Washington: Stop Centralizing!

Joe Barton and Michele Bachmann both made excellent points during last week's Congressional shakedown of BP. Barton's forced apology was hollow and pointless. Washington is supremely incompetent, intrusive, and deleteriously antagonistic toward private business and the free market, and the Feds have no business administering a $20 billion escrow fund for the victims of the oil spill. The fund, as Bill O'Reilly and Laura Ingraham noted, should be overseen by the state governments directly involved, including Louisiana and Florida.

The Obama Administration always jumps at the chance to move in on the private sector, sacking the free market and saddling it with choking regulation and bureaucratic red tape, whether it's banks, investment firms, health insurance companies, or family-owned small businesses.

The last thing the oil spill disaster needs, now or ever, is an escrow fund "czar." Hundreds of fishing and tourism businesses in the Gulf have complained, practically in tears, about the interference that results when their requests for aid have to be cleared through dozens of federal agencies, each with its endless rules and forms. The federal government had the same problems getting decisions made quickly and aid sent on time during the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

So back off, Obama & Co., and let the locals deal directly with BP without having to obtain clearance from the EPA or other federal agencies first.