Jindal’s sand berm was a total boondoggle:
[T]he independent commission appointed by President Obama to investigate the oil spill has chimed in as well. Its verdict is, if anything, more harsh than the assessment offered by earlier critics: In the report the commission’s members released today, they concluded the berm project was a total bust that succeeded in capturing virtually no oil.In emphatic language, the bi-partisan commission announced that it can “comfortably conclude that the decision to green-light the underwhelmingly effective, overwhelmingly expensive Louisiana berms project was flawed.”
The total amount of oil captured by the $360 million berm was, at most, 1,000 barrels. Skimming and burning got rid of 890K-1.85 million barrels.
MikeJ
Yet there will still be people, not only on the right, who will say, “at least he did something!”
Pity he couldn’t have done something cheap that didn’t divert resources. He should have prayed it away. With equal efficacy, I’d bet.
amk
Burp. Gimme some more amerikkkans.
Enceladus
At least he didn’t waste that money on volcano monitors.
Comrade Jake
Heckofa job, Brownie!
Sorry, I know that’s terrible. I couldn’t resist.
Michael D.
@Enceladus:
I know, right? I might add that this kind of coin could have funded the Polynesian Voyaging Society for a hundred years!
Dennis SGMM
Seems like only yesterday that Jindal mocked the gov for spending money on volcano monitoring. Between the supine media and the millisecond-long attention span of the American voter, Jindal can safely run on protecting the Louisiana coast by heroically building the sand berms with his own hands.
Thomas
Typical. The supervisor at my job at the time was all over me trying to say how Obama had messed up because he hadn’t done the berms earlier like boy genius Jindal wanted. Yeah guess not dipshit. If anything once again Barack’s failure lie not in refusing to listen to republicans enough, but in listening to them at all.
Walter
Funny, all I remember are some on the left saying how Jindal “was at least leading”
stuckinred
That little Howdy Doody lookin little mofo needs a blanket party.
mk3872
BLASPHEMY! How DARE you say that skimming and burning was a success … Just wait until Jane reads this story, you’re gonna be in for a WORLD of hurt!
Brick Oven Bill
It should be noted that the balance of the oil:
4.9 million barrels minus ~1.2 million barrels equals 3.7 million barrels or, like, most of it…
Was eaten by naturally-occuring bacteria, feeding off the energy contained in the carbon, with no help from man. With zero man-intervention, these bacteria would have consumed the entire oil spill.
Mother Nature is very robust.
Odie Hugh Manatee
So we paid $360 million for 1,000 barrels of oil? I wonder, do the oil companies own (or own stock in) the cleanup companies? If not I bet they are looking into it right now. What a great deal that would be, eh? Pump the oil and profit or spill the oil and profit, win/win for them and lose/lose for us.
I am sure they are on board with this plan!
Comrade Javamanphil
@Brick Oven Bill:
Sadly, No!
“When the BP oil well blew out earlier this year, the 4 million barrels that flowed into the sea didn’t simply vanish. There’s growing evidence that a good portion of it sunk to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, where some of it remains.”
joe from Lowell
@Brick Oven Bill:
First of all, there’s what Comrade Javamanphil said – you’re full of it to claim that the balance, or even most, of the remaining oil has been eaten. Most of it is still trapped in the deep, cold-water ocean bottom.
Second, you claim “with no help from man,” but that’s bull, too. The Gulf of Mexico has been the site of numerous oil spills over the years, large and small, including constant low-level leaks, leading to the creation of a larger-than-natural population of oil-eating bacteria. This was noted as far back as the Ixtoc oil spill in 1979.
kay
Everyone should read the report. It’s fascinating. It’s like a case study in political capture.
A nasty brew of conservative dogma mixed with political opportunism, and how that managed to hinder and ultimately capture the federal response.
It’s got everything: the state AG asserting the Tenth Amendment, Vitter babbling about technocrats, Jindal screeching about cutting out the federal middleman and just handing him piles of money…there isn’t a single conservative talking point they didn’t use. All the science and engineering experts were ignored or shouted down by Jindal and state and local politicians, (helped along enormously by media, which the report mentions).
What’s most interesting about it is how well the federal agency managers (non-political actors, the career people) come off. They knew what they were doing. They simply got shouted down, and the experts were much less effective than Jindal and Co. at playing the media like a piano. Anderson Cooper’s boat rides really didn’t help the situation, after all.
