Instead of dropping off 140 detainees every 72 hours as planned, authorities left Murrieta with full buses, rerouting to a San Ysidro facility near the Mexican border. From there, detainees will be distributed among four San Diego-area locations. What happens next is anyone’s guess.

It’s a striking metaphor for U.S. immigration policy, which has reeled in the face of an unprecedented wave of refugee migrants fleeing terrible conditions in Central American countries including El Salvador and Honduras.

The confusion comes on the heels of another, smaller protest, which scrapped federal plans to fly detained families and children from Texas to Murrieta’s beleaguered station. Those canceled flights were replaced with others, although the status of the new itineraries is also uncertain. The Border Patrol appears to have planned arrivals in El Centro, San Diego and some destinations in Texas and Arizona.

The blame game

California has become the focus of federal plans thanks to the availability of its detention space, which is now in high demand. As many as 80,000 parentless children are expected to flow into the United States this year, deepening a humanitarian and political crisis that has thrown a monkey wrench into both Republicans’ and Democrats’ immigration policies.

Importantly, many of the young migrants seeking refuge do not suffer from the kind of confusion that plagues policymakers themselves. Over half say they have parents or other relatives already inside the country, according to Marc Rosenblum of the Migration Policy Institute. Rosenblum warns that families and children are likely willing to risk deportation and detention because of a 2008 law that requires family members or foster families to host unaccompanied minors until deportation hearings can be arranged — a process that sometimes takes years.

Under pressure from allies and opponents alike, president Obama has vowed to take unilateral action, blaming Congress for failing to pass legislation that could have alleviated some of the current federal confusion. Speaker John Boehner, for his part, says he won’t bring a bill to the floor because Americans don’t trust Obama to enforce the laws already on the books.

A struggling president

Obama’s options, however, are limited — for practical and constitutional reasons. Nonetheless, activists and advocates are already planning to coordinate a political pivot in the run-up to November that would match the president’s efforts on policy. Their enthusiasm is tempered with frustration, however; one of Obama’s first moves was to order expedited deportation for detainees fueling the current controversy.

Obama also faces criticism of his apparent willingness to let the stream of migrants become a flood. At a Washington briefing, Texas Gov. Rick Perry said he has “known about this for years” and slammed the White House for a “failure of diplomacy.” Perry has played something of a Republican good cop to Congress’s bad cop, taking state-level action while framing the problem as a tragedy brought on by the administration’s negligence and incompetence. In a recent op-ed, Perry praised federal officials on the ground for doing their best to cope, lamenting the “very real human consequences of our country’s lax border security and muddled immigration policies.”

The president’s struggle on illegal immigration isn’t restricted to his unilateral orders. The executive branch as a whole is often caught working at cross-purposes, seeking to accommodate more detainees on the one hand and, for instance, demanding California overhaul its planned drivers’ licenses for undocumented applicants. (The Department of Homeland Security doesn’t want those licenses to closely resemble the ones issued to California and U.S. citizens.)

At a time when his public opinion rating on immigration is at its lowest in four years, Obama may not recover on the strength of political blame and executive orders alone. That’s not just a problem for the remainder of his term in office; potentially, it sets up an unwelcome challenge for whichever Democrat seeks to replace him in 2016.

So against this backdrop, what does the L.A. Times’ Chris Megerian come up with for a big overview of how California is functioning? A sunny story with this headline: “California’s economic stability leaves Gov. Brown a new challenge.” Its message? This guy is a genius! If only he could get more support in the Legislature!

“Gray Davis, a fellow Democrat, was recalled by voters as state finances imploded following an energy crisis. Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger limped out of office with rock-bottom poll numbers, leaving a pile of debt.

“But on Brown’s watch, deficits have become surpluses, helped along by tax hikes the governor persuaded voters to approve. More money is being pumped into schools.

“University tuition has stabilized.

“Budget standoffs that once dragged through the summer are now wrapped up by the June deadline, lending the Capitol a new sense of orderliness. And on Wednesday, the governor called a special legislative session to prod lawmakers to pass his plan for saving money and paying off debt.

