America First

America First now?  Hardly! Is this new matter ever so ridiculous to me.

Here is what was written so recently with which many will agree:

“Some of us have held out hope that the Moroun family might be taking a more civic-minded, less-obstructionist stance on matters of public concern — rejoining the community after decades of hunkering down to protect their own narrow interests...

But the scurrilous ad that the Moroun-owned Ambassador Bridge company has created in a final effort to block the new Gordie Howe International Bridge project blows out of the water the idea of a “new” Moroun approach. The ad demonstrates that the Morouns remain dedicated to their own narrow interests regardless of the impact on the broader community.” (John Gallagher, Detroit Free Press, June 21, 2018) 

In all of the years that I have written about this subject, I have never seen the Ambassador Bridge Company act in such a dumb fashion as they did recently. I have seen worse situations in the past in which the Bridge Company has been involved in being attacked by opponents in a foolish way and have never seen them responding back in such a strange way. Yet, they did well because the public understood how badly the opposition acted and opposed them strongly while giving support to the Bridge Company. This time around, the Bridge Company made a fool of itself. It will have a difficult time now with their silliness. They are going to have to work extra hard to get people back to support them.

They produced their "Dear Mr. President" advertising video and then made the decision to distribute it through the public in a TV ad even though it may be to a small part of the US population. Or, is this something brilliant that was done to achieve a deal in a transaction that is being negotiated right now.

What a strange thing to happen. I just do not understand it. It is only a short time after doing a magnificent transaction with Ford who is to take over the Michigan Central Station. Most people are applauding that transaction because it can change the appearance of Detroit wonderfully.

However, it now seems that the Bridge Company is proposing one of the most ridiculous actions that anyone could think possible in a relationship between Canada and United States. I am not going to outline it. Rather, go and take a look at video yourself since you can find it online and you will see what foolishness it is. I just wonder who at the Bridge Company made the final decision to make that video and, more importantly, who made the final decision to actually run this one publicly.

Let me outline what I think the two possibilities may be these days that can explain why the advertisement was created:

1) There is a deal that is close to finalization between the Bridge Company and the Canadian Government for the complete sale of the Ambassador Bridge site to the Government. However, the parties still cannot negotiate a final price for this deal. Or alternatively, the negotiated amount has been resolved but the price is so high that someone has to come up with a way to justify it.

2) Nothing is happening and the Bridge Company is looking for a way to wake up the Government of Canada to do some kind of a deal finally! That deal could be anything from allowing the Bridge Company to do everything by itself, to giving the Governments of Canada and the United States a small interest in the Bridge Company by contributing some money to help build a new crossing or even having the Governments buy them out completely.

Now I could go through a long explanation of both of these two points and tell you which one I think is the correct one. But frankly, I just cannot be bothered! I have no intention of wasting any more of my time on this matter because of this ridiculous advertisement.

Whatever the relationship is between these two organizations is so absurd to me especially because the public is harmed so badly by their inability to get a resolution quickly. The whole purpose of what is going on now is to put pressure on the public to force a resolution on the two parties to achieve some solution now.

Do you understand what I mean? We have to get outraged to force the parties to sit down together finally and either finalize the transaction that may have almost been agreed to or get one now because they are unable to do so or may even be unwilling to do so.

A farce!