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Assessing a Week of Scandal
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After Obamacare
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The New Paternalism
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Please Point the C-Span Camera This Way
April 29, 2013 | 32 comments
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Knuckle Draggers and the Pro-Life Enlightenment
April 26, 2013 | 85 comments
A Further Perspective
Crude Stereotypes
Finding affirmation in the oil spill.
The Gulf of Mexico oil spill has claimed another casualty. No, not another oil-sloshed fish washed up on the stained sand of a Louisiana shore. The latest life suffocated in the inky blackness of BP’s gusher is small-government conservatism.
At least that’s what the progressive literati are saying. Thomas Frank of the Wall Street Journal spent a recent column giving a merry tour of Republican and Tea Party hypocrisy. How could those who once condemned the creep of the federal government turn around and denounce Barack Obama for not intervening more to plug the spill? Frank concluded, “The catastrophe is too great to brush it off with the usual laissez-faire scholasticism. So the great debate must wait. We are all liberals for the duration.”
His point about hypocrisy is very fair. But Frank gets it wrong if he thinks libertarianism is in a coma until the leak gets plugged. If anything, BP’s ugly oil platform affirms suspicions about the world that cranky classical liberals have always had.
I’ll admit I’m a bit of a hypocrite. I castigate progressives for dividing the world into stereotypical groups — the rich, the poor, the people, the powerful, etc. — and then drawing sweeping conclusions about each one. But I, along with most other small-government types, often indulge the in the same mental laziness. Among my stereotypes: government workers are lazy and ineffective; corporations are avaricious and necessary; and politicians are self-serving and corrupt.
I’ve been watching the oil spill closely for the past month. Check, check, and check.
The government’s bumbling over the spill is obvious. Virtually no action was taken the first two weeks, which earned Obama criticism even from the New York Times. Early on in the crisis, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal requested 5 million feet of boom line from the federal government to protect his state’s coastline. To this day, he’s only received 800,000 feet.
The feds’ primary contribution to solving the crisis so far has been to dispatch bureaucrats in windbreakers to the Gulf Coast to stand around peering at the oil through binoculars. Pictures proudly displayed on the EPA’s website of agency Administrator Lisa Jackson standing on a Gulf jetty wearing a baseball cap don’t really inspire confidence. (They’ve since been removed.) Then again, what else can she do? Admiral Thad Allen admitted that the federal government, powered by a $3.8 trillion budget, doesn’t have the equipment necessary to cap the spill.
Then there’s the Minerals Management Service. The trusty civil servants in charge of regulating BP’s oil platforms quickly turned the MMS into a wretched hive of scum and villainy. MMS bureaucrats spent the last decade sleeping with oil company employees and then allowing them to fill out their own safety evaluation forms. Progressives maintain that this only happened because George W. Bush was in charge. If only Barack Obama had sat in the Oval Office eight years sooner, they reason, the MMS would have been a shining model of regulatory efficiency. But as compared to what? The Department of Agriculture? The DMV?
Corporations played their role perfectly as well. BP cozied up to the MMS and repeatedly received exemptions from environmental inspections that might have prevented the spill. One of those exemptions was granted in April 2009, three months after nefarious oil baron George W. Bush left office.
BP also lobbied the federal government relentlessly, spending $19.5 million since January 2009 alone. Contrary to progressive campfire stories, they weren’t trying to buy deregulation. As the Washington Examiner reported, BP lobbied for the stimulus bill, Wall Street bailouts, green energy subsidies, and, most notably, cap-and-trade. The oil giant wasn’t trying to snooker incompetent government bureaucrats into deregulating the market. They were trying to snooker incompetent government bureaucrats into posting more red tape that would tangle the competition and allow BP to profit.
Timothy Carney, the Examiner reporter who unearthed BP’s lobbying records, has been documenting this for years. Corporate predators use hapless government regulators to enhance their bottom line. Think of the smart girl in high school who dated the dumb jock because he was popular and had a nice car. I doubt a single libertarian was floored when they heard that BP and the MMS were in cahoots. It’s the way the world works.
As I said, corporations are greedy but necessary. The Gulf spill is a tragedy and perhaps even a crime. But what precisely is the alternative? Oil accounts for more than 40% of America’s total energy demands and 99% of fuel used in cars, according to the Department of Energy. Progressives are working themselves into a lather at oil companies. But there’s something hypocritical to the point of being vile about Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann verbally assaulting oil companies from technologically decadent TV studios illuminated by gigawatt klieg lights. It’s a hypocrisy impossible to evade unless you hammer together a Robinson Crusoe-style treehouse and hunt for your dinner. Maybe oil companies are a little evil. But they’re also completely, utterly, wonderfully life-sustaining.
