{"id":5426,"date":"2010-05-24T12:40:31","date_gmt":"2010-05-24T16:40:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=5426"},"modified":"2010-05-24T12:40:31","modified_gmt":"2010-05-24T16:40:31","slug":"toxicity-of-the-feds%e2%80%99-alphabet-soup-more-harmful-than-bp%e2%80%99s-oil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/5426\/toxicity-of-the-feds%e2%80%99-alphabet-soup-more-harmful-than-bp%e2%80%99s-oil\/","title":{"rendered":"Toxicity of the Feds\u2019 Alphabet Soup More Harmful than BP\u2019s Oil"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The most toxic substance floating around Louisiana\u2019s coastline isn\u2019t oil \u2013 it\u2019s the confusion that comes with the federal government\u2019s alphabet soup of bureaucracy.\u00a0 Click on any article describing the feds\u2019 response, and you get a myriad of people and institutions allegedly \u201cin charge\u201d of directing the cleanup activity.\u00a0 So far, the heads of the EPA, Interior Department, Homeland Security, and Coast Guard have all visited the state and personally weighed in on what should be done.\u00a0 Now, they are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/05\/24\/us\/24spill.html?ref=todayspaper \" target=\"_blank\">contradicting each other<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In a news conference on Sunday outside the BP headquarters in Houston, Mr. Salazar repeated the phrase that the government would keep its \u201cboot on BP\u2019s neck\u201d for results. He also said the company had repeatedly missed deadlines and had not been open with the public.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Salazar added, \u201cIf we find they\u2019re not doing what they\u2019re supposed to be doing, we\u2019ll push them out of the way appropriately.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That statement, however, conflicted with comments made only hours earlier by the Coast Guard commandant, Adm. Thad W. Allen, who said on CNN\u2019s \u201cState of the Union\u201d program that the access BP has to the mile-deep well site meant that the government could not take over the lead in efforts to stop the leak.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey are necessarily the modality by which this is going to get solved,\u201d he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>One of the consequences of bloated bureaucracies is overlapping areas of responsibility.\u00a0 Coupled with a politician\u2019s aversion to risk (an element of bold decision making), and the result is many people responsible, but no one is ultimately in charge.<\/p>\n<p>And while they dither, 65 miles of Louisiana coastline are \u201coiled.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The most toxic substance floating around Louisiana\u2019s coastline isn\u2019t oil \u2013 it\u2019s the confusion that comes with the federal government\u2019s alphabet soup of bureaucracy.\u00a0 Click on any article describing the feds\u2019 response, and you get a myriad of people and institutions allegedly \u201cin charge\u201d of directing the cleanup activity.\u00a0 So far, the heads of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1138,1305,902,1306,246,526,1307],"class_list":["post-5426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-bureaucracy","tag-coast-guard","tag-department-of-homeland-security","tag-department-of-the-interior","tag-environmental-protection-agency-epa","tag-louisiana","tag-oil-spill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5426"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5429,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5426\/revisions\/5429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}