quid quo pro for this political Jeremiah who self-righteously thunders that climate change denial “borders on the immoral.”

And yet, whenever he is challenged on his approval of fracking – he called it a “fabulous economic opportunity” in May 2013 – Brown slips the punch by citing all the other good stuff he’s set in motion to combat climate change.

Governor blasted for ‘lack of integrity’

On Friday, a Huffington Post writer — Paul Y. Song, a California physician who once helped advise the Brown administration — weighed in with a post headlined,”Governor Brown, We Urge You to Do What Is Right for Our Water and Our Environment!”

The Governor stated on Meet the Press last Sunday that, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the drought is no reason to ban fracking.

Worse, while Gov. Brown called out Senator Mitch McConnell for advocating on behalf of coal development amid concerns about climate change and drought, Brown refuses to stand up to fossil fuel development in California in the face of irrefutable evidence that fracking wastes California’s water. In so doing, Governor Brown sells out the needs of the people of California in order to serve the greed of the oil industry.

The consequences of Gov. Brown’s failure to halt fracking and protect California’s fragile water supply does not just represent a lack of political integrity, but bears dire consequences for California’s future.

Neither the Calbuzz or Huffington Post pieces noted that President Barack Obama and his administration have a long record of arguing that fracking is safe and welcoming its success in triggering the brown energy boom.

The administration is also in the process of adopting rules to govern fracking on leased federal lands.

In a January interview with KQED, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell specifically knocked California fracking critics as misinformed.

This un-nuanced adoration could also be found from the longtime newspaper journos who run Calbuzz:

“Releasing this report is an important step to restoring our values and showing the world that we are a just society,” Feinstein said on the Senate floor, calling the CIA’s post 9/11 interrogation program, “a stain on our values and our history.”

Under enormous pressure, Feinstein could have punted, mumbled about bipartisanship and played it safe by letting Republicans water down the report or bury it for good after she loses her committee chairmanship when the new Senate convenes. Such an option was most likely a non-starter for someone of her self-regard, but that she ultimately did not choose it may well stand as the greatest legacy of the 81-year old Senator’s years in Washington.

But if you bothered to look beyond the conventional wisdom advanced by the New York Times and the print media, much of the Left wasn’t buying the Feinstein-is-a-hero narrative. This is from BuzzFeed’s news coverage:

The Central Intelligence Agency tricked everyone. Senate Democrats’ recently released inquiry into Bush-era torture revealed a lot of shocking new details, but none quite as shocking as the the idea that the CIA successfully misled Congress, President George W. Bush, and even top intelligence officials about how brutal and ineffectual the program really was.

Most damningly — and politically conveniently — the report somehow manages to combine harrowing details of torture while exonerating nearly every top official whose job it was to prevent it from happening, and place the blame on a powerful political entity that is the most likely to emerge unscathed: the CIA itself.

Fox News shows had many variations on the same theme of scapegoating and blame-ducking. Here’s an example:

SEAN HANNITY: Let’s go to Dianne Feinstein back in 2002 when she said the following, this was quoted in New York Times, where she said, you know, it took that real attack, I think, to kind of shiver our timbers enough to let is know that the threat is profound and that we have to do some things that historically we have not wanted to do to protect ourselves.

You were there. You knew these senators, these lawmakers. Do you remember any specific meetings? Was Dianne Feinstein told specifically what the CIA was doing in terms of enhanced interrogation?

JOSE RODRIGUEZ: There are about 40 instances where we briefed the Senate and the House intelligence committees over the life of the program from 2002 to 2009. And we briefed Dianne Feinstein and Nancy Pelosi and Rockefeller and many others all the time. And we at the outset, at the beginning, back in 2001, I remember very clearly them telling me, you know, the problem that you guys have is that you are risk adverse. You need to use the authorities that we have given you to go out there and destroy this organization and to kill bin Laden. So we feel that we briefed them and briefed them thoroughly, and they are, you know, hypocritical.

Libertarians and anyone who believes in individual rights and who fears government power have to be happy that Feinstein has to a degree pulled back the covers on the anti-terrorism industrial complex.

But anyone who has watched the good cop/bad cop routine from Washington pols on national security  is not likely to readily accept the Feinstein-as-hero narrative.

“Living costs may not be particularly burdensome for those at the top of the economic ladder – the fortunate folks who live in Beverly Hills, Hillsborough or other affluent enclaves. But they do affect those on the middle and lower rungs, as a new Census Bureau report underscores.

“California’s official poverty rate of 16.5 percent is somewhat higher than the national rate of 15.1 percent, but under an alternative Census Bureau method of calculating poverty that includes cost of living, our poverty rate soars to – by far – the highest rate of any state. Nearly a quarter of Californians, 23.8 percent, live in poverty.

“This is, or should be, a matter of shame, especially for politicians who profess to represent society’s underdogs but who enact policies that raise their struggling constituents’ cost of living, or inhibit the creation of jobs that would lift poor Californians out of poverty. … [While] the state’s media and political elites may sneer at Texas and other states that lack our mild weather and scenic attributes, they should note that Texas’ poverty rate is just two-thirds of California’s and Iowa’s is just one-third.”

