Who's " Selling off America " ?

Published on Monday, February 27, 2006 by CommonDreams.org

When Americans No Longer Own America
by Thom Hartmann

The Dubai Ports World deal is waking Americans up to a painful reality: So-called "conservatives" and "flat world" globalists have bankrupted our nation for their own bag of silver, and in the process are selling off America.
Through a combination of the "Fast Track" authority pushed for by Reagan and GHW Bush, sweetheart trade deals involving "most favored nation status" for dictatorships like China, and Clinton pushing us into NAFTA and the WTO (via GATT), we've abandoned the principles of tariff-based trade that built American industry and kept us strong for over 200 years.
The old concept was that if there was a dollar's worth of labor in a pair of shoes made in the USA, and somebody wanted to import shoes from China where there may only be ten cents worth of labor in those shoes, we'd level the playing field for labor by putting a 90-cent import tariff on each pair of shoes. Companies could choose to make their products here or overseas, but the ultimate cost of labor would be the same.
Then came the flat-worlders, led by misguided true believers and promoted by multinational corporations. Do away with those tariffs, they said, because they "restrain trade." Let everything in, and tax nothing. The result has been an explosion of cheap goods coming into our nation, and the loss of millions of good manufacturing jobs and thousands of manufacturing companies. Entire industry sectors have been wiped out.
These policies have kneecapped the American middle class. Our nation's largest employer has gone from being the unionized General Motors to the poverty-wages Wal-Mart. Americans have gone from having a net savings rate around 10 percent in the 1970s to a minus .5 percent in 2005 - meaning that they're going into debt or selling off their assets just to maintain their lifestyle.
At the same time, federal policy has been to do the same thing at a national level. Because our so-called "free trade" policies have left us with an over $700 billion annual trade deficit, other countries are sitting on huge piles of the dollars we gave them to buy their stuff (via Wal-Mart and other "low cost" retailers). But we no longer manufacture anything they want to buy with those dollars.
So instead of buying our manufactured goods, they are doing what we used to do with Third World nations - they are buying us, the USA, chunk by chunk. In particular, they want to buy things in America that will continue to produce profits, and then to take those profits overseas where they're invested to make other nations strong. The "things" they're buying are, by and large, corporations, utilities, and natural resources.
Back in the pre-Reagan days, American companies made profits that were distributed among Americans. They used their profits to build more factories, or diversify into other businesses. The profits stayed in America.
Today, foreigners awash with our consumer dollars are on a two-decades-long buying spree. The UK's BP bought Amoco for $48 billion - now Amoco's profits go to England. Deutsche Telekom bought VoiceStream Wireless, so their profits go to Germany, which is where most of the profits from Random House, Allied Signal, Chrysler, Doubleday, Cyprus Amax's US Coal Mining Operations, GTE/Sylvania, and Westinghouse's Power Generation profits go as well. Ralston Purina's profits go to Switzerland, along with Gerber's; TransAmerica's profits go to The Netherlands, while John Hancock Insurance's profits go to Canada. Even American Bankers Insurance Group is owned now by Fortis AG in Belgium.
Foreign companies are buying up our water systems, our power generating systems, our mines, and our few remaining factories. All because "flat world" so-called "free trade" policies have turned us from a nation of wealthy producers into a nation of indebted consumers, leaving the world awash in dollars that are most easily used to buy off big chunks of America. As www.economyincrisis.com notes, US Government statistics indicate the following percentages of foreign ownership of American industry:

· Sound recording industries - 97%
· Commodity contracts dealing and brokerage - 79%
· Motion picture and sound recording industries - 75%
· Metal ore mining - 65%
· Motion picture and video industries - 64%
· Wineries and distilleries - 64%
· Database, directory, and other publishers - 63%
· Book publishers - 63%
· Cement, concrete, lime, and gypsum product - 62%
· Engine, turbine and power transmission equipment - 57%
· Rubber product - 53%
· Nonmetallic mineral product manufacturing - 53%
· Plastics and rubber products manufacturing - 52%
· Plastics product - 51%
· Other insurance related activities - 51%
· Boiler, tank, and shipping container - 50%
· Glass and glass product - 48%
· Coal mining - 48%
· Sugar and confectionery product - 48%
· Nonmetallic mineral mining and quarrying - 47%
· Advertising and related services - 41%
· Pharmaceutical and medicine - 40%
· Clay, refractory, and other nonmetallic mineral products - 40%
· Securities brokerage - 38%
· Other general purpose machinery - 37%
· Audio and video equipment mfg and reproducing magnetic and optical media - 36%
· Support activities for mining - 36%
· Soap, cleaning compound, and toilet preparation - 32%
· Chemical manufacturing - 30%
· Industrial machinery - 30%
· Securities, commodity contracts, and other financial investments and related activities - 30%
· Other food - 29%
· Motor vehicles and parts - 29%
· Machinery manufacturing - 28%
· Other electrical equipment and component - 28%
· Securities and commodity exchanges and other financial investment activities - 27%
· Architectural, engineering, and related services - 26%
· Credit card issuing and other consumer credit - 26%
· Petroleum refineries (including integrated) - 25%
· Navigational, measuring, electromedical, and control instruments - 25%
· Petroleum and coal products manufacturing - 25%
· Transportation equipment manufacturing - 25%
· Commercial and service industry machinery - 25%
· Basic chemical - 24%
· Investment banking and securities dealing - 24%
· Semiconductor and other electronic component - 23%
· Paint, coating, and adhesive - 22%
· Printing and related support activities - 21%
· Chemical product and preparation - 20%
· Iron, steel mills, and steel products - 20%
· Agriculture, construction, and mining machinery - 20%
· Publishing industries - 20%
· Medical equipment and supplies - 20%

