Private Control, US Infrastructure

The madness of privatizing and selling critical sections of the country's commonwealth just keeps chugging along. The traitors at the helms of state and local government literally don't care that the country is being dismantled for profit - either they don't care or are criminally short sighted and venal.

While we waste billions with insane wars this country is falling apart. States and communities are getting hard pressed to find the money to take care of business. One trend that we're going to see a lot more of is to outsource the infrastructure to foreign corporations. It's a quick way for the pols to promise lowered taxes, an increase in jobs and filled in potholes but the reality can be an awful lot different for the hoi polloi.

Take the 157 mile toll road in Indiana. Governor Daniels is leasing it to Cintra, a Spanish company, and Australia's Macquarie Bank for 75 years. He's getting almost $4 billion up front for the deal so he can speed up construction on other projects and keep the pork flowing. The foreign companies love the thought of a long term lease on tolled highways - it's a guaranteed income generator with revenues that will only increase over time. Apparently american CEOs would much rather go for much quicker and higher profits but the foreign guys are much better at planning for the long run.

Cintra is also involved with the highway to hell in Texas, another toll road that is going to set a precedent nationwide. The staggering ugliness of that project is a poster child of this out of control privatization.

It's easy to see where this is going. The danger with foreign control of american assets like highways and ports is self evident to anybody with a brain. Each contract determines such things as maintenance, minimum services, prices charged for services, concessions offered along the tollway and every other aspect of the venture. Ain't going to be any oversight by elected officials. Is the bottom line going to become the overriding factor at the expense of maintenance and safety? Here's just one example - fire and rescue chiefs in Indiana say the toll road policies are going to get people killed.

What's most disturbing is the spectacle of a once great nation selling off it's infrastructure to get a quick fix bandaid to solve it's problems. The US is supposedly the richest country on the planet but doesn't have the cash to run it's highway systems? We don't have the politicians with enough balls or uteri to acknowledge what's wrong and fix it for the long haul. Slowly but surely, america is being disassembled for expediency.