-Bush Approval Falls to 33%, Congress Earns Rare Praise -* No evidence of a public backlash against foreign commercial and -economic ties in the wake of the ports deal. A narrow majority (53%) -has a negative view of foreign investors owning U.S. companies. But -by 53%-36% more Americans view foreign companies investing in the -United States as a good thing; there are no significant partisan -differences on this issue.
Why is this xenophobia? You get the same opposition in most cases if a hometown owner is replaced by a New York corporate owner. "Foreign" ownership, whether foreign to a city or state or nation, implies loss of control and less loyalty to the broader interests of local citizens.
Dubai is a caricature of capitalism-- an oil company masking as a country run by a plutocratic clan which engages in rape of employees imported to do the elite's dirty work to the extent that Human Rights Watch has highlighted this repeatedly in reports.
You may claim that Robert Mendendez, the first latino Senator from New Jersey, whose old Congressional district is heavily muslim, is just a racist at heart and that all his stated reasons for opposing the deal reduce to simple xenophobe, but a bit more evidence would be nice.
-- Nathan Newman