Thus it shouldn't surprise us that the cons have sold off our ports as well, and will defend it to the bitter end. They truly believe that a "New World Order" with multinational corporations in charge instead of sovereign governments will be the answer to the problem of world instability. And therefore they must do away with quaint things like unions, a healthy middle class, and, ultimately, democracy.
The "security" implications of turning our ports over to the UAE are just the latest nail in what the cons hope will be the coffin of American democracy and the American middle class. Today's conservatives believe in rule by inherited wealth and an internationalist corporate elite, and things like a politically aroused citizenry and a healthy democracy are pesky distractions.
Everything today is driven by profits for multinationals, supported by the lawmaking power of the WTO. Thus, parts for our missiles are now made in China, a country that last year threatened us with nuclear weapons. Our oil comes from a country that birthed a Wahabist movement that ultimately led to 14 Saudi citizens flying jetliners into the World Trade buildings and the Pentagon. Germans now own the Chrysler auto assembly lines that turned out tanks to use against Germany in WWII. And the price of labor in America is being held down by over ten million illegal workers, a situation that was impossible twenty-five years ago when unions were the first bulwark against dilution of the American labor force.
When Thomas Jefferson wrote of King George III in the Declaration of Independence, "He has combined with others to subject
us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitutions and unacknowledged by our laws, giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation…" he just as easily could have been writing of the World Trade Organization, which now has the legal authority to force the United States to overturn laws passed at both local, state, and federal levels with dictates devised by tribunals made up of representatives of multinational corporations. If Dubai loses in the American Congress, their next stop will almost certainly be the WTO.
As Simon Romero and Heather Timmons noted in The New York Times on 24 February 2006, "the international shipping business has evolved in recent years to include many more containers with consumer goods, in addition to old-fashioned bulk commodities, and that has helped lift profit margins to 30 percent, from the single digits. These smartly managed foreign operators now manage about 80 percent of port terminals in the United States."
And those 30 percent profits from American port operations now going to Great Britain will probably soon go to the United Arab Emirates, a nation with tight interconnections to both the Bush administration and the Bush family.
Ultimately, it's not about security -- it's about money. In the multinational corporatocracy's "flat world," money trumps the national good, community concerns, labor interests, and the environment. NAFTA, CAFTA, and WTO tribunals can - and regularly do - strike down local and national laws. Thomas Paine's "Rights of Man" are replaced by Antonin Scalia's "Rights of Corporate Persons."
Profits even trump the desire for good enough port security to avoid disasters that may lead to war. After all, as Judith Miller wrote in The New York Times on January 30, 1991, quoting a local in Saudi Arabia: "War is good for business."
Thom Hartmann is a Project Censored Award-winning best-selling author of over a dozen books and the host of a nationally syndicated noon-3pm ET daily progressive talk show syndicated by Air America Radio. www.thomhartmann.com His most recent books are "What Would Jefferson Do?" and Ultimate Sacrifice.

source: http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0227-20.htm
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Monday, February 27, 2006

Dubai is now trying to censor CNN's Lou Dobbs
by John in DC - 2/27/2006 11:18:00 PM

I'm not kidding.

The Dubai state-owned company that wants to get control of 6 key US ports is now trying to silence CNN's Lou Dobbs. Apparently Dobbs' coverage of the port deal struck too close to home, so now Dubai is trying to force CNN to shut him up.

Well, here's a little advice for Dubai: In developed democracies the government doesn't get to tell the media to shut up or else. Sure, your good buddy George Bush has tried to censor the US media for years, but he's a failed president and an idiot and as a result is now at 34% in the polls. You've picked the wrong role model.

Dubai just proved once and for all how undemocratic and not-ready-for-prime-time it is. Scratch just a little bit and you uncover just another two-bit despot. But in this case, the two-bit despot has a checkered past with terrorism and wants to control the port of New York City.

