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| Ports, roads, self-respect; it's all on sale |
BeelzeBUSH |
03/13/06 |
A friend of mine emailed me this article from an Ohio newspaper. I think it is worth a read. I think it speaks to the concerns of most Americans regardless of our political voting habits. In my opion he article is a bit over simplified, but it hits on key issues that will have to addressed by all candidiates in future campaigns. Comments welcomed. George
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"By Dick Feagler
Are we so inept or so shortsighted that everything here is up for grabs? Even the ground beneath our feet?
It seems as if America is running a going-out-of-business sale, cutting madcap outsourcing deals that shrink us.
The problem with the Indiana Toll Road thing is obvious. Indiana doesn't know how to run a toll road. Otherwise, it would run its own turnpike within its budget.
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But it can't seem to do that. So a long global handshake between Spain and Australia wants to make a chunk of Indiana a kind of colony. If that's not a wet smack on the Hoosier puss, I'm dreaming.
I hope I'm dreaming, because if our ports are run by other countries, and if a 157-mile stretch of America is in control of two other countries, where does that leave us?
It's bad enough that we can't control illegal immigrants busting through our borders. It's bad enough that we are outsourcing good jobs overseas.
Where is our part in this global economy? The truth is, we haven't got a clue.
Once we thought we knew the world and our place in it. We knew our country's history. We knew our shape and size. First we had 13 states, and now we have 50. Immigrants flocked here and they all got to know America.
Often we broke our boundaries and ventured across the oceans to help the rest of the world. We left white gravestones in remote places. And then, after World War II, we helped Europe and Asia get back on track. There is no country as generous as this one.
The mistake we made was thinking we could retreat again to our fortress between the two oceans. Time caught up with us.
The global economy doesn't look so global from here. From here, it looks like we aren't reaping any profit. The profits seem to be going into the bank accounts of foreign nations.
At the moment, our big export is our Army. We are exporting kids overseas to lethally mix about in strange cultures, while here at home, the old idea of America is melting like a cake of soap.
If Indiana, a heartland state, is willing to give up a piece of its motherland, maybe that means none of us has firm ground under his feet anymore.
What scares me is that I think that's exactly what it means."
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Clarification/Follow-up by BeelzeBUSH on 03/13/06 3:27 am:
I just realized that I only pasted part of the article. Here is actually the first half of the article...
"When things go bad, they go bad in a hurry. America is going bad in a hurry.
A couple of weeks ago, we didn't know that most of our major ports were leased to foreign countries. The people we elect slipped that one through somehow. It was a shock to learn that the gateways of America are not in our charge.
The port story was bad enough. But now comes the outlandish news that we are auctioning off our highways, too.
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Indiana is about to lease its turnpike to an Australian company for $3 billion.
What is this, a garage sale? First we lease our ports. Now a piece of Indiana is on the block? It's unheard of. So why haven't we heard more about it?
Little bleeps of paragraphs have chronicled this story. I think it ought to be front-page news.
The Chicago Tribune explained it this way:
"The bill would allow [the governor] to lease the Indiana Toll Road to an Australian-Spanish consortium for an up-front payment of $3.85 billion. In exchange the companies would operate and maintain the 157-mile highway and collect its toll revenue for 75 years."
As I get it after reading a couple of Indiana newspapers, the money from the lease would pay for repairs to the toll road. To many Republicans in Indiana, this seems like a good idea.
To me, it seems like madness."
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