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Perhaps the sound of the rejoicing from the high and mighty reached this high and not-so-mighty place last weekend, but if so, it was overwhelmed by the media buzz of yet another Kennedy tragedy.
One of the rejoicers was our governor, Bill Owens, who
praised the $48 billion merger between Qwest Communications
International and U S West. Owens said it was good news
for Colorado
because the corporate headquarters will be
in Denver.
If U S West had been acquired by another suitor, Global
Crossing Ltd., then the headquarters would have been moved
to New York. Keeping, or attracting, corporate
headquarters is generally a good move. The best jobs with
the best pay are at headquarters. Further, corporate
charity begins at home,
and the educational and
cultural institutions in the headquarters city thereby
benefit.
Last month, at the request of Qwest, Owens issued a statement supporting Qwest's bid. Sen. Wayne Allard, along with four members of the region's congressional delegation, sent letters to Sol Trujillo, U S West chairman, asking him to give full consideration to Qwest.
That is, they were lobbying to get U S West to take Qwest's bid, rather than Global Crossing's.
Aren't these people from the same Republican party which frequently tells us how business decisions should be made in the market, not by politicians?
Molybdenum mining jobs migrate to Chile, computer programming work departs to India, our gas and electric and trash and cable utility payments now go to addresses that are never in Colorado, all without much comment -- but for some reason, they care about Qwest, and tell us how great it is that its headquarters will be in Colorado.
The question no one has asked is For how
long?
Qwest's founder and largest stockholder is Denver billionaire Phil Anschutz.
About 15 years ago, with encouragement from Roy Romer, like Owens a state treasurer who later became governor, Anschutz purchased the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad. When Romer first ran for governor in 1986, he pointed to this accomplishment -- Colorado's railroad would be under Colorado ownership, and thus presumably dedicated to serving Colorado.
This had been considered vital for a long time. In
1947, when the D&RGW emerged from bankruptcy and
judicial custody with local management, the Denver Post
hailed this development, as the railroad would be run by
outstanding Colorado and Utah men to best serve the public
interest instead of the interests of some other railroad or
Wall Street powers.
Forty years later, there was the D&RGW under Anschutz. He bought control of the Southern Pacific, and merged it with the D&RGW. Meanwhile he stripped away assets -- prime California real estate -- from the SP.
And he got into the communications business by laying fiber-optic cables along railroad rights-of-way. That led to Qwest, which he kept when he sold the Southern Pacific to the Union Pacific three years ago.
Look as you might around Colorado, you won't find the headquarters of the Rio Grande or Southern Pacific railroads, even though our leaders once told us that those offices would be in Colorado. Colorado isn't on anybody's main line these days -- it's been sidetracked, to the $2.8 billion profit of Phil Anschutz.
So now we have Qwest, which Anschutz controls, taking over U S West. We have politicians who supported this deal because it would keep corporate headquarters in Colorado, and politicians who announce their happiness upon completion of the deal.
If the Anschutz record is any guide, the expanded Qwest will be as mismanaged as the SP was under his regime. He'll eventually find some even bigger company to buy out Qwest and its local service subsidiary formerly known as U S West. Denver will have a handsome branch office, but the corporate headquarters will be somewhere else.
Just how our politicians could be so stupid as to line up behind Anschutz again is a good question, but I suspect the answer would be simple to find -- just examine the records of campaign contributions from people named Anschutz.
Meanwhile, out here in the boondocks, U S West on June 16 announced that it had agreed to sell 18 rural Colorado exchanges, among them Salida's, to Citizens Utilities, a company based in Stamford, Conn. Corporate spokesmen predicted that the transaction would take at least a year to complete as it moved through the regulatory process.
While I generally prefer to do business with Colorado-based companies, I'm glad to make an exception here.
I hope the state Public Utilities Commission moves quickly to approve the transfer, before Qwest takes over U S West. Paying the phone bill is never a pleasant task, but it would get downright disgusting if the money was going to Phil Anschutz.
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