The Dubai Ports Scandal isn’t interesting to watch…it’s just pathetic. It looks increasingly like Congressional Republicans are going to scuttle the deal. Everywhere I look I see Democrats cheering them on. Take a look at this:
[House] Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) will attach legislation to block the deal today to a must-pass emergency spending bill funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. A House vote on the measure next week will set up a direct confrontation with President Bush, who sternly vowed to veto any bill delaying or stopping Dubai Ports World’s purchase of London-based Peninsular & Oriental Steamship Co.
These assholes can’t find the stones to investigate illegal domestic spying on American citizens but they can take on the President over a mundane corporate takeover?
Message to liberals and panicking Republicans: DP World bought P & O. Ninety-nine percent of P & O’s shareholders agreed to the deal. Before they agreed to the deal, they received assurances from the United States Government that their contracts would be respected. Now, we are seeing nonsense like this:
The House is still boiling. Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), with bipartisan support, introduced legislation yesterday that would scuttle the deal; mandate that the owners of “critical infrastructure” in the United States, including ports, highways and power plants, be American; and demand that cargo entering U.S. ports be screened within six months of passage.
Duncan Hunter thinks it is okay to torture prisoners as long as you give them rice pilaf, but suddenly he wants to rip up free markets because the polls don’t look so hot on Arab management of our ports?
Exactly what kind of corporation is ‘American’ anyway? Last I checked, they didn’t make stock purchases contingent on having a valid social security number.
This is NOT a real debate. Either we allow corporations to run our critical infrastructure or we have the government run them. I seem to remember airport security running into a little problem when we left it to ‘American’ corporations. So, fine, nationalize the ports. We’re already screwing the investors of DP World and P & O. Now is the perfect time to do it.
The only argument I have seen opposing the ports deal that had any internal coherence is the one that objects to DP World, not because they are Arab owned, but because they are state-owned. If we want to make that a retroactive law, fine. But we should compensate the people that bought P & O with USG assurances that their assets (contracts) would be respected.
to investigate warrantless spying before yesterday too. This deal is going through, Congress be damned, the only question is what kind of BS Congressional Republicans come up with to save face and pretend they have the tiniest amount of independence from the White House.
I’m kinda wondering what kind of national security backlash we’ll see later this year when the media suddenly realizes that the United States doesn’t have a merchant marine anymore and all of the ships coming into our foreign-run ports are foreign-owned. We’re pretty much completely helpless if an enemy wants to ship nuclear weapons into the country and explode them, not that the DPW deal makes a difference in that either way.
As it stands right now, only about 5% of the containers coming into our ports are actually being searched. Port security is a myth.
WaPo Link
Priorities.
Right!!!!!!
If DPW was a privately held company that just happened to be based in the UAE, I’d have no problem with the deal. Having it in the hands of the state leaves us and our ports at the mercy of a change in government (say some sort of coup). And I would have had the same problem with the deal if it had been a company owned by the British government or monarchy.
And my argument is not based on threats of “terrorism” — it just looks weird to have Bush talking about weaning ourselves from foreign oil interests, while it appears that those same interests are going to be handling our ports.
I’m also still unclear as to what the role of P&O, now DPW, is in the running of the ports; that hasn’t really been made clear as far as I can tell.
Here’s an idea for a future law — anytime a company changes hands, all government contracts are subject to immediate review to determine if they should be extended, modified or cancelled. This would apply to foreign and domestic corporations — that way we can attempt to determine if the new company is going to do a good job, or just waste taxpayers’ money. (Imagine if it was Halliburton buying out P&O, for example.)
Just a thought…
we already do have laws and regulations on the transfer of corporate control when it comes to contracts.
Here is what happened. Two big shipping companies wanted to buy P&O. One was from Singapore and one was from Dubai. Both are state-owned.
They indicated to the USG their intent to make a bid and a review process started. Once they received assurances that we had no problem with them taking over existing P&O contracts they had a good sense of what the company was worth and bid accordingly.
The P&O shareholders then weighed the offers and chose to go with Dubai.
Now, we are threatening to rip up those contracts which is essentially a fraudulent thing to do. Making matters worse, we are talking about awarding these lucrative contracts to a so-called American firm. This hypothetical firm is obviously a competitor. So, we are going to screw the Dubai shareholders twice.
That is not how capitalism works.
We can blame the Bush administration for giving the thumb’s up to the contracts, but it is asking a lot to have them rip up those contracts and hand them over to a competitor.
