Ed Paschke ‘Bellisima’The news from the Gulf of Mexico is that there is no news. A massive spewage of crude oil into the ocean has become ordinary.
I wonder what Lady Gaga is up to?
Just about everything we know about the disastrous gulf oil spill we could have learned from Google Earth: thousands of miles of the Gulf of Mexico covered in oil slick or sheen, some of it headed for the Florida coast; almost 46,000 square miles, an area about the size of Pennsylvania, closed to fishing; miles of Louisiana marshland under siege from heavy oil.
But there is far more that we don’t know, either because the government has not extracted the information from BP or is not sharing it with the public.
Sharing information is at the bottom of the list of deficiencies. This government does not know how to govern.
Howcum the government didn’t freeze BP’s assets worldwide? That would guarantee BP’s financial responsibility for the spill, wouldn’t it? Howcum the Justice Department hasn’t begun an investigation? Where is the Special Prosecutor? Howcum the President didn’t order BP to drop everything else and use all of its resources to plug the leak? Where is BP’s oil spill response teams and equipment? Why isn’t the Federal government in court demanding a $2 million per day fine for oil discharge rule violations?
Where is the criminal investigation, the grand jury and the list of indictments promised? Where is the promise of BP executives and other responsible individuals – and there are many – facing accountability on the dock?
Long prison terms would serve to warn others!
Obama is the latest personification of the handwringing idiot Bill Clinton. In whose presidency all the TV’s in the White House were tuned 24 hours to the Weather Channel. This so Clinton could fly to storm damage sites and commiserate with the myriad tornado and flood victims: feel their lousy- stinkin’ pain.
Obama’s variation on the theme of inept has been to send thousands of bureaucrats to New Orleans – at taxpayer expense of course – to no discernible effect.
Like most political entities today, Obama does not know how to govern.
In every case, the suffering public and the country as a whole becomes a prop for regals’ posturing noblesse oblige, like G. W. Bush’s patronizing appearance in New Orleans after Katrina.
Governing is the ability to throw the fear of God into those who act badly within reach of government. Government is the force that stands for the citizens against the overreach of private interests. It balances the scales of public service needs on the one hand against the desire for private gain at any and all cost on the other. Governance contains an element of the adverse. It keeps the powerful off balance, for the benefit of the powerful themselves … who would otherwise take all that is productive to their own and allow it to fall to waste.
The failure of private greed as a substitute for policy is its fundamental indiscipline. To the powerful private interests, opportunity costs are all that matter.
Where is anything in the American public ambit but BP’s contempt for the country and for its resource stewardship responsibility?
Where is anything but Wall Street’s contempt for the public as well as its clients?
Where is the accountability? Where is the demand to restructure, to accept reality about all the non- collectible loans on the taxpayer’s account? When is the end of the Potemkin economy which promotes a fraudulent recovery that isn’t? The answer to the last is when that economy fails on its own, taking what is left of the government’s credibility with it!
While banks like Goldman- Sachs and Citigruppe sell trust, the only product of government is credibility.
When is the US government going to tell the people the truth about energy and the environment? When is the government going to govern; to begin the necessary preparations so that observable reality and outcomes do not fall with shattering effect upon the unsuspecting public.
The BP spill is part of the greater whole. The regulators relied entirely upon the assurances of an industry operating at the bleeding edge of technical capability while cutting as many corners as possible at the same time. How does this differ from the abuse of derivatives or mortgage- backed securities by finance firms? In all events, the government rewards the businesses involved for failure. Instead of simply shutting down the offenders until they or others can demonstrate the required competence, the offenders are allowed competitive advantage over their peers.
The government giving BP 48 hours to prove that its other platforms are compliant to all rules and regulations or face shutdowns would be reasonable, no?
Of course, BP would cry that constraining their operations – particularly if a platform or two is closed due to deficiencies – would cause shortages. The government could respond by ramrodding a $4 or $5 dollar gasoline tax and import fee through Congress, to encourage conservation and help increase government revenues! That would be unpleasant. People would cry that their toys would be too expensive to play with. The Tea Party- and Rush Limbaugh set would complain bitterly because they would not be getting the benefits they desire at everyone else’s expense.
That’s what governments do, they govern. They make difficult and unpleasant demands upon their constituencies. They do so for the good of the country.
In the US the rising alternative to Clinton/Obama style of non- governance is the radicalism of the Republican right. This posse does not believe in governing at all! Far from being the closeted- gay- dominatreux- fetishist- fascist scourges that they are made out to be, they instead wish to stand further afield and allow more BP’s to run amok, more Goldman- Sachsian outrages. They leave out the inevitable runs on the resource- and finance banks that are the endgame of this sort of fantasyland non- policy.
Non- policy and non- governance is why we are in our current predicament. Just as more debt cannot solve a crisis founded on excess debt, non- governance cannot cure ills resulting from non- governance.
As Homer Simpson would put it; “Duh …” Somehow, the Tea Partiers cannot grasp this. When is the Tea Party going to start demanding shared sacrifices?
Alternatively, the Tea Party concept is a stalking horse for those with ambition who would non- govern is a more effective manner than the Clinton exemplar. This way lies economic and cultural suicide. Who would trust any mechanism more complex than a cocktail napkin to the likes of Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck? This is what happens when government becomes just another pop- culture phenomenon. Limbaugh and his ilk fall into perspective when seen through the other end of the Andy Warhol “fifteen minutes of fame” telescope.
The Tea Party is just the latest version of The Beatles … without the hits, the hair, the boots or the paisley Rolls Royces. No wonder the Boomers are all over themselves about this, the nostalgia angles carry water while functioning public service sits and waits offstage.
Overseas, there is no governance in sight there, either. Watching German and French governments contradict each other on euro policy is pathetic. The Club Med leadership won’t do anything other than beg on one hand and tighten the screws on their own publics on the other. Meanwhile, Europe’s BPs and Goldmans are carefully escorted out of harm’s way, the harm that they themselves are responsible for creating.
The Chinese government is wedded to a derivative idea that is failed in the land of its originator. How can the ‘economy of waste’ not fail in China as it fails it the USA? Where is the leadership to chose a different path?
When is the new British government going to start telling more than tiny slices of the truth: about its resource difficulties, its fiscal black hole, its obsoleted institutionalization of resource waste as a social goal, that waste dollied up as ‘growth’?
The situation is deteriorating fast and unlike the 1930’s when similar dangers were emerging, there are no Churchills or Roosevelts on the political horizons. Only fashion plate poseurs: the Obamas, Merkels and Camerons.
We are lucky; Vladimir Putin is no Hitler and Hu Jintao is no Tojo … so far.