Protectionism disguised as social conscience
Posted: Thu May 19, 2011 6:56 am
I'm every bit as gung ho as the next guy about getting those who collaborated in the Holocaust to step up and take responsibility for their actions. But this just plain smells bad to me:
Using Holocaust victims to promote protectionism, I think a new low has been reached.
This looks very much like an attempt to push the contract towards an American bidder. There probably isn't a railroad in all of Nazi-occupied Europe that didn't transport Holocaust victims to the camps. But how can anyone expect the records of every transport to be complete 65 years after the fact? And why does the legislation target rail contracts only? I'm sure there are a lot of companies (several of them American) with which the state of Maryland does business that had some hand in the Holocaust; why isn't the awarding of those contracts being scrutinized?A company part-owned by the French railroad will have to detail the railway’s role in transporting Holocaust victims to Nazi death camps before it can compete again to operate Maryland commuter trains, according to legislation that Gov. Martin O’Malley, D, is scheduled to sign Thursday.
The law will make Maryland the first state to require that a company seeking government rail contracts provides all records about Nazi victims it transported and any personal belongings taken from them, supporters said.
The legislation targeted Keolis, a Paris-based company whose majority owner is Societe Nationale des Chemins de fer Francaise (SNCF), the government-owned French railway that historians say was paid to transport nearly 77,000 Jews and other Holocaust victims during World War II.
Keolis America recently bid on a contract to operate the Brunswick and Camden lines that CSX now operates for the Maryland Area Regional Commuter (MARC) system. The Maryland Department of Transportation canceled the bid process in November, saying it hadn’t attracted enough competition. CSX, which has the contract through June 2012, has said it wants to focus on its freight business.
MDOT spokesman Jack Cahalan said the Maryland Transit Administration expects to solicit Brunswick and Camden line bids again this summer. Asked whether a firm’s ties to the Holocaust would affect its chances of clinching a MARC contract, Cahalan said state procurement law does not consider a company’s historical actions. The new law, he said, does not preclude companies from winning a MARC contract once they have properly disclosed the Holocaust-related information required.
Using Holocaust victims to promote protectionism, I think a new low has been reached.
