Our Views: Jindal erupts in nonsense
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Thanks to an ill-advised eruption from Gov. Bobby Jindal, the technicians of the U.S. Geological Survey have a moment in the political sun.
Among the governor’s criticisms of the economic stimulus bill was an example of “wasteful” spending: “$140 million for something called volcano monitoring,” the governor said. “Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C.”
Oops. Turns out the $140 million is a larger appropriation for the Geological Survey. Only a small part of it will go to volcano monitoring. The agency will spend the cash on improving equipment that does monitor volcanoes and give early warning of a dangerous eruption.
As earth scientists were quick to point out, volcanoes do in fact erupt, and go from dormant to active in a short time, often just weeks. If you don’t have monitors, you don’t get any warning.
In 1980, 57 people died in the eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington state. Many more would have died had there not been monitors to give a warning of the event and get thousands evacuated.
That the Rhodes scholar governor did not do his homework on “something called volcano monitoring” is bad enough. That the obvious parallel to hurricanes in Louisiana did not occur to him was worse.
Nobel Prize-winning economist and columnist Paul Krugman immediately noted that amid Jindal’s dismissals of government activity, the idea of early warning of natural disasters is the clearest example of what government ought to do.
The Washington Post editorially criticized Jindal’s situational ethics in seeing waste in volcano monitoring in a state where the taxpayer, correctly, pays for early warning of hurricanes.
We hate to see the governor lower himself to talk-radio sound bites like this, but we believe there is a kernel of intelligent criticism in what he said. The problem is not with volcano monitoring but with the process that threw a lot of projects into a stimulus bill.
robably the nation does require updating its volcano monitoring equipment, but there is a regular appropriations process by which that and other spending plans can be weighed by relevant committees of Congress.
The stimulus bill short-circuited that process in a number of ways, including volcano monitoring. But by reducing his argument to a sound bite, Jindal diminished his message to low-level demagoguery.
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