BP still can’t get it right. Writing at First Things, Rob Bluey of the Heritage Foundation reports that BP is funneling aid money through government rather than through charities that do a better job with it.
By embracing government bureaucracy over private efficiency, the company is forcing charities struggling to respond to the enormous human needs—needs created by BP’s catastrophic spill—to rely on government to deliver the funding they must have to continue their crucial and irreplaceable work…. Private charities have a history of providing superior services to government. They are “mediating institutions,” as Peter Berger and Richard John Neuhaus called them in their book, To Empower People, able to understand, engage, and help people precisely because they are closer to them and more personally engaged with them than a government agency can ever be.
Bluey’s piece is really important stuff, well targeted at real problems. It also notes that the Obama administration is making things far worse with its moratorium on deep-water drilling. Bluey has done good work on moratorium-related issues for months now. Our own Frank Perley had a great piece on this last week as well.
