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.

In the 26th Senate district, seven Democrats and one non-partisan candidate are running to replace Democrat State Sen. Ted Lieu. The Torrance moderate is running for the congressional seat of retiring Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Beverly Hills. The district is considered a safe Democratic seat, according to the ATC Partisan Index, which ranks districts based on their competitiveness in the 2014 election.

However, with so many Democrats and no Republicans in the race, law professor Seth Stodder, the lone non-partisan candidate, is almost guaranteed to be the top vote-getter in the first round in June.

Non-partisan Seth Stodder: End one-party rule in California

“In my home state of California, dysfunction has taken the form of one-party rule,” Stodder wrote in recent column at the Huffington Post. “The Republican Party has all but collapsed because extremists have pushed it away from the mainstream. As a result, the Democratic Party and its entrenched interest groups have gained total control.”

He’s already received an endorsement from former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, a moderate Republican. Stodder, who cites California’s high tax rates as part of his campaign pitch, won’t be the only candidate courting the district’s independent and Republican voters, who represent a combined 52 percent of registered voters in the district.

Much like GOP gubernatorial candidate Neel Kashkari, former Writers Guild of America West president Patric M. Verrone has emphasized a message focused on jobs and education. “This region scripted the California Dream,” he told Variety. “From aircraft factories to movie studios, we produced middle-class jobs that bought homes, sent kids to college, and provided families with a secure retirement. Now, we must preserve those jobs and attract new ones to keep the dream alive.”

Dr. Vito Imbasciani’s personal story

Another candidate with cross-over appeal is Dr. Vito Imbasciani, a U.S. Army surgeon who served three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Although the district lines have changed with the 2011 redistricting, Lieu’s own military service played well in this district, where he won an outright victory in a special election.

Imbasciani’s appeal to independents and Republicans also comes without ceding ground to liberal Democrats. In 2012, President Obama highlighted Imbasciani’s personal story as part of his change to the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which prohibited gay and lesbian service members from serving openly.

He’s also got another ace in the bag. A long-time member of the California Medical Association, Imbasciani could benefit from outside support from one of the state’s most active political groups. According to a March 2010 report by the Fair Political Practices Commission, the California Medical Association ranked 23rd on the list of top political spenders from 2000-2010. Unlike other political associations on the list, the CMA gets involved in legislative races. In 2010, the organization spent heavily in support of Dr. Richard Pan’s campaign for the State Assembly.

Amy Howorth: Local leadership, fundraising lead

Not relying on outside fundraising help, Manhattan Beach mayor Amy Howorth holds a commanding early fundraising lead in the race. The former Manhattan Beach school board member has raised at least $290,660, including $200,000 in personal funds. According to state law, candidates can loan a maximum of $100,000, which means that her second six-figure contribution is committed to the campaign.

But don’t think her fundraising lead will stop her from running an effective grassroots campaign.

“I am really excited,” Howorth told the Daily Breeze, the district’s main newspaper. “To me, there is no greater privilege than getting to go door-to-door and meet new people and see what their concerns are, hearing them and coming up with pragmatic solutions.”

Howorth’s years of involvement in local politics will be buoyed by a great ballot title, “Mayor/Education Advocate.” That will help Howorth compete with Santa Monica school board member Ben Allen for the education vote.

Allen, a two-term member of the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District, has the backing of big-name Democrats, including Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky and state Sen. Fran Pavley. Allen’s campaign, which will reportedly show $225,000 cash on hand in its next campaign finance report, appears concentrated on education.

“Of course, remember, that half of the state’s budget is in education,” Allen told the Santa Monica Daily Press. “It’s an enormously important part of the state’s work so all of my education work, both on the school board and teaching, is very relevant to working at the state level.”

Butler, Fluke round out field of Democrats

Rounding out the list of top contenders is former Assemblywoman Betsy Butler, whom many consider a front-runner in the race. Butler represented a partially overlapping Assembly district from 2010 to 2012. After redistricting, in 2012 she lost a bitter intra-party fight to Assemblyman Richard Bloom. In that race, Butler spent more than $2 million, and she’ll have a similar warchest this time around. Her campaign claims to have raised $255,000 so far.

With 46 percent of the district registered Democrat, Butler will face steep competition from fellow Democrat Sandra Fluke. She is best known for her high-profile battle over Obamacare with conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh. With few direct ties to the community, she is making her “progressive” ideology a central focus of her candidacy.

