Clean up time.

Pretty much every day you can find another story that contributes to the thesis that Florida should simply be allowed to secede. Today, it's the unhappiness of Okaloosa County, who want the federal government to stay out of the county when it comes to cleaning up the BP oil mess. I'm all for it. Aside from the dangerous precedent of allowing county supervisors to legislate above the federal government, I'm all for the plan. Cut off federal funding for the county's clean-up efforts, stipulate that no federal funds provided to the state be diverted to Okaloosa County, and give the supervisors their dear wish.

But apparently, their desire for independence only goes so far...sure they want the feds to stay out of their way, until they either screw up or run out of money (it's kind of unclear):

So far, the area on Florida's panhandle has seen only weathered oil in the form of tar balls and tar mousse, but Okaloosa County, along with the city of Destin, have agreed to move forward with a unified plan to protect their beaches and waterways. They say they'll be spending about $5 million per month to protect their land, and they have one message to the feds.

"Have our backs. Let us go out and do our jobs," Villani said.

"We've got to protect the public," he said.

Does "have our backs" mean "keep funneling your federal dollars our way and shut up," or does it mean, "after we've exhausted our resources and have had about as much success as you've had, come in and take the blame"?

It's true that the federal government often falls short of perfection. After all, it's a relatively impossible task of on the one hand permitting private corporations to endanger the life and welfare of an entire region and on the other cleaning up after their messes. Especially when the people who live in the region really really want the private corporations to keep endangering their lives, so long as they pay them for it.

To use an analogy, there are very few junkies who want the cops to bust their dealer.

So anyway, I am 100% behind the Okaloosa commissioners and look forward to visiting the county once their logic has reached its inevitable conclusion and they've become a sovereign nation, and I can stay in their third world country for something like ten bucks a day. It'll be much closer than Costa Rica.