That was then and this is now!

Remember Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal chiding the federal gov't for monitoring volcanoes and intruding in the lives of citizens under the pretext of helping them?  Among the many boring things he said, here are a couple:

The strength of America is not found in our government. It is found in the compassionate hearts and enterprising spirit of our citizens.....

and 

While some of the projects in the bill make sense, their legislation is larded with wasteful spending. It includes $300 million to buy new cars for the government, $8 billion for high-speed rail projects, such as a "magnetic levitation" line from Las Vegas to Disneyland, and $140 million for something called "volcano monitoring."  Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C. 

Well that was in 2009, four years after Katrina and one year before petroleum giant BP's mismanagement unleashed an oily, toxic underwater volcano close to the Louisiana shore. Now, with a coastal catastrophe at hand, Jindal said this:

We have been frustrated with the disjointed effort to date that has too often meant too little, too late to stop the oil from hitting our coast,” Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindalsaid during a Monday news conference at Port Fourchon with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.

“BP is the responsible party, but we need the federal government to make sure they are held accountable and that they are indeed responsible. Our way of life depends on it,” Jindal said.

Nothing like a disaster to make the resolute "get government out of our lives" types to come down from their libertarian high horse. (If only all Tea Partiers were as honest as this man :-)

 (BP logo redesigned by Greenpeace)