Economist Paul Rubin asks, and attempts to answer, the question that is on everyone's mind on Day 74 of the Gulf Oil Crisis...WHY is the Gulf clean up taking so long?

As the oil spill continues and the cleanup lags, we must begin to ask difficult and uncomfortable questions. There does not seem to be much that anyone can do to stop the spill except dig a relief well, not due until August. But the cleanup is a different story. The press and Internet are full of straightforward suggestions for easy ways of improving the cleanup, but the federal government is resisting these remedies.

First, the Environmental Protection Agency can relax restrictions on the amount of oil in discharged water, currently limited to 15 parts per million. In normal times, this rule sensibly controls the amount of pollution that can be added to relatively clean ocean water. But this is not a normal time.

That can not be stressed enough - this is NOT a normal time.  Extraordinary measures need to be taken and bureaucracy simply can not handle extraordinary.....

Various skimmers and tankers (some of them very large) are available that could eliminate most of the oil from seawater, discharging the mostly clean water while storing the oil onboard. While this would clean vast amounts of water efficiently, the EPA is unwilling to grant a temporary waiver of its regulations.

Something President Obama could do with the swipe of a pen.

Next, the Obama administration can waive the Jones Act, which restricts foreign ships from operating in U.S. coastal waters. Many foreign countries (such as the Netherlands and Belgium) have ships and technologies that would greatly advance the cleanup. So far, the U.S. has refused to waive the restrictions of this law and allow these ships to participate in the effort.

This has been particularly disgraceful given how simple the fix is.  The Dutch offered their help and expertise on day one of this disaster.  Here we are 73 days later and the Obama Administration is still saying "thanks but no thanks" to their assistance and expertise!

The combination of these two regulations is delaying and may even prevent the world's largest skimmer, the Taiwanese owned "A Whale," from deploying. This 10-story high ship can remove almost as much oil in a day as has been removed in total—roughly 500,000 barrels of oily water per day. The tanker is steaming towards the Gulf, hoping it will receive Coast Guard and EPA approval before it arrives.

HOPING????  Why has the approval not been granted already?  This is borderline criminal negligence!  If a private business  were dragging their heels in the manner this administration is, there would have been Congressional hearings.....kinda like the ones BP faced a month ago.....

In addition, the federal government can free American-based skimmers. Of the 2,000 skimmers in the U.S. (not subject to the Jones Act or other restrictions), only 400 have been sent to the Gulf. Federal barriers have kept the others on stations elsewhere in case of other oil spills, despite the magnitude of the current crisis. The Coast Guard and the EPA issued a joint temporary rule suspending the regulation on June 29—more than 70 days after the spill.

The Obama administration can also permit more state and local initiatives. The media endlessly report stories of county and state officials applying federal permits to perform various actions, such as building sand berms around the Louisiana coast. In some cases, they were forbidden from acting. In others there have been extensive delays in obtaining permission.

As the government fails to implement such simple and straightforward remedies, one must ask why.

I will leave you to form your own conclusions, however (and this can not be stressed enough) some indication could be pulled from the pure and simple fact that Barack Obama had never, ever run anything (other than for higher office) prior to his election to the White House.  Activists are great and necessary, but they do not know how to make the snap decisions that are necessary in a time of crisis.  As we have all seen in the last 74 days.....