Sen. John Warner has announced that Dubai Ports World has agreed to divest their holdings of P&O’s American ports operations. They have agreed to sell to an ‘U.S. entity’, provided they have time to do an orderly transfer and do not suffer economic loss.
This is an excellent effort by Warner to solve the problem. We’ll see if there is any sanity left on Capitol Hill when congresspeople being responding.
Just wonderin’: is this egg on Bush’s face or is it not?
to keep the egg off Bush’s face. Congress would have overridden Bush’s veto and this is yet another end-around by the WH like the NSA compromise to avoid hearings.
That was quick, lickety spit, right after the vote. Others have been questioning the timing of the announcement too. “The Devil Is In The Details”
(via Thinkprogress)
Sure saves the use of a veto, that rarest of assets. Gotta give it to them. They do have full control of the news cycle.
Do you suppose DPW will follow through with threats of divesting US assets?
Maybe, but then again, not likely when there’s such practices as nominee directors, Panama, Bermuda, Bahamas shell companies.
A group of Bushco investors will form a company and will hire the person who used to run the ports for the British company to run this.
It’s free week at ft.com, so I get to post a link:
Jacob Weisberg calls Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and yes, Howard Dean “The Democrats’ three sorry stooges” in today’s Financial Times. Read it here.
Weisberg’s take:
I won’t embellish much further than to say that Weisberg does seem to like Howard Dean, but worries that Mr. Dean can’t manage his public image. Agree with Weisberg or don’t, but he seems to be on the idea that the current Democratic leadership isn’t likely to advance the progressive agenda where it needs to go.
The Democratic agenda is to get money from corporate sponsors. That’s all there is to it. And to appeal to Republican voters.
Ralph Nader was right and is always right. There is no difference between the parties. The left was always foolish to accuse Nader of some kind of egotism. Imagine! Ralph Nader is egotistical compared to Who?
I think the public would tolerate (maybe even relate to) crabby if we could get rid of the liberal elitism and disarray.
to a “US entity”, especially since these port operations are farmed out to other countries precisely because there are no US companies qualified to handle this job.
Would that be, um, ah, Haliburton?! Or the Carlye Group? What a shell game!
BlogsforBush on the South Dakota bill.
Best line: “We Republicans are by and large a pro-life Party.”
Yeah, except when it comes to providing for the actual needs of real people. Let’s see, cutting medicaid, student loans and refusing additional funding for heating in cold weather areas. Because real Americans don’t need assistance, they can just pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. And if they can’t, well, they’re not real Americans, so fuck ’em.
I don’t think this is good. What’s good about it? There is no resolution to a problem. There is resolution to an imagined problem.
So the government is involved in solving problems that don’t really exist. Arab ownnership of the work in the ports is nothing. No danger. This is a very dangerous precedent. They are going to solve more imagined problems now.
In other worlds. Xenophobia will be used by the Dumbocrats to stop other normal economic transactions in a pathetic attempt to make Bush look bad. This cost of making Bush look bad may be very hard to take on an ecomomic level when the Arabazoids start pulling out all or some of their money.
The idea of making Bush look bad is so stupid. They have to do this because this is the only thing their common corporate sponsors will allow.
Didn’t really catch that the dems were also playing the distraction game until you mentioned it, Stu.
As if there aren’t enough real problems w/o creating more!
This time Stu Piddy, it was bipartisan.
Below is quite a headline in FT, Financial Times, UK
Not quite. While I like the “perilously weak” descriptive that Bush may have lost control, there’s President Cheney.
Both men promoted fear of them over there… so they couldn’t be invited for dinner over here now, could they?
I think a lot of people don’t understand that ultimately Bush will not respond to public opinion. The press is not responding to public opinion except obliquely mentioning Bush’s drop in approval. They don’t call him for what he has done and is doing…and they won’t Bush and the press are all part of the same unit,
Bush is not and can never be considered weak. Only if he is sick or dying.
He has the power of the presidency and that is currently an imperial power. He can do whatever he likes.
Just becuase the Senate and the the House of Represntative are distancing themselves for 6 measely months from Bush until the elections, don’t get too excited. It doesn’t mean very much as he is very close to a King.
He can start a war without them.
Look at what they are separting themselves over. The Dubai Ports. Not the Iraq War, Not survilliance, not New Orleans , Not the coming war with Iraq.
This is bullshit. It means nothing.
Many a false step is made by standing still.
Wonder if we’re allowed to get a donation to our favorite charity from Frist’s frequent flier miles.
via Huffpost
“Frist a frequent flier on drug companies’ jets”
OK, we’re not disappointed, or surprised that the money trail is still robust. Neither are we shocked that Frist is dismissive.
Ya know, to quote the old man of the bard, Methinks he doth protest too much.
