“Keep your government hands off my government clean-up!”
That’s pretty much the idea behind this AP story, which nicely sums up where conservatives find themselves these days — trying to explain why up is down and down is up, and it’s okay:
Conservatives seek gov’t solutions after oil spill
Ben Brooks, a lawyer and Republican state senator from coastal Alabama, says he’s no fan of big government but he expects an aggressive federal response as a gunky oil spill threatens the Gulf of Mexico.
“There’s nothing inherently contradictory in saying we believe in smaller government and demanding that the government protect public safety,” Brooks said.
All along the Gulf Coast, where the tea party thrives and “socialism” is a common description for any government program, conservatives who usually denounce federal activism suddenly are clamoring for it.
But federal intervention to avoid the problem in the first place? God forbid…
The AP story is terrible reporting.
Emily Wagster Pettus simply outlines an apparent contrdiction but does not confront any of the politicians or tea partiersto give them a chance to explain how turning to the feds squares with their smaller government agenda.
I’m not a conservative by any stretch–I uncharitably suggested to someone that adding Rush Limbaught to the golf balls and shredded tires to help cap the well might solve two problems at once. But it doesn’t take too many smarts to imagine that Gov. Jindal might have said that smaller government would have allowed the feds to respond more nimbly. More berms might have been built much more quickly under smaller government.
Whether berms and booms will make much of a dent in a spill this vast, of course, is the real question. My cousin, an oceanographer with NOAA who regularly monitors off-shore drilling, jreturned from three weeks in the Gulf at the end of May and says the federal government has fewer resources than BP to handle the spill.
The two best options for containing what is already a catastrophe is to a) get the feds to maintain pressure on BP or b) call in assistance from foreign countries with better equipment. I expect many conservatives would balk at Option b, given that those countries are largely Arab states with which we have shaky alliances. But before I reported that assumption, I’d want to get a conservative pol to confirm it.
“All along the Gulf Coast, where the tea party thrives and “socialism” is a common description for any government program”
I don’t usually think of the AP as exhibiting regional bias, but I’d have to say that passage smacks of it. ‘On the faraway island of Balamafuzz, where the warriors paint their faces with butterfly milk and the women devour their young …’
““There’s nothing inherently contradictory in saying we believe in smaller government and demanding that the government protect public safety,” Brooks said.”
I do think that’s a serious conservative position, is not contradictory, and is deserving of serious and respectful engagement, if folks do find it contradictory.
Jim, a CNN poll does indicate that about a third of the tea-partiers (31 percent) come from the South, but only by a few percentage points more than those from the Midwest and West.
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/images/02/17/rel4b.pdf
No polls indicated that they paint their faces with butterfly milk or eat their young. But a survey reported in the Huffington Post does suggest that they watch Fox News.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/01/tea-party-survey-old-cons_n_522336.html
And a photo of tea partiers at a rally in a CNN story does suggest they enjoy colorful costumes.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/02/17/tea.party.poll/index.html
I spelled Rush’s last name incorrectly. Should be “Limbaugh,” no “t” on the end. Apologies.
On a practical, how-to-clean-up-the-mess note, some folks around where I live were getting their hair cut—to make some kind of hair sponges, which were supposed to absorb more oil than anything else—and be delicate to the environment as well. Hair salons were sending them to be processed into these sponges. I didn’t hear from any reliable source if these hair sponges have helped any—or if they do, how much more will need to be donated.
Maybe those sponges could be placed in the marshlands and absorb the gunk! Also, maybe some of our young people who have just graduated from colleges/universities and can’t get jobs, could be employed (paid by BP, of course) to assist in cleaning up along the Gulf Coast. We would have more people to do the work. The young people, God love them, could earn some money, and maybe this environmental-economic disaster could be
turned around before any more destruction of the environment occurs.
My feelings about members of the Tea Party—-they should be hired by people who need many balloons to be filled up—birthday parties, graduation parties, weddings, etc. Tea Party members have a lot of hot air.
David
You are really mischaracterizing the situation. First, the most imporatnt thing the government can do in this situation is to allow the implementation of plans that were already in place, and they aren’t. It doesn’t take a big bureacracy or even the expenditure of resources to approve dredging permits. If anything, it is the very fact of big government that prevents it from doing this. Second, the federal government has, for over a century, assumed responsibility for American coastlines and navigable waters. there is a difference between opposing government intrusion into people’s daily life and requiring it to act reasonably and efficiently in areas where it has historic responsibility.
Besides, what is more nonsensical, conservatives wanting a national government response to a national disaster, or liberals who regularly bash the innefficiency and corruption of government bureacracies like the MMS and SEC and then propose a solution that is to give them more resources and power?
Please excuse my repetition here but some of what I’ve said before seems relevant.
