Anyone else have a problem with NPR's homesland security story today?

NPR did a report on the Homeland Security bill which takes away money from NY & DC and gives it to, for example, Charlotte.

They dropped a tiny truth-bomb early in the story when they said that the super-secret "classified" formula (the invisible hand of fairness? right! i'm sure there wasn't a single lobbyist involved in creating that formula!) worked against NY because the proposal NY submitted spent too much money on (egads) paying people wages to do jobs (which they characterized as a plan that wasn't "effective.") The formula favored (unsurprisingly) Charlotte because their proposal included a lot of spending on computers, software, monitors etc. (ie, things big corporations sell...produced with Chinese labor, probably).

That truth-bomb was buried in the story. You really had to pay close attention to feel its blast. Most of the story was spent talking to the government officials in Charlotte so they could explain their side of the story -- which humanized them tremendously.

If anyone was interviewed telling NY and DC's side of the story, I missed it. And they certainly didn't talk about how absurd it was to suggest that a "formula" isn't capable of satisfying lobbyists's desires, and they didn't explain how there are serious policy implications (which define the differences between democrats and republicans) in favoring labor vs corporations, and they definitely didn't talk about whether a video camera is more capable of protecting people than a detective, or a programmer, or any trained professional.

Here's the link: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5490220



(BTW, NPR also gave some air time this morning to the Harvard "don't worry too much about real estate prices" study, which DU'ers yesterday noted was funded by a real estate group with an interest in seeing home prices (and therefore consumer debt) stay high -- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5490226).

NPR's "underwriters" (advertisers) are probably some of the same manufacturers of technology that the Homeland Security "formula" prefers over labor, and it would be nice if we could get some information from people who don't have that potential bias.

I wish there were a LABOR news station, or at least a news station that didn't really on corporate money.

Not people. Nah.

PD? That's the only thing I want to know.

Anybody?

To be honest, it's not a 'let's protect DC and NYC' program; it's a 'let's reduce the overall risk' program. Risk is to more than just human life, however much we may say pleasant falsehoods like "we should spend whatever it take to save X's life"; and the consequences of an attack on a symbol in NYC may be so much less than the impact an attack on the shipping terminal in San Pedro would be that the prudent course is to protect the shipping terminal.

It's not just "likelihood of an attack", but that multiplied by the consequences. I'd hope NYC had manage to get long-term efficiencies out of the money they've gotten, and not just hired people.

And buying equipment can multiply the usefulness of a dollar spent. It's all well and good to hire people, but if I can produce a significant reduction in damage and death by buying stuff, I'll do it. It doesn't even have to be as great as the one-year reduction from hiring people would be, because that equipment-produced risk reduction will extend over a few years. Think of it as interest, and trying to eliminate as much of the consequences of an attack as possible.

If it comes down to saving more lives and reducing damage, or hiring people, it's a no brainer. If I wanted to maximize the social return from spending the money on jobs I'd call it workfare and hire people in rural Mississippi or on a reservation: you'd get more benefit per dollar there than in NYC.