No, ‘I don’t need to be bought’ Just a few checks to my favorite charity will do. That’s the new shelter game being played in DC – the city of deceit.
why this is a good idea today? Removing a non-controversy, I guess? There still isn’t an experienced “Amercian” firm ready to take over the ports. So we’ll be treated to whomever getting on-the-job training. And as you pointed out yesterday, “Exactly what kind of corporation is ‘American’ anyway?” The whole incident is going to remembered as another insult in the Arab world. Not saying I”ve got the “answer,” just not sure why this should be seen as a positive development.
Presumably when they “divest” themself of the operation they will “divest” everything that goes with the operation, not just the contract. That would include the people who run the operation and all the equipment and other property used in the operation. So it would be divested as some kind of going concern.
Who will own it? I’m willing to bet Halliburton acquires an interest. And,of course, unless Congress passes a law forbidding or limiting foreign ownership of any company that operates ports — the same ownership group will probably have an interest in the new entity.
Halliburton used to concentrate on (as they say) their “core competencies” such as oilfield servicing.
The thing about the new, improved Hallliburton is that they are now essentially functioning as a middleman – give them a contract (often noncompetitive) to perform a task, any task, and they’ll subcontract for the expertise to do it (or, as has often been the case in Iraq, pretend to do it).
And of course they’ll tack on their admin costs and a guaranteed profit. And the Cheneys of the world suck up no-value-added dollars straight from the taxpayers pockets to their already bloated bank accounts.
I don’t, for a minute, put it past the administration to have planned the whole goddamn thing. With DPW in on it from the start. For all the stuff they’re incompetent at, they’re really good at finding creative ways of redirecting huge sums of money to a few favored recipients.
Well, it’s a good idea because the insanity had reached a boiling point.
Warner is allowing people to a) come to their senses and b) save some face.
We don’t want to screw DP World, we just don’t want them running our ports. They were not about to privatize the ports, so the only option was to allow them to sell off the assets and an equitable price.
We’ll see if it works. But given the politics, this would be the most fair outcome for DP World.
I’m not sure why you have such sympathy for DP World. As far as I can tell, they did poor due diligence on the transfer of the port contract and chose to go along with the side deal they made with the the Bush representatives instead of forcing the issue and making the Seller get them an unimpeachable consent to the assignment of that contract as a condition to closing. They took the risk; it backfired on them. Happens all the time in mergers.
I sympathize with anyone that trusts the Bush administration to protect their interests. But seriously, the USG’s word should be good.
The word of the executive brank of the USG should NOT have been enough for the Buyer in this transaction because the legal process allows for Congress to step in. It may be rare for Congress to do that; but it is a risk that needs to be factored into their decision making.
These are big companies that can afford teams of lawyers to advise them. If the US ports contract was a major asset in this transaction then the entire US vetting process should have been understood by those lawyers, including the risks. The CFIUS process is a risky process for the acquirer of a contract because Congress is only informed after the fact and its only choice in that case is to jump in as it is doing now. The risk that Congress may disagree with the administration is, perhaps small, but it is a risk and the kind of risk that may impact a transaction tremendously. It may be a dumb process (or not) but it is the process. They should have understood the risks and negotiated their purchase agreement accordingly.
All this hand wringing by big business is just that – hand wringing by big business.
No sympathy for the Buyer from me on this.
I’ve been wondering the same thing. At the lack of any disclosure, I just figured you had money invested in the deal somehow.
the US public. Just the words “American entity” will be sufficient to reassure Americans that Arabs will not be soiling America’s ports.
Even with all the outrage of recent weeks, few Americans realize that there are only a handful of companies in the world who are equipped to provide this service, and fewer still will question exactly what is meant by “American entity.”
It will be a textbook illustration, if another were needed, of how the most facile of cosmetic gestures can almost instantly calm the most furious storms of public outrage.
A most useful lesson for the “election” minded, as the season approaches.
I’m interested in seeing what “US Company” gets the job to run the US port deal now and whether it’s a company friendly to the neocon gang who seized control of the government or to the Carlyle Group gang who’ve been trying since 2000 to retake that control back from the neocons.
Since there are no US port management companies of a size equal to the task of running these 6 major port facilities, I’m looking for a battle between Carlyle/Bechtel and PNAC Neocon/Halliburton to develop over this.
Since Bechtel actually built the ports in Dubai itself and has long standing ties to the Arab world going back decades; and since the neocon insanity is weakening it’s grip of control over the Bush regime, ny money is on Carlyle and Bechtel, (or their surrogates), to prevail in this whole affair.
Bush himself is completely irrelevant to this power struggle between 2 very determined criminal enterprises.
This would fit right in with the ICG, the coal/energy/teck/telecom giant that made a few folks rich in the past 5-10 years buying bankrupters. He/Carlyle could grab one of the near-capable shipping companies that has high debt or other liability and write that off.
Great! Now that the UAE has egg all over their faces, let’s hope they keep on buying those airplanes, helicopters, and other American-made goods–and let’s hope they keep letting us use their ports and territory for our military–and let’s hope they keep on selling us their oil.
And let’s consider now about the OTHER port management companies, like the ones run by Singapore and China. And the LNG shipping danger. And the non-inspection of incoming containers…