Over the High-Tech Rainbow
In this piece, Sue Halpern writes: Siri [embedded in Apple’s iPhone 4S] “was incubated at the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), alongsidfe predator drones and driverless combat vehicles, and where the seeds of Apple’s original Macintosh computer were sowed.”
Perhaps government does do some good, no?
Showing posts with label Business. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Business. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Shuttle’s end leaves NASA a pension bill
This is a perfect example of governmental inefficiency, to say the least.
The nation’s space agency plans to spend about half a billion dollars next year to replenish the pension fund of the contractor that has supplied thousands of workers to the space shuttle program. The shuttle program accounts for a vast majority of the business of United Space Alliance, originally a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin. With the demise of the shuttle program, United Space Alliance will be left without a source of revenue to keep its pension plan afloat. So the company wants to terminate its family of pension plans, covering 11,000 workers and retirees, and continue as a smaller, nimbler concern to compete for other contracts.
United Space Alliance hired the workers, so they were not employees of Boeing or L-M. But United Space was a joint venture of the two companies, so, in effect, they were employees of both. Or none. Infinitely fine legerdemain.
Normally, a company that lost a lifeblood contract would have little choice but to declare bankruptcy and ask the federal insurer, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, to take over its pensions. But that insurer limits benefits, meaning not everyone gets as much as they had been promised. United Space Alliance’s plan also allows participants to take their pensions as a single check and includes retiree health benefits, neither of which would be permitted by the pension insurer.
Not everyone gets as much as promised; that is a familiar phrase: private companies screw their workers, and now states are doing the same. But United Space Alliance workers are going to get corporate welfare, courtesy of NASA.
United Space Alliance, however, has a rare pledge from a different government agency to pay the bill. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration says in its contract with the company that it will cover its pension costs “to the extent they are otherwise allowable, allocable and reasonable.” NASA interprets this to include the cost of terminating its pension plans outside of bankruptcy. The pension fund now has about half the amount needed. The president’s budget proposal for the 2012 fiscal year requests $547.9 million for NASA to provide the rest. That is nearly 3 percent of the agency’s total budget and just about what the Science Mission Directorate at NASA spent last year on all grants and subsidies to study climate change, planetary systems and the origins of life in the universe.
Welfare, or science? Why, welfare, of course.
Although NASA was reimbursing the contractor for the annual pension contributions, it had no say over how the money was invested. United Space Alliance put most of the money into stocks. The backstop will be unusually costly because of market conditions. While United Space Alliance has made its required contributions every year, the fund lost nearly $200 million in the market turmoil of 2008 and 2009. When interest rates are very low, as they have been, the cost of the promises rises rapidly as well, creating a bigger shortfall.
That is inefficiency bordering on corruption: NASA agreed to pay, and had no further say on tax-payer dollars.
The cash infusion is also being readied at a time when some members of Congress are demanding cuts in spending and threatening to block anything that could be construed as a taxpayer bailout. “It’s unfortunate that it’s coming in this fiscal environment,” said Bill Hill, NASA assistant associate administrator for the space shuttle.
Very unfortunate. So are many other things, including States Lean on Public Workers for Bigger Pension Contributions. Very unfortunate.
He said that he hoped Congress would appropriate the money before the fiscal year ended on Sept. 30. If not, he said, NASA will have to divert funds from space-related activities.
Or maybe lay off some financial wizards it employs, the very bozos that worked out such an agreement with United Space Alliance.
The nation’s space agency plans to spend about half a billion dollars next year to replenish the pension fund of the contractor that has supplied thousands of workers to the space shuttle program. The shuttle program accounts for a vast majority of the business of United Space Alliance, originally a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin. With the demise of the shuttle program, United Space Alliance will be left without a source of revenue to keep its pension plan afloat. So the company wants to terminate its family of pension plans, covering 11,000 workers and retirees, and continue as a smaller, nimbler concern to compete for other contracts.
United Space Alliance hired the workers, so they were not employees of Boeing or L-M. But United Space was a joint venture of the two companies, so, in effect, they were employees of both. Or none. Infinitely fine legerdemain.
Normally, a company that lost a lifeblood contract would have little choice but to declare bankruptcy and ask the federal insurer, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, to take over its pensions. But that insurer limits benefits, meaning not everyone gets as much as they had been promised. United Space Alliance’s plan also allows participants to take their pensions as a single check and includes retiree health benefits, neither of which would be permitted by the pension insurer.