You know, the original point of establishing “agencies” within the federal government was an acknowledgment that the world had gotten so complex that elected officials could not be experts in every field, and because they were subject to political capture, we needed technical people (the dreaded “experts) to deal, and buffer some of the politicking and nonsense, and provide objective facts.
This is a great example of why that is more true than ever.
Elie
Yes, 200 M was an expensive diversion of resources but it would have been even more expensive in terms of time and political cost to keep explaining afterwards that the berms would not have worked anyway. This way, they can see that they did not work and also what a big big mouth, money wasting project that Jindahl championed. Everytime he starts flapping his lips about money wasting government, he will get this shoved into his face.
WereBear
Before he got sick, Mr WereBear was one of them.
One of the things he was most livid about during the Bush years was reports from friends who let him know this vital core was getting harassed and replaced by Liberty University graduates and nepotic dynasties of True Believers.
Buck
@Elie:
Not in the MSM. Just on librul blogs – where no one’s listening.
JPL
@Elie: IMO, Jindal will pass the buck and blame the federal government for allowing his folly.
Ash Can
No one could have predicted…
kay
@Elie:
I googled it. It’s been brewing for months now. Everyone knows it was a boondoggle. Jindal even went on Hannity last month on sort of a preemptive strike to limit facts.
The report is critical of Obama for ultimately second-guessing Allen, who, it turns out, was actually doing a good job. The report exonerates the federal agency response, essentially. All the shortcomings are on the part of the political actors.
We might not want politicians anywhere near a disaster, Elie, if we’re going to be truthful about this :)
Alwhite
@joe from Lowell:
I’d also suggest that ol brick head take a little holiday to the beaches in Galveston. I have had several occasions to go there over the years and those ‘little leaks’ that are an everyday occurrence there wash ashore with such regularity and quantity that nobody swims there. Apparently those oil eating bacteria either don’t work there or hide out until huge spills happen & then just gobble it all up at once.
amk
@kay: This. Nailed it.
kay
@WereBear:
Well, some of the critics were on the Left. At the height of the hysteria, the Coast Guard and the EPA were all under BP’s control, allegedly. In hindsight, Allen looks like the only sane person on scene.
cleek
@WereBear:
according to NPR, this AM, this hostility towards science in Federal agencies is still alive and well, even under the over-promising Obama.
El Cid
@Walter:
Okay, I’ll take your word, but I didn’t recall that from anyone on “the left”, certainly not from the actual left. There are always a few who will say anything.
Besides, I thought the main usual purpose of things like berms etc. was just to wrongly try & save valuable beach lands from natural shifting beach processes.
cat48
I’m wondering what he did with all those huge rocks he had on about 100 barges waiting on approval from the Corp to build jetties to hold back the oil. It wouldn’t have held anything back. The Corp kept telling him no can do because evidently there are pipelines running everywhere underneath the water there & this would crush them if someone dropped huge rocks on them?? At least the sandberm only drowned the equipment parked on top of it. He’s really sort of an idiot when it comes to engineering……
scav
Silly Rabbits. The Lord DoG never speaks to committees, nor yet does He speak to experts, He speaks to his chosen fool so that the heathen among ye will be properly sore amazed at His powers (footnote). DoG don’t ‘preciate no second billing. And if The Lord DoG allowed that oil in those waters, it’s because DoG wanted the oil in those waters and who are these so-called experts keeping it out? Agents of EVIL! Only Filthy Evil Secular Muslim Commie Scum object to DoG’s plan for his holy tarball sandbox. ‘N that money went ‘zactly where DoG wanted it to. So. There.
footnote cf. voices in BoB’s head.
MattF
OT, but… Just read a whole Krauthammer column for the first time in a long time. He thinks Obama is outsmarting everyone, and will win in 2012. Now, I think so too, but I do enjoy hearing Charles say it.
Hanspeter
The berms didn’t capture oil, but would they have helped in diverting oil away from the the more delicate shorelands?
Legalize
@Elie:
No one who “matters” will ever bring this up to Jindal. “Government bureaucrats” will get the blame.
kay
@cat48:
The rock berms are in there. They merited a special section.
I read that Jindal sealed the state reports on the berms. I don’t know if it’s true, I saw it on Kos, and they didn’t have a cite. I’d be interested to know who got the contracts to build them.
