Leadership From The Top Over Rated

The oil spill is a corporate and governmental bureaucratic nightmare. I wouldn't be surprised that when all the dust settles and inquiries and investigations are complete the clean up will have taken longer than it couls/should have due to the "It doesn't say in the trainer's manual" amateurism.

Everybody is going by "the book." A book that should have been burned.

It's absolutely insane that local officials ready to take the lead are held up by the Feds. Worse, threatened with jail time for cleaning up a mess the Feds are too slow to react to. Obama is out there yapping (and appointing stupid commissions) while the people are ready TO ACT. Equally bizarre is the fact companies ready to step in and clean up the mess are being held up by the EPA.

Obscene.

Why get in the way of that? The assumption of course, is that leadership is top-heavy. Which is totally nonsensical to me. We've put up so many rules, regulations and laws we trip over them when faced with a problem.

Case in point:

"Others told him the government would handle it. He scoffed. He remembered the Exxon Valdez, hurricane Katrina, hurricane Ivan. If anyone was going to save Magnolia Springs, it wouldn’t be the feds, BP, or environmental activists. It would be the thousand-odd people who live here. After all, the locals knew the water – knew every twist and turn of Magnolia River, Fish River, and Weeks Bay. They would handle things the way they always did – together."

"Last Wednesday, that moment came. Hinton called the Alabama Department of Environmental Management and told them the time had come to deploy the barges.

“They acted as if they’d never heard about it,” he says. “We started jumping through hoops to get the plan approved again.”

Hinton and Mayor Charles Houser conferred. If the small-town fire chief blocked the bay without permission, he could be jailed or fined, but he was willing to take that chance.

In a way, the decision was an easy one. There is a timelessness to the marshes of Magnolia Springs, where ospreys glide across the water and cottonmouths slither through pitcher plant bogs. It is “the most beautiful place on earth,” Hinton says, and he wants his grandchildren to see it – just as it is now."

Think of it. Someone can go to prison for helping his community do the right thing during a crisis.