“That record, which will be a major part of Brown’s reelection campaign, is due partly to good fortune. California is benefiting from a nationwide economic recovery that has helped flood the state with revenue. Brown is also blessed with a Capitol dominated by fellow Democrats and a 2010 rule change that lowered the number of votes needed to pass a spending plan.”

A worship of process, an indifference to the real world

So if you read this story in a vacuum, you would believe that California had a healthy economy. That’s just not true.

You would also believe California has budget surpluses. That’s just not true. California has at least $200 billion in unfunded pension and health care oblgations to retired employees. The governor declines to ask the Legislature to provide even close to the actuarial minimum to fund these obligations. How does he finesse official budget documents to sustain the myth that the state has budget surpluses? With Enron-style accounting.

What’s going on here? How can the state with the worst poverty rate in the nation and staggering debt be depicted as nirvana?

Contrary to some libertarians and conservatives in California, I really don’t think it’s the West Coast version of Obamaphilia, where gigantic screw-ups and scandals are ignored because of idolatry and partisanship. (Do you really think the IRS hassling and impeding hundreds of conservative nonprofits during a presidential election year would be covered as it’s been if Bush were sill president and the nonprofits were liberal?)

Mainly, I think it’s a reflection of how stunned the Sacramento press corps was by the post-Pete Wilson dysfunction — the decade preceding Brown’s return to the governor’s office in which the Legislature couldn’t even pass a budget on time year after year after year.

Now that Brown, aided by Proposition 25, is able to get budgets passed, the absence of this chaos seems miraculous to the Sacramento media.

RIP, skeptical journalism. At least in Sacramento.

But instead of just giving the governor credit for restoring order to the budget process, they give him much broader credit for California’s rebound and its “economic stability.”

But what rebound? Nearly one-quarter of the state is in poverty, a much worse rate than West Virginia and Mississippi.

And what “economic stability”? If a household ignored its gigantic credit-card debts, mom and dad could pretend they were thriving. But are they really thriving?

Of course not.

In our idealized “All the President’s Men” conception of journalism, we believe that journalists hunt for discrepancies between what our leaders tell us and what is the truth. But in Sacramento, our journalists do no such thing. Instead, they put on the blinders, and reflect the view expressed in another classic 1970s movie.

Remain calm! All is well!

But it could also improve the public debate on the issue by finally forcing California’s pathetic media to acknowledge the Obama administration strongly supports fracking.

Not so far. Here’s the entirety of the Sac Bee’s story on Steyer’s hardball:

“Hours after Gov. Jerry Brown drew protests from environmental activists over his permissiveness on hydraulic fracturing, billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer called Saturday for legislation requiring a two-thirds vote of the electorate in any county before the controversial form of oil extraction can go forward in that area.

“The remarks reflect the expansion of Steyer’s effort to lobby the state Legislature on oil. He previously announced an effort to push for a tax on oil extraction in California, although such efforts failed to gain support in past years.

“‘In California, it takes a two-thirds vote by the Legislature to impose taxes, and in local communities it requires a two-thirds vote to impose taxes,’ Steyer told delegates at the California Democratic Party’s annual convention. ‘The business community has argued for years that this two-thirds vote is important to make sure they are not taken advantage of. Well, that exact same logic should apply when it comes to fracking.'”

Biggest green shills also hide Obama views

The Los Angeles Times story also had no mention of the president’s views.

It’s time to once again relate the story of the Times’ journalistic malpractice on this front. It doesn’t get more extreme or obvious. I’m amazed Patterico hasn’t jumped on it.

This is from what I wrote for CWD on May 18, 2013:

Say what you will about The New York Times, but at least it’s not in denial about fracking the way The Los Angeles Times is.

Friday’s LAT coverage of new U.S. Interior Department rules for fracking on 756 million acres of public and Indian lands depicted the rules as being strongly objectionable to both enviros and the energy exploration industry.

