2010 Year in Review: The Ridiculous

Tuesday, January 11, 2011 1:00 pm Daniel J. Summers

2010 was quite a year. To wrap it up, I'm bringing back a mostly annual tradition here of the three-post “Year in Review: The Good, the Bad, and the Ridiculous.” Per tradition, the posts are published in reverse, so when they're all posted, the good is on top. With no further ado, the ridiculous…

The BP Oil Spill

While this, on its own merits, would have landed on the bad list, the incompetence surrounding the spill launched it to the top of the list. On the front side, BP's pencil-whipped audits and ignoring of safety warnings is deplorable; those controls are there because they are necessary, and I'm sure that shutting off that particular well until it was fixed would have been much cheaper than clean-up from the spill was. On the back end, the US government's response was horrible. The failure to quickly approve waivers for foreign ships and exhaust regulations, and the failure to accept help from other countries in containing the spill while it was small, was eerily similar to the failures surrounding Hurricane Katrina. These failures led to the effects of the spill being far greater than they need to be.

While the Gulf does seem to be recovering more quickly than expected, there will be pockets of oil and a poorer overall quality of water in the Gulf of Mexico for years. The knee-jerk reaction of stopping all off-shore drilling compounds the problem. A safety down-time to recheck all the rigs is in order, but once the rigs are found to be safe, there is no reason that they should sit idle. This also illustrates the ridiculousness of prohibiting drilling on land; how much easier would this well have been to seal up if it was in land? But, to placate tree-huggers and NIMBYs, we're drilling through a mile of water to get oil.

What solidifies this ridiculousness is that we seemingly have learned nothing from these lessons. Time will tell, and I won't feel any joy and bringing this back up, but I have a feeling we'll be revisiting stories similar to this one if things don't change.

United States v. Arizona

One of the basic rights recognized by our legal system is the right to self defense. Many things that would be otherwise illegal are justified when they are done in self defense. The state of Arizona is experiencing an influx of illegal aliens streaming across its southern border, and people who live in southern Arizona are encountering increasing violence from these illegals. While the Federal government has laws on the books, the current administration (and the one before it) seemed to be more interested in turning this group of illegal aliens into voters than enforcing the law. So, Arizona passes laws similar to the ones the Federal government has. Simple self-defense, borne of necessity due to inaction by the Federal government in the face of mounting threats.

How does the US government respond? With loud denunciation, even threats of lawsuits against Arizona if they enforce these new laws. They are joined by the media, who painted heart-wrenching pictures of illegals who were deciding to move because of the new laws. (To which I say, “Good!” I read one where the illegal was going to Colorado, and I thought, "Well, that's the wrong direction.") The law makes the state less hospitable to those who shouldn't be there in the first place; just as the laws passed in Oklahoma a few years back, this is a good thing.

How much better shape would Mexico be in if they had another 30 million workers there, stimulating its economy? How much better would employment opportunities be here if there were 30 million fewer potential employees, many of whom skirt labor laws? This is win-win! Each nationality lives and works in their own country, and we visit each others' countries on vacation. It works well for Canada - why wouldn't it work with Mexico?

The Spiraling Inanity of Reality TV

The Real World started it, Survivor perfected it, and many, many other have followed it. I don't know that 2010 was the year when this “jumped the shark,” but it certainly continued down the trail. It appears that script writing is becoming a lost art, except on cable channels, where the shows aren't subject to the restrictions of over-the-air TV; basic cable can now be categorized as either sports, news, reruns, niche networks, and train wrecks. A&E has gone from Biography to Billy the Exterminator; History has gone from actual history to current-day shows that may be tangentially-related to history. This probably explains why I've been watching less and less TV that isn't sports or news.

(One notable exception to this are the sitcoms on ABC; this is likely why they are so successful.)

Finally, a ridiculous quote to finish it off, from now-former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi - “But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”