David Matthews

Ah, out on the deck the geraniums are in glorious bloom, the peacocks are screeching with lust, and T-Bone is reloading to fire off a warning burst in the direction of the Fox 12 news chopper circling overhead. Time to crack open a case of Bud Lite Lime and check the pulse of the republic. Summer is upon us at last…maybe.

Those who come to this space regularly, from time to time, or by fair chance or foul may note that your oft humbled scribe has not been scribing much of late. The flame of inspiration flickers and wanes. The grim specter of oil saturating the gulf and and washing into Louisiana’s wetlands and marshes where Bobby Jindal screeches like the pencil-neck geek manager of a villainous professional wrestling tag team is enough to render even the peacocks mute, much less a man of poetic sensibility and artistic pretension, I mean, ambition.

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It seems the company formerly known as British Petroleum invoiced its Deepwater Horizon partners for their share in costs related to the debacle, hitting Texas-based Andarko for $272 million and Moex, a subsidiary of the Japanese company Mitsui, for $111 million. Andarko fired back:

BP Plc, the project’s operator, should pay the costs from the spill because it acted recklessly and unsafely at the drilling site…

BP didn’t monitor or react to warning signs as the Macondo well was drilled, Chief Executive Officer Jim Hackett said yesterday in a statement. BP is responsible for damages under such conditions.

“BP’s behavior and actions likely represent gross negligence or willful misconduct and thus affect the obligations of the parties under the operating agreement,” Hackett said in the statement.

Needless to say, BP “strongly disagrees” with Andarko’s position. [Edward Klump, Andarko Says BP Should Pay After Being Reckless (Update 1), Bloomberg Businessweek, 19 June 2010].

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Meantime, in Afghanistan, where the counter-insurgency roils on, the Wall Street Journal reporting on l’affaire McChrystal offered this intriguing tidbit:

Even before the Rolling Stone article surfaced, Pentagon officials had become concerned with what one senior military official Thursday called a “cult of personality” that had surrounded Gen. McChrystal.

“That atmosphere is not just about McChrystal; it’s about that team, it’s that culture,” said another U.S. military officer who has worked with Gen. McChrystal. “The environment alienated other conventional commanders.” (Peter Spiegel and Jonathan Weisman, Officials Promise Unity Amid Afghan Shuffle, 25 June 2010)

Aha, the cult of personality. Maybe we need some Red Guards to root out the running dogs and lackeys and exile them to the hinterlands where they will be reeducated harvesting rutabagas and reading David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest.

President Obama’s choice of General Petraeus to replace General McChrystal was a savvy political and tactical move. The policy, however, remains dubious, though I acknowledge that this is one of those “damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t” situations, where any course is liable to come to a bad end.

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Even The Economist, not exactly a publication of a liberal bent, suspects that the rush to Hooveresque policies prompted by the fad for deficit reduction and fiscal austerity is not a good thing. The magazine reflexively charges that Keynesian critics of of this approach, such as Paul Krugman, oversimplify in making their own case, and tries to put the best face of the budget hawks’ policy, saying “The result probably won’t be another Hooveresque Depression. But it could be a recovery that is weaker and slower that it should have been.” When we consider the source, the indictment is stronger that it appears at first blush. (“Austerity Alarm,” The Economist, July 3rd–9th 2010, pp. 16-17).

The Economist fails to note that not all deficit hawks act in good faith. Not a few see the deficit issue as a golden opportunity to roll back, if not dismantle entirely, social programs to which they object on philosophical grounds. This leads to some preposterous positions, such as the argument against extension of unemployment benefits beyond 26 weeks on that grounds that it would give the unemployed the perverse incentive not to look for work. Cutting off benefits at a date certain, say the established 26 weeks, provides a positive incentive for the unemployed to look harder for work, or so the argument goes. Precisely how pushing the unemployed to look harder for jobs that by all accounts do not exist will solve the problem is blithely ignored by these ideologues of extreme laissez-faire and a naive individualism. Quelle surprise.

David :: Jul.04.2010 :: Politics & Current Affairs :: 2 Comments »

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