July 1, 2013

By Chris Reed

The Sacramento Bee has joined the reporting staff of The Los Angeles Times and the Ventura County Star’s Timm Herdt in the Fracking Disinformation Hall of Shame. Bee reporter Tom Knudson has a lengthy, often alarmist look at hydraulic fracturing, its long history in California and the possibility that it could trigger a huge economic boom in Golden State.

But while dwelling on fracking’s purported dangers, what Knudson’s article never does is mention the Obama administration’s extensively documented position on fracking: namely, that it is just another heavy industry that can be made safe with good regulations. Instead, Knudson offers up this sort of passing observation as fact: “fracking’s risks to groundwater remain unknown.”

All the president’s men (and women) disagree

Hey, Tom! I know you’re a Pulitzer Prize winner and all, and that therefore you shouldn’t be subject to questioning or editing, but when writing about fracking, aren’t these facts relevant?

— The president’s first energy secretary, Steven Chu, said: “We believe it’s possible to extract shale gas in a way that protects the water, that protects people’s health. We can do this safely.”

— The MIT physicist Obama chose to succeed Chu, Ernest Moniz, described the risks to water posed by fracking as “challenging but manageable.”

— The president’s first Environmental Protection Agency director, Lisa Jackson, told a House committee that she was “not aware of any proven case where the fracking process itself has affected water.”

— Sally Jewell, the president’s secretary of the interior, at a May 17 news conference announcing the release of fracking rules for public and Indian land, declared the following: “I know there are those who say fracking is dangerous and should be curtailed, full stop. That ignores the reality that it has been done for decades and has the potential for developing significant domestic resources and strengthening our economy and will be done for decades to come.”

Or just for fun, Tom, maybe you could quote the president himself. The photo atop this post of a recent Huffington Post story shows how he feels.

Maybe Tom Knudson got in the green tank for career reasons

The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times both covered Interior Secretary Jewell’s May 17 news conference. The contrast in their coverage is pretty amazing.

“The L.A. Times’ account put in the ‘fracking is safe and has been around forever’ context by quoting an oil industry trade association spokesperson. The NYT quoted THE SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR!

“Quite a gigantic difference. But than the LAT’s Neela Banerjee and Wes Venteicher and their editors can’t have Times’ readers knowing the Obama administration likes fracking, can they? It doesn’t fit the West L.A.-Marin County-NRDC narrative.”

Maybe that explains the Sac Bee’s Tom Knudson not mentioning the Obama administration’s view on fracking. He’s angling for a job at the L.A. Times.

Sheesh. If any member of the California journalism corps can offer a logical explanation as to why the environmental and political reporters who cover fracking never mention the position of the greenest presidential administration in history, I will be happy to pass it along.

But that won’t happen, because it is impossible to come up with such an explanation.

Paging Dan Walters, paging Dan Walters

The best explanations are the simplest one: 1) All these political and enviro reporters are in the green tank. They’d rather not get blowback from the people they cover, so they don’t mention an angle so powerful it makes the fracking-is-dangerous crowd look like fools. 2) They’re green activists pretending to be impartial journalists.

On fracking, I look forward to Dan Walters eventually fulfilling his periodic role of pointing out the stupidity of the media party line, like he has this year on budget happy talk and like he did back in late 2006 when reporters actually bought the idea that Arnold Schwarzenegger had figured out to make Sacramento functional.

Dan probably won’t name/shame Knudson, but I’ll settle for any improvement on the Sierra Club fracking propaganda we’ve been seeing masquerade as news and “analysis.”

By Chris Reed

Trying to preserve and help create manufacturing jobs should be a primary goal of a party that bills itself as being about social justice. Manufacturing jobs often offer middle-class wages, but don’t require college degrees — providing a great way up the ladder for disadvantaged minorities. Shouldn’t this be catnip for Democrats? One would think.

So what is absolutely crucial to manufacturers? The cost of energy. This is why one of the academics who peer-reviewed an air board study on the economic effects of AB 32 gave it low marks for downplaying what would happen as California forced a broad shift to cleaner-but-costlier energy. Here’s what UCLA economist Matthew Kahn had to say:

“According to page 39 of the Scoping Plan, there are 1.5 million people employed in manufacturing in California. Thus, a key issue is how this sector will be affected by AB 32 regulation. The results reported in Table II-8 claim that manufacturing employment will grow by .4% because of AB 32 regulation. Given that electricity prices are expected to rise by 14%, this is a surprising finding. The micro-econometrics literature has concluded that increased energy prices retards manufacturing employment growth. The manufacturing results reported here contradict the findings from the micro-econometric literature on firm locational and employment choice (see Carlton 1983 and Davis and Haltiwanger 2001 …). In his detailed study of the Fabricated Plastic Products Industry (SIC 3079), Communications Transmitting Equipment (SIC 3662), and Electronic Components (SIC 3679), Carlton demonstrates the importance of metropolitan area electricity prices as a factor in attracting job growth. Cities with high electricity prices lose jobs in each of these industries …”

So we are now ramping up AB 32, and surprise, surprise, guess what? Manufacturers are leaving California even as manufacturing rebounds nationally:

“Manufacturing is staging a big comeback in the United States, according to a new U.S. Commerce Department report, but a new state employment report indicates that manufacturing is continuing its years-long slide in California.

“The federal report says that between the start of 2010 and the end of 2012, manufacturing accounted for 500,000 new jobs. …

“Meanwhile, a monthly report on employment in California, also released Friday, shows that government and manufacturing are among the categories to show declines over the past year.

“Manufacturing, once a major component of the California economy, now accounts for less than 9 percent of the state’s non-agricultural payrolls. It shed 11,400 jobs between December 2011 and last month.”

That is from the Sacramento Bee.

Two questions:

1) Now will the California media finally stop buying the goofy spin that higher energy prices are somehow good for the state’s economy?

2) Do you think it bothers greens in West L.A./Brentwood/Malibu and Bay Area one bit that AB 32 is destroying a path to prosperity for the less-educated and their families?

The answer to the first is probably not. Only The New York Times, strangely enough, has reported that AB 32 is risky. The L.A. Times, Sac Bee, Mercury-News, etc.? They are in the green tank.

The answer to the second is of course not. Manufacturing, you see, creates “dirty” jobs. So greens say good riddance. The poor? Let them eat cake.