That leaves my third libertarian stereotype, the crookedness of politicians, which scarcely needs explaining. According to a senior White House aide, Obama was informed in April that oil would likely keep gushing through August until a relief well was drilled. Instead of relaying this to the American people, the president spent his time doing political ballet, trying to shift the target of populist rage from his administration to BP. Thus the government was “keeping its boot on the neck” of BP, Obama was yelling in meetings to “Plug the damn hole!” and the president was meeting with his advisors to figure out “whose ass to kick.”
Again, politicians are self-serving and corrupt. But as with any rule, I’m willing to entertain an exception. If Chris Christie was president when the oil rig blew, his anger wouldn’t be staged and comical; it would be very real. And a steady stream of heads would be rolling down the Beltway right now. It’d be enough to make jaded libertarians everywhere smile, if only for a moment.
About the Author
Matt Purple is The American Spectator’s assistant managing editor.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (38) | Leave a comment
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Bill Hussein O'Stalin| 6.21.10 @ 7:01AM
If there is any hypocrisy, it's in the fact that we pay taxes for the government to respond and like all citizens can demand an explanation if there is a poor response. The only hypocrisy is when someone mounts a claim of hypocrisy against conservatism when they ask why the government is failing.
In the 1950's students in America were taught that it was their civic duty to fight against corrupt government. Somehow that's been turned around and your duty appears to be keep your mouth shut in the face of government inefficiency or you'll receive undue criticism.
Pointing out that government is dismal in the government response is not demanding more government, it simply points out the reasoning that government help to business can be persecution or disastrous.
Realistically, the hypocrisy is all Obama's. According to Obama the government is approving all the moves. The threat there is that the government has the right to use physical force and in fact, Obama threatened to "kick someone's ass." How charming but total hypocrisy. Since he approved all the moves he should be kicking himself.
As far as the relationship between government and business, there is a certain air of influence buying, and that's precisely why we should have smaller government. The bigger the government the more influence there is to buy.
Ponder this quote from Ayn Rand:
"We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force."
As far as politicians being corrupt, that isn't a libertarian stereotype. That's a common stereotype throughout the world. The public has perceived politicians as corrupt since the dawn of politics. That isn't libertarian. That's reality.
Alan Brooks| 6.21.10 @ 9:04AM
"Among my stereotypes: government workers are lazy and ineffective; corporations are avaricious and necessary; and politicians are self-serving and corrupt."
The real 'problem' is America is a great nation,
but not a good one.
Though it probably will not end up as ancient Rome, it is quite similar to Rome; not in being an empire but in the lack of decency-- what in a gullible era was called "virtue".
scotchieguy| 6.21.10 @ 10:50AM
Good point. A perfect example of this is the following. George Will said Clinton wasn't the worse president, but was the worse man to become president. Likewise, Obama is not the worse man to become president, but he sure as hell will go down in history as the worse president.
Alan Brooks| 6.21.10 @ 11:01AM
"but he sure as hell will go down in history as the worse president."
You can't look that far ahead, unless you are psychic. It is too early to say how Dubya will be presented in the history books (depends who writes the books-- Democrats or Republicans),
but we know he wont be included with Geo Washington; neither will Obama, but after only one and a half years in office, it is too early to judge him.
I just realized why JFK is so popular: he wasn't in office long enough to start a nuclear war!
Alan Brooks| 6.21.10 @ 11:11AM
BTW,
our two "best" presidents:
1. Coolidge, who understood that silence is in fact golden.
and
2. William Henry Harrison, who made only one nistake in office: he wasn't dressed warmly enough at his inauguration.
Bill Hussein O'Stalin| 6.21.10 @ 12:04PM
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong but don't you actually have to something as President to indicate whether you're presidential or not?
I'm not talking about signing legislation, I'm talking about actually accomplishing something.
All Obama has done is appoint avowed communists to positions of responsibility in government, appointed terrorists huggers to the Justice Department, and lied prolifically.
I'm not sure what that qualifies him for but it sure isn't best president.