This was a full-court press. The entire Louisiana delegation pressured Obama. At each juncture, Jindal (or that Parish president, the media darling) would be on CNN again, bitching. It worked.
kay
@Hanspeter:
The EPA argued they would make that worse. “Partial construction during the emergency period could result in oil washing into the bayside berms and barrier islands, making matters worse”.
Elie
Oh, I agree that its not an unmitigated “win” to shove in Jindals face, and that there will always be some way to twist a bit…but he is defenitely on defense and will remain there… no way is this a “win” for him, critiques about the administration and the MSM nonwithstanding. Jindal shoveled some of the berm sand into his own gears.
Robert Sneddon
@joe from Lowell:
Crude oil is less dense than seawater and so spilled oil floats on the surface. There were crazy shit stories made up by people who should have known better during the Macondo disaster about vast lakes of magic super-heavy crude oil lying on the sea bottom in the Gulf which some folks still believe.
chopper
republicans fuck up something technical? that’s unpossible. next you’ll be telling me they don’t know anything about economics.
chopper
@Robert Sneddon:
eh. this was a deep well and the oil was heavier. also too, dispersants were mixed at the well head causing a lot of the oil to stay below the surface.
Kryptik
Dude, don’t you see that all that means is that the totally inefficient and expensive skimming and burning efforts kept taking the oil before the less costly berms could catch it and thus save us all billions upon billions? Why do you hate the free market and southern people, mistermix?
No, but seriously, this report won’t do jack crap, because the story’s already there. The mold’s been cast, the narrative written and all it says is ‘FEDS FAIL, STATE STRONG! OBAMA SUX, JINDAL FOR PREZ!’ And fuckwits will eat it the fuck up while our ocean becomes BP’s private waste dump.
Hanspeter
@kay: thanks for that bit.
joe from Lowell
@Robert Sneddon:
Initially, but after it degrades, there are byproducts like tar that are heavier than water.
rikyrah
not shocked in the least. all that posing done by Bobby ” I picked my name from a tv show” Jindal.
Elie
@rikyrah:
Even among a huge horde of creepy Republicans, Bobby stands out as particularly whinny, slimmy and weird… Of all the Repubs I can’t stand, he is way up there…
liberal
@Walter:
Maybe over at FDL, which I never read unless someone I respect links there, but this sounds like bullsh*t to me.
kay
@Hanspeter:
I was looking at the media fawning over Jindal, and it’s really disturbing how much “optics” matter. The facts are, Jindal diverted time and resources from methods that were working to a purely political pork project that didn’t work, and everyone knew wouldn’t work, including, probably, him, because he’s not stupid.
I criticized Obama for his political response ( I suspect his temperament makes him unsuited to overt displays of emotion, but still, cry a little or something), but I thought the substantive (federal) response was adequate to the emergency. What’s scary is, the reality didn’t match the meme. At all. In any way.
Kryptik
@kay:
This has been the most persistent and shocking gripe I’ve had with Obama, especially since the boiling points this last few months: for all the policy wonk and general attention to detail there, and despite the ridiculously efficient and effective campaign in ’08, the Obama Administration has been almost as politically inept as the rest of the Democratic Party, and at times even worse so.
And like you said, optics matter, which is why so much of this bullshit is so outrageously, mind-numbingly frustrating. I recognize the important of optics now, as begrudging as it is, so seeing Obama and Democrats consistently, persistently, and unnecessarily play in and buy into the ‘optics’ of the Republicans to the point that I’m screaming at my TV/computer monitor has just worn away at my soul. I expected it from Dems, especially the goddamned Blue Dogs, but Obama feels worse so, if only because I thought that damned pragmatism would include actually creating the frames rather than internalizing the same goddamned ones the GOP has repeated ad nauseum.
burnspbesq
@Elie:
In a rational world, that would be the case. However, we are talking about Louisiana. In 48 hours, the population will be back to caring only about the Saints and LSU football recruiting, except for a tiny minority of crazed hippies who prefer basketball or baseball.
Elie
@kay:
I think that Obama’s political response was ok. Over the time period of the disaster, the way he reacted, all business, took the unhelpful emotions out of it and gave the response team room to breathe a bit.