The NYT coverage made the industry whining seem more pro forma and offered this essential point that the LAT couldn’t bring itself to point out:

“The 171-page proposal is the first significant regulation issued under the new interior secretary, Sally Jewell. Ms. Jewell worked in the oil industry in the late 1970s and proudly said that she fracked a few wells in Oklahoma.

“Ms. Jewell said in a conference call for reporters that the administration would continue to lease large tracts of public and Indian lands for oil and gas development and that it was critical that rules keep pace with technology.

“Anticipating criticism from environmental advocates, she said: ‘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.’”

NYT quotes Obama Cabinet member; LAT quotes flack

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.

…. END …

Back to March 2014.

Hey, Dan Walters — alleged contrarian? When are you going to point out how terribly your paper and the LAT have done on fracking by leaving out Obama’s view?

Sheesh.

According to the Washington Post, the White House did this without any public announcement of the change:

But, without any public announcement, Obama administration officials have changed the rules so that people will have an extra day to enroll, according to two individuals with knowledge of the switch.

Over the weekend, government officials and outside IT contractors working on the online marketplace’s computer system made a software change that automatically gives people a Jan. 1 start date for their new coverage as long as they enroll by 11:59 p.m. on Christmas Eve.

Yet last week’s announcement — from the Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and Center for Consumer Information & Insurance Oversight, that individuals whose insurance plans were canceled, could receive an exemption from the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act — was thought to be the last of the last-minute changes to the law.

From the Post:

On Monday morning, one insurance industry official, informed by The Washington Post about the quiet deadline extension, criticized the move. “Making yet another last-minute change to the rules by shortening an already-tight time period in which to process enrollments makes it even harder to ensure people who have selected a plan are able to have their coverage begin in January,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the change has not been made public.

Covered California overloaded?

Back in California, the website for California’s health exchange, Covered California, is having troubles. I received word the website was down. “Covered Cal crashed just now as I was trying to enroll,” a friend sent me in an email message.

The website was moving slowly, and finally unresponsive when I made several attempts to sign on. Apparently Californians don’t know they’ve now got another day to sign up … until the next exemption from the federal law.

Health insurance cancellation notices have gone out to millions of  Americans. Many cannot get insurance at all. And for many who can, “premium shock” strikes those seeing their health plans canceled and renewed at higher rates.

Insurance industry experts are warning that two-thirds of already insured Americans will see their current insurance dumped into the hospital waste bin.

Obamacare is supposed to take care of people with pre-existing health conditions. But the actual “preexisting health condition” turns out to be already having private insurance. Obamacare means you have to sign up to find out whether that “condition” still exists — or has been canceled.

Another Obamacare bombshell about to drop

Written into the Affordable Care Act is section 105(h), which states every private employer must have 70 percent of its employee population covered on the company-sponsored health plan.

If not, the plan will be deemed discriminatory by the IRS, and the employer will be fined $100 per employee, per day.

But we’re not quite there yet. The Obama administration quietly had the IRS and the Department of Health and Human Services suspend this part of the law until they’ve written the regulations for it. This could happen at any time. The mere fact this explosive rule is sitting in the hands of the IRS and HHS should strike fear into the hearts of businesses and employees across the nation.

Insurance industry experts warn 40 percent of employers will drop health care benefits when the IRS and HHS implement this part of the ACA. Employers have no control over how many employees accept the company health plan. And who knows how drastic or cruel the regulations for this part of the law will be with the IRS and HHS disciplinarians in charge?

Union carve-outs

Sec. 1251(a)(1) of the ACA says that no one can be required to give up a health plan in effect when the law was passed. Those health plans are supposedly “grandfathered.”

However, my private health plan was not grandfathered. I received a cancellation notice last week and anticipate a renewed health plan for 2014 with significantly higher premiums.

Here’s why: a list of requirements also in the Affordable Care Act made it impossible, if not cost prohibitive, for insurers to keep offering the same plans. And the Obamacare designers knew it.

Insurance companies will not be able to afford to offer two actual platforms of health plans, for two different systems of insurance — government and private sector plans.