“I’ve worked on a myriad of progressive issues,” Fluke lists as her first qualification in a recent Huffington Post blog post. So voters don’t forget her progressive message, she lists as the fourth reason, “Sacramento is where I can most effectively create progressive change.”

With so many candidates in the race, even a lesser-known Democrat, such as attorney Barbi Appelquist, stands a chance. The  two-time cancer survivor says her top priority will be “to make early child education more accessible and affordable for families.”

The 26th Senate district is exclusively in Los Angeles County and spans coastal communities from Santa Monica to the South Bay Peninsula. Democrats hold a commanding edge in voter registration, with independents outnumbering Republicans, according to voter registration information from Political Data, California’s largest provider of voter information. In the 2010 gubernatorial election, Brown carried the region by 22 percentage points.

Fundraising Totals from AroundtheCapitol.com

Today, the only thing really daring is not having a potty mouth, but being decent.

Now Maher has taken time away from attacking religion to praising California being “back,” as Gov. Jerry Brown keeps insisting to us. Maher is late even with this, following in the footsteps of Paul Krugman in March and Rolling Stone in August, imitating them.

Maher’s article, “New Rule: Conservatives Who Love to Brag About American Exceptionalism Must Come Here to California.” Even liberals who agree with him politically must pause at his many inaccuracies. He should have asked his staff to check on some basic facts. In the following discussion, I’ll delete his profanities, which are as “shocking” in 2013 as whatever Miley Cyrus did. Maher:

“New Rule: Conservatives who love to brag about American exceptionalism must come here to California, and see it in person. And then they should be afraid — very afraid.”

What a cliche. When I use cliches, it’s because I’ve written five articles already that day and ran out of coffee. What’s his excuse?

“Because while the rest of the country is beset by stories of right-wing takeovers in places like North Carolina, Texas and Wisconsin, California is going in the opposite direction and creating the kind of modern, liberal nation the country as a whole can only dream about. And not only can’t the rest of the country stop us — we’re going to drag you along with us.”

Wisconsin faced a pension crisis and elected a Republican governor to solve it, which he did. In Rhode Island, a similar crisis was solved by Democrats themselves. As to Texas, Gov. Rick Perry has been in office since 2002. In North Carolina, years of Democratic misrule led to Republican victory.

Gun control, immigration reform, high-speed rail

“It wasn’t that long ago that pundits were calling California a failed state and saying it was ungovernable. But in 2010, when other states were busy electing whatever Tea Partier claimed to hate government the most, we elected a guy who actually liked it, Jerry Brown.

“Since then, everything Republicans say can’t or won’t work — gun control, immigration reform, high-speed rail — California is making work. And everything conservatives claim will unravel the fabric of our society — universal healthcare, higher taxes on the rich, gay marriage, medical marijuana — has only made California stronger. And all we had to do to accomplish that was vote out every single Republican.”

It’s not clear yet what gun control bills Brown will sign.  On immigration, the national debate actually has moved out of our state. Illegal immigration actually is increasing elsewhere in America, but not in California because it’s too expensive to live here.

Proposition 215, which legalized medical marijuana, passed in 1996 when Republican Gov. Pete Wilson was in office and Republicans controlled the Assembly, the only year in the last 40 in which they controlled either house of the Legislature.

And it’s under his beloved President Obama that a war has continued, despite assurances to the contrary, by the federal government against California medical marijuana dispensaries.

As to voting out Republicans, in the 2010 election, none was on the ballot to vote out. At that time, only Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was a Republican, and he was leaving due to term limits.

As to high-speed rail, even the guy whose idea it was, former state Sen. Quentin Kopp, now says it’s a boondoggle.

Higher taxes

“Higher taxes on the rich” sure happened. But the $7 billion a year from Proposition 30 was promised to go into the K-12 schools. Instead, $4.5 billion of it will go to pay for the pensions of the California State Teachers’ Retirement System. That’s the number CalSTRS says is needed to keep its system solvent. Other pension demands will eat up the rest of the tax increase — and more.

As to “gay marriage,” California voters banned it two times, in 2000 and 2008. The question now is moot, of course, because of the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling, not anything done in California. And Proposition 8 passed not because of Republican voters, but because two core Democratic constituencies, blacks and Hispanics, favored Prop. 8. Their record turnout for Barack Obama in 2008 pushed Prop. 8 over the top.