But don’t expect the anti-Texas sneering to stop. It’s just one part of an overall mindset in the Obama era, in which the left views the right as not just wrong on politics but as pathetic, racist inferior beings. Admitting that a conservative state is better governed than California? Admitting that there are far fewer poor people in Texas than the Golden State? In San Francisco, west Los Angeles and Democratic legislative chambers, that’s akin to hate speech. The CalBuzzers are probably laughing themselves silly at the very thought these facts might be true.

By Chris Reed

So Proposition 30 is built on a threat — raise sales taxes on everyone and income taxes on the rich or we’ll punish school kids.

Its primary purpose is to preserve a school status quo dedicated to the interests of adult employees, to such an extreme that there’s more concern about protecting child molesters from losing their jobs than about protecting kids from being molested.

And when Prop. 30 starts to falter in the polls because of ads that point out its slipperiness, what happens? The Democrats in the media freak out and blame the forces of darkness — as if Prop. 30 has the moral high ground!

“As Calbuzz predicted and warned, self-anointed school savior Molly Munger (with an assist from her right-wing brother Charles Jr. and the underhanded Joel Fox), has driven Gov. Jerry Brown’s Prop. 30, a measure to bolster the state budget and prevent draconian cuts to the schools, below 50% in the polls.”

Groan. How is it possible that Jerry Roberts and Phil Trounstine can have their blinkers on about the California Teachers Association after all these years? How can anyone in the media?

Prop. 30 deserves to fail for many reasons. One of them is that it is amoral. Threatening children to coerce voters is disgusting. That Jerry, Phil, Dan Morain, George Skelton, etc., don’t grasp this is a comment on the power of Sacramento groupthink.

By John Seiler

I don’t get cable TV. No way I’m paying $40 a month. So I’m not a “Fox News,” watcher. I also remain mad at them for pushing the disastrous Iraq War to boost profits the way William Randolph Hearst pushed the Spanish-American War.

But it’s silly for critics to attack FoxNews for bringing viewers two sides of the global-warming debate, as Calbuzz has done:

Why Watching Fox News Will, In Fact, Rot Your Brain

Here’s an actual fact — borne out by at least seven different scientific studies — that will make certain people squawk: those who watch Fox News are the most consistently misinformed media viewers.

There are two reasons for this: Fox News actively and intentionally transmits false and misleading information, as exemplified in the 2009 internal staff memo from Fox Washington managing editor Bill Sammon, exposed by MediaMatters, ordering correspondents to:

. . . refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question. It is not our place as journalists to assert such notions as facts, especially as this debate intensifies.

But also because conservatives, and especially right-wing authoritarian personalities, are most likely to engage in “selective exposure” that University of Alabama psychologist William Hart explains “is the clearest way to look at how people create their own realities, based upon their views of the world.”

The driving force behind “selective exposure” is the desire to alleviate “cognitive dissonance” — the uncomfortable psychological state people experience when their core beliefs are in conflict with what they know to be true. Although liberals do it too, studies show that they are also more open to a variety of information sources.

What a gaggle of psychobabble. The whole “authoritarian personality” meme was cooked up 60 years ago by Theodor Adorno and other cultural Marxists. A refugee from Nazi Germany, he rewarded the returning, victorious U.S. troops that save Adorno and his associates from probable execution by Nazis by branding every G.I. as being a “potentially fascistic individual.” What an ingrate.

One of those G.I.’s was my late father, Capt. John C. Seiler, U.S. Army 1941-45. He defeated fascism.

Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek has written of Adorno and his comrades, “These writers adopted what eventually became a favorite Soviet tactic against dissidents: anyone whose political views differed from theirs was insane.”

Hey, didn’t America win the Cold War? The Soviet Union dissolved 20 years ago. Yet this Adorno-Cultural-Marxist-Soviet attack on right wingers still is being used.

And get what CalBuzz is upset about: FoxNews insisted that its news readers provide two views on the global warming controversy. What’s wrong with having more opinons?

Doesn’t it display — dare I say it — and authoritarian personality for Calbuzz itself to want to deny people information, to provide only one side fo the story?

Sure, FoxNews itself does that in other areas. They sure did it on the Iraq War.

But in this case, FoxNews providing more information.

Unlike Calbuzz.

EDITOR’S NOTE: In response to some of our readers, we want to remind you that this is a tongue-in-cheek thought experiment with virtually no chance of taking place. Send us your creative ideas for dealing with the impasse.

Democrats are struggling to put Gov. Jerry Brown’s $12 billion tax increase proposal up for a June 2011 election of the voters of the state of California, which supposedly would help close the budget deficit of $25 billion. They need 2/3 votes in both houses of the Legislature to call a special election for the vote, but are just shy of that number. Which means they need a handful of Republican votes in each house of the Legislature to put the ballot measure to the people.

Callbuzz even said this was “undemocratic.”

But do they really need the minimum Republican support in the Legislature?

Actually, no. There’s a way around it, if Democrats dare. It involves a two-step process. The steps must be done in order.

