Big Government is not the solution

Donna Brazile has a mighty convenient way of looking at facts. Why was BP drilling through a mile of water and 3 miles of earth? Because Big Government won’t let safe shallow water and dry land sites be developed!


Obama’s administration knew enough about BPs operations that they were going to recognize them for excellence in exploration and production, while ignoring that the Obama administration failed to enforce the safety requirements that may have prevented this fiasco.

Obamas Big Government gave BP a “pass” on having the emergency resources in place, required by Bush’s Big Government regulations to deal with such an accident and would have dealt with the spill at the site rather than waiting for it to reach hundreds of miles of beach and wildlife breeding areas; or mandating the use of dispersants that make the problem worse, not better.

Big Government is the entity dragging it’s feet and doing nothing but jabbering in response to Governor Jindal’s request for sand barriers to protect the vital wetlands along his coast. By the way Brazile, Jindal doesn’t have control over federal resources, only State resources. After Katrina it was the State government that delayed response by the federal government. With this oil spill, the State has requested permission to act and it is the big federal government that is delaying the response.

Maybe if the Obama administration was more interested in solving this problem than assessing blame, more would be getting done to actually stop the problem. If there was anyone in the Obama administration with any real world experience (rather than ivory tower theorizing) they would understand that first you fix the problem and then you establish how to keep it from happening again and assess responsibility for the damage. But then Obama never has been very good at accomplishing anything.

It is elucidating that 18 months into the Obama presidency their first line of defense is to blame Bush as if that actually accomplishes anything. When will Obama start taking responsibility for a government that he’s had complete access to since the day after the election in 2008?

The failure in this instance was not the lack of regulation, but the failure of Big Government to enforce the existing regulations designed to deal with just such an event. Increasing the scope or size of government will never compensate for failure to act according to existing regulations.

Government doesn’t have to be big, only competent. Unfortunately, competence is sorely lacking in the Obama administration as is painfully evident in their failure to prevent this problem; in their slow and inept response to this problem; in their poor coordination and implementation of available resources to deal with this problem; and their lack of focus in addressing the mitigation of this problem.

Obama’s administration has lots of experience and resources dedicated controlling “spin”. They just don’t accomplish much else.