Not everyone gets as much as promised; that is a familiar phrase: private companies screw their workers, and now states are doing the same. But United Space Alliance workers are going to get corporate welfare, courtesy of NASA.
United Space Alliance, however, has a rare pledge from a different government agency to pay the bill. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration says in its contract with the company that it will cover its pension costs “to the extent they are otherwise allowable, allocable and reasonable.” NASA interprets this to include the cost of terminating its pension plans outside of bankruptcy. The pension fund now has about half the amount needed. The president’s budget proposal for the 2012 fiscal year requests $547.9 million for NASA to provide the rest. That is nearly 3 percent of the agency’s total budget and just about what the Science Mission Directorate at NASA spent last year on all grants and subsidies to study climate change, planetary systems and the origins of life in the universe.
Welfare, or science? Why, welfare, of course.
Although NASA was reimbursing the contractor for the annual pension contributions, it had no say over how the money was invested. United Space Alliance put most of the money into stocks. The backstop will be unusually costly because of market conditions. While United Space Alliance has made its required contributions every year, the fund lost nearly $200 million in the market turmoil of 2008 and 2009. When interest rates are very low, as they have been, the cost of the promises rises rapidly as well, creating a bigger shortfall.
That is inefficiency bordering on corruption: NASA agreed to pay, and had no further say on tax-payer dollars.
The cash infusion is also being readied at a time when some members of Congress are demanding cuts in spending and threatening to block anything that could be construed as a taxpayer bailout. “It’s unfortunate that it’s coming in this fiscal environment,” said Bill Hill, NASA assistant associate administrator for the space shuttle.
Very unfortunate. So are many other things, including States Lean on Public Workers for Bigger Pension Contributions. Very unfortunate.
He said that he hoped Congress would appropriate the money before the fiscal year ended on Sept. 30. If not, he said, NASA will have to divert funds from space-related activities.
Or maybe lay off some financial wizards it employs, the very bozos that worked out such an agreement with United Space Alliance.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Don't publish THAT
The government has issued warnings that formaldehyde can cause cancer and that styrene might as well. Formaldehyde, the report says, is found in worrisome quantities in plywood, particle board, mortuaries, and hair salons, while high levels of styrene are found in boats, bathtubs, and plastic cups and plates. The government's Report on Carcinogens said consumers should avoid contact with the materials, but that they probably don't pose a serious risk to most people. The workers who make formaldehyde and styrene products, however, are at greater risk. The report was delayed for several years because of intense lobbying from the chemical industry.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Obama and Wall Street
President Obama is in town today, bulking up his war chest with a fund-raising party at the Waldorf Astoria and a private reception for wealthy donors. The reception — which will be held at the Fifth Avenue apartment of the wife of former New Jersey governor (and ex–Goldman Sachs CEO) Jon Corzine — will be attended by about 70 thick-walleted supporters, each of whom will cough up $38,500 for the honor of kicking Obama’s reelection efforts into gear.
Pocket change, for these folks. What is the difference between campaign contributions and influence-buying?
Pocket change, for these folks. What is the difference between campaign contributions and influence-buying?
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Insurance, taxes, and snow
Tea Party Shadows Health Care Ruling: “It is difficult to imagine,” Judge Vinson, of Federal District Court in Pensacola, Fla., wrote in a central passage of his 78-page opinion, “that a nation which began, at least in part, as the result of opposition to a British mandate giving the East India Company a monopoly and imposing a nominal tax on all tea sold in America would have set out to create a government with the power to force people to buy tea in the first place.” Supporters of the health care act — which Judge Vinson invalidated after ruling it was unconstitutional to require citizens to buy health insurance — saw in the language a deliberate nod to the Tea Party movement. Government can mandate that all drivers must have insurance in order to drive; how is that so very different?
The Return of the Cranky Mayor: After a short, uncharacteristic stretch of empathy and contrition from New York City’s chief executive following the Blizzard Brouhaha, the moody mayor re-emerged on Wednesday morning, ready to sass. The setting was the Blue Room at City Hall, where Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg was asked why municipal employees were being penalized for not showing up to work during a snowstorm last week — even though the city instructed most of them to stay home. Sympathetic he was not. I hadn't noticed that the Mayor had stopped being cranky.
