How Not to Govern

I proceed in hitting one disappointment after another with Obama.

Here's one of bureaucratic ineptness arising with the Gulf Oil Spill. From the Christian Science Monitor:

Three days after the accident, the Dutch government offered advanced skimming equipment capable of sucking up oiled water, separating out most of the oil, and returning the cleaner water to the Gulf. But citing discharge regulations that demand that 99.9985 percent of the returned water is oil-free, the EPA initially turned down the offer. A month into the crisis, the EPA backed off those regulations, and the Dutch equipment was airlifted to the Gulf.

This reminds me of the Bush administration which decided to "tighten" border security but didn't bother to understand what the border is and how it works. Between Canada and the US there are some towns where the "border" runs down Main Street with Canada on one side and the US on the other. The people in the town rationalize their civic functions, so in some of these towns the fire service is in Canada. But with "tighter security" the US suddenly required that a fire truck responding to a fire call stop by the local border station (possibly miles away) and have the fire fighters troop off the truck and show their documentation before they would be allowed to proceed to the fire and try and put it out. (Actually by this time, the fire would have burned the building to the ground.)

I never cease to be amazed at the bureaucratic mind that doesn't undertand prioritizing and doing quick trade-offs, or even the idea of making a "timely decision". Tragic!