HATCHET JOB

Here's the thing about Homeland Security -- you can always argue for more. How much security we want depends on the way we balance our perceptions of threat, what we want to spend, and where else we can spend those resources. But the truth is you can always -- always -- spend more. If you've improved security for air travel, why not rail travel? If for rail travel, why not interstate buses? If for interstate buses, why not mass transit in large urban areas? If large urban areas, why not smaller areas? And so on, and so on, and so on.

There will always be constituencies who will argue either that we aren't spending enough on Homeland Security or that we ought to be spending it differently.

Now, I don't say this because I don't believe we're spending enough on Homeland Security -- I think we could spend more, and I'd like to shift our priorities around (in particular I think we should be doing far more to prioritize funding based on which areas are the under greater threat.)

I see this because the way that this can be argued leaves open a great deal of potential for people who want to play a little fast and loose.

Which is what I think CBS News does tonight. They put together a piece that I think is nothing more than a hatchet job. Their reporter is apparently aghast to discover that the oil industry is getting grants from Homeland Security for improvements in security when "public transportation" is underfunded.

Now, mind you, no specific details are offered in this piece. Which specific public transportation systems are underfunded? What projects aren't being paid for right now? The piece doesn't tell us. What it does tell us is that the very nice man from the Association for Public Transportation -- indeed, the President of that fine organization -- thinks that the money would be better spent on public transportation. You think he might have an incentive to say that? You think, in fact, that it might be his job to say that?

It gets worse:

"We don't have unlimited resources," says Danielle Brian, the executive director of Project On Government Oversight. Brian cites the Bush administration's close ties with the oil industry and points out that these companies could well afford to pay for their own security.

Putting aside the fact that government budgets are set by, you know, Congress this is a slur. I'm getting a little tired of carrying water for the Bushies, but when you see a bald assertion like that being put forward in a news piece, you've just got to point it out. Because this piece makes it out as if there's barely any justification for the government to get involved in the security of the oil industry. Nothing could be further from the truth. (Caution: this link takes a few seconds to load, and it plays music, but it's really, really cool.)

As Secretary Ridge says (at the very end of the piece): "'They need to step up, in my judgment, with their own money,' said Ridge" although it isn't clear that he means for the entire price. It may well be the case that the oil companies should, in fact, pull the entire freight. But my point is that there are issues here: how underfunded is public transportation? why was it decided to pay for the oil sector? how was that decided? by whom? No one from the Bush administration (or anywhere else, for that matter) is shown on screen addressing the claim that the HSD budget worked out this way because President Bush used to be in the oil industry. That's a charge and it should be answered, not just left sitting out there.

This piece doesn't discuss or inform us on any of the issues it raises. It makes insinuations about those issues.

Comments

[DaninVan]

Something curious going on this afternoon in Vancouver (Canada).
http://www.canada.com/vancouver/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=52259111-64c3-4b49-a8e2-6a963210328d

[Glenmore]

If the oil industry is left underprotected and priority given to protecting transit (mass or otherwise) it won't matter. Blow up a bus and 40 people get killed and a bus doesn't run. Blow up a refinery and 40 people get killed and all the busses don't run (no fuel).

[Lugo]

No, it's blow up train, at most hundreds die, blow up an oil refinery, and thousands or tens of thousands die. THAT is why oil should be prioritized, not because Bush has "ties to the oil industry".

Geez, can you imagine the screaming and finger pointing if the bad guys did blow up a refinery? Then the media party line would be, "The oil industry was exempted from security oversight due to its nefarious influence on the Bush Administration..."

[dauber]

1. holy CRAP: that story from Vancouver doesn't make me feel any better given the stories here that intell is twitching. Let us know what happens.

2. It could be a combination of many, many deaths, an environmental disaster, and an economic crisis. You think people are complaining about gas prices now? It's another instance of their not looking at the link between stories. What if they took out a refining facility? Clinton identified the sectors he did not because "Clinton was an oil man" but because those are the sectors required to keep the country moving, where removal or sudden deep losses would have profound effects on the country as a whole.

[gordon Daugherty]

Exactly--not to minimize the harm but, at any given time there are surprisingly few people actually at work in a refinery, despite their huge size. The disaster is basically a huge fire, which is essentially local, and most of the deaths are those you would see in any similar event.

Despite what most people probably think, refineries (the well-managed ones, at least) have typically put lots of thought into fire fighting, in close cooperation with the local fire dept.

No--the major effect is economic. The people who complain abt gasoline prices don't know that refineries are now running flat out, it having been impossible to build a new one since 1976. There is no slack in the system. And prices, in real terms (ie inflation-adjusted) are nowhere near record levels going clear back to the '50's but they will be if there is a coordinated attack on multiple refineries, at least for an indefinite time.