The Paradox of Corporate Taxes: Of the 500 big companies in the well-known Standard & Poor’s stock index, 115 paid a total corporate tax rate — both federal and otherwise — of less than 20 percent over the last five years, according to an analysis of company reports done for The New York Times by Capital IQ, a research firm. Thirty-nine of those companies paid a rate less than 10 percent.
The Return of the Cranky Mayor: After a short, uncharacteristic stretch of empathy and contrition from New York City’s chief executive following the Blizzard Brouhaha, the moody mayor re-emerged on Wednesday morning, ready to sass. The setting was the Blue Room at City Hall, where Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg was asked why municipal employees were being penalized for not showing up to work during a snowstorm last week — even though the city instructed most of them to stay home. Sympathetic he was not. I hadn't noticed that the Mayor had stopped being cranky.
The Paradox of Corporate Taxes: Of the 500 big companies in the well-known Standard & Poor’s stock index, 115 paid a total corporate tax rate — both federal and otherwise — of less than 20 percent over the last five years, according to an analysis of company reports done for The New York Times by Capital IQ, a research firm. Thirty-nine of those companies paid a rate less than 10 percent.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Right wing flexes muscle
3 stories offer glimpses at the Republican Party early in 2011, the year it assumes some governmental power.
Darrell Issa, soon to be launching at least half a dozen investigations into the Obama administration's first two years, offers to have business tell him what laws and rules they it would like to have repealed.
Companies spend millions of dollars each year complaining to Congress about burdensome laws and regulations, pressing their concerns in public campaigns and in private meetings. They rarely wait for invitations. Last month a senior House Republican, Representative Darrell Issa of California, nevertheless dispatched letters to 150 companies, trade groups and research organizations asking them to identify federal regulations that are restraining economic recovery and job growth. Mr. Issa, incoming chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said the concerns of businesses had been ignored by the Obama administration as it pursued what he described as an unprecedented regulatory expansion.
He's offering them a rebate on lobbying, in effect. Indiana's governor, Mitch Daniels, has his own agenda: burnish his credentials as a budget hawk in advance of launching his own presidential bid.
Congressional Republicans have spent much of the last decade voting for tax cuts and spending increases, all the while giving speeches decrying the deficit. Mr. Daniels, who took office in 2005, has reduced the number of state workers by 18 percent and held spending growth below inflation. He has raised the sales tax to help make up for a property tax cut. Largely as a result, Indiana finds itself in better fiscal shape than many other states.
Reduce the state's work force, increase unemployment, and cut one tax whilst raising another: balm for the gilead?
Darrell Issa, soon to be launching at least half a dozen investigations into the Obama administration's first two years, offers to have business tell him what laws and rules they it would like to have repealed.
Companies spend millions of dollars each year complaining to Congress about burdensome laws and regulations, pressing their concerns in public campaigns and in private meetings. They rarely wait for invitations. Last month a senior House Republican, Representative Darrell Issa of California, nevertheless dispatched letters to 150 companies, trade groups and research organizations asking them to identify federal regulations that are restraining economic recovery and job growth. Mr. Issa, incoming chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said the concerns of businesses had been ignored by the Obama administration as it pursued what he described as an unprecedented regulatory expansion.
He's offering them a rebate on lobbying, in effect. Indiana's governor, Mitch Daniels, has his own agenda: burnish his credentials as a budget hawk in advance of launching his own presidential bid.
Congressional Republicans have spent much of the last decade voting for tax cuts and spending increases, all the while giving speeches decrying the deficit. Mr. Daniels, who took office in 2005, has reduced the number of state workers by 18 percent and held spending growth below inflation. He has raised the sales tax to help make up for a property tax cut. Largely as a result, Indiana finds itself in better fiscal shape than many other states.
Reduce the state's work force, increase unemployment, and cut one tax whilst raising another: balm for the gilead?
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Got any money?
Over the last year, Save the Children emerged as a leader in the push to tax sweetened soft drinks as a way to combat childhood obesity. The nonprofit group supported soda tax campaigns in Mississippi, New Mexico, Washington State, Philadelphia and the District of Columbia. At the same time, executives at Save the Children were seeking a major grant from Coca-Cola to help finance the health and education programs that the charity conducts here and abroad, including its work on childhood obesity.
