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..the nation’s ports still are not able to check the names of maritime workers against a federal terrorist watch list

Hell, not too many folks in government are concerned about securing our nation's borders.

Any Tom , Dick, or Harry can waltz across the southern border. While this effort is a start, our border security should be the priority.

The truth is that the government does NOT WANT to secure our Southern border at all. The decision has been made by our leaders (in both parties) that illegal laborers are essential to keeping the inflation rate down.

So much depends on the inflation rate, and that is why steps were taken during the Clinton administration to change the way the CPI is calculated, to keep it down. Keeping down the real and perceived inflation rate keeps down the increases in government payments and also keeps down the cost of borrowing money for governments and private businesses alike. It allows us to have 1 dollar cardiac arrest double cheeseburgers, and allows some immigrants (legal and otherwise) to charge 70 dollars for a house cleaning and pay the other cleaner 20 dollars per house, and both are happy with the deal. The cost to the homeowner is lower than the 120 dollars (or some similar high sum) it would be if the borders were controlled effectively.

At some point, the high price would mean less business, but there would be fewer sales of services at the higher price and many homeowners would do without cleaning services. This would mean less tax revenues to teh government, because, contrary to popular perception, taxes are very often paid on transactions involving illegals. Many illegal aliens have fake SS numbers and the government loves getting the payments for accounts that have a decent chance of never being collected from. Sure, there will be a movement to allow illegals to correct their paperwork and collect social security based on contributions to their fake accounts, but that is for bureaucrats to deal with 15 to 20 years down the road, when the current bureaucrats will have retired.

The abundant supply of illegals in our midst keeps down pay for menial labor and semiskilled labor. This is considered a good thing by many important decision-makers, I guess.

Of course, the cost of providing free public schools and health care for countless illegals is never adequately factored into the cost-benefit analysis.

Despite such additional measures, the nation’s ports still are not able to check the names of maritime workers against a federal terrorist watch list, and the majority of ports – including Virginia’s – also don’t have the authority to conduct criminal background checks. Those two missing pieces leave gaps in port defense systems, maritime security experts have said.

So it makes no difference who runs the ports? The politicians will do nothing to strengthen our port security once they stop the Dubai port deal, but hey, they got anti-Bush brownie points with, um, whoever, and they might get re-elected. Yippee.