“The law also left open the possibility that the president could impose additional requirements on grandfathered plans (except union plans),” according to Obamacare expert Betsey McCaughey. “Two months after Obamacare was passed, the IRS, Department of Labor and Department of Health and Human Services — all reporting to the president — churned out hundreds of additional rules to make it even harder for grandfathered plans to survive.”

McCaughey said Obamacare has been a lie from day one, and “consumers have been duped and dropped.”

Media fact-checking four years too late. Period.

Washington Post – Four Pinnocchios

Adding insult to injury, the Washington Post Fact Checker column just this week decided to investigate President Obama’s claims from 2009. The president promised then, “No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise … if you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what.”

Most Americans believed Obama, because 85 percent already had health insurance.

Obama continued to campaign for Obamacare, and as recently as 2012 said, “If [you] already have health insurance, you will keep your health insurance.”

And still the media ignored the facts.

Four years later, now that Obamacare implementation has begun, the Washington Post finally looked into the Affordable Care Act particulars, and gave Obama four Pinocchios for not being honest with the American people.

Collapse underway

Because Obamacare was designed as a one-size-fits-all health plan, there was never going to be a way for the 85 percent of insured Americans to keep their plans. Obamacare is based on a structure where young, healthy people will have to pay for the sick, uninsured and old.

The Affordable Care Act is turning out to be unaffordable for responsible, hard working Americans, who have always been insured.

The collapse of the newly created state insurance exchanges under Obamacare is causing panic in many, especially Democrats. Earlier this week, senior Obama administration official Valerie Jarrett tweeted:

“FACT: Nothing in ‪#Obamacare forces people out of their health plans. No change is required unless insurance companies change existing plans.”

The young people aren’t signing up in droves as expected. So far, the only people keen on Obamacare are those with serious pre-existing conditions, and those who could not afford insurance. This is not exactly the financial model needed to support the new system, which now controls one-sixth of the U.S. economy.

Say goodbye to choice

The Obama administration has arrogantly decided what appropriate health coverage for all Americans is. Choice is being removed.

Obama spokesman Jay Carney and a team of Democratic operatives now are saying Americans who had prior health insurance had lousy insurance. Carney called private insurance “substandard,” and claimed it never met the minimum Obamacare standards.

If Obamacare works, it means the U.S. is moving toward health care even more heavily ruled by government. If it crashes, it means we are moving to a single-payer system.

It didn’t have to be this way. Which is proof enough that this administration knew what it was doing, and why Congress had to pass the bill to see what’s in it.

But this hasn’t cooled the White House push for the project — even though the boondoggle violates plainly written federal regulations.

On another such project, however, is common sense finally sinking in? Not really. But there is an obstacle. This is from KPCC/PBS:

“You can cancel that high speed train trip to Las Vegas — at last for now. The Department of Transportation has decided to ‘suspend further consideration’ of a $5 billion federal loan application from a private company that wants to link Southern California with the gambling and entertainment mecca.

“The Department of Transportation put the XpressWest high speed train project on pause because the company couldn’t come up with enough U.S. manufacturers for rail cars and tracks. The department prioritizes projects that use American-made products.”

“The XpressWest train would take passengers to Las Vegas from Victorville — a connection point with California’s proposed high speed train running from Southern California to the Bay Area.”

“Both projects are subject to a ‘Made in the U.S.’ standard.

“South Bay Democrat Janice Hahn, who sits on the House railroads subcommittee, explains the dearth of U.S.-based manufacturers: ‘That’s one of the problems with our economy, is that we’re not growing up enough businesses to build these transportation projects in the future.'”

But if the Vegas-to-Victorville project is in danger on these grounds, how is the Central Valley project proceeding? Curious stuff.

By Katy Grimes

President Barack Obama gave the commencement speech Friday to the 2013 graduating class of the United States Naval Academy, lecturing them on morals and calling for an end to sexual assaults in the military.

It could have been one of his press conferences.

But this was not an isolated incident.

On Saturday, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told graduates of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point that they must build a “culture of respect” that would eliminate sexual assaults and harassment in the armed services.

