W aides' biz ties to Arab firm

This is off the New York Daily News. I don't know how reputable this story is, but it does provide an interesting reason as to why the White House allowed for this port sale to secretly go through. Here's the story:

WASHINGTON - The Dubai firm that won Bush administration backing to run six U.S. ports has at least two ties to the White House.

One is Treasury Secretary John Snow, whose agency heads the federal panel that signed off on the $6.8 billion sale of an English company to government-owned Dubai Ports World - giving it control of Manhattan's cruise ship terminal and Newark's container port.

Snow was chairman of the CSX rail firm that sold its own international port operations to DP World for $1.15 billion in 2004, the year after Snow left for President Bush's cabinet.

The other connection is David Sanborn, who runs DP World's European and Latin American operations and was tapped by Bush last month to head the U.S. Maritime Administration.

The ties raised more concerns about the decision to give port control to a company owned by a nation linked to the 9/11 hijackers.

"The more you look at this deal, the more the deal is called into question," said Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who said the deal was rubber-stamped in advance - even before DP World formally agreed to buy London's P&O port company.

Besides operations in New York and Jersey, Dubai would also run port facilities in Philadelphia, New Orleans, Baltimore and Miami.

It is interesting that these two connections to the Bush White House has been raised. And it is also not surprising--the White House develops policies that benefit their corporate interests. In this case, it was Treasury Secretary Snow who was bound to make a nice profit from the CSX sale of its port to DP World, and now Sanborn, who previously worked for DP World and is now heading the U.S. Maritime Administration. This administration doesn't care about public policy. Public policy is crafted to benefit corporate interests--any corporate interests which administration officials have ties to. And you can bet that these officials still have ties to the corporations they've left to work in the White House--shares of stock, or options that have been placed into blind trust funds is a perfect example. They will use their power in government to help their former companies in providing government goodies, tax breaks, and deregulation because they know that such benefits will help increase the company stock that they hold in their blind trust funds.

The cronyism continues on.