www.thornwalker.com/ditch/lights140.htm

February 24, 2006

Strakon Lights Up
 

The Dubai deal

Port socialism: Allah be merciful!
 

 
Many things can be said about the Bushites' port-operation deal, and I'm going to say quite a few of them.

First, before you say "strange bedfellows," the Bush handlers want you to know that their decision to accept Dubai Ports World as the operator of six major U.S. ports actually helps their Warrrr on Terrrr by throwing a juicy plum to Arabs of the friendly variety. (DPW is a state-owned "company," i.e., it's tantamount to a government agency.) Now, one might question how long those Arabs will stay friendly, but in all fairness I must pass along assurances from David Sanger of the New York Times that most of the employees here in the United State will continue to be American. ("Big Problem, Dubai Deal or Not," February 23) However, I'm not altogether sure that the question of who sets overall policy and gives those employees their orders is irrelevant.

In any case, the Bushites are quick to assure us that their decision wasn't based just on clever diplomacy. No! — DPW is jus' the bestest choice in the whole wide world, kids! So I guess that's okay, then.
 

Moving on, I have to note the interesting fact that none of the Bush handlers considered it necessary to bother their nominal boss with this obviously hair-raising decision — or to brief Congress, either. But now, even though the normally supine lawfakers, including Republicans, are rising in revolt — along with their constituents — Bush's renowned dumbhead stubbornness has kicked in. He wasn't let in on the jaw-dropper deal beforehand, but by Gawd he's now behind it all the way.

It seems to me that this nicely illustrates the way the entire regime is run. Plot, plot, plot ... maneuver, maneuver, maneuver ... and then serve up the fait accompli to the Wee Emperor. George'll eat it. He eats anything.

Will we actually see the first Bush veto, over the ports deal? Well, maybe, but one should never underestimate the lawfakers' ability to calm down once New Facts Come to Light, to go along in order to get along, and to hornswoggle their constituents in the going.
 

On this next point, once again I must confess my ignorance of the intricacies and depredations of leviathan, especially in the "post-9/11 environment." But I have to ask, since when has it been the Central Government's business to decide who gets the contract to operate ports in this country? One of the ports included in the Dubai deal is the Port of New York. Whatever happened to the New York Port Authority, I wondered. Well, it turns out that it's still in business, including the seaport business, at least to some extent. I did find an unsubstantiated comment on a blog that the Port Authority is "very much against this sale," and if that's true, it begins to sound as though that agency has been relegated to running bridges and tunnels and the like, and roughly shouldered aside when it comes to seaports, apart from grunt work such as dredging. Clearly no one with actual power is listening to it on the DPW deal.

I actually slogged through the original PATRIOT Act on your behalf, as well as other reams of the most unbelievable and interminable government gobbledygook, but I was unable to find a definitive answer to this question of federal port control. I did discover that there exists something called the National Shipping Authority (under something called the Maritime Administration), which is responsible for "the coordination of port services for defense and commerce." And the Authority seems to have special powers of "coordination" during a state of emergency, which of course we're laboring under now and will continue to labor under for the remainder of our lives.

A friend of mine who works on a congressional staff in Washington provides these details, which do help: "My understanding is that [the deal] was approved by a committee run by the Treasury Department and including State, Homeland Security, Defense, and Commerce. They have authority to approve or deny all trade deals (not just ones dealing with ports) that might have 'national security implications.'" Still unanswered, though, is how the deal emerged in the first place — if the port of New York actually opposed it, that strongly suggests that the ports themselves did not initiate it. I detect here the stench of Polite Totalitarianism, with all its pettifoggery, shadowy manipulation, and impenetrable complexity.

Not to perseverate, but I find it amazing the lengths a fellow has to go to, with respect to so many news stories these days, in order to find answers or even clues to the most obvious questions. (If you've seen a straightforward explanation in some news account, please clue me in. I'll be appropriately abashed and grateful.)
 

Lifting myself out of that morass, I arrive at my final point. Assuming government at any level has any business even existing — an assumption that, as you know, I absolutely do not make — what proper business does it have owning, operating, or having anything to do with ports? As for the Central Government in particular, its control apparently emerges from its incessant warmaking, but that's not what I mean by proper.

Here we have the regime monopolizing control over at least six big ports. (Actually there are now 14 ports designated as "strategic.") If Washington has made a mistake, it will be a doozy, and naturally we can expect to see the usual governmental denials of error, soon followed by the usual blame-shifting and the usual scapegoating. Though every pol and bureaucrat eventually leaves office one way or another, the government itself can't go out of business when it blunders.

However busily it may try to "coordinate" all aspects of our lives, government is an inherently uncoordinated entity, owing to the anti-epistemology of coercion. Ports should be privately owned, and their owners should be able to decide for themselves how to operate and protect their ports, guided by free-market competition, which if left alone will generate all the intelligent intelligence required for safe, efficient, and profitable operation. Only the market, functioning in an environment of justly owned property, can generate such information. Down with port socialism! Down with port fascism!

But you knew I was going to say that, didn't you?
 

A footnote on the mechanics of the deal: Dubai Ports World purchased the quaintly named Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co., which had been operating the ports, after the U.S. government "approved" the sale.

I obtained that background detail from the first part of a February 23 "Economic Brief" at Power and Interest News Report, which also provides other informative detail. The whole matter remains unfathomably abstruse, but if I'm reading the PINR report correctly, it provides a further indication that the Bush regime didn't make the deal so much as approve it.

My friend in Washington tipped me to this equally enlightening article at Capitol Hill Blue, "The little agency that created a great big stink," by James Rosen. However, even it doesn't address my basic question of why the individual ports seem not even to be in the room when hiring their own contractors is under discussion. The question of governmental approval aside, who picked Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co. in the first place?

February 24, 2006

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