When are Bobby Jindal and the states rights Republicans going to stop the oil spill?

Media Matters

As Jindal and the conservative media criticize the federal government for not deploying enough resources, they seem to overlook that they are the same ones who have championed the private sector over the public sector. Jindal himself just over a year ago said, "There has never been a challenge that the American people, with as little interference as possible by the federal government, cannot handle."

In this case, the private sector clearly caused the greatest ecological disaster in the history of the United States. But the private sector cannot clean up its own mess. Further, the states, including Louisiana, clearly cannot solve the crisis on their own.

As Mother Jones' Josh Harkinson noted:

In February, 2006, while serving as a member of the GOP-controlled US House of Representatives, Jindal introduced the Deep Ocean Energy Resources Act. Passed by the House a few months later, the bill would have opened up the entire US coast to offshore oil drilling. States could override the law and ban rigs in their territorial waters, yet the law would let them share lease royalties with the federal government--a strong incentive to drill. Adjacent states would have little say in the matter (clearly a problem, given that BP's spill has marred several states' coastlines). On the risks of deepwater drilling, the text of Jindal's bill is comically pollyannaish:

(4) it is not reasonably foreseeable that . . . development and production of an oil discovery located more than 50 miles seaward of the coastline will adversely affect resources near the coastline.

(BP's Deepwater Horizon rig is located 50 miles from the coast, and of course would have devastated the Gulf even if it was further out to sea).

Jindal is certainly at the forefront of the conservative media campaign to discredit the ability of the Obama campaign to deal with the oil spill. But Jindal and the media conservatives will never be able to escape the fact that spills like this are bound to happen with more and more offshore drilling. Nor can they escape the fact that this ecological disaster is the consequence of the private sector's inability to clean up its own mess.