I think Frank Rich is way off this week, particularly in his conclusion:
The only good news from the oil spill is that when catastrophe strikes, even some hard-line conservatives, like Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, start begging for the federal government to act, and act big. It’s the crunch moment for government to make its case [for robust government action]— as Obama belatedly started to do on Thursday. But words are no match for results. As long as the stain washes up on shore, the hole in BP’s pipe will serve the right as a gaping hole in the president’s argument for expanded government supervision of, for starters, Big Oil and big banks. It’s not just the gulf that could suffer for decades to come.
Rich notes that the federal government looks impotent because they can’t cap the well in the Gulf of Mexico. And that feeds into the conservative narrative that the federal government is incompetent. But, that’s ignores what people want in this case. They want the federal government to take over. They wish the government had the tools to take over. They are going to demand that the government get the tools to deal with a future leak. They are going to demand the government more closely regulate the offshore drilling industry. So, Rich’s argument actually makes no sense.
Obama already has the authority to act in the Gulf but he refuses to do so.
TITLE 33 > CHAPTER 26 > SUBCHAPTER III
§ 1321. Oil and hazardous substance liability
Obama is married to BP and won’t direct other willing entities in the world to help clean up the mess.
carrying that over to this thread without accounting for what was said in that last thread is just SPAM. Please do not engage in that kind of behavior.
You posted a diary inferring that Obama does not have the authority when you should have known from the last thread that he does have the tools to act but refuses to.
You can distinguish between taking over the well-capping effort and the cleanup operation, right? You can distinguish between relying on the oil industries equipment and expertise and letting them have all the decision making authority, right?
Cuz, you don’t seem to be able to make those distinctions.
You write:
Nowhere does Rich suggest that Obama should cap the well. Rich rightly declares that the government looks impotent because of a general failure to act — call it Katrina II. Rich:
and then you write:
That’s the part of your comment that I am addressing — dealing with a leak, not simply capping the well. Cleaning up the mess. And you know that according to law the government DOES have the tools to deal with a leak so such a statement shouldn’t be allowed to stand unaddressed. Agree?
“Cleaning up the mess” is almost childish in its simplicity. How, exactly, were they, or anyone, supposed to do that that hasn’t been tried? This is not a “mess” to be cleaned up, it’s a catastrophe that will harm us for half a century or more. Twenty years after Exxon Valdez, turn over a rock on Prince William Sound and you find poisonous tar underneath. The ecology is still nowhere near recovery. And yet Obama is supposed to be shamed for not “cleaning up a mess” that makes the Alaska spill look like somebody pissing in a creek.
I agree with you on the perception part of the equation. But KaterinaII? That’s just pure bullshit so off the mark that it brings your own agenda into question.
The Dutch company Koseq, after 42 days, has been asked by the US to act.
from the Koseq website:
What “the people want” is conflicted because you are talking about several groups of people. And opinion is different from demand. I don’t foresee an environmental movement sweeping the country and demanding that politicians do something to re-regulate offshore drilling. There is too much media bafflegab for that to happen. And Rush and Beck are pumping their pollution into the rural areas of the heartland every day.
This is going to be more disappointing than financial industry re-regulation and reform.
The gaping hole in the President’s argument has to do with the failure of government messaging to close that hole in the argument. And that likely is because Obama himself is conflicted on how far he can go with re-regulation. Rich’s argument show how big the gaping hole in messaging is.
Yes, it makes no sense. But then, politics in the US right now makes no sense. Our political discussion has become dysfunctional to actually dealing with problems.
You’re overthinking, Booman. Rich’s argument makes no sense, which is exactly why he’s correct: the right-wing narrative of this makes no sense, either. But that won’t stop them from spinning it, nor will it stop some people from buying into it.
The fact that BP has controlled the response process from Day One (setting aside the argument of whether Obama had a choice in that or not – in practical terms, he didn’t, but the federal deference has still been revolting) is way too much detail for these folks. What they see is that government didn’t work during Katrina, and now, with the guy who said he’d make government work, bad things are still happening. End of story.
For much of Obama’s agenda, he’s been delayed or prevented from getting what he wants due to Republican obstructionism, and that hasn’t figured into this narrative either. Same thing. In its most basic terms, it goes like this: “The Democrats [aka Big Government] can’t get anything done. [Because we stopped them.] So elect us.”
