The point to my opening remarks in my initial post herein (post #3) was simply to illustrate the hypocrisy, that the very same people who cry "government, stay out of private affairs" are the same people who all but demand government involvement in situations like this. The fact of the matter is yes, government does have a role to play in such disastererous situations whether naturally occuring (i.e., tornado, flood, hurricane, earth quake, volcanic eruption over populated area, etc.) or man-made such as this oil spill. The issue here is how much of a role should they play?
Except the point you're "illustrating" isn't hypocricy, its your own apparent lack of knowledge of what conservative ideology actually stands for and their historical stances on things, which seems to be why you've made your remarks from the very beginning based not on actual history or any tangible fact but based on hyperbolic stereotypes, over generalizations, and gross misrepresentations of what Conservative ideology actually is and what is meant by the statement of wanting less "Big Government" or "government out of public affairs".
You seem to be laboring under a false impression, or perhaps putting forth a purposeful dishonest guise, that Conservatism is somehow
anarchism. A desire for no government authority, for government to be involved in nothing, for the government to be completely detached. This is simply not the case. Conservative philosophy doesn't back this up, conservative legislation doesn't back this up, conservative history doesn't back this up. Only the extremely exaggerated stereotypes created by those most actively seeking a chance to deride and insult the conservative ideology and those that follow it ever present this kind of notion as if its fact, using nothing as evidence save for their own opinions about what individual statements meant void of any and all context surrounding them or honest intellectual thought regarding it.
There is no hypocrisy here. Conservatives in general want LIMITED government. They typically do not want a "nanny state", IE the government looking after each and every individual for their own individual well beings in regards to having a job, health care, etc. They want less government intrusion into the private sector and the markets. Primarily however they want the government to do what they believe it was limited to within the Constitution rather than expanding into everything and anything it see's fits on the loosest of loosely connected justifications. They see the "General Welfare" being a term focused more on the collective welfare of the country, such as its safety, rather than the welfare of each citizen individually.
Responding to major disasters that impact multiple states, have a significant affect on interstate commerce, and/or present a security or safety risk to the country is something that is within that scope. There is nothing hypocritical in that fact. To consider that conservatives are hypocritical for wanting the government to do something about this Oil Spill that is impacting multiple states shore lines it would require conservatives to either believe that there should be no government action on anything at all ever or there would need to be proof of past instances of major disasters where Conservatives have stated the federal government should not provide aid. The first option above simply isn't true, the second option has yet to be shown by anyone as having any truth at all.
If you look at the NCP where local, state and regional governments responsibilities are, you'll see that they (as well as the private business entity according to their SPCC on file w/the federal government) are to act as "first responders" to such crisis and that the federal government steps in only when it has been determined that local, state and regional governments and/or private enterprise can't handle the situation.
Exactly, which by the way was the main criticism Conservatives had of the media and democrats in the wake of Katrina as the federal government and Bush recieved the vast majority of the blame when the local, state, and regional governments all seemingly dropped the ball for no other reason than simply feeling like the Federal Government should do it. And, upon doing so, got relatively little of the blame in realition to the Federal Government who essentially had a lot more dumped on them, and faster, than reaosnable expected if the local and state levels had actually bothered to do anything (in regards to New Orleans at least, which was the focus of most attention on Katrina).
That is unlike here where initially the focus was primarily and completely on BP, and has continually been focused mostly on BP though more and more is getting shifted to the federal government as well. And guess what? I have no issue with that. I know from my perspective at least on this forum my complaints regarding Obama's actions on the oil spill was less complaining about what Obama was doing and complaining far more on how liberals and the media were presenting this and focusing on this and how STRIKINGLY different they were holding this president and BP responsable as compared to how they were holding Bush and New Orleans/Lousiana responsable.
I do think that BP should've been the first to try and respond. I do thinkthe states should respond. I do think that BP should be financing a large amount of this and I have no issues with them coming under penalties if they're found legitimately negligent about something. That said, it didn't take this very long to become relatively clear that this was a major issue that needed to be fixed sooner rather than later for the sake of a number of states economic security and the countries well being, and to do it sooner rather than later was going to need heavy federal support to the issue.
This was not some environmental problem where a company was dumping some toxins out back of their complex which contaminated a small local lake. This is the coast line of a number of states spanning hundreds of miles resulting in potential economic damage in the millions. Yes, by all means, force the company to do everything in their power to fix the initial problem or let the states decide on what punishments and how heavy to pressure them in regards to time at first, as its reasonble that they likely would've been able to fix it and the impact would be small in regards to the country. That is not the case in this instance and if you want to do something like require that federal plans to "fix" this must be partially subsidized or funded by BP or something of the sort, fine, but the federal government needs to be involved on an issue that is of this large of scale.
Afterwards if you want to figure out something in the future that if companies are found reasonable negligent in the cause of a man-made disaster such as this that requires the Federal Governments involvement that a temporary tax is levied upon them of "X" percent until such time that they have paid back half of what it cost the government? Fine, I'd be open to discussing something like that. But what we have to deal with is what we have now, and right now we have a major disaster on the shores on multiple states severely hampering the countries economic and possibly physical security and we need to be focusing on how best to fix that issue in the quickest and most efficient way first.
Or, to paraphrase a point Obama made that maybe he should take to heart.
Stop trying to constantly point fingers and shift blame and instead take responsability and get something done.