The UAE owns Dubai Port Co., which is taking operations from London-based Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co., which operates six US ports. A political uproar has ensued over the deal, which the White House approved without congressional oversight.
The donations were made in the early 1990s for the library, which houses the papers of former President George Bush, the current president's father.
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They also gave $100 million to the Hurricane Katrina relief effort.
By the way, I don't like this arrangment any better than you do.
Charles Krauthammer sums up the complexity of the dilemma very well in his column today...
http://www.townhall.com/print/print_story.php?sid=187679&loc=/opinion/columns/charleskrauthammer/2006/02/24/187679.html
I think I agree with his assessment.
What I find funny though is how this issue has made Lefties such as yourself suddenly so concerned about terrorism. Here I thought all along that you belonged to the Michael Moore "There-is-no-terrorist-threat" school of thought. What gives?
And besides, in your mind wouldn't you consider the squelching of this deal to simply be racial profiling on a grand scale?
Please explain.
"A political uproar has ensued over the deal, which the White House approved without congressional oversight."
This is a bogus statement. This sort deal has never required, or been done with conregssional oversight in the past.
Should we give back the $100 mil for Katrina relief?
I don't understand the uproar here. How and why would the UAE govt officials use their position as port owners to bring terror to their vital trade partners, the US? I share Six's credulity at taking advice from Nansi Polosi and Howard Dean on defending the US from terror. Do you guys now support (as a majority of black Americans do) racial profiling at airports? How about tapping phone calls between people in the UAE and US?
This one is about recycling petrodollars. In addition to the Chinese, Opec oil barons are propping up the US economy by using their petrodollars to by US assets (usually bonds and stocks.) These guys usually don't go for hard assets--direct foreign investment--but the port deal signals a new appetite for same. Even though Bush is supposed to oppose dictatorships, even though he's supposed to be against "our addiction to [foreign] oil," he really has no choice but to support UAE here. If they got pissed off and stopped buying our bonds, trouble would ensue. Because we're certainly in no position to stop buying their oil. (Insert crack about SUVs here.)
Conspiracy theory? Sorry, fellas; read it in the WSJ.
"What I find funny though is how this issue has made Lefties such as yourself suddenly so concerned about terrorism. Here I thought all along that you belonged to the Michael Moore "There-is-no-terrorist-threat" school of thought. What gives?"
My oppostition to this deal is the backroom shenanigans that went on, and the fact that the project was green-lighted without following the rules. It is another example of members of the Bush regime using their position to enrich themselves and their cronies at the expense of the American people.
The fact that it is an Arab country who is being allowed to purchase an asset that is vital to national security (without a security investigation) just demonstrates the hypocrisy of the Bush administration. They "disappear" American citizens and resident aliens of Arab descent, but the rich sheiks are allowed to do whatever the hell they want.
Tom: You and some of the WSJ writers and Pat Buchannon say that Arabs and Chinese are investing in the US in order to prop it up; the Cafe Hayek economists and Larry Kudlow say that these transactions demonstrate that these investors value the US economy as more stable and profitable than any alternative. In either case, the globalists are surely correct that these investors have their fates tied to that of the US economy. Please explain what hypothetical befefit the UAEers would have in abetting Al Qaida in sinking the US economy.
What if Opec decided that accepting euros and/or yen (now it only accepts dollars)--or yuan, for that matter; if the currency is "undervalued," as everyone says, why not bet on it?--made good economic sense? (See Ron Paul post, above). Your Hayek economists are treading on dangerous ground pretending that global financial crises are now impossible. There are reasons to stiff the dollar beyond just sticking it to the US?
Tom: Why are you resorting to comments like "pretending" to describe the authentic beliefs of other people? Those kind of comments go nowhere. I can say you are "pretending". There. Now what? Let's just stick to facts and logic, please. Speaking of which, they Hayekers do not claim that "financial crises are now impossible." Have you read those guys?
Rather, in a world of possibilities, they believe that the most likely positive outcomes occur when people and nations trade freely amoungst themselves. And yes, they acknowledge that the Arab dictators could start holding their wealth in euros or yuan... and that this would harm the US economy, as well as the Arabian investments in the US economy. They do predict that Arabs and others will switch their investments to other nations if those other nations start doing a better job of permitting their citizens to prosper. Neither the Hayekers nor I want the US to artificially outperform (our out-attract investors) other nations. We want our nation to do the best possible job.
If other nations start doing a better job, then maybe its time to immigrate. One way that they Hayekers and I are convinced that the US will (or any nation) will do the best job of attracting investments (or facilitating prosperity in general) is to have the smallest possible government neccessary, with the lowest, flattest taxes.
"Let the market decide" = "Let humans decide for themselves, without stealing or extorting from each other."
With your endless procession of criticism (now you're arguing for a return the gold standard?) of the US, I get confused about your proposals for improvement. What is it that you are arguing for here?
Son, I've read Hayek himself. Remember when I was researching the book on conservatism in the academy? I've read Smith and Ricardo, too. And I read the posts from Cafe Hayek you direct me too. What I see is an extremely sanguine worldview that squeezes out much complexity. In the case of oil, for example, what free market? An open and US-approved cartel controls something like half of all reserves. For all the president's blather about our "addiction to oil" and his support for alternatives, the recently approved energy bill contains much more in the way of goodies for Big Oil than it does for alternatives. Bush's big support for alternatives ends up being another boost for corn-based ethanol--that government-rigged, environmentally ruinous, oil dependent fraud.
To me, the CH boys have to pretend there's a free market in order to marvel at its perfection. I counter, show it to me.
The "free" market is rigged in favor of crude production and consumption. I hope the global warming and peak oil theses are wrong, because the market ain't going to save us if they're not.
Tom: So, for the first time in human history, the doomsayers are finally correct, about petro running out and standing as humanity's final energy resource.
They Heyakers don't imagine that the world comprises a perfectly free market. They recognize that all national economies comprise a spectrum, with some much freer, and others much more centrally controlled, than others.
As for the petro market in particular, they understand that a good portion of it is unfree, including OPEC. They argue that more wealth and innovation would result from making the market more free, rather than, say, enacting Hugo Chavez's "nationalization" project. They have commented on the shortages that resulted from the hurricanes last year, and argued convincingly that a response comprising restrictions (in the form of "gouging" laws) would result in a much less perfect outcome than a response comprising more freedom.
This argument extends to other areas, including education, where the freedom of vouchers exist for colleges (pell grants), but not for K-12, and the predicted outcome of a much less bad college system than K-12 system.
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