Moreover, no competitor that I am aware of is even prepared to take over these ports (except perhaps the state-owned Singapore outfit).
So, we should let it go or we should create a government entity to do port security. Of course, that is totally unrealistic because it would screw several other corporation and leave us without port management in the interim.
about the deal, especially after learning that Treasury Secretary John Snow had some pretty strong financial incentive to okay DPW’s bid. Could that have colored his judgement? Most likely.
As is always the case in politics, follow the money — things haven’t changed that much from Deep Throat’s era…
John Snow was the CEO of CSX which was a major rail transport company. After he became Treas. Sec. DPW bought out CSX. I am not sure if he benefitted from that, but it is likely that he did.
However, the Americans did not have a role in the shareholders of P&O’s decision to accept the Dubai bid over the Singapore bid.
This is an international corporate takeover and did not involve the United States except in the normal manner of the transfer of contracts.
If Bush had rejected a transfer of these contracts to Singapore but not to Dubai then we could accuse them of rigging the deal. Singapore, in that case, could not afford to bid as high as Dubai.
I have seen no evidence that anything of this kind happened.
I think it is terrible idea to have port management in the hands of foreign corporations, or any corporations. But that is how the entire world does port management.
Argh. I can’t count how many times I’ve seen this mis-statement. DPW bought CSX’s port operations about a year after Snow left. CSX still lives on, moving goods via rail across the East. Try CSX on your favorite stock symbol lookup service for details
We’re liberals. Let’s get the facts right.
yes, you’re right, Dubai bought CSX’s World Terminals division, not the whole company.
which means that its native overseers receive large quantities of your taxpayers’ money to ensure that the population is maintained in a secure state of crackdown, precluding any coup, and if there were such an attempt, US gunmen stand at the ready to help ensure that the US, not the people of the UAE, decide what kind of government they should have.
What role has P&O had up to now?
You can find out at this website (I presume it will stay up after the takeover)
Wait for the map to load, click on a port and in the box on the right you will see a link “more info”.
Click the link and a new browser window will open with details of what they do at that port.
In summary:
You may have heard about a 22nd port, this is Tampa, where P&O had negotiated an operating lease but it had not taken over operation by the time DPW completed the purchase.
or whatever…I’ve just got a very bad feeling about this whole thing…someone’s getting bankrolled on this, I feel it, and it’s the American taxpayer that’s going to pay.
America — for sale to the highest bidder, and all the money is with the Middle East oil folks.
And for all this talk about “alternative energy”, I know that the contracts under this misAdministration are going to go to Cheney’s fat cat energy pals, who’ll make a show of research while secretly pocketing the money, then come forward with a “report” saying that alternatives are not feasible…or they’ll come up with a solution that’s going to cost American families five times more than they’re paying now, in the name of “recouping research losses”…
Sorry for the rambling rant…
It thrills me to hear them rage against Bush. They seem so surprised, so outraged, so awake to the fact that he must be stopped. The head cheerleader, of course, is Lou Dobbs, and I’m cheering him on, too.
I don’t like to think the enemy of my enemy is my friend, but that’s how I feel about them and Bush. With all the Reps up for reelection and Dobbs making this quite public with an attitude, maybe they can help us rid the WH of this criminal. If not, it should hurt these Reps and thus help Dems in November. All imho, of course, but if this is true it could be a win-win for us.
Since the law doesn’t matter any more and the Dems have no will, these shareholders may have to “make a sacrifice.” It wouldn’t be the first time in corporate reality, but it could be the most worthwhile. We could take a page from Bush’s book, just this once, and do it now and apologize later.
I’ve not heard anyone else say something like this. Am I totally wrong-headed? Missing something important?
no, you’re not wrong-headed. It’s a major screw-up for BushCo. Ironically, this screw-up is 100% political.
I just don’t understand how the media can be so incredibly lazy. I spent about an hour researching the history of the deal and the shipping industry and I figured out that there was nothing special about this deal. I notice that not a single Australian newspaper or politician (as of last week) has raised a peep about this deal which effects their ports every bit as much as ours.
Bush deserves this, he does. But I don’t want our side to act like fools or racists.
There are real reasons of security to oppose the deal. But those reasons are fairly minor and fixing them really involves the extremely radical notion of nationalizing our ports and not in showing corporate favoritism.
Seems to me DP World could easily sell, renegotiate, or sue for breach if they are blocked by legislation. Like you wrote above, this is pure political theater at a time when our focus should be elsewhere. Want security? Pay for (fund) it. That’s Bush’s failure.
