The Daily Background

Remember Dubai Ports World? That was the private foreign corporation based in the United Arab Emirates that the White House had set their hearts on out-sourcing US port security to. A huge outcry of public and Congressional indignation stopped them from contracting American security out to a foreign corporation (with alleged ties to Osama bin Laden), but instead the Administration quietly worked out a deal so that this corporation, Dubai Ports World (DPW), could still profit off of securing America.

The way they set it up was like this. The Department of Homeland Security would still pay DPW hundreds of millions of our tax dollars to secure American ports, but instead of DPW doing it themselves, they now get to sub-contract it out to some other private corporations. Basically, just keeping them in there as a middleman so that they can profit off of the whole deal even though they’re not actually doing any of the work. Outrageous.

Associated Press reports:

A Dubai-owned company will accept final bids within two weeks for the sale of all $700 million worth of its U.S. port operations to an American buyer, a plan forced by concerns over terrorism security.

[…]
Under the sale, DP World took over a U.S. subsidiary with significant operations at ports in New Jersey, New York, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia — plus lesser dockside activities at 16 other ports in this country.

Now, I am of the humble opinion that securing America should not be a for-profit business (the same way I feel about healthcare and education). So it’s for that reason that I wholly oppose the Republican-led concept that private corporations (based in the United Arab Emirates or elsewhere) should be given no-bid contracts with huge profit margins to make America secure. And those private corporations especially shouldn’t turning the topic of American security into an auction war and subcontracting it out to other private corporations with slightly-smaller but still outrageous profit margins. All paid by our tax money, of course.

Filed under: Port Security, Tax Money, Z-TDB Blog