USNA

My son graduated the USNA in 2011. We were fortunate to have Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense, give the commencement speech that year.  It was a good speech, appropriately full of vision, and inspiration — thankfully, because Annapolis in May is hot and humid, and we were melting in the stadium stands. If Gates had gotten political, the crowd might have turned on him.

Gates said in 2011:

“As you start your careers as leaders today, I would like to offer some brief thoughts on those qualities.  For starters, great leaders must have vision — the ability to get your eyes off your shoelaces at every level of rank and responsibility, and see beyond the day-to-day tasks and problems.  To be able to look beyond tomorrow and discern a world of possibilities and potential.   How do you take any outfit to a higher level of excellence?  You must see what others do not or cannot, and then be prepared to act on your vision.”

“Personal conduct”

Friday, Obama lectured the Midshipmen and women about personal conduct and sexual assault:

“And yet, we must acknowledge that even here, even in our military, we’ve seen how the misconduct of some can have effects that ripple far and wide. In our digital age, a single image from the battlefield of troops falling short of their standards can go viral and endanger our forces and undermine our efforts to achieve security and peace. Likewise, those who commit sexual assault are not only committing a crime, they threaten the trust and discipline that make our military strong. That’s why we have to be determined to stop these crimes, because they’ve got no place in the greatest military on Earth.”

And he strangely complimented civil servants:

“Every day, elected officials like those on this stage, but also all across the nation, devote themselves to improving our communities and our country. But all too often we’ve seen a politics where compromise is rejected as a dirty word, and policies are driven by special interests rather than the national interest. And that breeds a cynicism that threatens our democracy.

“Every day, our civil servants do their jobs with professionalism — protecting our national security and delivering the services that so many Americans expect. But as we’ve seen again in recent days, it only takes the misconduct of a few to further erode the people’s trust in their government. That’s unacceptable to me, and I know it’s unacceptable to you.”

False reporting?

The “sexual assault problem” in the military is now a trumped up political agenda. The definition of sexual assault was greatly expanded in 2007, and again now, even while simultaneously increasing the role of women in the military.

Most of the media have been inaccurately labeling the results of the military’s recent survey of sexual assaults and “unwanted sexual contact” as “sexual assaults.”

There is a big difference between unwanted touching, and actual sexual assault. The new definition can be interpreted to mean that someone just heavily flirting with someone, or even touching someone’s thigh, waist, or butt, is lumped in with serial rapists.

And, the military now counts the number of complaints, and not actual not convictions.  But many of the more than 3,000 reports last year were found to be baseless.

The Pentagon “uses the term ‘sexual assault’ to address a range of crimes including rape, aggravated sexual assault, wrongful sexual contact, non-consensual sodomy, abusive sexual contact, aggravated sexual contact, and indecent assault. The annual report includes case synopses, case dispositions, and punishments imposed in cases involving unrestricted reports.”

There has also been an active effort by Congress to expand the definition of what a sexual assault is which further inflates the statistics they are currently going around and using to bash the military with:

“For incidents that occurred prior to the changes made to the UCMJ on October 1, 2007, the term “sexual assault” referred to the crimes of rape, nonconsensual sodomy, indecent assault, and attempts to commit these acts. For incidents that occurred between October 1, 2007 and June 27, 2012, the term “sexual assault” referred to the crimes of rape, aggravated sexual assault, aggravated sexual contact, abusive sexual contact, wrongful sexual contact, nonconsensual sodomy, and attempts to commit these acts.
For incidents that occur on or after June 28, 2012, the term “sexual assault” refers to the crimes of rape, sexual assault, aggravated sexual contact, abusive sexual contact, nonconsensual sodomy, and attempts to commit these acts.”

Abusive sexual contact was added to the definition of sexual assault, so people who touch someone’s posterior are now equated with serial rapists.