Sort of hypocritical, but:
The talks with Coke are still going on. But the soda tax work has been stopped. In October, Save the Children surprised activists around the country with an e-mail message announcing that it would no longer support efforts to tax soft drinks. In interviews this month, Carolyn Miles, chief operating officer of Save the Children, said there was no connection between the group’s about-face on soda taxes and the discussions with Coke. A $5 million grant from PepsiCo also had no influence on the decision, she said. Both companies fiercely oppose soda taxes. Ms. Miles said that after Save the Children took a prominent role in several soda tax campaigns, executives reviewed the issue and decided it was too controversial to continue.
Right. And the moon is green cheese.
Sort of hypocritical, but:
The talks with Coke are still going on. But the soda tax work has been stopped. In October, Save the Children surprised activists around the country with an e-mail message announcing that it would no longer support efforts to tax soft drinks. In interviews this month, Carolyn Miles, chief operating officer of Save the Children, said there was no connection between the group’s about-face on soda taxes and the discussions with Coke. A $5 million grant from PepsiCo also had no influence on the decision, she said. Both companies fiercely oppose soda taxes. Ms. Miles said that after Save the Children took a prominent role in several soda tax campaigns, executives reviewed the issue and decided it was too controversial to continue.
Right. And the moon is green cheese.
Friday, October 29, 2010
Thursday, June 17, 2010
2 opposed views
It never ceases amazing me how differently two people can see the same event. Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., one of the resident right wingers in the Wall Street Journal editorial board (that is an oxymoron), and Thomas Frank, the token liberal write on the President and the Oil Company BP.
Leading off on the right, the message begins at the headline: Obama vs. BP (and You) and continues with the subheading: The government holds a company's stock price hostage.
The lefty takes a different approach: Britain Cries Foul Over BP and continues in the subheading: Thatcher's heirs may be the only people on the planet to regard Obama's response as swift and effective.
Frank only had to read the column at the top of the page where his appeared to see Thatcher's heirs are not the only ones.
In BP's case this week, the company's stock price hasn't just been taken hostage by Washington, it has been wrapped around management's neck and progressively tightened. The sight hasn't been an edifying one, not least because the target isn't just BP.
BP has authored one of the country's great industrial accidents and expects fully to pay through the nose. You could wish, in this light, Washington's politicians didn't seem quite so much like muggers standing on a street corner waiting for a vulnerable passerby. For one thing, it doesn't benefit the victims, who will continue to line up for years to come, if BP can't reinvest to sustain and grow its business.
Turns out they are not all muggers: here is a Republican representative:
Leading off on the right, the message begins at the headline: Obama vs. BP (and You) and continues with the subheading: The government holds a company's stock price hostage.
The lefty takes a different approach: Britain Cries Foul Over BP and continues in the subheading: Thatcher's heirs may be the only people on the planet to regard Obama's response as swift and effective.
Frank only had to read the column at the top of the page where his appeared to see Thatcher's heirs are not the only ones.
In BP's case this week, the company's stock price hasn't just been taken hostage by Washington, it has been wrapped around management's neck and progressively tightened. The sight hasn't been an edifying one, not least because the target isn't just BP.
BP has authored one of the country's great industrial accidents and expects fully to pay through the nose. You could wish, in this light, Washington's politicians didn't seem quite so much like muggers standing on a street corner waiting for a vulnerable passerby. For one thing, it doesn't benefit the victims, who will continue to line up for years to come, if BP can't reinvest to sustain and grow its business.
Turns out they are not all muggers: here is a Republican representative:
GOP leaders forced Rep. Barton to retract apology to BP
Washington Post - - 2 hours ago
Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, accused the White House of conducting a "$20 billion shakedown" by requiring oil giant BP to establish a fund to compensate those hurt by the Gulf Coast oil spill.
Video: Biden: Barton Criticism of BP Fund 'Outrageous' The Associated Press
US Gulf Oil Spill BP's Ally The Associated Press
Unbalanced and opinionated
Typical Wall Street Journal slant on the news.
BP PLC, under intense legal and political pressure from President Barack Obama, agreed Wednesday to put $20 billion into a fund to compensate victims of the Gulf oil spill, and said it would cancel shareholder dividends for the first three quarters of this year to offset that cost. BP said it would pay another $100 million to a separate fund to help oil-industry workers sidelined by the Obama administration's moratorium on deepwater drilling.
The payments far exceed the letter of U.S. law, which caps economic liabilities in oil spills at just $75 million. BP agreed to waive that limit. In a pact hammered out in a four-hour White House bargaining session, BP agreed to "set aside" $20 billion in U.S. assets as a guarantee that it would make good on the promised $20 billion in cash by 2013.
