The BP Disaster Is Like Katrina In One Important Way

by tristero

Kevin Drum:
...Katrina would have been an immense disaster no matter what. But it was far worse than it had to be because a conservative administration, one that fundamentally disdained the mechanics of government for ideological reasons, decided that FEMA wasn't very important. Likewise, the BP blowout was made more likely because that same administration decided that government regulation of private industry wasn't very important and turned the relevant agency into a joke. If you believe that government is the problem, not the solution, and if you actually run the country that way for eight years, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. But we shouldn't pretend it's inevitable.
Yep. The response to both disasters could not be a better illustration of the sheer stupidity and madness of conservative/libertarian ideology. "Less government versus more government" is a grossly false dichotomy. The valid one is decent government versus incompetent and corrupt. As Kevin reminds us in his post, FEMA was a competent, well-run agency until Bush trashed it.