So far, it’s been depressingly effective. The Stupid, It Burns.
I just don’t see it that way. Maybe it’s a matter of scale. Am I too focused on the response to this disaster and not focused enough on its impact on the meta-narrative of Big Government?
Maybe.
But I think the response will be tighter regulation and new federal capabilities and responsibilities in the oil industry, which will more likely bleed over to other areas than have the opposite effect.
What really frustrates me about all this is the framing opportunity that just calls out to be taken advantage of. The Repubs will spin this until the wheels come off. See! See! Big Government doesn’t work! Free markets! Free Markets!
The painfully obvious response is This is what you get when you let the Republicans run things. Regulators literally in bed with the companies they’re supposed to be regulating. Corners cut on safety and environmental protection and who knows what else. Epic disasters that someone else (the Democrats) have to clean up.
What do we hear from the Repubs? Exactly what you’d expect. What do we hear from our side? Crickets.
there’s plenty of time to get into that in pre-election months in the fall, at which time ppl will appreciate that the Obama admin didn’t waste airwaves politicizing this tragedy.
I agree, but SOMEBODY, not Obama, has to remind people that this is a Bush/GOP legacy, right now. The media desperately wants this to be “Obama’s Katrina” because that’s the last time they managed to do their job for a while. There have to be countervailing voices right now.
not sure I agree. there’s plenty of time in the fall to remind ppl this is a gop legacy. in the fall when it comes to campaigning there will be plenty of video of gopers spewing and whining and plenty of record of gop laxness. right now everyone is upset and urging Obama to “do something” even if that means point out that it’s gop’s fault. I don’t think this is the right time for that. I think reasoned action to deal with the gusher and damage is the first order of business and it will backfire if Obama takes time out of presidenting to frame the catastrophe politically. every week the media has a new reason why the event this week is THE test of Obama’s presidency. they are hopeless. there’s no way they can spin the destruction of the gulf coast for people in direct contact with it and those paying attention to environmental issues (which includes everyone under 25). remember Katrina – the media actually weren’t that hard on Bush iirc, except for Anderson Cooper. didn’t matter, ppl decided to believe their lyin’ eyes instead of the cr*p media.
Hmm, thought that’s pretty much what I was trying to say.
thought we disagreed about timing – sorry if I misunderstood you.
Ok, reread your comment. I don’t actually think we need the dem voices right now except with respect to uncovering facts ASAP about precisely what happened.
What Dave said. It’s OK to keep Obama above the fray if possible. But every other Democrat who gets close to a microphone ought to be, should have been, beating the drum of Republican obstruction, Republican corruption, Republican incompetence, driving home from day one what a monumental mess Obama and the Democrats inherited from Bush and Cheney and a Republican government.
Obama’s’s response to progressive demands: “I agree. Now go out and make me do it.”
I think you’re ignoring the lack of evidence that regulation or its lack directly caused this disaster. In the minds of most Americans, we have Big Government already, therefore it failed. The narrative from the right and the “middle”, running all the way from the likes of Krauthammer to the likes of Rich, Chris Matthews, and today Robert Redford will be to focus on the government’s inability to fix the problem, not on BP and its liability. There is an intensive and incredibly dishonest campaign going on to make this “Obama’s Katrina”. I don’t see the slightest basis in reality for it, but it seems to be becoming the default position for the “mainstream” media.
We are a nation of spoiled children who think “American knowhow” can run back the clock on every mistake, as Elizabeth Rosenthal suggests in the Times today.
Blaming the American people — “spoiled children” — is disingenuous when the real problem is a federal failure to act. They’re not doing what we pay them to do. It has nothing to do with us.
I guess you’re just going to keep repeating the same unbacked assertion over and over again. I don’t blame you for wanting there to be a fix, but it’s too late for that now. It was too late the moment the blow happened. Yeah, let’s do what we can to mitigate the damage, but wishful thinking only blurs the picture.
Americans voted for the inevitable to happen when we decided that keeping our cheap gas was more important than saying No to uncontrollable technology. We can whine all we want about “failure to act” now, but the price will still be paid. It has everything to do with us.
So you have facts at your disposal that the rest of us don’t? There is no solution? Oil put in the water is impossible to get out? Please share your source since no one, including the President seems to be aware of this.
