We can all rest easy. One of the experts in Washington this week to brainstorm solutions to the oil leak knows a thing or two about blockbuster disasters ..... Titanic director James Cameron. It sounds absurd, but actually it may be an inspired idea: Cameron is an expert at underwater filming and remote vehicle technologies. He now says BP turned down his offer to help. But he wasn't turned away by the EPA: the truth is that government needs as much expert talent as it can get.
President Obama himself has made it clear who has the know-how, and it's not a government agency or even the world's mightiest military: he said last week that the Defense Secretary and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told him that "the federal government does not possess superior technology to BP." And while many Americans insist that the U.S. government should step in and take over, Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen, who is heading the federal response to the spill, essentially said, get real: "to push BP out of the way would raise a question, to replace them with what?" The upshot: the government has little choice but to rely on BP, the company federal investigators are now probing on possible criminal charges.
It begs the question: why is there no effective counterweight within the government able to step in when disaster strikes, or to keep tabs on industry behavior to prevent disasters from happening? It is because over the past 3 decades, government talent, experience, technological know-how and power has been overtaken by private companies. The work and status of regulators and other government employees has been increasingly demeaned, devalued, or outsourced to contractors beholden to a bottom line, and key agencies haven't kept up with the vital technology. That has left the government without the competitive tools, manpower, resources or mandate - businesses are "superior," to hear the U.S. military tell it, and often even drive the regulatory agenda to suit their interests (Here's the latest Huff Post reporting on BP's formidable lobbying machine.) Janine examines these trends up close in her book Shadow Elite.
We seem to have taken it as a given that some business activities are so complex that it would be wildly impractical and expensive to acquire and retain the talent and technology that would allow government oversight power to keep up. How much would it cost the government to understand all the relevant off-shore drilling technology at play in the Gulf of Mexico? Or to grasp the very latest workings or "innovations" of Wall Street? Or have public servants regulating the car industry actually know the guts of the computer programs that now run our vehicles? If you think all that would cost too much, just total up the costs - in lives, livelihoods, life savings and tax dollars that have been lost in these three cases: the oil spill, the economic collapse, and the Toyota recall. It only seems impractical or expensive until disaster strikes.
In the case of the oil spill, one proposal from Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is to create, as described in the New York Times, "a kind of parallel technological universe in which government would have .. robots .. and ... other tools necessary to help control a big blowout." Try to imagine the political response to that idea before the April blowout: it's too expensive, government doesn't need these high-price gadgets, the industry can handle this.
That attitude traces back to at least the Reagan era, when politicians began attacking government and regulatory power -- determined to restrain the growth of government, or, rather, give the appearance of restraint. The irony is that politicians actually created a bigger, more expensive and far less accountable shadow government, by farming out vast amounts of work to businesses.
Today upwards of three-quarters of the work of federal government, measured in terms of jobs, is contracted out. This has been part of a fundamental redesign of governing: contractors do the work of government but ultimately answer to someone else -- not you, the taxpayer -- but typically a company with an eye on maximizing profits. This may encourage contractors to cut corners on safety or ignore societal consequences. Meanwhile some oversight agencies have grown to look less like regulators and more like arms of the industry they are supposed to be policing, as was the case with the oil drilling "regulator", the Minerals Management Service. And throughout the government, regulatory agencies and beyond, there's been a drain of institutional expertise, information, talent and authority.
Take the CIA, where companies were soliciting active-duty intelligence officers during lunch hour in the cafeteria. (Some were later banned.) CIA director Michael Hayden complained in 2007 that his agency had begun "to look like the farm system for contractors around here." One reporter Tim Shorrock wrote this about top intel officials leaving for the private sector:
It's a privatization of the highest order, in which our collective memory and experience in intelligence -- our crown jewels of spying, so to speak -- are owned by corporate America.In another corner of the intelligence world, a full 95 percent of workers at the very secret National Reconnaissance Office, which runs U.S. spy satellites, are full-time contractors.
While many knowledgeable public servants have been lured over to the private sector and/or into roles as contractors, those who have chosen public service as their career have been demeaned, either implicitly or explicitly.
An explicit and egregious pattern of devaluing government experience and expertise could be seen at the hands of top players in the administration of George W. Bush. In Shadow Elite, Janine calls them the Neocon core - an informal group of a dozen or so neoconservatives, who've worked with each other in various incarnations for some thirty years to realize their goals for American foreign policy through the assertion of military power. In their drive to invade Iraq, core members sidelined the government process and showed disdain for both career public servants (such as CIA analysts who didn't support their positions) and expertise.
