Transportation Secretary Mineta to Resign
U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta, the only Democrat in President Bush’s cabinet, will resign July 7th apparently not due to any dissatisfaction with his performance. He will be 75 in November.
Secretary Mineta served as Secretary of Commerce during the Clinton administration, represented Silicon Valley in the U.S. House of Representatives for over 20 years, and was mayor of San Jose, California, whose international airport was later renamed after him.
In his long career, Secretary Mineta has not operated without controversy.
The Secretary led the fight against racial and ethnic profiling in the security screening process at the nation’s airports after 9/11. This action, many believe, weakened efforts to stop the people most likely to be terrorists in another 9/11, persons of Arab descent.
However, I’ve strongly agreed with the secretary. For one reason, having a profile, instead of a unpredictable random system, makes it too easy for potential terrorists to work around that profile. The recent arrests of seven people of non-Arab descent in the Miami area alleged to have been plotting the destruction of the Sears Tower in Chicago supports this point of view.
Secretary Mineta himself was profiled during World War II because of his family background.
In 1942, then eleven-year-old Mineta was hauled from his home in San Jose to a concentration camp in Wyoming for the duration of the war because the government believed that he and all others of Japanese descent posed a security risk to the United States.
When asked by his parents to put on his best clothes for the trip to Wyoming, this son of immigrants donned his Little League uniform and grabbed his glove and bat. When federal agents tried to take the baseball bat from him, future secretary Mineta resisted and a tug of war pursued. He lost, but this kid was more American in attitude than those who decided to lock him up.
I haven’t always agreed with the Secretary. His views on the future of Amtrak border on clock cuckoo land.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I will match my free enterprise credentials with anyone. However, I realize that the framers of the U.S. Constitution correctly believed that the federal government best handled certain activities, such as the implementation of a national road system to move mail and interstate commerce.
Mineta, on the other hand, as well as others in the Bush administration, believes that the individual states, not the federal government, should plan, fund, and operate interstate passenger rail service. Imagine, if you will, the chaos that would result from each state running its portion of the current national air traffic control system.
In the case of rail passenger service, what if Illinois and New York wanted trains between Chicago and New York City, but Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana did not? Refuse to stop in these states? Run the trains via Canada?
This is not an idle concern. Currently, Maine and Massachusetts sponsor popular rail service between Boston and Portland, but New Hampshire, whose most populous region lies between these two points, refuses to pay its share of a service that keeps so many people off its roads.
In my opinion, Amtrak would need little, if any, government subsidy if the federal government did not so heavily subsidize other forms of transportation, especially air transportation. I am not necessarily arguing against these subsidies; I am just suggesting, if we are to have them, sharing them with a transportation mode that is more efficient in so many cases and more environmentally friendly.
Secretary Mineta disagrees, but please join me in thanking him for his long and distinguished service to his country, and wishing him well.