I’m not going to link all the stuff on Cspan and NPR I’ve been glued to. What I get out of it includes:
–The vast majority of the oil is below the surface because of the effects of the extreme depth/pressure. Dispersants are designed to drive surface oil below the surface. That means the threat to beaches and wetlands is somewhat mitigated, but the deep oil will cause incredible longterm damage.
–The deep oil has been emulsified — broken down into droplets like salad dressing is. Can you imagine sucking water the volume of half of Lake Erie through a pipe, putting it in tankers, somehow separating out microscopic droplets of oil, building storage for the resulting oil, and pumping it out and starting all over again — all in a few days and without the likelihood of doing even more damage to the fisheries and the ecosystem than the oil itself?
— People keep yelling about how they did this or that in the Persian Gulf or wherever. The wells there are measured in hundreds, not thousands of feet. The pressure and its effects are not comparable.
— Mile-long oil plumes have formed mushroom clouds of emulsified petroleum and byproducts of interaction with pressure and seawater. They stretch from the sea floor to a few feet below the surface. Their underwater nature lessens visible pollution of beaches and wetlands but does huge damage to coastal fisheries where the Gulf ecosystem is born.
No, I don’t have special info or expertise. I’m going by what strikes me as the most credible explanations. If you have something better let’s hear it. I sure don’t blame you for wanting “something to be done”. We all do. What’s a lot harder is accepting that the poison toothpaste is just no going to go back in the tube. I don’t know — I have a powerful aversion to acting for action’s sake just because that makes us feel better, even though it does nothing to improve things. I hope I’m wrong and the myth of Yankee ingenuity will somehow triumph.
Media calling it a “spill” (oh I tipped over my glass of milk) and a “leak” (oh I see a few drops on the floor, I think this bucket is leaking) was one reason ppl didn’t get alarmed right away. It should be called something related to what it is. Both the Rich and Rosenthal articles hit a nerve for me and I disagree with both – environmental science is all about the judicious use of technology together with more organic methods. Embrace of technology wasn’t even the problem, it was recklessness and cutting corners on safety provisions. NYTimes had something in April about a way to short circuit animals’ experience of pain to make factory farms less “cruel” – i.e. the animals would still suffer, but not experience their suffering. That’s BP thinking, imo, but not many actual humans subscribe to it. in other words, I think Rosenthal is wrong.
After 42 days the US has finally acted.
news release:
For weeks now other countries and companies have been offering their expertise and equipment to help stop the oil gusher and to help clean up the oil in the Gulf of Mexico. Finally, a Dutch company is being taken up on its offer.
The Dutch company Koseq has been asked by the US to construct two sweeping arms, which will be used to clear the oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico. At the same time another six sweeping arms are being sent to the US from Europe.
Kodeq has had to wait a long time to get the job and had even started constructing the two sweeping arms. Now that it has been given the order, the gear will be flown out as soon as possible.
There’s no reason to think this will be any more successful than the attempts so far. I hope to god it is, but not latching onto one more “fix” right away does not = inaction.
To paraphrase Booman,
You should distinguish between taking over the well-capping effort and the cleanup operation.
The “Big Government” haters have been getting away with directing vast funds to their own causes, from the military to agribiz to the finance industry for decades without the slightest consequence. The Dems can’t hammer too hard on the hypocrisy because their own “deficit hawk” contingent plays the same game.
The fact seems to be that there’s nothing much the government can do at this point, despite the hysterical screams from the likes of Chris Matthews and Fox News for deploying whatever quick fix they’ve latched onto today. Given the combination of America’s nonexistent memory and Obama’s skitterishness about “revisiting the past”, it’s hard to see this leading to serious discussion or action to change the basic foundation that allowed this to happen. The only thing that will change that is for Obama and the Dems to launch an national crusade, Kennedy moon-shot style, to end the fossil economy no matter what. What are the odds of that happening? Not saying it couldn’t but it would require a seismic political/cultural shift that is not in evidence at the moment.
Au contraire, I think that’s what Obama will do. Remember the inaugural parade, at the very end of the parade were science floats and NASA irrc. someone pointed out that pattern in his speeches (maybe Booman – apologize, I don’t recall) that he starts out agreeing with the opposition, talking about bipartisanship, then gets into his main points. He has a strong commitment to science – his role models, JFK and Lincoln, under whom was founded the National Academy of Sciences.
