Lately we are hearing a lot about our ports. It is common knowledge that President Bush was going to let a state owned company from Dubai, a United Arab Emirates-owned company, take over running several large ports in the U.S. This raised a furor in this country for three reasons:

1. People were appalled that a country where some of the 9/11 terrorists came from would be responsible for a U.S. port and they saw this as a security risk.
2. The flames of dissent were fanned, no doubt, by the opposition party.
3. The company was owned by a foreign country, it wasn't just a foreign company.

Politically, it was a arrogant move because it must have been know before hand that this would cause a lot of trouble for the Republican party, yet President Bush did it anyway. Why would the president do this? None of us are privy to all the facts so it is hard to say. I could speculate and say he is feathering his nest for when he gets out of office or that he is reciprocating for deals that were made in the past where he benefited, but this would only be a guess.

We have been hearing of late that hardly any companies in the U.S. are capable of running a port. No one seems to mention the fact that municipalities are capable of doing this on their own in many cases. Here are a couple that run two of the busiest ports in the U.S and there are more:

Port of Long Beach in California:

This is one of the busiest ports in the world yet the city itself is able to run this port. This sort of flies in the face of what we have been told to us. I am speaking about the fact that we were told that only a few foreign companies are capable of running a big port here. It does stand to reason that a fairly large city or large town might have the resources to run it's own port doesn't it?

Port of Los Angeles in California:

The Port of Los Angeles is a department of the City of Los Angeles and is often referred to as the Los Angeles Harbor Department. The Port is operated and managed under a State Tidelands Trust that grants local municipalities jurisdiction over ports and stipulates that activities must be related to commerce, navigation and fisheries.

Many of the states and municipalities where large ports are located have been begging the president for increased funds so that they could tighten security but instead, 6.8 billion dollars may be headed to Dubai. Some of the ports that may come under this company, if the deal is approved, are the Cruse ship terminal in the New York City Port, in New York State, the container port in Newark, N.J. and the port in Baltimore. Interesting enough, no one has mentioned the tax arrangements for such a deal. The connections in the government to this company are said to be very strong. I don't really want to get into all this but if you are interested just check the N.Y. Daily News which ran a story on them. Other ports that would be affected are in New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia.

How did all this come about? A British company that has been around for about 165 years was subjected to a bidding war and the Dubai company won. That British company is the one that ran the ports in question and that is how the company from Dubai got involved with our ports. One thing is for sure, there will be some economic retaliation if this deal falls through and maybe even some if it doesn't. The Arabs governments are furious. They tend to stick together in situations like this. One of the first targets of their retaliation might be Boeing with the contracts it has for planes. It would be very easy for the Arab nations to switch to Air Bus.

What I don't understand is why our government would ever consider letting a state owned company from any country run our ports. You might as well declare those ports foreign territory. It is one thing to let a foreign company run them and quite a different thing to let a state owned company do it. On top of that, using a country that some of the 9/11 terrorists came seems to really be asking for it. Is this political suicide or what?

Maybe I am old fashioned, I believe in the U.S. running it's own ports. With all the billions we spend every year, on things that produce absolutely no return for the common man, why can't the government subsidize the ports in this country? I am not asking the Federal Government to run all the ports but just to help out a little. It could turn out that with proper management, cutting down on theft, etc. the ports might even break even. It might turn out the if a U.S. company ran a port, it could be successful and they might bid to run other ports.

Some people are for this port deal. There are numerous editorials out there saying it is o.k. They claim we are discriminating against an Arab company but they never mention the fact the the company is state owned which changes things completely. Still, in this atmosphere, it would have been hard for any Arab company to be approved. You also have to look at this from another point of view. How would an Arab country, or any country for that matter, like it if the U.S. Parks department took over it's ports? That is the equivalent of a state owned company. You would hear the screaming all over the world and I bet it would be a lot worse than what is happening here. You would probably have riots and the U.S. embassy would be attacked.

Let me end this article by saying that the deal is just wrong and was wrong when the British ran the ports (no insult intended to anyone). A countries' ports should be run by that country either directly or indirectly by a company from that country and that is all there is to it.