W. Patrick Lang, who earlier served stints as both a Defense intelligence officer for the Middle East, South Asia and Counter-Terrorism and a director of Defense HUMINT (human intelligence collection) for the Defense Agency, recalls a revealing conversation he had with Undersecretary of Defense for Policy and Neocon core member Douglas Feith in his office in early 2001. When Feith learned that Lang is an Arabist, he asked him "Is it really true that you really know the Arabs this well, and that you speak Arabic this well? Is that really true?" When Lang replied in the affirmative, Feith responded "That's too bad."
Feith's comment is a glaring example of contempt for government expertise. More subtle was the case of the Clinton administration's plan to "reinvent government". The implication was that federal workers -- lumbering, inefficient and risk-averse -- needed business to jump-start (or replace) them. The Clinton White House also undermined financial oversight power -- by letting banks diversify into new businesses and by letting derivatives go unregulated -- two key factors in the economic collapse.
As for the oil industry, it had effectively hijacked its regulator -- using its power to argue, conveniently, that only they, the regulated, had the expertise to regulate themselves. Unfortunately, they were largely right: it appears now that the U.S. has little choice but to rely on BP for the expertise to oversee the mess they made. This makes further mockery of Kentucky's Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul, who recently blasted the administration as anti-business and "un-American" for trying to put a "boot heel on the throat of BP." The truth is BP could have used the heel well before the spill. But after decades of ceding power to private industry, the government doesn't have any boots left in the closet.
The anti-government people have destroyed our ability to respond to emergencies and regulate businesses whose only motivation is to make money. When we privatize a war we loose our motivation to end it.
Trusting the corporation, the wealthy and powerful, is and always has been a problem for governments, ours as well as any modern nation. Our economy was almost flushed down some deep hole to protect the profits of a few. Now it looks like our environment is going down that same hole.
And it is so simple one hast to be willfully blind not to see that privtization does not serve the people but make us pay for the profits of very few parasties.
If You have a billion dollars for healthcare and give 30% of that to "investors" - guess what - You have only 700 million to treat the people who are ill.
If You have 10$ billion to govern the nations and You privatize the jobs it means a lot of money goes to the parsites so less is there to pay the people and do the jobs.
But hey, NOT privatizing is socialism, right? Baaaaadd. - So say the corporate owned media and rich "specialists". so it must be true. They make profit, so they have to know what they are talking about.
Same would be true for Idi Amin or Robert Mugabe. In China, the government would already own BP but it would not have been able to drill this deep and would not have the expertise to even tried to cap a deep well leaking.
So there are pluses and minuses to big government. On the plus side, when something bad happens, they can step in immediately, if not very effectively. Also, since government controls the press, the people are not unnecessarily upset by news coverage of the event. On the minus side, everyone is poorer and no one dares open their mouth.
"On the minus side, faceless corporations being forced to comply with regulations and laws by a government with the size, and the resources, to ensure compliance, is EVIL!!! This would unnecessarily cut into profits, making corporate shareholders unhappy. Also, there would be no free oil to keep the sand and sealife lubricated! And have you ever heard a squeaky shrimp? It's really sad."
In the late 60"s when the Federal Government finished the Interstate highway system it was the ENVY of the world. Now it is falling apart under our wheels for lack of money to maintain and upgrade. Your tax cuts at work.
If you need a more modern example of good government, then look no further than the Cash for Clunker program. It stimulated the sale of new cars, removing very costly inventory overhang, and forcing manufacturers to actuall build cars. What private sector program has been that successful in stimulating any marketplace? Well there is one. The ultimate ponzi scheme, lovingly referred to as Wall Street.
Enjoy your small government and tax cuts. It is the future.
It's very sad to see what this country is becoming and I fear that we are beyond self correcting as there are too many politicians, lobbyist, and CEO's who would rather sell this country piece-by-piece if they knew they could profit from it in anyway.
THE ANSWER AND SOLUTION ARE UNFORTUNATELY NOT IN EITHER OF THESE POLITICAL PARTIES. Most "Tea Party" people have just woken up but are still DREAMING IF THEY THINK THE BUSHES were ANYTHING BUT EVIL; and that things ARE SO DIFFERENT UNDER OBAMA when it comes to Corporatism !!!!!!
I just hope and pray that the revolution that must come can be a peaceful one, with all of those who consider themselves EITHER Liberal Progressives OR Conservatives realizing they have to stop pointing fingers at each other AND JOIN TOGETHER to EDUCATE ALL to the EVILS of these special interest and lobby groups.
You taking the time to write your wise words and spreading them are the foundation of the solution Bobo; PLEASE don't give up hope and keep up the GREAT WORK.......
Adam Smith wrote a truly important work that tried to put economics on a scientific footing. Unfortunately, there has been little progress since and, rather than treating The Wealth of Nations at a springboard, many (and in particular so-called Conservatives) treat it as revealed truth. Adam Smith is either laughing at the idiocy of his disciples or rolling over in his grave over the hoplessness of the human condititon. The "Age of Reason" is no more.