The deal is the latest in a series of interventions by the Obama administration in the operations of private businesses in crisis. Mr. Obama sent an emissary to demand that the then-head of General Motors Corp., Rick Wagoner, resign prior to the government-led rescue of GM. The administration has pressed Wall Street banks in the aftermath of the financial crisis, calling for sharp cuts in executive pay.
If GM was to receive taxpayer funds, the government had a legitimate right to write conditions on disbursing said funds. It is more than the Administration that has pressed for cuts in executive pay; Congress and the public have, too.
BP PLC, under intense legal and political pressure from President Barack Obama, agreed Wednesday to put $20 billion into a fund to compensate victims of the Gulf oil spill, and said it would cancel shareholder dividends for the first three quarters of this year to offset that cost. BP said it would pay another $100 million to a separate fund to help oil-industry workers sidelined by the Obama administration's moratorium on deepwater drilling.
The payments far exceed the letter of U.S. law, which caps economic liabilities in oil spills at just $75 million. BP agreed to waive that limit. In a pact hammered out in a four-hour White House bargaining session, BP agreed to "set aside" $20 billion in U.S. assets as a guarantee that it would make good on the promised $20 billion in cash by 2013.
The deal is the latest in a series of interventions by the Obama administration in the operations of private businesses in crisis. Mr. Obama sent an emissary to demand that the then-head of General Motors Corp., Rick Wagoner, resign prior to the government-led rescue of GM. The administration has pressed Wall Street banks in the aftermath of the financial crisis, calling for sharp cuts in executive pay.
If GM was to receive taxpayer funds, the government had a legitimate right to write conditions on disbursing said funds. It is more than the Administration that has pressed for cuts in executive pay; Congress and the public have, too.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Not a spill, a gusher
In the early 1990s, thousands of desperate Cuban balseros cast themselves adrift on rafts, tires and any other makeshift craft that could float. They shoved off even from the island's far shore, entrusting their lives to the powerful Loop Current that pushes north from the Yucatán, rounds Cuba, rushes through the Florida Straits, and spills into the Atlantic, seeding the Gulf Stream. Many drowned or perished from thirst. But others survived to wash up on Florida's east coast.
Now the Loop Current is in the news once again. Oil from the Deepwater Horizon gusher—please don't call it a "spill"—has begun trickling into the current, prompting anxious speculation as to how much will be swept up and where it will be borne. Only a small quantity of surface oil has been seen entering the current, but much more swirls below. Given the complex natures of both petroleum and marine waters, these underwater plumes will be extremely difficult to measure and track.
Language used belies prejudices and lack of information. To call what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico a spill is erroneous. A spill is to cause or allow (a liquid substance) to run or flow from a container.The Exxon Valdez disaster was a spill, for petroleum spilled out of the ship. This current disaster is not a spill.
Oil is far from a homogenous substance, even before it gets emulsified by waves, currents and sun. It's a complex mixture of liquids, gases and waxy solids that vary widely in weight and solubility. Ocean waters are likewise not uniform; they are made up of distinct water slabs differentiated by temperature and salinity, and propelled by wind and currents. When I first began using monitoring equipment—newly available in 1967—I tracked these water bodies-within-bodies and dubbed them "snarks" because of their elusiveness.
Expertise has not been brought to bear; BP has been allowed to run the show. More than a month ago an academic ascertained that much more than 5,000 barrells a day were gushing out into the Gulf; no one made much of that. Even the media let it go, too busy with finding the sensational.
Some eddies veer west, bouncing along the continental shelf at about three miles per day toward Texas. By late last month, according to mapping by Mitchell A. Roffer's highly regarded ocean forecasting service, this process had already begun: Tentacles of oil were extending west past the Loop Current. One eddy appears to have broken off and begun crawling to Texas. It may entrain escaping oil deep underwater for several months, relieving the Florida, Alabama and Mississippi coasts and the upper water column where most marine life lies.
Now the Loop Current is in the news once again. Oil from the Deepwater Horizon gusher—please don't call it a "spill"—has begun trickling into the current, prompting anxious speculation as to how much will be swept up and where it will be borne. Only a small quantity of surface oil has been seen entering the current, but much more swirls below. Given the complex natures of both petroleum and marine waters, these underwater plumes will be extremely difficult to measure and track.