“Without a Republican governor and without a legislature [expletive deleted] by Republicans, a $27 billion deficit was turned into a surplus, continuing the proud American tradition of Republicans blowing a huge hole in the budget and then Democrats coming in and cleaning it up.”

Actually, the tax increase was not passed by the Democratic Legislature, but by voters with Prop. 30. Although it’s true that Republicans sometimes have blown huge holes in budgets — witness President George W. Bush — Democrats only sometimes have closed those holes. In the Bush case, President Obama made deficits even greater.

In California’s case, the deficit was so big in part because the Democrats who ran the Legislature in the mid-2000s went on spending sprees signed into law by Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who broke his 2003 and 2007 promises to restrain spending. But Arnold, as was detailed in the  the biography “Governator,” by Ian Halperin, after 2005 effectively gave control of his administration to his wife, Maria Shriver-Kennedy, and her friend, Chief of Staff Susan Kennedy (no relation), commonly called the “little governor” because of her great power. Both Shriver-Kennedy and Kennedy were Democrats happy to bust the budget while Arnold was tooling around his Bentley smoking stogies.

And today there is no “surplus.” If the $4.5 billion demanded by CalSTRS were included, the fiscal 2013-14 budget, which began on July 1, would be in deficit. When the next recession hits, the $20 billion-plus deficits will be back with a vengeance.

Lead bullets

“California is about to ban lead bullets. Which is a no-brainer, because bullets don’t need lead, and lead kills birds and gets into the food supply of people who hunt their own food. Which explains why Ted Nugent is such a raving lunatic.”

Actually, as Katy Grimes wrote on our site, the lead bullets would be banned only for hunting. And major opponents include labor and trade union members, traditional Democratic constituencies, who like to hunt. How does that fit into Maher’s Mainchaean view that the world is entirely divided up into Republicans-Bad/Democrats-Good?

The fact is that Maher is part of the new Democratic elite that’s remote from traditional Democratic constituencies, like the working class factory workers I grew up with in Michigan, including most of my family. His view of the world extends no further than Hollywood, Manhattan and Washington, D.C. Everybody else is a rube or a redneck out in Flyover Country. He also is incapable of doing even minor fact-checking with Google, or asking one of his staff to do it.

At least Miley Cyrus, as Camille Paglia urged, is young enough to grow up.

“Obama, for instance, has called for hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to be safe and carefully monitored, but has never pushed for federal restrictions on it.”

You follow?

Obama. Never. Pushed. For. Federal. Restrictions. On. Fracking.

But the Sac Bee’s Tom Knudson won a Pulitzer, so let’s defer to him if he doesn’t think the view of the greenest president of all time is relevant to his opus on California and fracking.

Hey, Tom: How do you sleep at night? Pravda would be proud of you.

Far less green posturing, alarmism in Keystone State

But back to the National Journal article, which discusses the potential for a split among Democrats nationally over fracking. This passage makes we wish we could trade California’s dominant political class for Pennsylvania’s:

“At first glance, Pennsylvania’s Democratic gubernatorial primary next year looks like a prime opportunity for the party to swing left on natural gas. Fracking is a major issue in the state’s politics. Primaries are driven by the party’s base, which is friendly to environmental causes. And many of those voters live in or near Philadelphia, the one region of the state that hasn’t benefited economically from the natural-gas boom. On top of all that, two of the candidates, John Hanger and Katie McGinty, are former heads of the Pennsylvania Environmental Protection Department.

“But operatives connected to many of the campaigns predict the campaigns won’t veer left on natural gas. The politics of opposing fracking are complicated, even within the Democratic Party, they say, because most Democrats believe it brings jobs that are worth the environmental risk. ‘The flip side to appeasing the environmental lobby is that you open yourself up to getting roasted on killing jobs in Pennsylvania,’ said one Democrat working one of the campaigns.

“The front-runner in the race, Rep. Allyson Schwartz, has already publicly opposed the state party’s moratorium resolution. Few expect other contenders for the nomination, including Hanger, McGinty, State Treasurer Rob McCord, or businessman Tom Wolf, to take a stand in sharp opposition to the industry. The Democratic contenders will talk a lot about being sure to regulate the industry and levying larger taxes on it, said Chris Borick, a professor and pollster at Muhlenberg, but they won’t go further.”