I keep sayin’, Pavlov would be proud. The “left” is so easily distracted.
I remember racism was the first charge out of their mouths to anyone who objected. To me, the absurdity of the deal is that the UAE laundered money and was the home of two of the people who attacked us. After five years of terrorizing us with terrorists, Bush turns around and gives this terrorist-tolerant sheikdom the keys to our ports.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Not to worry, It’s a hog tied done deal.
Here’s why. According to FT, quoting lawyers’ representations in court, only the preznit can block the deal. And we can’t afford to say NO.. unless we’d like to risk $2 billion funding per day, plus other US assets divestment – a threat made in open court. So it’ll be more like ‘pretty please, and how soon can you set up shop.’
In a comment I posted Feb. 28 with link to the article in (FT) Financial Times UK, “London court urged to block port takeover” there was this gem:
If the Republicans in the House want to get re-elected, they’re going to have to impeach aren’t they? 😉
The grass-roots movement in Vermont, voted to impeach Bush. Yesterday we had Town Meeting and that’s about as close as we’ll get. Five towns voted for impeaching Bush.
At least we countered the Senate Intel Cover-Up Committee voting to codify Bush’s illegal authorization for warrantless spying. After giving him cover, there can be no hope of having an impeachment trial. We’ll need to take controlling seats at mid term.
I’m surprised Bush hasn’t pulled out a map for the republican leaership. Here’s the UAE, here’s the straits of Hormuz, here’s Iran . . . connect the dots.
You’re quite correct to point out that the security is the job of the Coast Guard & Homeland Security.
Bush’s latest Executive Order should reassure us all, just in case “somethigng” else happens:
I’ve said it elsewhere but I’ll say it again.
And just in case you were wondering, DPW was NOT managing the port in Aden in 2000 when the Cole was hit.
Pax
Boo,
I totally agree with your assessment of this situation. If this is such a big deal now, why was it not a big deal in January 2004?
We entrust DPI to support our military warships in the Gulf port of Jebel Ali, UAE, which we (meaning the U.S.) do not control. 30% of America’s ports are managed by foreign-owed port management companies based in Singapore, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Japan and Taiwan. If UAE is seen as bad, what happens when DPI continues to acquire other foreign-owned port management companies? Are we even a position to control these acquisitions and what additional foreign policies failures will occur if we try to do so? We need to think about this because the impact could be costly in the future for our country.
Additionally, the cost to turn over all port management to U.S.-owned companies would be cost prohibitive at best with the American consumer getting the “shaft” in higher costs for goods and produce. We already have other issues (feeding the poor, social security, Medicare, housing, and education to name just a few) and how would these programs be affected if additional funding cuts are applied?
The real focus should be on security resources. Since 9/11 only $630 million has been spend on port security compared to $18 billion in airport security. With record trade deficits, it would seem that more resources would be directed to ports for cargo inspections, bill of laden verifications, etc.
Let’s not get so wrapped up over this unless we are willing to pay the price (which will be $100s of billions) to nationalize the port system. This fight is not about national security, it is about Repub political posturing, plain and simple!
Please note that DPI is not DPW but I believe that they are affiliated, thus the reason for the example. The goal is point out that other UAE companies have acquired American-owned port management companies after 9/11, so why now is it so uncool??
DPI is DPW
from DP World, history
Thansk for the confirmation!
One of the most important assets in this deal is the data brokerage resources that come from CSX and will be owned/stored away from US authority.
Vote 62-2
Now, let’s see if Bush will use his first veto
I don’t have any doubt at all that this deal, or some form of it will pass. They might make a show of standing up to him but the deal will make it through, somehow.
Hell, the PA only passed by 2 votes in the House, didn’t it?
I wonder if anybody heard the story on NPR a few days ago about how one of our ports is managed by a company owned by a guy who is a big shot in the Communist Party in China. This particular port is one that the Tenth Mountain Division uses for embarking to Iraq.
In this case it’s not even a foreign owned company, which might at least have some oversight, instead it’s a private company owned by a big-wig in the government of a country that is barely above water on a whole bunch of international issues.
So we’re going to come down hard on a perfectly legitimate company from a country that is doing exactly as we say all the oil-producing countries should do, i.e. diversify into other businesses? Meanwhile we let the Red Chinese run one of our military ports?
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5240306
This port foo-rah is seriously the stupidest thing I have seen from both parties for a long, long time. Where is the leadership on this?