You're doing a heck of a job, Dubie.
source: americablog.org
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From the Dallas Morning News

Nancy Kruh: Pundits have worries, but Dubai Ports isn't the main one

05:28 AM CST on Tuesday, February 28, 2006
The proposed sale of six U.S. port operations to a United Arab Emirates company has put pundits' reflexes to the test, with most exhibiting a healthy ability to knee-jerk one way or the other. But an outpouring of less-spontaneous commentary is now beginning to crest, and it's placing the controversy in the context of bigger-picture issues.
Balance of Opinion
In addition to the syndicated national columnists who regularly appear on Viewpoints, we are offering readers more voices in this twice-weekly roundup, on Tuesdays and Fridays, of comments from the country's leading political commentators.

Read the complete columns
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Trudy Rubin is among a small band of columnists less concerned about the sale than about port security in general.
"The irony of this tale is that there is a real threat to port safety, but it isn't Dubai Ports World," the Philadelphia Inquirer columnist writes. Now she hopes that "the ... flap may finally give the issue of port security the attention it deserves."
The federal government has allocated $18 billion to airport security since 9/11, Ms. Rubin points out, but just $630 million has gone to protect ports in the same time frame. "Only around 6 percent of the 6 million shipping containers that arrive annually are inspected," she writes.
"The problem is how to figure which containers ... might have had a dirty bomb inserted en route ...
"Should such a bomb explode, says maritime security expert Carl Benzel, it could shut down the country's ports and smash the 30 percent of the U.S. economy that relies on retail trade. Yet the system to prevent this from happening is rickety."
Nicholas Kristof and Rich Lowry pinpoint foreign ports as the larger security risk. "The key step" to smuggling a bomb into a U.S. port, Mr. Kristof writes in The New York Times, is "hiding the materials in the shipping container of a well-known and trusted exporter. If the container were shipped out of Rotterdam and seemed to contain Lego toys, for example, U.S. customs officials (who are now also based abroad) might not bother to examine it."
Mr. Lowry imagines a similar nightmare scenario. "More resources," he urges in the National Review, "should be poured into detection technology deployed overseas and in the United States, where only 37 percent of containers go through radiation detectors."
Looking through an economic lens, John Judis and David Ignatius both consider the trade implications of the proposed sale.
Mr. Judis wonders whether President Bush's "intransigence" has something to do with a UAE deal last November to purchase 42 Boeing jets for $9.7 billion with an option to buy 20 more.
"That is one of the largest purchases of commercial aircraft ever," he writes in the New Republic, "and it may have been the most important foreign sale made by an American company last year ...
"Bush officials have probably pressured Dubai's leaders to buy Boeing. That needs to be kept in mind as the administration continues to resist calls to rescind the port deal. Banning Dubai World Ports could have adverse consequences ... for Boeing and for America's trade balance."
For Mr. Ignatius, "the real absurdity here is that Congress doesn't seem to realize that an Arab-owned company's management of America's ports is just a taste of what is coming. ... Fiscal policies have sucked in imports so fast that the nation is nearing a trillion-dollar annual trade deficit."
The Washington Post columnist quotes economist Nouriel Roubini, who believes that "if we continue with our current patterns of spending above our incomes, by 2013 the U.S. foreign liabilities could be as high as 75 percent of GDP."
Far worse than the port-operations sale, Mr. Ignatius writes, would be for other "foreign investors to take us at our xenophobic word and decide that America doesn't really want foreign investment. If they pulled out their money, U.S. financial markets would plummet in a crash that might make 1929 look like a sleigh ride."
Where Congress should be putting its energies now, the columnist adds, is in "changing the fiscal policies that are transforming the United States into a ward of the world."
Balance of Opinion is a roundup of commentary published in addition to the syndicated columns that regularly appear on Viewpoints. Nancy Kruh is a freelance writer in Dallas; her e-mail address is nancykruh@swbell.net.
source: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/balance/stories/DN-balance_28edi.ART.State.Edition1.e329fbb.html
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From the Abilene Reporter News

U.S. for sale
February 28, 2006

It's funny, a few years ago when I wrote my first letter against George Bush, people came out of the woodwork to tell me how wrong I was. But these days I see a bit of a flip flop. More and more people are getting fed up with the way your president is treating his own country. Now he wants to sell six major shipping ports to the Arabs. Why not just tell them to go ahead and drop a bomb on us? How hard would it be for a container coming into an Arab-owned port to make its way in to our country, only to contain an atomic bomb? Why not just cut through all the red tape, Mr. President, and simply put up a For Sale sign. For Sale, Slightly Used but going broke. The United States of America, sold to the highest bidder.

David Gann
Abilene
source: http://www.reporter-news.com/abil/op_letters_editor/article/0,1874,ABIL_7984_4501278,00.html