Not a Peep from the Lamestream Media, when the Obama Administration Leased California BLM Land for Oil Fracking — without Proper Environmental Review

10 April 2013

The American media’s predominating hypocrisy matches the President’s

What must former President George W. Bush be thinking about the contrasting way that he was treated in office?

If “G.W.” had done the following, he would have been crucified in the press:

A federal judge has ruled the Obama administration broke the law when it issued oil leases in central California without fully weighing the environmental impact of "fracking," a setback for companies seeking to exploit the region's enormous energy resources.

The decision, made public on Monday, effectively bars for the time being any drilling on two tracts of land comprising 2,500 acres leased for oil and gas development in 2011 by the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management in Monterey County.

U.S. District Judge Paul Grewal in San Jose ruled that the federal government erred, and violated U.S. environmental law, in declining to conduct a full-fledged environmental impact study of its oil leasing for the Monterey Formation.

This is not an out of the way location

People familiar with California will recognize that the affected leases are not on what many people might think of as unpopulated, waterless waste land that we can feel free to trash:

Nearly 20,000 acres of prime Central Coast farm and ranch land may be protected at least temporarily from oil and gas "fracking" due to a federal judge's "watershed" ruling.

The affected leases sold in September 2011 include scenic stretches of southern Monterey County, where cattle ranchers and wine grape growers rely on tight water supplies to irrigate their pasturelands and vineyards. The area is also part of the historic range of the endangered California condor, whose global population was recently estimated at less than 400 birds.

Environmentalists worry the technique can contaminate groundwater and pollute the air, as well as trigger seismic activity in the state's most earthquake prone area.

Regarding the “Fourth Estate” that isn’t

I have written about successful democracy’s reliance on a fair-minded and investigative media before — and pointed out that today’s media is not performing what used to be thought of as its Fourth Estate duty to the republic:

here — why a diligent press matters (27 September 2011)

here — in the absence of truth reporting, amorphously expressed frustration like Occupy Wall Street occurs (27 October 2011)

here — an example of collusion among two national newspapers, who agreed not to report geographic expansion of President Obama’s drone program (07 February 2013)

here — how the American press ignored Bradley Manning’s torture at government hands, but fed on his WikiLeaks information (09 March 2013)

The press’s inattention to the Obama Administration’s evasion of law (in granting the BLM California fracking leases) is just another instance of the same kind of media avoidance.

Because the President is allegedly liberal, he gets a pass on issues that his predecessor would have been slammed for even contemplating doing.

The moral? — “Wannabe King” Obama is successfully shredding American protections of law, while the press (and virtually everyone else) keeps looking the other way

Reflexive anti-Obama sentiment on the Right tends be even more extreme in advocating for illegalities than the President has been. Or, alternatively, it advocates for Libertarianism’s camouflaged version of anarchy.

Neither opposition position is likely to lead to successful society.

Most of the rest of us are asleep, brain dead, or have lost our minds. The press shares a place in all three ineptitudes.

PeteFree.com

Not a Peep from the Lamestream Media, when the Obama Administration Leased California BLM Land for Oil Fracking — without Proper Environmental Review