Friday, January 20, 2012

They Never Miss Using a Crisis as an Opportunity to Expand Government (Cruise Ship edition)

A mad dog cruise ship captain drives his cruise boat into a rock near Italy and Barbara Boxer sees an expanded role for government.

Boxer wants the Coast Guard to train cruise ship passengers before they head of on cruises.

Boxer, who is chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said in a letter to Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Robert Papp that after the accident of the Costa Concordia cruise liner, the U.S. Coast Guard should change its policies regarding American cruise ships.

We are getting surrounded.

10 comments:

  1. America's favorite nanny.

    A few decades ago, when Nader was flyin' high, I made the remark that the ultimate safety program for the U.S. was to restrict everyone to their beds (rotate hourly to prevent bedsores), and have robots service with food and bedpans. (Kinda like the Matrix, in retrospect).
    Well, we're gettin' pretty darn close to it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. First you need to find an American flagged cruise ship. We sent ship registration offshore decades ago. They already know we are insane.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'm always amused by the scramble to create new laws, regulations, and punishments whenever something (inevitably) goes wrong. By their own logic, the planners admit they failed. Since state action is their proposed solution to these problems, and the current laws, by their own admission, were insufficient to prevent the problem and are apparently insufficient to punish, isn't the state admitting failure in its (self-awarded) watchdog duty every time it uses a crisis to claim more power?

    Why would anyone trust these people to keep them safe when they are perpetually admitting their lack of foresight in preparing for problems in the first place? How do these people keep getting the benefit of the doubt?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Are there any American flagged cruise ships?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Yet more proof that common sense is uncommon.

    ReplyDelete
  6. "We are getting surrounded." Too late.

    ReplyDelete
  7. "We are getting surrounded."

    Only if we allow it to happen. Personally, I'd rather have Boxer and her cohorts 'take a cruise' to nowhere and never come back.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Note how ex-Senator Chris Dodds Motion Picture Association drove the crackdown on piracy.

    ReplyDelete
  9. The "mad dog" cruise ship skipper meme strikes me as a possible media scapegoat setup. Remember how the skipper of the Exxon Valdez - Joseph Hazelwood - was painted as drunken sailor? Ultimately, these claims didn't stand up in court. By which time the media and political circus had marched on.

    The drunken sailor story, according to Greg Palast, helped Exxon escape blame and diverted the circus from the failure of Exxon to live up to their deal with native Alaskan land holders. To a certain extent deals of this type when brokered through the political system are inherently less reliable than court enforceable contracts. Besides a corporate (really corporate statist) culprit, the USCG was not without fault either.

    Unfortunately, it is a part of human nature, or at least part of the nature of mass media consumers, that "every disaster needs a scapegoat." For the corporate state - either in it's corporate or state arms - it is important that the scapegoat be someone other than them.

    Maybe we should wait and see if this Italian skipper is really everything they say.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Will the good people of California please relocate Ms. Boxer to the ever expanding fast food industry? I do realize that she is grossly under qualified for honest labor, but at least all she will be able to ruin is lunch...

    ReplyDelete