Tim*| 6.21.10 @ 5:18PM
Tell that to all the Nations in Europe and around the world that our Military defends and has defended. Tell that U.S. Charity and Aid expenses and Americans Individual & Non Government Charities
JP| 6.21.10 @ 7:41AM
Thomas Frank is a knee-jerk Progressive. I tired of his illogical rants many moons ago. With regard to small government conservativism, he has his logic backwards. As Matt Purple illustrates, BP and other Fortune 500 firms are so deeply entrenched in the Beltway Favor Bank that what we have is anything but small government conservativism. And the fact that today the federal government consumes nearly 40% of our economy seems to not register at all with Mr Frank. There may be a few people who expect better from a government that consumes $4 trillion (of which $1 trillion is borrowed).
It is also beyond Mr Frank's imagination to consider the real reason why BP and other oil companies even consider drilling over the deep waters of the Gulf. Mr Frank's party has put in place such severe restrictions for land and shallow seas drilling that the only place left are the deep waters of our oceans.
Anthony| 6.21.10 @ 2:28PM
JP, You are 100% correct. Thomas Frank, besides being a knee-jerk progressive, is a moron to boot. The Constitution grants the federal government limited, yet vital roles that it is required to perform. We insist that the government do what is required of it, rather than seek more and more power over things it has no business in.
The fact that idiots, like Frank, are deliberately obtuse to this fact is , sickening.
Unfortunately, the beltway Rs have also proven the point that our elected officals are mostly worthless. The shake down of BP was properly called by its proper name. There is no legal basis for what Obama has done, both with the slush fund and the shutting down of the off shore drilling industry. Our R leaders are incapable of articulating this point without being accused of being in the "pocket of big oil". How sad. Once again, their agenda is not our agenda. Once again, we have elected people of very modest intellectual prowess.
We need a see change in Washington both D & R.
A memo to our weak-kneed Rs. Read Friedrich Hayek's book "Road to Serfdom". The recent tzarist actions of Obama speak directly to one of Hayek's key point: "We shall never prevent the abuse of power if we are not prepared to limit power in a way which occasionally may prevent its use for desirable purpose". Obama's slush fund is case in point.
Albert Anthony Turner| 6.21.10 @ 8:21AM
If the Feds would not be so spread out on stuff they have no business participating in, they could be of better help in these situations.
Alan Brooks| 6.21.10 @ 10:50AM
You are a deep thinker.
Ray| 6.21.10 @ 11:51AM
You are correct, and a very deep thinker. This government has grow so large, with so many competing departs a, policies, and the people tasked to carry out those department policies, that they interfere with each other when trying to address a problem.
This "spill" is a perfect example of this. Here we have a situation where the various government department are interfering with each other in the response. For example, we have the EPA interfering with the Coast Guard's ability to create temporary sand barriers to keep the oil for reaching wetlands ( a reasonable approach to disaster mitigation) because the EPA needs to perform a "environmental impact study" of the proposed barriers before they can allow them to be built. That doesn't make any sense! We have on department overriding another and no one is "stepping in" to coordinate between them!
The government has grown so large with so many competing departments and regulations, and so many people within each department with the authority to interfere with the other departments, that it can no longer even govern itself! How can we expect it to govern the rest of us?
Ken (Old Texican)| 6.21.10 @ 8:53AM
(copy/pasted from another thread)
OKOK! (smile)
The Repubs felt they HAD to give Barton a public bop on the head. (And a handshake in private.)
A very close friend retired recently as the VP Marketing of one of the major oil companies. He told me that 80% of his efforts ...and staff were devoted to keeping energy illiterate congress critters from inadvertently cutting off oil/gas supplies to Americans.
That's right....."inadvertently".
Very few people understand the economics of oil production and the companies that engage in it.
Of course the oil companies have to earn a profit. They utilize enormous sums of "working capital". (Capitalism see.) The reason for much of the "third world" is that the capital is squandered by the government elites, or stuck in a Swiss account, instead of "capitalizing" productive enterprise in those countries.
US "capital" is thus utilized to develop and market their resources, and the profits come right back here because those governments can skim enough cash for our efforts to be delighted.
Am I ringing any bells with anybody yet?
Folks, OUR government is acting like a third-world government these days....with the same demonstrable results if they can't be made to stop.
Sarah Palin's most impressive feat in Alaska was to find a "balance" between the needs of "capital formation through productivity", and...the "dividends" on that capital being fairly distributed to the "risker/investors" (in her case, the citizens of Alaska....much like a landowner down here in Texas gets "dividends" on a producing well on hisproperty.
