Italy: The Sclerosis Is Too Deep, They're Cooked

Little known fact.  In the wake of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, several countries placed moratoriums on offshore oil drilling.  One of those countries was, believe it or not, Italy.  Why Italy?  Who knows, I guess any self-respecting leftist Euro-weenie government thought this was a non-pass-upable chance to stick it to some oil companies.  But Italy wasn't run by a leftist Euro-weenie, it was run by the King of Bunga-Bunga himself.  Like I said, who knows?  Anyway, what's important for our purposes here it to note that two years later, Italy still hasn't lifted their moratorium.  This is a country that is staring into the economic abyss and needs jobs, economic growth and cold hard cash more as a matter of survival, but they can't seem to get small easy policy calls right.  Oil drilling won't get Italy to the fiscal promised land, but robust economic growth is the only thing that will and they can ill afford stagnation by a thousand cuts, of which this is one example.  The whole world has moved on, even if some have been forced to kicking and screaming, but not Italy.

So what's the lesson?  That a political ideology and the structure that flows from it, cannot be easily and painlessly undone.  Leftism, the European social model, whatever you want to call it, is not a policy direction that can simply be reversed, it is a political carcinogen that has been ingested in too large of a quantity and must be somehow excised or expelled from the body.  This never happens quickly or painlessly.  European problems are only beginning.  I pray that they only stay in Europe - Europe has a way a f**king things up for the entire world.