The New York Times has an informative article on how Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal is trying to claim the federal government’s response to the Gulf oil spill is being undermined by bureaucratic dithering. Problems aside, in reality, the state is responsible for much of the relief planning, and their planning – thanks in part to funding cuts – was incomplete and unready.

As a result of this lack of planning, Jindal et al. want to rush forward with an emergency engineering response that will take months to complete and cost hundreds of millions of dollars…even as experts think it won’t work.

If the White House were proposing this plan, Jindal would ridicule it as undercooked pork, a la volcano monitoring. But apparently asking the experts to weigh in before committing to throwing hundreds of millions of dollars into this crude pit is the height of nanny-state incompetence.