I am sure that no one agrees with me on that, that his “crying” and showing a lot of emotion about it would NOT have somehow made it better for him or the effort. I think that the team just got down to business and did what needed to be done, a model that seems to be his own style of managing almost everything. I actually like it but its totally foreign to our high drama MSM and political culture that adores melodrama. In the reality tv society, cat fights and fluffing the latest crisis through emotional showmanship too often substitutes for substance. Obama may be a bit too dry at times, but the work moves on and while folks may not always like the product, you get to see it without the faux emotional overlay — which his critics and the crazy opposition both inside and outside of his party supply in way more excess than needed anyway..
amk
@kay: I, for one, am happy that there is an adult in charge of crisis, not some bohnersque drama queen, fake cry baby act.
kay
@Kryptik:
I honestly don’t know about “optics”. It’s one of those subjects that everyone has an opinion on, and I just don’t think I’d be better than anyone else at planning “messaging”.
As an example, I disagreed with almost everyone here about the political power of ending the tax cuts on the above 250K crowd. I think it was good policy, but I’m completely unpersuaded that it was a slam dunk, politically.
I don’t believe that most people care what other people pay in taxes. I think people care what they pay in taxes. That’s been my experience as a volunteer running school levy campaigns, and I’m sticking with it.
I don’t have any problem with someone lobbying for a particular policy to point to a poll or whatever to make their case politically. Use whatever you got, is my motto. I run into trouble when they seem to buy their own spin. The tax cuts issue went from a good policy choice to a slam dunk political imperative, and I don’t know what backs that idea up.
I do think Obama’s PR team are bad, but I’ve thought that forever. I never thought Robert Gibbs was any good at that job. I think Obama trusts and likes him, and David Axelrod seems like a great person, but neither one of them can talk, and Gibbs comes off as combative and defensive.
D-Chance.
The problem is that they didn’t spend enough on the
stimulusberm. It was too small, and therefore, counter-productive.Elie
@kay:
Dave Axelrod is leaving, Rahm is already gone and his replacement, Rouse,… apparently is not thinking a long term thing
Gibbs is probably not the best press secretary, but ya gotta say, this administration has been put through about as much extreme crisis as any in recent history. Maybe he would have picked them differently had he known in advance what would lie ahead. I am not sure that a slicker press secretary and more verbally glib advisers would have made Obama’s early journey any less bumpy.
I truly wish that all of this would have come off smoother and with less agony for all of us. I do not believe, however, that this was the fault of his team alone. He and we stepped into a pile of crazee that no amount of slick presentation would have mitigated. I also think that his dry and sometimes underwhelming approach to communication is molding us a bit too… we know and so does the MSM and the opposition, that he is hard to get a rise out of and not very reactive, so they have to expend a fair amount and don’t always end up successfully manipulating the situation. Things seem a little quieter — not permanent I know and not absolute.
Maybe he will make some changes that will be more touchy feely for those who want that. My guess is that this is a permanent thing and that even the replacements will be low key folks like him…(I do think replacing Gibbs for someone less edgy would be a good idea)
Robert Sneddon
@joe from Lowell:
Tars form naturally after the lighter fractions in crude oil evaporate and sunlight polymerises and cross-links the heavier fractions making the residue denser to the point where it will sink in seawater. Evaporation and polymerisation only happen very near or on the sea surface, not at depth and since most of the Macondo spill was dispersed at the wellhead it never reached the surface in large homogenous amounts to be turned into tar by natural processes.
Some of the tar ends up on beaches as tarballs and is at its most obvious there. A lot more of the tar sinks offshore and may be washed onto the beaches during storms over a period of years. The oil-eating bacteria responsible for the slow consumption of the spilled Macondo oil and the other oil leaks in the Gulf don’t thrive on the heavier tarry compounds for various reasons, sadly.
The Republic of Stupidity
@Elie:
Which means this will end up being bad news for Barack Obama, but good news for conservatives…
NonyNony
@kay:
I agree with this – modified. Most people care what they themselves pay in taxes and don’t care about what anyone else pays. A few people care about taxes as a whole – but they’re mostly anti-tax nutjobs who hate all taxes on principle even the ones other people are paying.
Most of the folks who are in favor of increasing taxes on income over a quarter million a year aren’t really in favor of taxes as taxes – they’re in favor of the government getting revenue and see this as an obvious place to obtain it. And that’s why I think kay is correct about the tax policy thing being a nothing thing except to the liberal portion of the Democratic base – we haven’t arrived in this country to the point where the middle classes are prepared to engage in class warfare against the upper classes, so tax policy targeting the folks who make more than a quarter million isn’t really a political policy they care about.
