Jeffrey Goldberg - Authors - The Atlantic: "A False Comparison Between Terror Deaths and Bathtub Deaths
NATIONAL SEP 2 2011, 1:16 PM ET
Via Mike Allen, a Los Angeles Times story raises interesting questions about the effectiveness of post 9/11 homeland security spending, but falls short but failing to question what has become a standard argument used by those who oppose heightened, and therefore more costly, security measures: the specious, "More people are killed by (fill-in-the-blank) than by terrorists, so why do we worry so much about terrorism?" argument.
The "fill-in-the-blank" in the LAT story is bathtub death, but I've also seen pool drownings, kitchen accidents, and gardening mishaps used to make the case that we overreact -- and overspend -- when protecting ourselves from terrorism. The story frames the question this way:
A decade after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, federal and state governments are spending about $75 billion a year on domestic security, setting up sophisticated radio networks, upgrading emergency medical response equipment, installing surveillance cameras and bombproof walls, and outfitting airport screeners to detect an ever-evolving list of mobile explosives."
'via Blog this'
No comments:
Post a Comment