 Other Presidential commencement speeches

By contrast to Obama’s and Hagel’s political speeches, in 2001, President George Bush gave the commencement speech to the USNA graduating class without lecturing:

“You know by now that life in the Navy and Marine Corps is not glamorous. You will endure long hours of routine, punctuated—at times without warning—by moments of danger, where the stakes for your crew and your country could not be higher. Annapolis has prepared you well for this life. It has strengthened your bodies and sharpened your minds. Most importantly, it has fortified your character with timeless values, honor, courage, and commitment. Through 4 years, your class has sat through many a lecture about the meaning of these values. You don’t need another lecture today. But I do urge you to reflect upon their importance. Reminders of their relevance surround us.”

In 1994,  President Bill Clinton addressed the graduating class of the USNA. He gave a good speech, albeit with some politics in it explaining his recent military cuts:

“… since the time Admiral John Paul Jones proclaimed, ‘Without a respectable Navy, alas, America.’ The right-size defense costs less but still costs quite a bit. That is why this year I have resisted attempts to impose further cuts on our defense budget.

“I want you to understand this clearly. It is important for your generation and your children to bring down this terrible debt we accumulated in recent years. And I have asked the Congress to eliminate outright over 100 programs, to cut over 200 others. We’ve presented a budget that cuts discretionary domestic spending for the first time since 1969. That will give us 3 years of deficit reduction in a row for the first time since Harry Truman was President of the United States right after World War II. But we should not cut defense further. And I thank the Congress this week for resisting the calls to do so. That enables us to answer John Paul Jones’ cry.”

 Obama’s speech Friday continued with his lecture:

“With the time I have left, that’s what I want to discuss today. It’s no secret that in recent decades many Americans have lost confidence in many of the institutions that help shape our society and our democracy. But I suggest to you today that institutions do not fail in a vacuum. Institutions are made up of people, individuals. And we’ve seen how the actions of a few can undermine the integrity of those institutions.

“Every day, men and women of talent and skill work in the financial institutions that fund new businesses, and put new families — put families in new homes and help students go to college. But we’ve also seen how the misdeeds of some — wild risk-taking or putting profits before people — sparked a financial crisis and deepened the recession that cost millions of Americans their jobs.”

Last year, Secretary of defense Leon Panetta, an Obama appointee, gave the USNA commencement speech:

“That is why you came here… for the challenge of leading others at sea; deploying to every part of the world; taking risks in the skies; fighting ferociously ashore; and giving our enemies hell wherever you find them.

“After you leave here, the challenge that I just outlined is exactly what you’ll get.

“And it won’t be easy. You’ll need every quality that got you through the past four years: love of country; the desire to learn; the will to work hard; the will to sacrifice; the judgment to make good decisions; and the drive to overcome any odds.”

As I searched for historical commencement speeches to the Naval Academy, it was clear that the Obama PR machine had done its job making sure the President’s speech and sexual assault lecture resonated. Every page for at least 10 in my Google search linked back to a news story about Obama’s speech.

I was searching for President James Garfield’s speech in 1881, the first commencement speech to the Naval Academy, to no avail. Obama’s 2013 speech is everywhere.

That’s proof of a political agenda demonizing the military for sexual assault.

By Chris Reed

The debate over hydraulic fracturing — using high-powered water cannons to reach natural gas and oil reserves deep underground — is heating up in California, driven by the vast economic potential of the Monterey shale formation under vast swaths of the state.

Last month, a committee of the California Legislature passed three bills targeting “fracking.” A Nexis account shows hundreds of mentions of hydraulic fracturing in state newspapers over the past 12 months.

Given the extent of media interest and the high stakes for the state’s economy, one would think the Obama administration’s position on the safety of fracking would be central to coverage of California’s possible expanded use of the energy-exploration process. The president, after all, is broadly seen as the greenest president in history, using the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and his executive powers to advance far-reaching regulations.

Just another heavy industry with ‘challenging but manageable’ pollution

It would thus seem to be highly relevant that:

— A task force commissioned by the Obama administration’s Energy Department concluded in a 23-page report issued in November 2011 that fracking was just another heavy industry, one with significant but manageable pollution concerns.

— The president’s first energy secretary, UC Berkeley’s 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.”

— Chu’s replacement, MIT physicist Ernest Moniz, said the risk that fracking posed to water supplies was “challenging but manageable.”

