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Absolute Safety Never Assured

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There’s this old joke. “How do you know when a politician is lying? He’s moving his lips.”

Regarding President Obama’s recent speech about the ongoing oil spill disaster, Byron York of the Washington Examiner noted “one particularly striking moment . . .

midway through his talk, Obama acknowledged that he had approved new offshore drilling a few weeks before the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion on April 20. But Obama said he had done so only “under the assurance that it would be absolutely safe.”

York then quoted industry experts swearing on a stack of scientific reports that, regarding oil drilling, there is no such thing as “absolutely safe.” So, the intrepid reporter wanted to know, who told Obama that new deep sea oil drilling would be safe?

Long story short: He got a lot of administrative runaround from the Administration.

But who in their right mind believes anything is “absolutely safe”? Water isn’t. Chewing gum isn’t. As Thomas Sowell has explained in books like Applied Economics, we never choose between the risky and the absolutely safe. There’s risk all around. And trade-offs.

Assuming that Obama is not a nitwit (a pretty safe assumption), when he spoke the “absolutely safe” line, he simply wasn’t being honest.

Why? Because he looks bad. But this could have been an opportunity for America (and its president) to confront reality.

Of course, for a sitting politician, that’s the furthest thing from safe.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

7 replies on “Absolute Safety Never Assured”

I disagree with one point, I think he really is a functional nitwit. He may have a bunch of degrees that he was given free of charge, but he is not particularly bright, at least in a realistic sense. Remember Einstein could not dress himself. Obama is a good ‘talking head’ but he could never write a speech nor can he fully remember one. Without a teleprompter he is totally lost, and I think the teleprompter may have gone down, showing that he is a liar as well. But he really is a nitwit.

Mr. Jacob’s point is accurate – nothing is absolutely safe. But if our politicians didn’t pass the Oil Pollution Act (quite the ironic name) which limited BP’s liability to a measly $75 million for damages (beyond cleanup, and except in cases of gross negligence which doesn’t appear to be the case) then if there was a spill, those damaged would be compensated thru the courts. And having to get insurance for such a catastrophe would have created incentives for both the insurance company and BP to avoid a spill, and mitigate damages if one occurred.

John Stossel has made the same point in his shows/columns. E.G., http://stossel.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2010/01/30/freedom-vs-safety/ or http://reason.com/archives/2010/02/25/whose-body-is-it or http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?articleId=cad8c545-7246-4e4e-9591-843e0f5c189c&headline=John+Stossel%3A+Protecting+us+to+death

Many believe government should provide us with what the market cannot. The market has shown that it provides the trade offs we want regarding safety. Government “regulations” for safety do not. Consider the MMS and the Oil Pollution Act – they contributed to the spill. The act’s name is ironic – because it led to oil pollution.

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