Disasters “R” Us: America the Defenseless

At its most basic level, the role of government is to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.  As individuals we obviously cannot monitor the safety practices of a gigantic multinational oil company drilling off our shore.  We cannot individually puncture real-estate bubbles before they explode and threaten to hurl the world into economic depression.  And we usually can’t prevent terrorist attacks.  As citizens, we rely on government to protect us, but again and again government has failed.  The ongoing BP catastrophe, the recent financial collapse and the 911 terrorist attacks are all quite different forms of catastrophe, but the prevention of future similar events requires a similar approach:  multiple layers of defense constructed by a competent government.

Survivors of the BP Deepwater Horizon rig explosion describe fatal shortcuts taken by BP to save money.  The BP official in charge directed the test well to be filled with seawater, instead of following the accepted practice of using mud, in order to make it easier and cheaper to bring the well online.  At a meeting prior to the disaster, the representative of the rig owner from Transocean, which provided the leased rig to BP, objected to this dangerous shortcut, but was overruled by the BP official in charge.  Obviously if the Transocean employee had been given authority to veto actions deemed dangerous, then the entire Gulf catastrophe might have been averted.  Such veto powers could comprise a future layer of defense to help prevent similar disasters.  In hindsight, it’s shocking that no Coast Guard, EPA, or Minerals Management Service officials closely monitor these rigs.  Obviously someone should.  Mechanical fail-safes also failed.  Assuming that the nation will continue deep-water drilling, are there other technical and mechanical defenses that can be added to enhance safety?

The question that should always be asked in the case of off-shore drilling, and in many other cases, is this:  If one layer of defense fails, is there a backup?

But there is an even bigger question:  Why are we so often asleep at the wheel?

In the case of the financial crisis, its multiple causes each cry out for defenses to prevent a future crisis. In the private sector, greedy and risk-oblivious bankers, predatory lenders, and lying or naïve homebuyers all contributed to the current recession. On the government’s side, bad policies and practices allowed this bubble to become so inflated. The Federal Reserve kept interest rates too low for too long.  Degraded lending standards – encouraged by government policies and quasi-government institutions like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – were at the heart of the recent financial meltdown.  Nonetheless, the legislation currently before Congress leaves the nation still vulnerable on all of these fronts.  Mostly, the financial reform bill just bolsters the line of defense we had before the crisis began – the one that failed so miserably just two years ago.

In terms of national security, a lack of layered defenses also leaves the United States still open to terrorist attack.   Nine years after 911, precious little of consequence has been done to safeguard homeland security.  America’s borders remain wide open.  Port security is porous.  Last December a known-terrorist suspect failed to be placed on a no-fly list, got past airport security with a bomb in his pants, boarded an aircraft, and would have blown it up if a passenger had not jumped on him.

Why is our government so inept?  Our leaders seem hopelessly distracted by the politics of maintaining political power rather than focusing on good governance.

Obviously industry affects government action by donating large sums of money to Congressional re-election campaigns.  All major industries, including big oil and big banking, promote their interests by making donations to politicians, regardless of political party.  The only appropriate term for this practice is “institutionalized bribery.” Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have, for example, been pouring money into the coffers of Democrats.  Reform of these for-private-profit-at-public-risk institutions are suspiciously absent from current financial-reform legislation.

Ideology also enfeebles sound defensive regulatory policy.  Rather than working together to make sound policy, politicians play to ideologically charged audiences.

Conservatives, fed on a steady diet of rhetoric that damns all government regulation, fail to comprehend that keeping environmental disaster from happening is one way to keep profits flowing and the economy growing.

Progressives, in their zeal to help the poor, fail to realize that lowering lending standards can bring down the whole economy, and hurt the poor and middle class far more than the inability to buy houses without five or ten percent down.

Neo-conservative ideology led to the invasion of Iraq, causing its own train of disasters, instead of adequately shoring up homeland defense.

Environmentalists’ obsession with an air-born global-warming threat may have distracted from the real and immediate threat of massive amounts of carbon escaping into the ocean.

American politicians, many of whom love their offices too much, fail to focus necessary attention on the nation’s real problems.  The layered defenses of checks and balances our Founding Fathers built into the Constitution were designed to make government cool, rational and virtuous, but they have all but withered away.  At the heart of every significant problem faced by the United States – from environmental disasters and financial collapses to national security, debt and deficits – lies the urgent need for a major reform of the American political system.