The commitment is there, but somehow they all come off as those “little plans that have no power to stir mens’ blood”. Even though they’re not little. Maybe it’s time for a little flimflam like the race to put humans on the moon, or wartime rationing. Something we can see and even sacrifice for. Something that everybody knows/feels as life or death.
I think ppl (Obama plus environmentalists) will be able mobilize support. Your word “seismic” describes the impact of this event imo. the stupid bloviating (Maureen Dowd column, for example) is lots of white noise while the serious ppl are trying to step 1 shut down the gusher. step 2 is where do we go from here, and I think there will be support. One thing the NYTimes is doing commendably is the reporting on what went wrong. and the more hearings the better ASAP. and not let BP destroy any docs.
Considering the massive cost involved, and the difficulty of holding oil companies accountable in the courts, can the US government afford to take this over?
Unfortunately in a nation stuffed with lawyers, there’s also the question of ownership of the problem. The more government takes over remediation, the more it weakens the argument that BP is the sole responsible party under the law. It’s a dilemma growing out of decades of corruption and incompetence as Big Oil steers the ship of state into the rocks.
There is NO question of ownership of the problem. Obama owns it, just like Bush owned Katrina.
According to the law, BP owns it.
like there ARE no solutions to this horrific crime and the oil will continue to bleed into the Gulf until the well runs dry.
As far as government taking over, guns ablaze, who thinks they have the technology and equipment that BP doesn’t have? Is the government supposed to form some sort of shadow enterprise for every single business venture that is undertaken within the US in order to take over and FIX THINGS when they go wrong? Shit, how much would that cost?
It’s not that. Look overseas. Is there anything those other oil producing countries can offer us? You know, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait?
It would have to be a country that drills under water, and that has had experience with this particular kind of explosion and blowout. I can recall oil spills involving tankers, like the one that hit the Great Barrier reef off the coast of Australia, but I can’t recall an offshore rig explosion and spill of this magnitude. It’s already surpassed the Ixtoc ! spill of 1979.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ixtoc_I_oil_spill
If you simply google “oil spill cleanup” you might educate yourself on the technology of oil spill cleanup.
Wow, dick much? They’re doing the same stuff they’ve been doing unsuccessfully for 50 years. The oil tankers that “suck up” the oil….that solution that Saudi Arabia uses? Isn’t very efficient when the oil is only a few centimeters thick, or has been “dispersed” to death with poisonous chemicals.
dispersal was probably a mistake, but it was done under US (Coast Guard & others) supervision, and even then to not do anything because doing something ” Isn’t very efficient” is also a mistake. Lots of mistakes, and they need to be aired and not excused away simply because it was Obama who made them.
It wasn’t a mistake. It was a choice between driving the oil below the surface to try and limit it’s impact on the shoreline and wetlands, and by doing so making it not skimmable, or letting it stay on the surface where some could be skimmed but shoreline and wetlands would get hit harder and faster.
But I forgot your only goal is to trash Obama, to join the teabaggers in making this “Obama’s Katrina.” Maybe it’s time for you to go away add some more to your godlike store of wisdom.
Don B will probably have to take a day off tomorrow. all that Obama trashing must be exhausting.
I’m with Colin Powell on this. Get our biggest corporation – our military – on this disaster NOW. And accept any and all offers of other countries who have resources to get all this oil out of the water.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/30/colin-powell-oil-spill-is_n_594779.html
The same Colin Powell who spoke to the UN before the gulf war?
Go look at look at many are in the GOM working on this.
This is a civilian situation, not military.
What can be done is being done.
Powel lied and he wanted to hang onto his status rather than tell the truth.
Why would anyone listen to him?
What the eff does he know about oil?
Excuse me but NOBODY gives a shit about the size of the government when there is a disaster this large. Frank Rich failed by squandering his own “bully pulpit” by bringing up this type of DC pundit discussion at this juncture of the disaster. Not one person, including politicians, who lives near a body of water today cares if the government triples in size to deal with this nightmare.
The size of government discussion should/will come up when new regulations affect the revenue of oil companies — but only once the immediate disaster to the Gulf is dealt with.