Breaking News: Corporations Found Running Ports! [View All]

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Suddenly it's as if Dubai Ports World had peppered a guy with birdshot.

I reserve judgment on whether the deal to turn American port terminals over to a UAE company is the stupidest move in history or not. But am I the only one who finds it mighty peculiar that this week we're fervently debating an item that nobody noticed last week?

Did the proposed sale really pop up out of the blue? Evidently vast portions of American infrastructure are routinely farmed out to companies scurrying around this (as Tom Friedman reminded us with his trademarked adjective again this morning) flat world. Without rising to the level of front-page news.

Everyone knows about the outsourcing of call centers. What about the rise of privately owned propaganda centers, army auxiliaries, Afghan and Iraqi nation builders, etc.? Why aren't they a huge story combining business-as- usual with national- security? For that matter, why isn't the unprotected state of chemical plants, electric grids, etc. a regular beat?

The port shebang would seem to be a certifiable Big Story, a segment of the Bigger Story of the privatization of nearly everything. But I haven't seen it crop up in national business news. Any more than, before September 11, 2001, I saw anyone reporting that a prime company running airport security was, as the president would say,Great British. Where are the Datelines, the Nightlines, the Closer Looks, the Eyes on America? Where are the business staffs, the Washington bureaus?

http://www.tpmcafe.com/node/26998