***12.07.2011 16:32: Dmitry Medvedev proposes tightening transport legislation *The president believes stricter measures must be taken against those who transport passengers. Medvedev spoke about this at a meeting with the leaders of parliamentary factions at the Gorki residence outside Moscow. As for the causes of the tragedy on the Volga, the head of state declined to comment, noting that this is a matter for law enforcement agencies and the state commission. www.echo.msk.ru/news/792645-echo.html Every time something collapses, sinks, falls apart, crashes, or explodes, this nonsense begins: puffing themselves up with importance, the authorities start talking about “tougher liability.” Medvedev, who loves to emphasize that he is a lawyer, ought to remember that what matters is not the severity of the punishment, but the inevitability of it. There is no need to tighten anything; what’s needed is for the existing oversight system to work. And if that oversight failed, then everyone who failed to organize it should be held accountable. Every child in this country knows that the absurd number of supervisory agencies that exist here are there for one reason only: to feed the people who belong to them. And when disaster strikes, all the inspectors escape responsibility. Where are the lists of police officers, FSB officers, and transport prosecutor’s office employees who were jailed, fired, or dismissed for allowing or overlooking the Domodedovo airport bombing? Where are the lists of those punished for the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power plant disaster? For the metro bombing? After the Dubrovka theater hostage crisis, did they at least fire the head of the Moscow FSB directorate? Who answered for Beslan? They fired the heads of the republic’s Interior Ministry and FSB, even though this was clearly, at a minimum, a failure of operational work across all of southern Russia. Have they ever jailed anyone—or at least fired a group of genuinely senior officials? I can’t remember anything except the dismissal of the chief fire official of Perm Krai after the tragedy at the “Lame Horse” nightclub. You could introduce quartering followed by public burning—it still wouldn’t help. And all this empty bluster about “tougher liability,” this “casting words in granite,” which ends in nothing, only further rots the system. After every “we will investigate and punish those responsible,” they need to investigate and punish those responsible. Jail those directly guilty, fire the superiors of those guilty, and the highest political leaders responsible must bear political responsibility—by resigning. Obviously, this is all Captain Obvious stuff, but there is no other remedy, and yet the obvious course is never taken.