|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|
|
Also this issue: Vox Discipulus Inky Stinky Over Mag Bag In the spirit of blowing one’s own horn... No Way Street The Bell Curve |
|
|
|
|
 |
|||||||||
April 17-23, 2003
city beat
When the feds distributed $100 million in anti-terror aid to cities earlier this month, Philly came up empty. Prime targets New York and Washington, D.C., took $25 million and $18.2 million respectively. The nation's second- and third-largest cities, Los Angeles and Chicago, hit the low eight figures. But with cities like Seattle and Houston making the list of seven, Philadelphians had to start wondering why we got the shaft.
According to Rachael Sunbarger, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, the congressional legislation authorized $100 million to be divided among "high-threat urban areas." It was left to the Office for Domestic Preparedness, a branch of the Department of Justice, to come up with a formula for distributing the money. According to Sunbarger, "the formula itself is classified." What she could reveal was that it took into account three factors: population density, critical infrastructure and a threat assessment.
Asked why Houston, with its low-density sprawl and complete lack of historic sites made the list, Sunbarger offered "NASA's in Houston."
And so is the president"s father, it should be noted.
But if personal connections were part of the top-secret formula, Philly should have done a bit better with former Pennsylvania Governor Ridge running the homeland security office.
Mayor Street"s spokesperson Barbara Grant had mixed feelings about not making the cut. "It's discouraging not to be in the first round of grants, but encouraging that we were not considered to be a top risk," she said. Grant said the city spent more than $20 million last year on terrorism security and the city is "actively petitioning the [federal] government to pick up some of these costs as they"ve promised." Grant said the mayor is confident that the federal government will come up with some money for Philadelphia, saying "we have had some discussions with Senator Specter about directing funds to the larger cities [and] have a lot of hope that it"s coming."
"We were, I wouldn"t say surprised," explained Keith Martin, director of Pennsylvania's homeland security office. "A little nonplused would be the reaction." Martin explained with only seven cities on the list, the money was ³was much more narrowly targeted than anybody had guessed."
Martin said with nearly a billion more dollars coming down the pike, Philadelphia will surely get some reimbursement from the feds. "The door is not closed," he said. According to Martin, Governor Rendell recently sent a letter to Secretary Ridge "regarding the omission of Philadelphia from the list of seven cities that were identified, offering to meet with him personally to discuss that matter and other homeland security issues important to Pennsylvania."
Ridge has not yet replied to the letter, though Martin is confident that he will shortly.
As U.S. forces took Baghdad, two foreign policy thinkers dropped by Philly to give their two cents on the situation. Robert Kaplan, a contributing editor at The Atlantic Monthly and author of a number of books on the Middle East, spoke to the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Alan Keyes, who ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000 and until recently hosted a talk show on MSNBC, gave a keynote address at a Philadelphia Hadassah chapter fundraiser. Both Kaplan and Keyes backed the war but were critical of how the administration pursued it.
By any standards, Kaplan declared, "the U.S. is an empire." Not that this is a bad thing for Kaplan, whose talk was dedicated to explaining America's empire-maintenance strategy. Using special forces, currently deployed to 65 countries, America's goal, Kaplan said, is to preserve the status quo by propping up weak regimes be they democratic or authoritarian. "Historically, imperialism is the most benign antidote to chaos," he declared. Problems arise when U.S. power is exercised overtly, making headlines -- and enemies -- worldwide, as in the current situation in Iraq. Kaplan noted that when CIA agents had Latin-American revolutionary Che Guevara killed in 1967, there was little reaction from a public sidetracked by events in Vietnam.
At the Hadassah dinner, with a microphone on his lapel, Alan Keyes wandered back and forth behind the podium speaking for nearly an hour without notes, keeping the audience rapt with the crescendos and decrescendos of his voice. Keyes' stated topic was the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (Keyes unabashedly sides with the Israelis), but his speech went off on an interesting tangent. Playing the policy intellectual (hardly a stretch for a man with a Harvard Ph.D.) Keyes told the audience: "Self-defense is the only justification for war." While he agrees with the decision to topple Saddam Hussein, it is only on the grounds that Hussein was a threat to the United States, not the president's position that the United States should remove him because he is an evil dictator. If nations feel justified in invading countries just because they don't like the type of government they have, Keyes asked, what's to stop the Chinese from invading Taiwan or the Arab states from invading Israel.
-- Respond to this article in our Forums -- click to jump there