Step 1. Do this quickly. Gather petitions to put the $12 billion tax increase on the next statewide ballot. Signature-gathering now costs about $2 million for each initiative petition.

Step 2. Gather petitions to recall one statewide elected official. That also will cost about $2 million to collect the signatures. You remember from the Gray Davis recall of 2003 that, when the recall of an official is put before the voters, all the statewide initiatives that have qualified immediately go on the ballot, too. So the tax-increase initiative would go on the ballot.

The next question: Which statewide official should be recalled? Democrats hold all the statewide positions now, so they can’t target a Republican officeholder. They’ll have to sacrifice one of their own. The obvious choice: Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom. The job shouldn’t exist anyway. He’s a clown whom we would laugh at as he flailed around trying to hold onto his worthless, tax-sucking job.

Newsom probably would prevail in a recall, keeping his post. The point of the recall would not be to get rid of him, but to put the tax increase on the ballot, as well as the entertainment value.

So there you have it, Democrats: A way to put Gov. Jerry’s Brown’s tax increase on the ballot without even talking to GOP legislators.

Calbuzz and others should stop whining about the end of democracy. You want direct democracy, you got direct democracy. And for $4 million, which is chump change to the teachers’ unions, the prison guards’ unions, the cop unions, the Silicon Valley billionaires and other Democratic special interests in this state.

And by the way: Do I have to show you guys everything?

Jan. 30, 2011

Calbuzz has been maintaining a line that “democracy” demands that a tax-increase election must be held in June, as called for by Gov. Brown. The latest: “Calbuzz Democracy vs. Flashpoint Feudalism.” Actually, it’s the current system — high taxes making us tax serfs — that most resembles feudalism. But never mind.

Calbuzz writes: “The other morning, there was an intriguing headline slapped over a story on Flashreport, the conservative web site run by our favorite knuckle-dragging blogger and Republican operative, Jon Fleischman.”

Knuckle-dragging from caveman times? But I thought they were attacking feudalism, which existed as recently as a couple of hundred years ago, not something from millions of years ago? They must get their paleontology from the Ringo Starr movie “Caveman” (pictured at right). So never mind.

Calbuzz didn’t like it that an article had over it, “Yet another reasons (sic) why we shouldn’t put taxes on the ballot.” Calbuzz then huffs about opposing putting a tax-increase vote on the June ballot:

Seemingly fearful that their arguments on the merits would not prevail in a statewide election test, they instead reserve to themselves the right to forbid ordinary people from having a decisive say about a momentous policy question that will shape the future of California.

Like a small band of feudal lords, they seek to dictate to the vassals and serfs what the shape and size of the state’s political and economic landscape shall be, placing their highest priority not on the will of the people, but on their own power, exercised through the tyranny of a tiny minority.

For one thing, the “tiny minority” is more than one-third of each house of the Legislature.

For another, California has had plenty of democracy. Just last November, we had an election in which voters rejected tax increases outright by defeating Proposition 21 and Proposition 24. And in May 2009, voters also rejected Proposition 1A, a tax increase similar to the one proposed by Brown (but for two years instead of Brown’s five years). Prop. 1A was wiped out by voters, 65% to 35%.

Maybe we should have a tax-increase election every day just to make Calbuzz happy.

Moreover, American governments are (or at least are supposed to be) republican (small “r,”) with elements of democracy (small “d”). That means the pure will of the people is restrained by constitutions, bills of rights, and customs.

The people, for example, cannot by a majority vote revoke the Bill of Rights. To do so would require amending the Constitution via the usual cumbersome process. This process makes it harder, for example, to shut down free speech or freedom of religion.

Finally, Calbuzz’s article includes a picture of Grover Cleveland (shown at right), with the caption “No Relation to Grover Norquist,” the anti-tax activist who’s behind the anti-tax pledge taken by almost all Republican legislators in California.

Doesn’t Calbuzz know? Cleveland was the last small-government Democratic president in the tradition of Thomas Jefferson. Historian Thomas DiLorenzo writes:

Ascending to the governor’s mansion [of New York], Cleveland became known as “the veto governor” for vetoing numerous Tammany Hall patronage bills put before the state legislature. Inevitably, this reputation would follow him into the White House where he would veto hundreds of bills, including forty-nine that he pocket vetoed on his very last day in office, March 4, 1897 (see Alyn Brodsky, Grover Cleveland: A Study in Character New York, St. Martin’s Press, 2000, p. 57).

During his first term as president Cleveland vetoed hundreds of pension expansion bills as unwarranted raids on the U.S. Treasury. He became Public Enemy Number One in the eyes of the “Grand Army of the Republic,” the Union army veterans lobbying organization that consistently agitated to plunder the taxpayers. Despite the dwindling number of veterans, expenditures on veterans’ pensions had increased by some 500 percent in the previous twenty years, purely because of the political clout of Union army veterans. (Southerners paid taxes to finance the pensions, but did not qualify for them).

That’s why Grover Cleveland was America’s last great president, of either party. His heroism in fighting excessive government pensions obviously reverberates today in California. There’s no question where he would stand: cut the government workers’ pensions, don’t increase taxes.

And he was a Democrat.

Jan. 19, 2011