— The president’s first Environmental Protection Agency director, Lisa Jackson, disputed claims that fracking, which occurs 5,000 feet below the surface, had polluted water tables which are usually less than 1,000 feet below the surface. She testified before a House committee that she was “not aware of any proven case where the fracking process itself has affected water.”

It is true that the White House has prevented fossil-fuel exploration on federal lands, which perhaps can be interpreted as opposition to fracking. But at a very basic level, the Obama administration has disagreed with the central claims of the anti-fracking campaign, which build on the idea that the process is new, unproven and hugely destructive to the environment.

Plenty of coverage — but none of it mentions Obama administration’s view

Here is a short list of recent California newspaper coverage that mentions greens’ warnings about hydraulic fracturing but never acknowledges that the Obama administration is on record as essentially dismissing greens’ claims and supporting fracking’s use:

— A May 9 column in the Ventura County Star by Timm Herdt headlined, “Drilling for a middle ground on fracking.”

— A May 2 story in the San Francisco Chronicle headlined, “Fracking in drought regions a bad recipe.”

— A May 1 column in the Sacramento Bee by Dan Morain headlined, “Calculating the profits, pitfalls of an oil tax.”

— An April 29 story in the Ventura County Star headlined, “Assembly committee passes three bills to impose fracking moratorium.”

—An April 20 story in the Ventura County Star headlined, “New leases reveal an oil land rush in Ventura County.”

— An April 13 story in the Los Angeles Times headlined, “Report urges tough rules on fracking.”

— An April 11 editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle headlined, “Ground rules: On fracking.”

— An April 10 story in the Los Angeles Times headlined, “California Senate panel approves bill to regulate ‘fracking’.”

— An April 9 story in the San Francisco Chronicle headlined, “Foes of fracking win case — delay in drilling likely.”

This list could be far longer. I have been following the fracking issue intensely in California for a year and have never seen a newspaper story that even mentioned the Obama administration’s views in passing.

The juicy angle on greens and fracking that’s never shared with public

It’s impossible to know if ideology or groupthink or a combination of both is driving this bizarre omission of basic facts from fracking coverage. But one way or the other, it’s indefensible as journalism — especially because of the juicy story that awaits telling by the mainstream media:

Hydraulic fracturing has been a common tool in oil and gas exploration since the 1970s, and has been around since the late 1940s. It was only after it became a much more efficient and refined process in the last decade and began generating vast amounts of natural gas and oil that environmentalists began to object to it.

But this increased efficiency has also made fracking cleaner and less wasteful than ever. Less water is used, more is recycled — and there’s a race on to improve recycling technology.

Isn’t that worthy of coverage? That greens didn’t object to the much dirtier version of fracking for decades but only griped when it got efficient — and much cleaner?

Of course it is.

But if this juicy, important, obvious angle ever appears in the Times, Mercury-News, Bee or Chronicle, it will likely come as a complete surprise to subscribers. California’s environmental reporters simply refuse to cover the big picture on fracking.

By Katy Grimes

The Associated Press found itself in an interesting juxtaposition yesterday when it had to report that the Obama Justice Department secretly obtained two months of AP’s own employees’ phone records.

In what can only be called strange, the Obama Justice Department has been secretly tapping the phone lines for 100 reporters and editors of the Associated Press, according to news reports just released yesterday.

This is a direct attack on the freedom of the press. Ironically however, this is the same press which has been in-the-bag for candidate, and now President Obama.

Also ironically, while the Patriot Act was being rammed through Congress, the press sat on their hands and did nothing. Now they are being spied on, ostensibly under the guise of the Patriot Act and national security.

According to the Associated Press, general phone lines for AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and for the main number for the AP in the House of Representatives press gallery, were all tapped, according to attorneys for the AP.

The Justice Department, run by Attorney General Eric Holder, obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather the news.

“Chief Executive Officer Gary Pruitt said the government sought and obtained information far beyond anything that could be justified by any specific investigation,” the AP reported. “He demanded the return of the phone records and destruction of all copies.”

