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.
