I’ve always been enamored of Professor Glenn Reynolds’ oft-repeated aphorism: “I’ll believe there’s a crisis when the people who say there’s a crisis act like there’s a crisis.” It’s a great BS detector, but it has some corollaries that I’m finding truly terrifying.
What does it mean when those people say there’s a crisis, I agree that there’s a crisis, but they refuse to act like there’s a crisis?
I speak, of course, about the Gulf oil spill.
I read the alleged inside account of the situation Kevin posted last week, and come to the conclusion that the anonymous author is a lousy writer, but seems to know his shit. And the conclusion I drew from that — as well as what so many others have said — is that the situation below the former Deepwater Horizon platform is developing into an ecological catastrophe that could scar — and economically cripple — the US for a very, very long time.
This is Katrina bad. This is 9/11 bad. This is JFK Assassination bad. This is Pearl Harbor bad.
And — it should go without saying — this is “screw politics, all hands on deck” bad.
But it isn’t.
The Obama administration wastes no opportunity to remind us of how dire the situation is in the Gulf. But its actions are utterly inconsistent with their words.
While the oil is still spewing, we have certain needs to best respond to the ongoing catastrophe. And those needs are not only being ignored by the Obama administration, but — in some cases — being actively sabotaged.
We need a strong, focused BP — the people who ran the rig that failed so disastrously — to lead the efforts in stopping the flow. They were the ones who ran it, who were in charge of it when it blew up. Unless we think they deliberately destroyed it, they are the best people to know exactly what happened and how best to stop it.
Instead, we have an administration that seems hell-bent on destroying BP. Hell, last week they extorted a $20-billion-dollar shakedown out of BP. And, cynically, the primary motive wasn’t to get that money, but to secure the federal government’s first dibs on BP’s assets should they file bankruptcy in the US. This was the same move the Obama administration pulled with GM and Chrysler — bypassing the normal rules of bankruptcy and screwing out the other creditors.
We need an easing of normal restrictions and limitations, freeing up all parties concerned to react swiftly to the impending slow-motion disaster. Instead, we have the Coast Guard turning away skimmers for inadequate life jackets, states being blocked from building berms due to long-term environmental impact concerns, foreign vessels and offers of assistance and expertise being ignored.
We need to find ways to minimize the immediate economic impact of the disaster, to somehow compensate for the loss of revenues from the damage in the Gulf. Instead, we have a proposed moratorium on all new offshore drilling, throwing even more people out of work, removing even more oil from our national supply.
We need to get the best and brightest and throw them at the problem. We need the experts, the geniuses, to figure out how best to stop the ongoing crisis, repair the harm it has caused, and prevent it from happening again.
Instead, we have a panel of experts finding their words distorted and their explicit rejection of a suspension of offshore drilling rewritten into an endorsement. And we have a new panel of “experts” who have absolutely no experience or knowledge of oil drilling, but have absolutely solid leftist credentials in Big Oil Bashing and environmental extremism.
There are several possible explanations for this, and I have no idea which is the most frightening.
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