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.

That’s something good about our state. Because other states require yearly safety inspections, something we don’t have. It’s obviously a government scam for the bureaucrats in cahoots with the car-repair industry.

Of course, in California the cops can cite you for driving an unsafe car, giving you a chance to get it fixed. But mostly, modern cars are very safe, and getting safer every year.

One place that requires the yearly inspections is Virginia, the home of libertarian auto writer Eric Peters. He’s a car buff who owns a lot of cars. He writes:

Each year, in my state, I am required by law to take each of my seven vehicles in to be “inspected” – on my time and at my expense. It does not matter that I know this exercise is a massive waste of my time and money, since I know my vehicles are “safe.” I am very conscientious about my vehicles (being consciously concerned about my own safety as well as the safety of others) and so keep track of such things as the condition of the brakes, the tread left on the tires, whether the signal lights are working – and so on. I also know I am competent to do the repairs – and feel more comfortable driving a car that I know is in good order because I keep it in good order.

None of this matters.

I must prove to the satisfaction of a minion of the state that the car is, in fact “safe.” Indeed, the car is presumed to be unsafe irrespective of its actual mechanical condition. And, here’s the real kick in the crotch: I am subject to violence – to being waylaid at gunpoint by armed gangsters (i.e., the police) if I do not obtain the inspection irrespective of the actual condition of my car, its tires, its brakes (and so forth).

Innocence is no defense. Just as one need not be “drunk” in order to be treated as presumptively drunk at a “sobriety checkpoint. Refuse to take their tests? You are as guilty under the law as if the floorboards were littered with empty fifths of Jack Daniels. Even if, later on, you demonstrate beyond any doubt that you were completely sober at the time of your arrest and caging….

Adding injury to insult, you are forced to pay for this. If you, like me, own multiple vehicles, the total sum is not trivial. In my state (VA) the mandatory annual inspection is $15. I own seven vehicles. That’s another $105 out the window – and into the hands of government  – each year. Over the course of 20 or 30 years, it amounts to several thousand dollars.

Maybe, even at this late date, Californians are just to wild to go along with such nonsense. Time for a California jam: