Today's Object of Ridicule and Scorn is Leonard Pitts of the Chicago Tribune, who feels compelled to mistakenly point out Bobby Jindal's hypocrisy over the Oil Spill.
Regular readers (of which there is precisely one) will recall I already took a look at the very issue of defending laissez-faire capitalism in the context of the Gulf Oil Spill earlier this week, (Thursday’s Object of Ridicule and Scorn was E.J. Dionne Jr. of the Washington Post) but I just couldn’t resist the opportunity to savage my hometown newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, which is a stiff breeze away from tumbling into complete insolvency.
Regular readers (of which there is precisely one) will recall I already took a look at the very issue of defending laissez-faire capitalism in the context of the Gulf Oil Spill earlier this week, (Thursday’s Object of Ridicule and Scorn was E.J. Dionne Jr. of the Washington Post) but I just couldn’t resist the opportunity to savage my hometown newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, which is a stiff breeze away from tumbling into complete insolvency.
Leonard Pitts presents an even less compelling argument than Dionne did. No, the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico does not underscore the need for increased federal power and regulation. Precisely the opposite, it shows how ineffectual and inefficient power can be when it is congealed within the grips of a massive bureaucracy.
FREE-MARKET RELIGION LOST IN OIL SPILL by Leonard Pitts
"There has never been a challenge that the American people, with as little interference as possible by the federal government, cannot handle." — Bobby Jindal, March 24, 2009
That was then.
Wow. Three words that are both a sentence and a paragraph. The simplicity of the sentence and the short paragraph break really draw me in to the tension of the writing and underscore the starkness of the comparison.
…Spinal Tap? …Sparta? …how we do it?This is
now:
11 people dead in an oil rig explosion,
Not to belittle those people’s deaths, but wasn’t that “then” too?
fragile marshlands damaged,
Past tense again. This is still then.
perhaps irreparably, uncalculated millions (billions?) in lost revenue for the tourism and fishing industries,
Sure. Now everyone cares about revenues and profits. (And ‘lost’ is still past tense)
and a short attention span nation
Don’t insult us. We’ve stared grimly at a bubbling plume of crude for days because it portends a disaster thousands of miles away from us. It has dominated the news cycle at a point when the President’s Supreme Court nomination is still being vetted, the Congress is passing a massive Financial Industry Overhaul, Iran and Israel inch closer war, and a resolution to our immigration crisis continues to elude our federally elected representatives. That’s plenty of attention span.
Transfixed
Past tense again.
by a compelling image from a deep sea camera, brown gunk billowing out from a hole in the ocean floor, Things Getting Worse in real time.
Things Getting Worse is a proper noun? Are they a band? I bet they have a keytaur player.
And Bobby Jindal, governor of Louisiana, off whose coast this tragedy is centered, is singing a new song, starkly at odds with what he said last year in a speech before the Republican faithful. Now he's BEGGING for federal "interference."
Shouldn’t the very notion that the duly-elected governor of a state in the grips of a disaster begging appointed federal bureaucrats at FEMA or the EPA grate against any society that regards government as a stewardship conducted only through the consent of the governed?
He wants federal money,
Federal income tax rates are between 10% and 35% (and likely to increase). Louisiana state income tax rates are between 2% and 6%. There are good reasons state income tax rates are so low. First, Louisiana must, by necessity, compete in a marketplace with the other states like Texas and Mississippi to draw income-generating businesses and individuals into the tax base. Secondly, the Federal Government has amassed so much unwarranted authority that they have overwhelmed the capacity for citizens to pay higher state tax rates. Liberal policies of amassing control at a federal level have left states crippled to handle crises like this on their own. Yet as the destruction they enabled continues, men like Pitts mock the malnourished state as feeble.
federal supplies, wants the feds to help create barrier islands to protect Louisiana wetlands from oil.
No. He wants federal authorities at the Army Corps of Engineers to stop preventing him from creating barrier islands on his own. There’s a big difference.
Not to pick on Jindal. He is but one prominent voice in a chorus of Gulf state officials who once preached the virtues of tiny government
Tiny FEDERAL government. Jindal’s feelings on state and local governments are far less well-known.
but have discovered, in the wake of this spreading disaster, the virtues of government that is robust enough, at a minimum, to help them out of a jam.
Oh? I wasn’t aware that the Federal Government had rescued hapless Louisiana and saved the day. The Feds have been mired in incompetence from the start. They failed to execute controlled burns of the leaking crude when it was still out in Federally controlled water because of bureaucratic inaction. They’ve continued to fail to cap the well, farming out responsibility to BP because the Feds are clearly MORE incompetent. They’ve gotten in the way of Jindal’s efforts to protect his state at every turn. The Federal Government absolutely can not get Louisiana out of this jam,
One hears pointed questions about President Barack Obama's engagement or lack thereof in the unfolding crisis. One hears accusations that the government was lax in its oversight duties and too cozy with the oil industry it was supposed to be regulating. One hears nothing about deregulation,
Yes, one does. The entire reason that the leak has been so difficult to plug is because onerous environmental regulations forced BP to drill in deep water, as opposed to easier to control sites. Had this leak occurred on land or on the continental shelf, it would have been capped pretty much the day of the leak.
about leaving the free market alone to do its magic.
A liberal’s understanding of the free market: magic. A liberal's understanding of magic: shove a dove down your pants and wait for the puff of smoke to let it out.
You know what they say: it's all fun and games till somebody gets hurt.
No, they say “It’s all fun and games ‘til someone loses an eye.” Sack up, Leonard.
Well, the Gulf Coast is hurt, hurt in ways that may take years to fully assess, much less repair. And the sudden silence from the apostles of small government and free markets is telling.
