We human beings are tempted to shirk responsibility when our lapses of judgment result in negative consequences. Rather than owning up and handling those consequences, we often try to shift the onus or remediation costs to others. Politics is rife with examples of the syndrome, such as what happened when Southern California began to see portions of its film industry gravitate to other states and nations with lower production costs. Rather than adjusting operations to remain competitive, the industry successfully pressured state officials for subsidies from taxpayers. Currently, there are two other noteworthy examples of offloading civic embarrassments. The first hot mess is the Queen Mary, a 1930s-vintage ocean liner that the City of Long Beach, flush with money from its oil-producing tidelands, foolishly purchased 54 years ago. Local officials thought the ship would become a floating hotel, museum and the catalyst for repositioning Long Beach as a tourist destination, but it never happened.