Back to my thesis sentence here: Folks, most States are NOT net oil/gas exporters. The Republicans need those States' voters to understand that the Repubs are on the side of the citizens there too.
Kapice?
Louis Jenkins| 6.21.10 @ 9:25AM
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal maybe receiving his babtismal. We've worried that Jindal didn't have the where with all to be a national political figure, but this development has changed the tables. Dare we say that he will come out of this predictament smelling like a rose? A fire built under him? All schooled under the adversity of an oil spill.
scotchieguy| 6.21.10 @ 10:58AM
Funny how the same oil spill that is making Jindal look like Guilianni after 9/11 is exposing Obama as an utterly dithering incompetent.
autoacct628| 6.21.10 @ 6:31PM
23 words said volumes. Thank you, kind sir, for your efficiency, your wit and your wisdom. Amen!
Eric| 6.21.10 @ 9:34AM
Government that tries to do everything will not do anything well.
That's the whole point of Constitutionalism; it provides the focused short list of the things government has the authority and responsibility to do. The Tea Partiers know in their gut that our government is disastrously failing to do the things it's supposed to do (border control, budgeting, sound currency/financial system, disaster response in federal areas) precisely because it's trying to take over too many areas of our lives.
Therefore the increasing catastrophic failures of government - such as the failure of the Obamacrats to respond adequately to the spill - are the fault of the sneering leftist hypocrites like Thomas Franks, who refuse to let us focus government on its core functions, because they derive personal ideological or financial gratification from big bully government.
Ray| 6.21.10 @ 12:06PM
What ever happened to FEMA? You know the very department that was created by Congress and is tasked with responding to a crisis like this? Obama seems to have completely negated FEMA's role in responding to an emergency. That had to have been a conscious decision. Is he afraid to be associated with FEMA or something? If so, then why doesn't he propose to eliminate FEMA and save the taxpayers a lot of money?
Jamie | 6.21.10 @ 12:08PM
Good article, Mr. Purple. Nice headline pun, too.
keyboard jockey | 6.21.10 @ 12:37PM
Former Clinton Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick has joined BP as legal counsel. Many would remember her for stovepipping intelligence during the Clinton Years, and her conflict of interest sitting on the 9/11 commission. She made millions from Fannie Mae, and got out before the meltdown…she’s back. *Look Who Is Back On The Pipe*
Nicknamed the Mistress of Disaster because of her culpability in both 9/11 and Fannie Mae. I can see why BP would want to hire someone with disaster experience – and knowledge of pipes.
http://youhavetobethistalltogo.....ck-on.html
vtwin| 6.21.10 @ 2:12PM
When Congressman Joe Barton (R-TX) apologized to BP he “exposed, for all to see, the "DNA" of the Republican Party … they have a cozy relationship with BIG oil and BIG business in general … they do [BIG business’s] bidding in Congress.”
BIG business interests are their masters.
Tim*| 6.21.10 @ 4:18PM
During his time in the Senate and while running for president, Obama received a total of $77,051 from the oil giant and is the top recipient of BP PAC and individual money over the past 20 years, according to financial disclosure records.
BP & Enron created Cap & Trade in the Mid 90's and Obama is attempting to backdoor reward BP by tryin' to get Cap & Trade passed in The U.S.
vtwin| 6.21.10 @ 5:47PM
Of the top 20 congressional recipients of gas and oil money, 18 are Republicans
McCain, John (R-AZ) $2,677,064
Hutchison, Kay (R-TX) $2,137,225
Gramm, Phil (R-TX) $1,682,814
Cornyn, John (R-TX) $1,638,450
Barton, Joe (R-TX) $1,447,880
Inhofe, James M (R-OK) $1,228,223
Pearce, Steve (R-NM) $981,272
Young, Don (R-AK) $980,263
Obama, Barack (D) $973,051
McConnell, Mitch (R-KY) $860,261
Nickles, Don (R-OK) $841,388
Vitter, David (R-LA) $783,835
Dole, Bob (R) $781,705
Landrieu, Mary L (D-LA) $757,744
Domenici, Pete V (R-NM) $747,897
DeLay, Tom (R-TX) $689,840
Conaway, Mike (R-TX) $651,718
Sessions, Pete (R-TX) $642,864
Tiahrt, Todd (R-KS) $618,773
Santorum, Rick (R-PA) $614,178
http://www.opensecrets.org/ind.....ortorder=U
Of the two Democrats,the gas and oil industry seeing the eventual victory of a Democrat in the last presidential election cycle showered both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton with money, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find Mary Landrieu on her knees servicing the CEO of BP in from of the cspan cameras.
vtwin| 6.21.10 @ 6:01PM
The Smithsonian Magazine has an article that traces the origins of Cap and Trade to the Reagan Administration in the 1980s.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/.....nking.html
John Navratil| 6.21.10 @ 8:19PM
The acid rain mitigation was a cap on SO2 emissions which was to discourage use of high-sulphur coal without capturing the sulphur. The same sort of solution has been used in West Texas where H2S is prevalent in natural gas. It is similar, also, to VOC reduction regulations.
