Guest Author - Wendy Amato

So, the Bush administration has selected a foreign company to run America’s port operations and insists that connections to the Saudi Arabia are irrelevant. That may well be. But the fact is that after 9/11, Americans were so concerned about security that we made all airport screeners federal employees in order to standardize training and monitor goings-on. Why, then, are we not doing the same for port security? We already have thousands of crates coming in to our nation's ports that are not adequately screened. Some crates even contain people!!!! And yet, in order to save money, the administration feels it is appropriate for a foreign entity to run our ports. American companies couldn’t be trusted to keep our airports safe, but foreign companies can be trusted with our port security? That certainly doesn’t make sense. If the emphasis is on saving money, I’m sorry to say the hiring of the Dubai company is not going to make a dent in our trillion-plus deficit. Especially not enough to balance out the potential security risks.

The “outsourcing” of America is troubling. If we are comfortable trusting our security to foreign entities, perhaps next we will allow them to run our military bases. Hey, since the Department of Homeland Security did such a rotten job on Katrina, let’s oursource them and FEMA! Besides, I own shares in several international mutual funds, so maybe my portfolio will increase at the same time. Double-bonus!!