Anybody Know Any Rich Oil Companies?

Trial attorneys have a saying: “When you can’t win on the law, argue the facts. When you can’t win on the facts, attack your opponent.” So we antiplanners always feel a bit vindicated when someone responds to our data with ad hominem (Latin for “against the person”) attacks.

For example, the Reason Foundation has been doing some excellent research lately on mobility, highways, and toll roads. This prompted an ad hominem response from Railway Age magazine.

According to William Vantuono, the magazine’s editor, the Reason Foundation “would like to pave over every square mile of the U.S. that isn’t already paved.” Why? Because it is “heavily funded by Exxon, General Motors, and several other large corporations with a vested interest in selling either automobiles or gasoline.”

“Believe me,” the editor went on to say, “if the Reason Foundation were to derive its principal corporate funding from companies like Bombardier, Alstom, Siemens, Kawasaki, AnsaldoBreda or Wabtec Corp. (the largest suppliers of rail transit vehicles and components around the world, including the U.S.), the numbers would be very different. One gets what one pays for.”

The truth is that Reason’s research in transportation is funded by Robert Galvin, former CEO of Motorola. Last I heard, Motorola wasn’t making its money selling automobiles or gasoline.
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But that’s beside the point. Vantuono is saying that Reason and other think tanks are for sale to the highest bidder. If that is true, then why aren’t Bombardier, Siemens, or the American Public Transportation Association (APTA, the main transit lobby in Washington) bidding for their services? I have never once had any of them call me and offer to pay me to write a report favorable to rail transit (and neither, I am sure, has the Reason Foundation).

APTA does pay Paul Weyrich, a socially conservative writer who happens to be a rail nut, to write in favor of rail transit. (I am a rail nut too, but I don’t let it confuse my interpretation of the facts.) My encounters with Weyrich have not been pleasant, but I would never accuse him of selling out to the rail transit lobby. Weyrich genuinely, if mistakenly, believes that rail transit is a good thing, and APTA was happy to pay him to write on the subject.

The truth is that the transit lobby is much more powerful than the highway lobby. Automobile and oil companies know that people are going to buy their products no matter how many billions are wasted on light-rail lines, so as far as I know they have never given any money to any think tank to work on these issues.

The main “highway lobby” in Congress has historically been highway contractors and highway users (mainly trucking companies). Most contractors can make as much profit building rail lines as roadways, so they aren’t particularly enthused about opposing the rail lobby. And trucking companies don’t see light rail as their competition, so it is hard to get them motivated about urban congestion.

However, if anyone knows of any auto manufacturers or oil companies that want to buy a think tank, send them my way. I can give them lots of good advice on where to spend their money.

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About The Antiplanner

The Antiplanner is a forester and economist with more than fifty years of experience critiquing government land-use and transportation plans.

8 Responses to Anybody Know Any Rich Oil Companies?

  1. Tad Winiecki says:

    “Follow the money” is a good economic and political research technique. Despite some outstanding examples to the contrary (addictive drugs, junk food, promiscuous sex, addictive gambling) most people do what they think is in their best interest most of the time.
    Too much of the time people assign motives to opponents without following the money or other valid research; and they are completely wrong in their assumptions. One common fallacy is, “If you aren’t with us you are against us.” This is probably true less than half the time. Republicans say Democrats aren’t patriotic because they don’t support the president or the Iraq war. Democrats say the Republicans aren’t patriotic because they don’t respect the Constituition or support wounded (physically or psychologically) war veterans enough.
    As a designer and advocate of personal rapid transit I and my fellow Advanced Transit Association members have been accused of being part of the highway lobby because we would prefer new automated transport to the well-proven failure of light rail transit.
    Perhaps if logic were a required course in high school, with periodic refresher courses for news media and politicians the standard of debate would improve.
    On the other hand the world keeps getting more complicated so that it is easier for one person who understands part of a system to foul it up. And when labor, business and government all work together they can really foul it up. My favorite bad example of this was the Washington Public Power System nuclear power plant construction fiasco.
    I hate to make mistakes, so if I mistakenly assign motives to people I would appreciate it if the other bright people who write on this blog would correct me.

