> > I for one am more worried about the shocking medical bill that I just
>> received for my recent ER visit (the problem turned out to be a
>> kidney stone): $2,812.00 (of which $1,758.00 is accounted for by a CT
>> body scan)! Privatized health care is a bigger threat to me &
>> workers in the USA -- especially those of us without health
>> insurance, like yours truly -- than Al Qaeda.
>
>Of course. Hell, the bad drivers here in Mich (the worst I've ever seen) are
>more an immediate threat to me and my family than is al-Qaeda.
I just noticed Nathan's post on the topic. He put it better than I have, & I'll include his article next time I hand out literature.
>Doesn't
>diminish the latter threat; nor does worrying about and discussing how to
>deal with this threat eliminate the need to deal with other, pressing
>domestic concerns.
Along this line, there was an interesting New York Times article yesterday:
***** New York Times 10 December 01
DOMESTIC DEFENSE
Cities and States Say Confusion and Cost Hamper Security Drive
By PAM BELLUCK and TIMOTHY EGAN
After Sept. 11, the rush was on to construct Fortress America, with sentries patrolling cliffs above the Hudson River, newly deputized sea marshals boarding ships entering California ports and NATO pilots from Germany and Italy flying radar patrols high over the United States.
But for all the calls to vigilance in a domestic defense drive like no other, many state and local governments are starting to balk because of the costs and the frustration over what they see as the federal government's confusing stream of intelligence information and security alerts....
...Some officials, like Gov. Gary E. Johnson of New Mexico, have resisted calls from Washington for more security, citing common sense. Others, like Gov. Angus King of Maine, fend off requests for extra protection of ports, tank farms and other private sites simply because they cannot afford it.
"We just aren't financially geared up for this level of what is really a national defense expenditure," Mr. King said. "The question for us is where do you stop with providing security?"
Beyond the business of actual protection is the public's perception of security. State and city officials are still at loose ends over how to respond when the federal government issues vague warnings about possible terrorist acts.
When Mr. Ridge announced last week that there might be more attacks against the United States as Ramadan, the Islamic holy month, wound down, officials like Mayor Jeff Griffin of Reno, Nev., were unsure how to react.
"I'm concerned that we might lose the public on this," Mr. Griffin said. "I don't know what to tell them. `Be vigilant'?"...
...Some officials feel that they do not have enough information to make informed choices.
Because his city is a principal port of call for tankers carrying liquefied natural gas, Boston's mayor, Thomas M. Menino, assumed he would be alerted to threats made on gas supplies in this country. But when Attorney General John Ashcroft announced recently that Osama bin Laden might have approved a plan for his followers to attack gas supplies, it was news to Mr. Menino.
"You know how I found that out?" Mr. Menino said. "Reading the Internet. Nobody called and told me. I think the first thing that should happen is the mayor should be contacted, because the mayor is on the front lines."
Mr. Ridge says he looks to the nation's 650,000 police officers to be the main guardians in the domestic security realm. Yet they can be the last to receive information. Mayor Martin O'Malley of Baltimore complained that it took a month for the F.B.I. to put detailed information about people on its post-Sept. 11 watch list into the national crime database, which local and state police officers check when making any arrest or routine traffic stop.
"Unless they think they all graduated from the Osama bin Laden school of perfect driving, why wouldn't they ask us to be looking for these folks on traffic stops or speeding stops?" Mr. O'Malley said. "It's mind-boggling to me."
Then there are the conflicting messages from federal agencies. Al Berndt, the assistant director of the Nebraska Emergency Management Agency, said that in late October, four agencies - the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Department of Justice, the Defense Department and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission - passed on confusing information regarding two power plants.
In response, the plants called the state and requested National Guard troops. "The information they were telling us differed from what the Department of Defense had told us moments before," Mr. Berndt said. "It didn't translate into what we were supposed to do."
Several mayors complained about restrictions on intelligence sharing between federal investigators and state and local law enforcement. Mayor Griffin of Reno, who learned from television that federal agents were investigating a letter suspected of containing anthrax that was received by a Microsoft office, said that mayors and police chiefs had to fill out onerous clearance forms to obtain crucial information. Some of those restrictions would be lifted under a bill introduced in Congress....
... The F.B.I.'s director, Robert S. Mueller III, has also agreed to take steps toward better coordination with local law enforcement officials.
But better communication does not mean more money or authority. Mr. Ridge cannot commit the federal government to protect, or require states and private business to protect, many potential targets: chemical plants, refineries, gas and oil pipelines and trucks carrying tankers of lethal compounds across the interstates.
One exception is nuclear facilities, which are governed by a single federal agency - the Nuclear Regulatory Commission - that can order security steps using the leverage of withholding operating licenses. Still, the plants remain at risk. While the reactors themselves are well protected, the 40,000 metric tons of spent fuel that is usually housed just outside the main reactor shells remains particularly vulnerable.
A study last year by the commission suggested that breaching the storage cask of a spent fuel tank could create a radiation leak larger than the release from a 10-kiloton nuclear weapon.
Thirteen states have called out the National Guard to help protect their plants. One is New York, where about 20 million people live within 50 miles of the Indian Point nuclear plant. But other states say they cannot afford that level of protection.
Nor can many states, especially poorer ones like West Virginia, afford other basic security measures.
For a time after Sept. 11, West Virginia ordered all trucks carrying hazardous material to stop at weigh stations for inspection once inside the state border. Now, however, several dozen inspectors are roaming the roads, pulling over trucks at random to inspect licenses in a hit-or-miss effort.
"Without a lot of extra money, there is simply no way we can protect most of our infrastructure," said Bill Case, a spokesman for Gov. Bob Wise.
Mayor Bob Corker of Chattanooga, Tenn., made a similar point. "You have all kinds of chemicals being transported back and forth, in and out of your city," he said. "And at the end of the day, you wonder how much you can really do."
Many states have already begun to set limits on security spending. The Wisconsin building commission just scrapped plans to build a $1.7 million fence around the State Capitol after Gov. Scott McCallum questioned whether the extra safety was worth the expense.
In Maine, which is facing $31 million in one-time security costs and expects recurring annual costs of $20 million, Governor King was relieved when his security experts told him there was no pressing need to send the National Guard in to help guard the defunct Maine Yankee nuclear plant. He had been worried about setting an expensive precedent.
"What happens when you start providing government security to private facilities is if you say yes to one, how do you say no to the next and the next?" said Mr. King, who added that 1,000 Guard troops cost about $40 million a year. "There's the tank farm, the port of Portland, and everywhere else. I've already gotten calls from them, gotten letters from them."
Some mayors and governors wonder how much they can cut basic services to keep up with the calls for vigilance. In Baltimore, where Mayor O'Malley estimates security will cost $19 million through this fiscal year, all nonemergency departments have been asked to reduce budgets by 4 percent, he said. "Last year, I had to raise taxes, close seven firehouses, five libraries and privatize 250 jobs in order to make up that kind of money," Mayor O'Malley said....
<http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/10/national/10HOME.html> *****
There are lots of problems here that leftists can sensibly discuss: poor coordination; restricted information; increasing costs of security measures when recession brings decreasing tax revenues; dangers of nuclear power & other plants & hazardous material transport; etc.
I gotta go do some work now, so I'll come back to the rest of your points later. -- Yoshie
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