To compare the mitigation of a component present in fuel with a tax on the use of all carbon based fuels is to compare the flea to the dog.
Anthony| 6.21.10 @ 8:06PM
Wrong. Joe Barton's apology goes to the lack of intestional fortitude of our elected representatives. If there is any cozy relationship to be discerned here, it's the fact that our elected representatives have a cozy relationship with remaining in power.
The agenda of America is not their agenda. Their agenda is to remain politically viable. Stay in power, screw America.
All the D.C. R elite care about is not allowing the Ds to use the quote politically, despite the truth of the comment. All the D.C. Ds care about is making political points; meanwhile the oil gushes and the oil rolls on to the shores of America.
In D.C. it's politics 24/7 while the country goes to Hell.
This is why Sarah Palin scares the hell out of the Ds and the R establishement. She can articulate the fraud of Obama and when attacked, she exposes the attack for what it is. She doesn't cower, she doesn't back down, she just kicks ass. She has kicked Obama's ass on every occcasion she's taken him on. Not bad for the idiot the left insists she is.
If only the men in our party had her balls!!!!TERM LIMITS, TERM LIMITS, TERM LIMITS!!!!
Oldefarte| 6.21.10 @ 2:12PM
What this country desperately needs is for the Chris Christie-like TEA PARTIERS and American voters to KICK THESE POLITIAL RADICALS' ASSES PERMANENTLY OUT OF POWER beginning in November 2010!!!!!!!!!!!!
Stan Redmond| 6.22.10 @ 12:45AM
What bothers me is Obama and his minions comes out to announce they are stepping on the throat of BP. They will make BP pay. They will sue BP.
NOT ONCE, did he say "I am declaring a state of emergency and any federal resource needed to help BP solve this problem will be made available immediately."
NOPE. Obama wants ALL the credit and wants the oil on the shores for decades to keep putting in campaign ads. Every dead whale, bird, shark, and unemployed fisherman will be a tool to elect democrats for a long long time.
jstwndring| 6.22.10 @ 1:26AM
Well, I guess Thomas Frank is a moron. Those of us who believe in small government conservatism as defined by our Constitution believe the government is there to protect us. How does wanting the federal government to do something actually productive and protect us count as hypocritical? If this idiot can't see the difference between money spent to solve a valid problem, and money spent to study cow flatulents, then he needs to quit his day job, and get a real one. Nice try Mr. Frank, but, you don't get to dismiss us quite so easily.
jstwndring| 6.22.10 @ 1:37AM
Oh, and just one more thing, quit referring to Democrats as "liberals", or, democratic for that matter, as they are neither. They are a bunch of collectivist tyrants. Their every move is calculated to grab more, and more power for themselves by taking away our Constitutional rights with every new law they pass. Hate Crimes legislation, anyone? Ever hear of the First, and Fourteenth Amendments? How about their effort to destroy Fox News and conservative talk radio via the "Fairness" Doctrine. They are power-hungry propogandists through and through. One might even say, Nazis. I guess I just did.
Marc Jeric| 6.22.10 @ 2:42AM
No - they are not nazis, they are much worse, they are communists. I should know, having lived under both way back. Nazis come and go, while commies stay and stay. Hitler killed 6 million Jews and lasted 12 years, Stalin killed 60 million of everybody and lasted 32 years.
Nick| 6.22.10 @ 12:29PM
Five days ago, while President Dither was extorting $20 billion from BP, Bloomberg reported that the MMS was notified, back 0n February 13th, that there were cracks and leaks around the Deep Horizon well:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/.....-show.html
O'Bama, and the other goons in his regime, are in cahoots with BP to try and cover up their misdeeds and law breaking.
Come next January, when the Republicans retake the Congress, impeachment hearings should begin right away.
guo | 7.1.10 @ 5:18AM
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