And honestly – the fact that most people don’t understand marginal income tax, and most journalists don’t seem to understand marginal income tax, doesn’t help the argument at all. Most of the anti-tax nutjobs willfully misunderstand marginal income tax, but the rest of the country seems to just honestly not even make an attempt to understand how their taxes are calculated. Which makes discussions about tax policy nearly impossible.
kay
@NonyNony:
I think it’s an okay tactical maneuver.
For example, if I care a whole lot about immigration reform, there is nothing wrong with me, as an advocate for that policy, presenting a poll or polls that seem to support that as a politically winning issue. I expect advocates to do that.
What I try not to do is buy my own bullshit, because, really, I don’t care if it’s politically a slam dunk. I just want the legislation, and insisting it’s a political winner might get there :)
What bothers me is when we go from A. good policy that we want! right to B. If we don’t get it, it’s political malpractice. That’ s not necessarily so. The two are not inextricably tied, as you know, much as we may say they are.
kay
@Elie:
Gibbs just rubs me the wrong way. I don’t think the press secretary’s job is to antagonize the press. I understand they’re facile and silly, political press, but come on. He’s not supposed to be battling them to a draw, he’s supposed to be working them to his (and his bosses) advantage.
Talk about picking a stupid fight. Robert Gibbs was going to reform political media in the US. He wasted a year on that, and he lost. How did he think that was going to end up? Better media? Fat chance.
Elie
@kay:
I don’t disagree at all.
It will be interesting to see what happens and how the administration makes changes to the core team. I have no idea
Elie
@kay:
More than anything Gibbs has conveyed an arrogance that has not served Obama well
Davis X. Machina
@liberal: Berms, and Jindal, and nuking the wellhead, were all flavors of the week over at DemocraticUnderground.
Obama’s Katrina, and all that.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Ah, but did it capture a lot of cash for Jindal or a friend/relative that will remain undiscovered and/or not trigger retribution?
Those are the only measures success in the GOP.
AxelFoley
@Walter:
You remember that shit, too?
Bubblegum Tate
@MikeJ:
I think in its official form, it will look something like this: “An independent commission appointed by Obama? Pfft–more like a cadre of political hatchetmen tasked by Comrade Obama with making sure the public doesn’t know about the success of conservatives like Jindal by lying about them!”
Pangloss
@Elie: The Bush administration staged their media events like a gimicky broadway musical for 8 years. (Starlight Express?) No corpo media ever called them on it, no matter how superficial it was (covering Made in China on boxes in a factory, plastic Turkey, flightsuit/codpiece, etc.).
If Obama had used a more concerted effort in messaging and optics, would it have helped, or would it have been another meme to point out disingenuousness (like teleprompters, birth certificate, etc.)
Nellcote
back in June:
linky
burnspbesq
@Robert Sneddon:
This would seem to be a situation that calls for some new, genetically engineered bacteria that can feast on the heavier stuff. However, Republicans don’t believe in science and the Democratic base, influenced by the European left’s stance on genetic engineering of food crops, can only think about this issue in Pandora’s-box terms.
burnspbesq
@Elie:
Maybe I’m having a senior moment, but I don’t recall that critique being raised about the equally arrogant Dana Perino.
danimal
Given the shamelessness and inconsistency of conservative politics, I predict that Jindal will claim the policy was a success as….an economic stimulus program.
Closet Keynesians, they are.
Comrade Kevin
@Michael D.: Oh, you’re back! Had enough bad-mouthing this place elsewhere?
Citizen_X
@Enceladus: I would add that Jindal, the guy who put scare quotes around “volcano monitoring,” has now put them–literally–around “cost-benefit analysis.” From the linked article:
So, the Jindal plan for disasters is
1) start looking federal bureaucracies to eliminate (wtf???)
2) do something to make you look busy
3) sneer, “‘Analysis’! ‘Cost’! You think yer such a smarty pants! You hate my constituents!”
Bill Murray
@kay:
Isn’t this what was meant by “ultimately capturing the federal response”?
Bill Murray
@Citizen_X: cost benefit analysis is close to complete hokum. It gets used mainly as a way to justify your favored position, particularly if that position is structured around heavy costs (like in regulation). Costs are usually relatively easy to estimate, benefits difficult, making the analysis not much more than a partially informed guess
Triassic Sands
But, but, but…Jindal is an innovator.
Note: there are a lot more stupid solutions outside the box then there are smart ones.