“There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters. These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP’s newsgathering operations and disclose information about AP’s activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know,” Pruitt said.

This is going to get interesting. The IRS has been targeting conservatives and pro-Israel groups, and no one has been fired. Now the same administration is attacking freedom of the press and spying on the AP. What Constitutional right will be violated next? And what are people willing to do about it?

On the Jewish blog, Boker tov, a reader left a thought-provoking comment: “The sheer stupidity of the Obama mob is beyond belief. This really is the gang that cannot shoot straight. Why in the world would they pull this caper on — of all the news agencies on the planet — the one news agency that has done probably more than any other to make Obama look like a Great American President? Whatever happened to such sage admonitions as “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you” and ‘Don’t kill the goose that lays golden eggs’? Will this be the straw that breaks the camel’s back? I wouldn’t bet on it; so far, the camel’s back has been as strong as Atlas’s. But if this is the straw that cripples the camel, Obama will have only his own and his henchmen’s stupidity to blame.”

By Chris Reed

In much of Europe and in California, greens wield such power in politics and the media that the debate over whether a nation or state should pursue hydraulic fracturing of energy reserves seems like a fight over a new and unproven process. But in the rest of the world, there’s an acceptance that times have changed. that fracking’s nothing new, and that fossil fuels are still the big dog in town. Read this New York Times article from April 24. to get a sense of the real-world view of fracking and other energy developments. It is headlined “By 2023, a Changed World in Energy” and cites the “miraculous change” in the U.S. energy outlook because of fracking.

Yet in California, the real world does not intrude. And so the Ventura County Star, which offered the first coverage of measures blocking fracking being approved by a legislative committee, never offered this minor detail: The Obama administration sees fracking as just another heavy industry. Isn’t that, yunno, news? Duh!

Fracking sanity chapter No. 8: Mexico

This media sloth and ineptitude is why that every morning for a week I’ve been blogging about the nations around the world that think it’s a good thing to have cheap energy and have embraced fracking. So far I’ve covered Germany, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Canada and Argentina. Now it’s the turn of our neighbor to the south, which has the fourth largest shale reserves in the world, according to the U.S. government.

What’s my point? The fracking/brown energy revolution is coming, regardless of what greens in the Golden State and Europe want, and that California can either join in the party or get left behind.

This is from an April 21 Inter Press Service report that lays out the determination of PEMEX, the government-owned oil giant, and Mexican leaders to get on the fracking bandwagon:

“Since 2011, PEMEX has drilled at least six wells for shale gas in the northern states of Nuevo León and Coahuila. And it is preparing for further exploration in the southeastern state of Veracruz, at a cost of 245 million dollars over the space of 18 months, in conjunction with the Mexican Petroleum Institute (IMP), a state institution. …

“In a 2011 report, ‘World Shale Gas Resources: An Initial Assessment of 14 Regions Outside the United States,’ the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) assessed 48 shale gas basins in 32 countries, including Mexico, and estimated that there were 6,622 trillion cubic feet of shale gas in the United States and the other 32 countries studied. … For Mexico, it calculated 681 TCF — the fourth largest reserves in the world. ….

“The National Hydrocarbons Commission (CNH), in charge of technical permits for PEMEX projects, will analyse and approve regulations for fracking this year.

“Mexico’s oil giant plans to drill 20 wells by 2016, with a total investment of over two billion dollars. It projects operating 6,500 commercial wells over the next 50 years.”

Will CA media heed green or The New York Times? Character test time

Quite the contrast. Mexico will “analyze and approve” fracking regulations this year. In California, the Legislature will just ignore fracking’s long history and what the rest of the world is doing and ban it. And the state’s media and its corrupt environmental reporters will never point out this long history or what the New York Times — THE NEW YORK TIMES — says about the brown energy revolution.

Sheesh.

Fracking watch: Previous posts

No. 1: Germany

No. 2: China

No. 3: Russia

No. 4: Saudi Arabia

No. 5: Brazil

No. 6: Canada

No. 7: Argentina