March 8, 2006 - Calvin Coolidge is said to have coined the phrase that has become the Bush-Cheney Administrations philosophy of government. “The business of government is business.” Put another way it seems to say that America is for sale to the highest bidder and all other considerations become insignificant in the quest for profits. The neo-conservative seizure of power at all levels matured in the election of 2000 and created an environment in which all things became possible if you were Jack Abramoff, Tom Delay, or the Sheik of Araby. America went on the auction block and has been hammered down as sold.

Duke Cunningham, Conrad Burns, Tom DeLay, and others not yet named climbed on the band wagon, seized opportunity by the throat and cashed in while the watchers looked the other way. The Party of Family Values toiled mightily and made government a wholly owned subsidiary of the gambling interests. Is it an accident that the Emir of Dubai, the proprietor of Las Vegas East on the Persian Gulf was the high bidder for America’s waterfront? In discussing the DP World ports deal we focus on the national security aspects of the deal but we don’t look closely at the Emir’s economic miracle built on hedonistic appeals to the baser instincts of the very rich - gambling, prostitution and opulence on a scale that Bugsy Siegel only dreamed of when he moved in on that empty Nevada desert. Take a look at the Emirates premier night club with the Oriental ladies along one wall competing for the evening business with the Russian girls aligned along the other. Is that the environment we want to sell our ports into?

The Selling of America isn’t confined to Washington DC or the Republican Party. Illinois’ Democratic Governor engineered the 99 year lease of the Illinois Toll Road System to a Spanish-Australian consortium. Indiana’s Republican Governor, Mitch Daniels – who served a term as President Bush’s budget director – is engaged in selling Indiana’s toll roads to the same concern. A key segment of Dwight Eisenhower’s National Defense Interstate Highway System will belong to a foreign concern. The Illinois American Water company is a wholly owned subsidiary of a German company. Whole chunks of the country’s vital infrastructure have been sold to foreign investors. They are, of course, investors from “friendly” countries but as history has taught repeatedly today’s friends are often tomorrow’s enemies.

The Skillings-Lay trial is showing us that the business that is the business of government is too often a run it up and dump it operation. Perhaps that is why the chunks are being sold overseas. If government owned assets can’t be run on a break even basis what makes these investors think that they can operate them at a profit? If they can be profit making ventures why should we permit those profits to fly from our shores? Surely there are American investors who see the profit potential in toll roads, in port operations, and in public utilities. Are American governments flim-flaming the Arabs, the British, the Spanish, and the German investors? Is that why our country is for sale and oh so cheap!