I used to be librarian at an oil exploration company here that has turned into the leargest oil exploration company in the world, so I got to know a few of the top brass a little bit — yes, they used the library a LOT. As a group they were the smartest people I’ve ever known except for the philosophy faculty at Catholic U. The head honcho there asked me to get a copy of John von Neumann’s “Theory of Games”. It is not, of course, about fun as it it about the mathematics of risk taking — how to calculate the risks people are willing to take and what are “reasonable” risks. It’s the same sort of math that the brains at AIG, Lehmann Bros., etc., used when making the kinds of investments that led to the current deep recession, the sort of math that ‘the quants” do. The quants are all those brainy people out of the best colleges who went to work for those companies and make those obscene bonuses. Anyway, it was back in 1962 that I got a copy of von Neumann for the Big Boss, and I”m sure the lessons were well learned. BP obviously learned — ittook a humongous risk by not buying that safety valve that cost beans but risked a rig that cost hundreds of millions of US greenback, and now we’ve all lost.
So what do Goldman Sachs and BP have in common? Brains, tons of brains, wornderful wages, understanding of Bayesian math but also a willingness to take risks that the rest of us consider insane. The conservatives call this “competitiveness”, I call it madness.
Now contrast them with the people at the Corps of Engineers, who with FEMA, gave us the clean=up after Katrina. You all know about that already. I don’t know anybody at the Corps, but I do know that my father was a very smart man who worked for the government because the depression threatened his family, and we needed security above all. (He had worked at Shell Oil at one time — he called it “Hell Oil” — and found it inhumane the way they drove their employees unmercifully.)
So now we have the insanely competitive trying to solve a problem working with the supremely cautious. The outlook doesn’t look good. The question to me is; how cautious is Pres. Obama? And how can he make the urgency of the situation apparent to the Corps.
Recently my US representative Jos. Cao sent out a transcript of part of a hearing about the spill. He questioned an employee of the Corps and asked why they had not begun fabricating the berms necessary to hold back the oil on the surface of the Gulf. The man replied that first they had to complete an environmental study.
Yes, there is fault on both sides, but the greatest fault, as I see it, is that of BP which took crazy risks. The solution? Change the mind-sets of the risk-taking “conservatives”. They’re not really conservative at all, at lal — they are wildmen. Or learn to regulate them properly.
Criticism of big government need not and should not be a conservative prerogative. From the beginning government has too often interfered in preference for its friends and those who pay to get them elected. In New York the legislature is so corrupt that Bruno, who headed the State Senate for so many years, was allowed to speak so long after his conviction that the judge had to call a recess to resume afterwards. As we noted here before the State and Federal pensions are among the most scandalous in the country while governments near bankruptcy with record deficits.
As far as Conservatives desiring big government when it helps them, that is an accusation that can apply across the board. Generally, people applaud government when it agrees with them and criticize when it does not. But the need for a federal and state government with more integrity is something we can all agree on.
Bill,
It depends on what you mean by “criticism of big government.” Sure, when it comes to government being corrupt, or inefficient, or wasteful, etc. in particular situations, you are correct. It’s everyone’s perogative to crtiticize.
Most conservative’s (and please don’t people start pointing to George Bush – he wasn’t one) criticism, however, is rooted in a neutral principle while liberal criticism usually isn’t. When progressives criticize big government it is not because there is anything inherent in the nature of government that leads to corruption, inefficiency, waste, and rent seeking, it’s because the wrong people are in charge.
Thus the question, how are more regulations going to be effective when the people responsible didn’t enforce the ones they already had in place? I mean, when we hear senior officials at the SEC are cruising porn or MMS officials are on crystal meth the liberal, after expressing his outrage, turns around and gives them more power and writes the corruption off to having the wrong political party in power.
As to the current political mess I am of two minds. On the one hand, I think the expectations regarding Obama and the federal response are unrealistic. That being said, it’s a case of being hoisted by their own petard. Obama promotes this view of the omnipotence of the government and its indipensibility in all cases, so he has to look like he’s doing something. So when he goes to the gulf and says his plan is to have blue ribbon commissions and sue people he ends up looking even more incompetent than he is.
Bill, (cont.)
You say, “But the need for a federal and state government with more integrity is something we can all agree on.”
Of course we can, but that’s exactly the point I was making. You don’t do it by giving them more power, influence, and resources. Do you really think that it will promote integrity to give bureaucrats more control over the financial system or means of production?
What ensures integrity in government is narrowing, not increasing, the ability to feather your own nest or get more political influence.
Sean,
The devil is in the details. Slavery was abolished by the federal government. Civil rights had no chance without the intervention of the federal govt. So the question is what should or should not the government be involved in. Likewise when you argue your case it remains fuzzy unless you give examples.
As far as your example of Obama and the oil spill, you must admit that the President is expected to act so he must deal with that politically. It is not just he who promotes the all powerful govt. The people already expect help from it.
Jean, Rush’s last name is most correctly spelled “Humbug.”