High unemployment in CA = vast misery

That’s what Democrats who believe job creation is a good thing sound and act like.  But as I wrote Monday, the contrast with California’s Democrats could not be more pronounced:

“Nearly one in five adults in California who wants to work full time can’t find such a job. The state’s unemployment rate has been among the highest in the nation for four years. And just Friday, a new report said it had gone up to 8.7 percent in July, going against the broader U.S. trend.

“Why don’t these grim facts create a sense of urgency in Sacramento? Don’t Brown, Steinberg and Pérez understand how much human misery is reflected in these numbers? How this vast joblessness is very much linked to the fact that California has the highest poverty rate of any state?

“The Golden State’s unemployed do not deserve this cruel indifference. In the capitals of other megastates, there is a bipartisan desire to create jobs. In Albany, many Democrats seek to help New York’s banking, finance, manufacturing and garment companies. In Austin, many Democrats work to boost Texas’ energy, aeronautics, cattle and farming interests. In Tallahassee, many Democrats look to assist Florida’s tourism, international export and agriculture industries.”

And in Harrisburg, many Democrats back fracking, knowing it’s doing great things for Pennsylvania’s economy.

In California, alas, we’ve got very different priorities.

“Democrats are passionate only about preserving union jobs and creating subsidized jobs in ‘green’ industries.

“Why? How can a party that is supposed to be devoted to helping the downtrodden be so indifferent to the millions of Californians who want and need jobs? It’s mystifying — and sad.”

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 John Hrabe

California’s chief political watchdog, Ann Ravel, recently announced plans to regulate political websites that accept payments from campaigns. Last year Gov. Jerry Brown appointed her to head the Fair Political Practices Commission.

California bloggers right, left and center quickly criticized the proposal for quashing free speech and putting them at a disadvantage to out-of-state competitors.

“The Internet is global,” wrote Mark Paul on his blog, the California Fix. “The commission’s jurisdiction is limited to California. If campaigns find it useful to make payments to online sock puppets, won’t they funnel the dollars to bloggers living outside the state? Do we want to send jobs out of California?” Paul also is the co-author of the new book, “California Crackup: How Reform Broke the Golden State and How We Can Fix It.”

Out-of-state competition might not be a problem, say some legal experts, because California’s Fair Political Practices Commission could cross state lines and police out-of-state blogs and websites, including international news aggregators like the Drudge Report, regardless of their location. And there is adequate case law to back it up.

Pavlovich Precedent: The ‘Effects Test’

UCLA law professor Stephen C. Yeazell argues that Pavlovich vs. Superior Court, a 2002 California Supreme Court case, established an “effects test” for evaluating jurisdictional claims in the Internet age. He believes it could provide a legal justification for the FPPC’s regulation of out-of-state bloggers, if the sites featured ads from California campaigns.

“Under the Pavlovich test, the question is whether or not the speech is aimed at California,” Yeazell said, when asked if California had jurisdiction to regulate an out-of-state website like the Drudge Report. “On the one hand, the website’s speech is aimed at California by advertising California campaigns and posting links about California stories.”

“Internet jurisdiction is a mess,” added Samuel Issacharoff, Professor of Constitutional Law at New York University School of Law, who shared Yeazell’s interpretation of the Pavlovich precedent.

Aggregators, Bloggers and News Sites Affected

National political websites and news aggregators, such as the Drudge Report, the Huffington Post, the Daily Caller and Real Clear Politics commonly feature stories on California while also running advertisements from California candidates, initiatives and campaigns. Matt Drudge, now a Florida resident, founded his website while based in California.

“What kinds of content would trigger the disclosure?” asked Paul. “Any sort of favorable comment about a campaign or critical comment about a rival campaign? Links to news reports favorable or damaging to a campaign?” They were questions raised by many California bloggers.

An FPPC spokeswoman told CalWatchDog.com that the specific details have yet to be determined. She added that Ravel was currently traveling out of the country and would be available for an interview on Friday.

Jerry Roberts and Phil Trounstine of CalBuzz, who are the only bloggers to interview Ravel on the subject, wrote on Monday, “We’re happy to report, after our conversation, we think she agrees with us that the best way to confront secret payments to websites that propagandize for their retainers lies in stricter, more timely and precise reporting of campaign expenditures.”