  2. JimKarlock says:

    The Antiplanner APTA does pay Paul Weyrich, a socially conservative writer who happens to be a rail nut, to write in favor of rail transit. (I am a rail nut too, but I don’t let it confuse my interpretation of the facts.) My encounters with Weyrich have not been pleasant, but I would never accuse him of selling out to the rail transit lobby. Weyrich genuinely, if mistakenly, believes that rail transit is a good thing, and APTA was happy to pay him to write on the subject.
    JK:
    How can any intelligent person “genuinely, if mistakenly, believes that rail transit is a good thing..”?
    Surely you must be giving him much more than just the benefit of the doubt.

    Thanks
    JK

  3. Dan says:

    Ad hominem is often purposely misused as a tactic.

    Ad hominem: your argument is wrong because you are an idiot.

    NOT Ad hominem: your argument is wrong because of A, B, C. And by the way, you are an idiot.

    Anyone with two brain cells to rub together and giving the most cursory glance to the editorial in response to the “choo-choo” can see this isn’t Ad hominem argument.

    HTH.

    DS

  4. rotten says:

    Apparently, transit loonies can’t rub more than one brain cell together. This is clearly an ad hominem attack, instead of attacking the argument, they attack your funding (which apparently wasn’t the truth either, big surprise). It’s classic ad hominem.

  5. Dan says:

    Apparently, transit loonies can’t rub more than one brain cell together. This is clearly an ad hominem attack

    Huh. Another person who doesn’t read the links. Shocking, surely.

    “Mr. Bedard claims that commuters ‘shun’ transit. I can spout numbers, too: In 2004, for example, according to the American Public Transportation Association, Americans took over 3.5 billion trips on heavy rail, light rail and commuter rail systems, accounting for over 2.5 billion passenger-miles. In 2005, voters nationwide approved state and local ballot initiatives supporting mass transit 84% of the time. A 2005 Harris poll said that 44% of Americans would like to see more people travel by rail in the future. And an AASHTO Bottom Line report documented annual investment needs of $43.9 billion to improve and expand public transportation.

    “Doesn’t sound like shunning to me.

    “And why is Mr. Bedard so angry? He strikes me as having a personal vendetta against trains. Aside from his belief that passenger rail is a fraud on taxpayers, what’s his beef? He sounds like those cranky senior citizens from retirement villages who rally to vote down public school budgets because they have no children in the local school system.

    Patrick Bedard is a first-rate automotive journalist who should stick to writing about subjects he knows very well—automobiles and motorsports. He’s as much an expert on mass transit as I am on highway construction or motor vehicles. I would hope that he would have more sense than to believe the slanted number-crunching and suspect statistics of organizations like the Reason Foundation, which exist mainly to stay in business and serve little, if any, useful purpose. [emphasis added]

    Like I said: not ad hom (see above). See how simple that is? Sure you do. Now stop your name-calling and read the link Randal provided you to see for yourself.

    HTH.

    DS

  6. rotten says:

    “I’m familiar with the Reason Foundation. Does Mr. Bedard know that it’s heavily funded by Exxon, General Motors, and several other large corporations with a vested interest in selling either automobiles or gasoline?”

    From the link provided. That is still an ad hominem attack.

  7. Dan says:

    That is still an ad hominem attack.

    As I said above, that is a mischaracterization of the argumentation. The possibility exists that it is a misunderstanding of the meaning of ad hom, despite the definition** being given above.

    I noticed the tactic (malcharacterizing an argument as ad hom) was popular in certain ideological (& esp. partisan) circles this past fall-winter, but lately the frequency of use is diminishing as the tactic is easily countered by pointing out what actually is ad hom.

    DS

    ** http://tinyurl.com/3a34h5 “Ad Hominem is the most familiar of informal fallacies, and…is also one of the most used and abused of fallacies, and both justified and unjustified accusations of Ad Hominem abound in any debate.”

  8. rotten says:

    Well… not that I care, but that is still clearly an ad hominem attack. Posting a bunch of links and trying to sound smart does not prove your point. Not that it matters, it’s really all the transit loonies have, lately. Now that wasn’t ad hominem, it’s good old fashioned name calling. 😉

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