[Tichy]

I must admit, I don't understand this. What do US presidents, or for what it's worth, US governments, know about how to stop oil spills 5000 feet below the surface of the sea?

What reason is there to assume that BP is not trying the best it can to stop the spill, and to them being the best experts on the subject?

Also, hasn't the government called in a panel of independent experts already?

[jbooth]

It's simple. When things are going well, everybody spends all their time calling government the problem, cutting funding, shredding regulations and defanging any government enforcement agencies.

Then when things go bad, everyone's pissed that the government isn't omnipotent.

[anamax]

> It's simple.

You're forgetting that Obama and the Dems campaigned on "we're far more competent than Bush and the Repubs. If you elect us, sea levels will fall, [etc]."

It's sort of like the "huge financial firms aren't giving money to Obama, that money comes from their executives" argument. While true, you never hear it about money going to Repubs.

[jbooth]

Yeah, and the Republicans campaigned on "all you need to know about energy is drill baby drill".

So do you think the government should have done more to prevent this? Or that this isn't a big deal and that the private sector is handling it fine?

[anamax]

> So do you think the government should have done more to prevent this? Or that this isn't a big deal and that the private sector is handling it fine?

mu.

I don't think that the govt could have done more to prevent this without causing other, more significant problems.

It is a big deal. I think that the private sector is doing a better job of fixing the leak than govt would have.

I note that govt had reasonable plans for dealing with the effects of leaks yet didn't bother. (For example, burning, which should have been started on day 1 and would have helped significantly, was pre-cleared in the 1990s for exactly that reason. Note that it never happened in any meaningful way.) It's unclear why I should blame the private sector for that.

[jbooth]

Well, fair enough. It does actually sound like most people involved are doing their best job, except for the safety inspectors who let the thing get built that way in the first place.

[sigzero]

I like this quote because it is true as well. It is easy to point to finger.

"But Republicans should beware, and even mute their mischief. We're in the middle of an actual disaster. When they win back the presidency, they'll probably get the big California earthquake. And they'll probably blow it. Because, ironically enough, of a hard core of truth within their own philosophy: when you ask a government far away in Washington to handle everything, it will handle nothing well."

[anamax]

> It does actually sound like most people involved are doing their best job, except for the safety inspectors who let the thing get built that way in the first place.

Not at all. The cleanup and reaction people failed horribly, and most of them were in govt.

[sigzero]

Big Oil gives to the Democrats. I wonder why? I read somewhere that Obama has been the biggest recipient of Big Oil monies as a politician in the last 25 years. Again, I wonder why?

[jbooth]

All big lobbies give to both parties.

Obama has quite loudly proclaimed that he wants to take our economy off of oil dependence and onto renewables. He says this multiple times every week. If Big Oil has bought and paid for him, they've done a horrible job of it.

FYI: "I wonder why?" is terrible form. Make a statement and defend it with facts. You're not even arguing anything, just trying to insinuate things that are quite clearly contradicted by the man's repeated public statements.

[anamax]

> Obama has quite loudly proclaimed that he wants to take our economy off of oil dependence and onto renewables. He says this multiple times every week.

He says similar things about "big finance" but his actions are different.

[sigzero]

"Then when things go bad, everyone's pissed that the government isn't omnipotent."

That, my friend, is a true statement.

[jbooth]

For bonus points, it's usually the same people who were loudest about shredding regulations and disempowering government in the first place.

Related examples include the NIMBY a-holes who lobby against cell phone towers in their town while having a family plan, and of course people who insist on tax cuts while demanding better services.