The Port Deal - Flopping Aces

So it appears a deal has been made that pretty much benefits everyone on both sides, some more then others:

WASHINGTON ? A United Arab Emirates-owned company said Thursday it would give up its management stake in a controversial ports deal that has taken Washington by storm and has caused massive upheaval in the president’s own party.

“Because of the strong relationship between the United Arab Emirates and the United States and to preserve that relationship, DP World has decided to transfer fully the U.S. operation of P&O Operations North America to a United States entity,” DP World’s chief operating officer, Edward H. Bilkey, said in a statement, read on the Senate floor by Sen. John Warner, R-Va.

The company said its decision was “based on an understanding that DP World will have time to affect the transfer in an orderly fashion and that DP World will not suffer economic loss.”

[…]A Warner spokesman told FOX News that based on conversation between his boss and DP World lawyers, “we understand this is a full divestment or sale of the U.S. operations of P&O.” That would mean the Senate amendment would essentially be off the table.

I don’t think the Democrats are too happy because they thought they could use this vote for the upcoming elections:

The announcement was somewhat of a blow for Democrats, who were pushing for a Senate vote on an amendment that would halt the deal. The Senate later voted 51-47 to ignore GOP requests to wait until a 45-day review of the deal is completed before they try to stop it. Republican leaders needed 67 votes to stop debate on the measure.

[…]Democrats were pushing that amendment to lobbying reform legislation to ensure that no UAE-related company has any control over U.S. port operations, particularly since so few details of the latest DP World plan is known. The amendment, sponsored by Sen. Charles Schumer, would not only block the Dubai deal, but also other U.S. ports deal with any company wholly owned or controlled by any foreign government that recognized the Taliban in Afghanistan from 1996-2001.

If they succeeded in forcing a vote on the amendment, Democrats could then claim a big election year win in the area of national security ? an area Republicans generally have a stronger track record on.

The Democrats lose a bit on this deal, Hillary loses even more since she will have to explain why she was against this deal while at the same time her husband worked behind the scenes to get this deal done.

Either way, while this pull out by the UAE has calmed people done the fact that EVERYONE politicized this deal and panicked beyond reason cannot be forgiven. Even the top US Commander in the Middle East thought the whole thing was foolish:

He said the United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is a part, is vital to the military’s stake in the Persian Gulf region. The Navy heavily uses the port there.

“I am very dismayed by the emotional responses that some people have put on the table here in the United States that really comes down to Arab and Muslim bashing that was totally unnecessary,” Abizaid, who just returned from Iraq for meetings in Washington, told reporters.

I guess congratulations are in order to the Republicans who went into hysterics with this deal. They have managed to give the Democrats a election year victory based on hysteria and lies, and of course the Democrats PR machine….sigh.

Thankfully some level headed Republicans were able to persuade the UAE to make a deal, which definately softened the Democratic victory, not completely, but at least softened it.

Mark Steyn pretty much spelled it out today on the Hugh Hewitt show: (via RadioBlogger)

Well, I would say there aren’t really many happy endings in this story for the Democrats. They saw an opportunity to bash Bush on this, because he looked vulnerable on it. Not just the Democrats, a lot of conservative commentators, Michelle Malkin and others were upset about this deal, too. But the Democrats really ran with this, and panicked enough Republicans into joining them. And the question now is who do these things go to? Do they go to Halliburton? I mean, Halliburton might as well get it, because the reality is that PNO, the British company who were running things at these ports were running them because there’s no American company that does it. What are we going to do? Are we going to create a company specifically for the purpose of running these ports, which would be some semi-nationalized off-shoot of Homeland Security? I wouldn’t personally want to see that. Or is there going to be a real company that steps forward. Interestingly, as I understand this deal, Dubai Ports World will still be running Canadian ports. So if the argument is that these ports will be vulnerable to getting something suspicious trucked in, shipped in, all they have to do is ship it into Vancouver and drive it over the border to Washington State. So I’m not sure quite what the benefits are there.

Now how about those other ports?

While allowing some countries to operate our ports may be considered a security risk, others’ already run some of our ports, such as China and Saudi Arabia, but they are not considered dangerous? Hell, why don’t we look at the Americans who are running them currently:

With all the recent talk about security vulnerabilities at the nation’s ports, one subject goes virtually unmentioned. The men who actually control many of the nation’s docks, especially on the Eastern seaboard, are in the hip pocket of the Mafia and have been for decades.

Regardless of whether or not a Dubai-owned company manages operations at these ports — currently the source of much hand-wringing in Washington — many of those with the most direct access to the billions of tons of cargo that move through those ports owe their jobs to the mob.

How can that be? It all has to do with the peculiar institution of the union hiring hall. No matter who owns or operates the ports, the union, not the employer, actually assigns workers to jobs. You can’t work unless you carry a union card. And on East Coast and Gulf ports, the union card belongs to the International Longshoreman’s Association (ILA), one of the most mobbed-up unions in the country.

In July 2005, the U.S. Department of Justice filed suit under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) against the ILA, which targets the entire 31-member ILA executive council, including the president, secretary-treasurer, executive vice president, general vice president and more than two dozen others.

In a press release accompanying the suit, the Justice Department notes, “For decades the waterfront has been the setting for corruption and violence stemming from organized crime’s influence over labor unions operating there, including the ILA and its affiliated locals, as well as port-related businesses. Since the late 1950s, two organized crime families — the Gambino family and the Genovese family — have shared control of various ports, with the Gambino family primarily exercising its influence at commercial shipping terminals in Brooklyn and Staten Island, and the Genovese family primarily controlling those in Manhattan, New Jersey and the Port of Miami.”

The Justice Department has already won convictions against more than a dozen high-level Gambino and Genovese mobsters who controlled docks on the East Coast and is also seeking convictions of several ILA officials. The government has charged these men with extorting money from waterfront businesses and terminal operators and extorting thousands of dollars from individuals seeking employment on the docks, among other crimes.

And who support the Unions no matter what? You got it, the Democrats.

Could these guys, the ILA, be the reason no US company will touch the ports with a 10 foot pole? Do you think a terrorist organization could involve a mobster in getting a WMD onto our ports as easy as they could if they operated the port itself? Just wondering.

Even more interesting is way down in this article:

Among the top recipients of ILA PAC money in the last few elections were Sens. Frank Lautenberg, D-NJ, Robert Menendez, D-NJ, Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., Chuck Schumer, D-NY, and Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-NY, all of whom represent states with important ports. Some of these same senators are among the chief critics of the Dubai port deal, but they are noticeably silent when it comes to mob influence in the union that actually controls who works on these ports.

Things that make you go hmmmm.

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Curt

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