Thread: Ports & Borders: Manage Them Ourselves

http://www.sierratimes.com/06/03/02/Henry.htm

Ports & Borders: Manage Them Ourselves
Ed Henry

Surprise! By now, all Americans should know that our ports are being managed by somebody else. Whether they should be in the hands of a British or an Arab company isn’t the crucial question. They shouldn’t be managed by either one. They should be managed by Americans. If we can’t come up with a way to take care of ourselves, something is very, very wrong.
With tons of cocaine and marijuana coming into our country daily it’s obvious that our ports and borders leak like sieves. Are the “war on drugs” and Homeland Security a joke, some sort of national pastime that costs us a fortune?

How about thirty-five million illegal aliens that have entered our country and cannot be located and identified, much less jailed and deported? In fact, the Department of Immigration and Naturalization claims that it can’t even keep track of people who have entered our country legally. People that were given visas and a time limit wander about without restriction and cannot be found. We can trace a mad cow from Canada and all of its relatives, but we can't find alien humans.

No one needs to be reminded that nineteen terrorists entered our country legally, were given visas, acquired driver’s licenses and credit cards, rented apartments and went to schools to learn how to fly but not land large aircraft, then brought us the horrors of 9/11.

Did our leadership do the common sense thing by closing or at least tightening our borders? No, instead we opened them even more and went off on the crazy invasion and occupation of a hapless republic that had nothing whatsoever to do with the terrorism inflicted on the Trade Center and Pentagon. We sent our National Guard to Iraq when they could have been guarding our borders. Today, nitwits like Bob Barr, the former congressman from Georgia who is now a consultant for CNN, are telling us that a company owned by the United Arab Emirates is well suited to take over management of our largest East and Gulf Coast ports because they are experienced with the terrorist problem. Then in the next breath, telling us that security will still be in our hands. Security will still be the responsibility of our government that can’t inspect more than four or six percent of the containers offloaded by our union operated stevedores, so don’t worry.

Do you realize how big these containers are, or that China has just set up the world’s largest container offloading and reloading operation just miles off our shores in Lucia, Grand Bahama? An average family could live inside them with as much if not more space than the trailers FEMA (Failing Everyone Miserably Again) has yet to deliver to New Orleans.

In fact, it would have been cheaper to use the containers already stacked in the Port of New Orleans. Punch a few holes in them for windows, doors, ventilation and air conditioning and these containers would have been readily available for temporary housing. With our negative $726 billion balance of trade, there must be thousands of them waiting to be used for something and there shouldn’t have been any question about using them in a flood zone since they’re already there.

As it is, George W. Bush’s never ending “war on terrorism” as well as his promise to “rebuild the Gulf Coast bigger and better than ever” after the greatest natural disaster the nation has ever experienced are looking more and more empty and contradictory as time passes.

Since when does the world’s richest, most powerful, and technologically efficient nation need outside help to manage its affairs? And just what specific services do either of these so-called “friendly” British or Arab companies provide that we couldn’t provide for ourselves, especially when we have so much unemployment, outsourcing of jobs, and debt?

I always thought that our ports were managed by local and federal Port Authorities and unions with their daily “wait in line” system of passing out jobs to Marlon Brando type dock workers and stevedores. That equipment and so forth was all coordinated with Immigration and Naturalization people, Customs, and Homeland Security. It’s a big surprise to me to find out that the British Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O) has been managing so many of our major ports without anyone disclosing or apparently evaluating what it is they bring to the table that we can’t do ourselves.

Who is managing the West Coast ports from Seattle to San Diego – the Chinese?

We've had a great many American companies move all or major portions of their operations overseas, and we've had a great many foreign companies taking over companies or large parts of private enterprise in our own nation, but this may be the first time the American people get a glimpse of the extent our government and its New World Order have so brazenly sold out their own governmental responsibilities. How else do you explain our federal government's and their news lackies failure to address this basic question?

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"Published originally at www.EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact."

Ed Henry is the founder of TUFF, the Taxpayers Union, and a regular columnist for Ether Zone.

Ed Henry can be reached at ctzcrank@mindspring.com

Ed's FREE pamphlet-"To The Moon, Alice" the national debt, your Social Security, and the Pay-It-Again Sam scam"

We also invite you to visit his website at www.Uncle-Scam.com

I am so dumb. Really. I thought that those ports and their infrastructure had been built with taxpayer dollars. Either the taxpayers of the state or the taxpayers of the nation. How in hell can government sell what government doesn't OWN?? The taxpayers OWN those ports and everything else in this nation.

So what will they sell next? The Interstate Highway system???

RR

Our governement is a corporation funded with our money. They must have forgotten it is for the people by the people.

We still own the ports. We just don't operate the port terminals and the cargo-handling. This is the lucrative business ciphoned off the "furrners".

The port authorities lease the port terminals to the "furrners" to handle all the port operations and cargo-handling.

If no American Company wants this lucrative business, the only explanation would be there are no American Companies left, then the port authorities should take over operations and use the lucrative business to fund their cities and states!

If no American Company wants this lucrative business, the only explanation would be there are no American Companies left, then the port authorities should take over operations and use the lucrative business to fund their cities and states!

Absolutey they should. Allowing furners to profit from our infrastructure is wasteful and arrogant...damn the taxpayers.

RR

I hope some people who work at the port authorities see our idea!!

Take it Back Port Authorities!

roadrunner..."damn the taxpayers"

You've got that right Roadrunner...it's so infuriating....some days I could:

S C R E A M!!

GRRRR!