Language used belies prejudices and lack of information. To call what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico a spill is erroneous. A spill is to cause or allow (a liquid substance) to run or flow from a container.The Exxon Valdez disaster was a spill, for petroleum spilled out of the ship. This current disaster is not a spill.
Oil is far from a homogenous substance, even before it gets emulsified by waves, currents and sun. It's a complex mixture of liquids, gases and waxy solids that vary widely in weight and solubility. Ocean waters are likewise not uniform; they are made up of distinct water slabs differentiated by temperature and salinity, and propelled by wind and currents. When I first began using monitoring equipment—newly available in 1967—I tracked these water bodies-within-bodies and dubbed them "snarks" because of their elusiveness.
Expertise has not been brought to bear; BP has been allowed to run the show. More than a month ago an academic ascertained that much more than 5,000 barrells a day were gushing out into the Gulf; no one made much of that. Even the media let it go, too busy with finding the sensational.
Some eddies veer west, bouncing along the continental shelf at about three miles per day toward Texas. By late last month, according to mapping by Mitchell A. Roffer's highly regarded ocean forecasting service, this process had already begun: Tentacles of oil were extending west past the Loop Current. One eddy appears to have broken off and begun crawling to Texas. It may entrain escaping oil deep underwater for several months, relieving the Florida, Alabama and Mississippi coasts and the upper water column where most marine life lies.
Friday, May 28, 2010
New rules in an old tug-of-war
In the messiest way possible—quite literally—America is rethinking and remaking the relationship between government and business. Only the latest example is unfolding in Louisiana. Even as oil laps ashore there after leaking from BP PLC's well, souls are being searched in Washington about why regulators didn't prevent the disaster or have a good answer for coping once it hit.
How about a contingency plan? Both the government and the industry (including BP) should have had contingency plans.
President Barack Obama's announcement Thursday of an extended moratorium on new deep-water drilling and suspension of exploration and lease sales elsewhere is only the beginning of a government re-evaluation of its relationship with the offshore oil industry. A presidential commission soon will put the relationship in full therapy.
I highly doubt that the re-evaluation will be comprehensive; lobbying will see to that.
Mr. Obama declared that the whole relationship has been marred by a "cozy and sometimes corrupt relationship" between the oil industry and government regulators, and there's bound to be much discussion of whether there was too little regulation. The better question, though, isn't about quantity but quality: Were regulations and regulators smart and up to date?
Cozy relationships and rotating-door movements between industry and government os the norm, not the exception, and it is pervasive.
Regulators up to date? C'mon. Between calls of socialism when the government tries to make strong rules that work, and underfunding of governmental agencies accompanied by shouts of fiscal prudency and limited government, how the hell can government agnecies be up to date?
The broader point is that the oil spill is just the latest in a series of traumatic events forcing a rethink of government's relationship with business. Bank bailouts, energy plans, auto-maker rescues, Toyota accelerator problems: All have forced both politicians and average Americans to rethink the proper role of government in a private economy.
Rethink? As in calls of socialism, communism, fiscal irresponsibility from the right?
How about a contingency plan? Both the government and the industry (including BP) should have had contingency plans.
President Barack Obama's announcement Thursday of an extended moratorium on new deep-water drilling and suspension of exploration and lease sales elsewhere is only the beginning of a government re-evaluation of its relationship with the offshore oil industry. A presidential commission soon will put the relationship in full therapy.
I highly doubt that the re-evaluation will be comprehensive; lobbying will see to that.
Mr. Obama declared that the whole relationship has been marred by a "cozy and sometimes corrupt relationship" between the oil industry and government regulators, and there's bound to be much discussion of whether there was too little regulation. The better question, though, isn't about quantity but quality: Were regulations and regulators smart and up to date?
Cozy relationships and rotating-door movements between industry and government os the norm, not the exception, and it is pervasive.
Regulators up to date? C'mon. Between calls of socialism when the government tries to make strong rules that work, and underfunding of governmental agencies accompanied by shouts of fiscal prudency and limited government, how the hell can government agnecies be up to date?
The broader point is that the oil spill is just the latest in a series of traumatic events forcing a rethink of government's relationship with business. Bank bailouts, energy plans, auto-maker rescues, Toyota accelerator problems: All have forced both politicians and average Americans to rethink the proper role of government in a private economy.
Rethink? As in calls of socialism, communism, fiscal irresponsibility from the right?
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