You mean, the refusal to play politics with a massive human, economic, and ecological disaster gives you an indication that the entire free market concept foisted by the acolyte-zealots of Adam Smith is all hokum?
The thing is, their argument is not fundamentally wrong.
Does that mean it’s fundamentally right?
Who among us does not believe government is frequently bloated, inefficient and bound by preposterous rules? Who among us does not think it is often wasteful, hideously complex and redundantly redundant?
You're okay with this? Perhaps you don't understand the adverb 'hideously.'
Yes, government is not perfect.
This would be an excellent time to reference Madison’s concept of a “more perfect union.” It’s in the Constitution, you know.
Nor is it perfectible.
It’s in the Preamble for Christ’s sake! You only have to read one sentence!
As adults, we should understand that. Any bureaucracy serving 309 million people and representing their interests in a world of 6.8 billion people, is likely always to have flaws.
The more ways in which it forces itself to serve those 309 million people only amplifies its flaws. Instead of being a protector of American sovereignty, the Federal Government is now also a car company, a financial company, a healthcare company, a massive land-owner, and an insurance provider, among other egregious functions I’m overlooking. Is it any wonder why the bureaucracy has failed to serve us?
Thus, fixing government, making it more streamlined and responsive, is and will always be an ongoing project.
Where is the line between imperfect and counterproductive? I can deal with imperfect. But we’re not talking about imperfection. We’re talking about a government that loots the money of the taxpayers and uses it to finance projects that directly injure certain taxpayers. How would you feel if, as a Ford employee, you now had to deal with the renewed competition of General Motors, backed by the printing presses of the Treasury Department? How about if you owned a private health insurance company, now regulated by its chief competitor? Every one of these decisions injects unneeded risk into the markets, clogs the flow of capital, and discourages consumption.
But instead of undertaking that project, people like Jindal rail against the very concept of government itself,
Jindal’s not an anarchist by any stretch of the imagination. His objection is that amassing power at the FEDERAL increases the distance between authority the source of its power. This leads to a loss of control, inefficiency, disenfranchisement, and anger.
selling the delusional notion that taxation and regulation represent the evisceration of some essential American principle.
Did they even teach this guy the history of the American Revolution?
They wax eloquent about what great things the free market and the free American could do if government would just get off their backs.
Here's the amazing part: it's been tried. It was tried for the first hundred years of American existence. The free market is what earned America the moniker of "the Land of Opportunity." It's what made us the most prosperous society in human history. We can have it again. It's not too late. We just have to stop thinking of limited government and laissez-faire capitalism as radical extremism and start thinking of it as a tried and true expression of our cherished liberties.
One thinks of one's meat oozing with salmonella,
That’s why we generally cook chicken, champ.
one's paint filled with lead,
Yes, because fear of developmental retardation in children certainly isn’t enough to get Americans to change their consumption habits away from lead-based paints. Only taxation can provide incentives.
one's car getting 12 miles to the gallon,
The cost of gasoline being lowered by $2 per gallon
one's self being breezily denied a job for reasons of race, creed, gender or sexual orientation
The opening of an entire marketplace for discrimination-free jobs and consumer goods and services for people of any and every race, creed, gender, or sexual orientation rife with opportunity for whoever has the courage to bear the risk.
and, yes, one's ocean covered from horizon to horizon with a sheen of oil.
That one falls under the “insure domestic tranquility” clause of the preamble. Again: limited government DOES NOT MEAN ANARCHY.
And one shudders.
You see, government is not our enemy. Government is the imperfect embodiment of our common will.
And by continuing to divorce the control of local affairs from local governments and hoarding power in Washington, the government becomes so imperfect as to no longer embody anything except a self-perpetuating greed for more conglomeration of powers.
That is a not-so-fine distinction
It’s not a distinction at all, because no one is likely to confuse enemy with embodiment of self. You've made an argument of definition--and a bad one at that.
Jindal and others like him have lost in the rush to stoke the sense of grievance that burns in some conservative souls. It is a distinction they recalled with great clarity as oil began spilling upon their waters.
A distinction is more along the lines of enumerating the powers of the state government versus the powers of the federal government. Saying that government is always our friend isn’t a distinction. It’s a delusion.
As there are no atheists in foxholes, it turns out there are no small-government disciples in massive oil spills.
You need to listen more carefully.
No, with BP oil soaking the sands of his coastline, Bobby Jindal turned righteously to that big, sometimes bloated, often intrusive federal government,
Is that supposed to be an endorsement? That government is “bloated” and “often intrusive”?
and asked for help. He said, Send money, send resources.
You will notice he never once said, send less.
This is like criticizing the Japanese for asking us to send military support if they’re invaded by China. Of course they want military support. The reason they don’t have their own military is because we won’t, by international law, allow them to have one. The reason that Jindal doesn't have the authority, power, and funding to control the oil spill is because the Federal Government won't allow it of the state government of Louisiana.
Here’s the point: government intervention has become a hindrance to the economy. The stated purpose of the federal government are articulated in the preamble of the Constitution. It is to:
· Form a more perfect union
· Establish justice
· Insure domestic Tranquility
· Provide for the common defense
· Promote the general Welfare
· Secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity
Federal aid in controlling the Gulf Oil Spill, which would be a drop in the bucket of the federal budget, is precisely what the Constitution referred to with the goal to “insure domestic Tranquility.” Every conservative from Bobby Jindal to Rush Limbaugh agrees that these are the appropriate uses of the federal government.
This crisis in the Gulf has revealed the roots of our concerns. Why do the statists of the Washington establishment fight so violently to control segments that rightfully belong to the private sector when the power apparatus drags its feet to execute to those responsibilities with which it is Constitutionally charged? Why do we let it?
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