Critics of the state’s regulatory agency are less optimistic and warn that the proposal is a first step toward more regulations of political speech.

“This means a lot more than the issue at hand; it means the first of many additional steps to regulate political speech,” said Jonathan Wilcox, a communications consultant and former speechwriter for Gov. Pete Wilson. “Given the troubling political practices just in Sacramento, some will wonder if the FPPC could catch a speeding driver at the Indy 500.”

Chandra Sharma, the publisher of Fox and Hounds Daily, complained about the agency’s bad track record with new technology.

“The FPPC’s attempts to regulate online political speech over the past few years have been badly conceived and ill-informed,” he said. “This is yet another example of the FPPC attempting to regulate a medium it doesn’t understand, and as others have already noted, they haven’t even begun to realize the kind of unintended consequences that would manifest themselves as a result.”

No Protection from the First Amendment

Both Yeazell and Issacharoff, experts on jurisdictional issues, are skeptical that the FPPC would win a dispute with out-of-state bloggers because of complicating factors, such as First Amendment concerns. “I also imagine the courts being hesitant to extend the reach of a state regulatory agency in this case given other factors, including the First Amendment implications,” argued Yeazell. However, First Amendment experts believe that a state regulation of political websites, if properly crafted, could withstand a First Amendment challenge.

“When a blogger is paid to write for a campaign, that’s basically a campaign buying a political advertisement, said UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh, who publishes the legal blog, The Volokh Conspiracy. “The Supreme Court has held (in McConnell and Citizens United) that the government may require political advertisers to identify the source of the advertisement. Requiring the blogger to identify his speech as an advertisement paid for by a campaign would be much the same as the identification requirements that had been upheld — it would inform the public about who is actually paying for the speech, and do so at the moment the speech is received.”

Michael Houston, a partner at the Newport Beach firm Cummins & White, LLP, shared Volokh’s interpretation and emphasized that there’s little difference between a paid blogger and paid spokesman.

“Frankly, I see little difference between a blogger advocating for a candidate or cause and a paid spokesman,” said Houston, who specializes in political law and regulatory issues. “The only real question is whether the bloggers should have to do so on their own.”

Former FPPC Chairman Dan Schnur expressed concern that new regulations “would discourage people from adding their voices to the political dialogue.”

“Whether it is constitutional or not shouldn’t be the only threshold,” said Schnur, the director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California. “It may be constitutional but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea”

(Coming up Friday: Part II: How Bloggers’ Voices Will Be Affected.)

By John Seiler

A couple of days ago I wrote an article, “Why pensions are going broke.” It showed how the massive federal and state debts are weighing down the economy, which has not grown in 13 years. Hence, there’s going to be not enough money for the generous government-sector pensions.

A liberal commentator, “Truthsquad,” said that the U.S. economy always has bounced back. I left a response there. But there’s more information.

The Huffington Post, a liberal site, just ran an article about how America mainly is creating low-wage jobs. Sure, Silicon Valley and other places are creating great high-paying jobs — if your IQ is 180 and you’re a computer genius. For the rest of us, here’s what’s happening:

“Out of all OECD countries, the U.S. had the highest share of employees toiling away at low-wage work in 2009, according to OECD data cited by Mark Thoma, an economist at the University of Oregon. The graph was originally published in a January paper by John Schmitt, senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

“One in four U.S. employees were low-wage workers in 2009, according to the OECD. That is 20 percent higher than in the number-two country, the United Kingdom. At 4 percent, Belgium has the smallest share of its in employees working in low-wage jobs. Low-wage work is defined as earning less than two-thirds of the country’s median hourly wage.”

Here’s the .pdf of the study.

And here’s a screen show I made of the graph:

Right wingers will say it’s because taxes and regulations are too high, so businesses can’t grow and make higher profits, which eventually get passed on to employees. Left wingers will say we need to raise taxes to “invest” more in education, because a better-educated workforce will produce higher-value products, thus increasing pay.

In any case, the point is that, right now, our workforce’s earning potential is stagnant or declining. And you can’t have high-dollar government pensions supported by low-dollar private-sector workers. Low-dollar workers can only support a low-dollar tax base to fund the pensions. Any fixes would work only long term.

Something has to break.

It will.

It is.