Sex & Drugs & the Spill
- From: Raymond <Bluerhymer@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 07:05:30 -0700 (PDT)
Sex & Drugs & the Spill
Permalink By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: May 9, 2010
“Obama’s Katrina”: that was the line from some pundits and news
sources, as they tried to blame the current administration for the
gulf oil spill. It was nonsense, of course. An Associated Press review
of the Obama administration’s actions and statements as the disaster
unfolded found “little resemblance” to the shambolic response to
Katrina — and there has been nothing like those awful days when
everyone in the world except the Bush inner circle seemed aware of the
human catastrophe in New Orleans.
Yet there is a common thread running through Katrina and the gulf
spill — namely, the collapse in government competence and
effectiveness that took place during the Bush years.
The full story of the Deepwater Horizon blowout is still emerging. But
it’s already obvious both that BP failed to take adequate precautions,
and that federal regulators made no effort to ensure that such
precautions were taken.
For years, the Minerals Management Service, the arm of the Interior
Department that oversees drilling in the gulf, minimized the
environmental risks of drilling. It failed to require a backup
shutdown system that is standard in much of the rest of the world,
even though its own staff declared such a system necessary. It
exempted many offshore drillers from the requirement that they file
plans to deal with major oil spills. And it specifically allowed BP to
drill Deepwater Horizon without a detailed environmental analysis.
Surely, however, none of this — except, possibly, that last exemption,
granted early in the Obama administration — surprises anyone who
followed the history of the Interior Department during the Bush years.
For the Bush administration was, to a large degree, run by and for the
extractive industries — and I’m not just talking about Dick Cheney’s
energy task force. Crucially, management of Interior was turned over
to lobbyists, most notably J. Steven Griles, a coal-industry lobbyist
who became deputy secretary and effectively ran the department. (In
2007 Mr. Griles pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about his ties to
Jack Abramoff.)
Given this history, it’s not surprising that the Minerals Management
Service became subservient to the oil industry — although what
actually happened is almost too lurid to believe. According to reports
by Interior’s inspector general, abuses at the agency went beyond
undue influence: there was “a culture of substance abuse and
promiscuity” — cocaine, sexual relationships with industry
representatives, and more. Protecting the environment was presumably
the last thing on these government employees’ minds.
Now, President Obama isn’t completely innocent of blame in the current
spill. As I said, BP received an environmental waiver for Deepwater
Horizon after Mr. Obama took office. It’s true that he’d only been in
the White House for two and half months, and the Senate wouldn’t
confirm the new head of the Minerals Management Service until four
months later. But the fact that the administration hadn’t yet had time
to put its stamp on the agency should have led to extra caution about
giving the go-ahead to projects with possible environmental risks.
And it’s worth noting that environmentalists were bitterly
disappointed when Mr. Obama chose Ken Salazar as secretary of the
interior. They feared that he would be too friendly to mineral and
agricultural interests, that his appointment meant that there wouldn’t
be a sharp break with Bush-era policies — and in this one instance at
least, they seem to have been right.
In any case, now is the time to make that break — and I don’t just
mean by cleaning house at the Minerals Management Service. What really
needs to change is our whole attitude toward government. For the
troubles at Interior weren’t unique: they were part of a broader
pattern that includes the failure of banking regulation and the
transformation of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a much-
admired organization during the Clinton years, into a cruel joke. And
the common theme in all these stories is the degradation of effective
government by antigovernment ideology.
Mr. Obama understands this: he gave an especially eloquent defense of
government at the University of Michigan’s commencement, declaring
among other things that “government is what ensures that mines adhere
to safety standards and that oil spills are cleaned up by the
companies that caused them.”
Yet antigovernment ideology remains all too prevalent, despite the
havoc it has wrought. In fact, it has been making a comeback with the
rise of the Tea Party movement. If there’s any silver lining to the
disaster in the gulf, it is that it may serve as a wake-up call, a
reminder that we need politicians who believe in good government,
because there are some jobs only the government can do.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/10/opinion/10krugman.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
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