Strapped States Try New Route, Lease Toll Roads to Foreign Firms

[LiberalHeart]

ELKHART, Ind. -- Its official state motto is "the crossroads of America." Yet Indiana is about to turn over its entire toll road for the next 75 years to two foreign companies, making it more expensive to drive.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/09/AR2006060901775.html

[oscar111]

1. sell city water plants to Iranian millionaires, and they raise rates

tenfold for your tap water. Why cant this happen? Just market forces at work to make this a worker's paradise in the GOP style, right?

all part of TWA. Third Worlding of America. TWA.

Next, why not let Polish millionaires buy our banks. Fees for getting your statement raised tenfold. ATM charges raised to five dollars a time. Loans called due immediately. Etc.

[Voltaire99]

9. C'mon. It's just neoliberalism in reverse.

The U.S. preached as much to Latin America for years: if you're too poor, you must let rich white capitalists come and buy out your public infrastructure.

We were only too content to be buyers then.

Shoe's on the other foot now. ;-)

Hee hee: perhaps Hugo Chavez will be kind enough to lower the tolls for us.

[sadiesworld]

21. This isn't neoliberalism "in reverse".

The selling off of public-owned assets is plain neoliberalism and it doesn't matter where it's done.

[Voltaire99]

26. It is neoliberalism for neoliberals,

and some would say it is just desserts.

[MountainLaurel]

31. Just desserts

I think you may be right.

[sadiesworld]

32. Some would say that the global elite get fatter and happier...

while the people suffer, no matter where it occurs. I guess you really chortled with glee when CA experienced rolling blackouts as a result of energy deregulation.

[Roland99]

13. Well, local gas and electric was sold to a British and now German company.

Rates have increased dramatically since.

[aquart]

2. Access to american highways controlled by foreign powers.

That's treason, not commerce.

[Daphne08]

10. I agree. n/t

[Delphinus]

18. Mitch Daniels, cohort of the boy king,

is doing everything he can to stop the lawsuit against this. I've never heard of anyone, or any group, having to raise money or show they have money, to file suit in the Supreme Court and that's what's happening here.

Even in this horribly red state, Mitch has angered a lot of his own kind.

[carincross]

3. Interstate Highway System Sold to Foreign Companies

When President Eisenhower proposed the Interstate Highway System he stressed its necessity because of National Security. Now it is simply the latest victim of our huge debt and growing trade imbalance. And privatization trumps national interest once again.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/09/AR2006060901775.html

Its official state motto is "the crossroads of America." Yet Indiana is about to turn over its entire toll road for the next 75 years to two foreign companies, making it more expensive to drive.

The decision to hand the Indiana Toll Road to an Australian and Spanish team for $3.8 billion at the end of this month has blown up into one of the biggest brawls here in a generation. It has unsettled the state's politics in the months before the November elections, pitting a governor who was President Bush's first budget director against the people of northern Indiana, which the highway passes through.

The decision also places Indiana at the leading edge of a nascent trend in which states and local governments are exploring the idea of privatizing parts of the United States' prized interstate highway system. The idea goes beyond projects, such as Northern Virginia's Dulles Greenway, in which states have turned to private companies to build or widen toll roads. Now, they are considering selling or leasing some of the best-known and most-traveled routes across America.

[rodeodance]

4. i thought people had lost their marbles when I first heard of this months

ago. now they are going ahead. i do not know what to say anymore.

[LiberalHeart]

25. Someone should make a list...

...of all the things we no longer own and/or operate.

[liberal N proud]

5. Selling America down the river, anything for a buck

What the hell is going on in this country?
Soon there will be nothing left to call America. These corporate whores would sell their grandmother if it would get them a free trip to a remote island.

[KansDem]

30. A joke...

Did you hear about the American corporatist who became incensed when someone offered to buy his mother for $25? He would never have let her go for less than $50...

[ovidsen]

6. Only the beginning

Here in South Carolina, there's a proposal to make I-95 a toll road, and possibly sell it.

http://www.tollroadsnews.com/cgi-bin/a.cgi/TgA7.NyYEdqcEYJ61nsxIA

Since South Carolina is in good financial shape, this plan is not sitting well with the locals.

[raccoon]

17. You're right about that. This is another BOHICA--here's what one

of the locals had to say.

"It may affect more than you think as Colorado and other States recently found out. Here are a few excerpts from news articles:

"...local governments in Colorado have agreed to deliberately impede traffic on existing highways near a toll road in order to protect the toll roads' investors.

<snip>

...towns along toll roads, which have roads parallel to the toll road, in particular, are to discourage their use by more red lights, no road improvements (widening) and lowered speed limits by as much as 15 to 25 mph. For Bluffton, that would mean, U.S. 17, Alt 17 and ???."

http://www.blufftontoday.com/node/6228

[LaurenG]

7. Now they've sold the highways too?

I have nothing to say. You know how it is, of course there is NO money for the infrastructure of the nation, we have to stay the course in gw's g--damned war! :sarcasm:

[no_hypocrisy]

8. It's bad enough that public tax dollars went to building the highway, only

to have its Trustees (the government) privatize and sell it to investors (not to mention more than one homeowner lost his/her/their house to eminent domain as the government laid claim to their property to establish the highway). It's worse that control of the highway is going to entities out of this country.

What are they going to charge for tolls? Euros?

[raccoon]

19. This country is truly going down the toilet. And quickly. nt

[OregonBlue]

23. Send this one to Lou! It should really piss him off.

[HereSince1628]

29. In the 50's wasn't it called National Defense Highway System?

I seem to remember that.

[carincross]

11. It is not what is said, but what is implied!

Why are we selling off our highway system? Why have laws been changed to allow this to happen? The world is awash in dollars. Foreign governments, foreign banks, foreign companies are all looking at ways they can invest these surplus dollars. The highway system is a good choice for foreigners. But the day may be coming when foreign creditors decide there is no longer anything to buy. Both Martin Mayer (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/14/opinion/14mayer.html) and Robert Samuelson (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/13/AR2006061301499.html) discuss that possibility in today's newspapers.

[lindisfarne]

12. "Making it more expensive to drive". Why can the private sector charge

more than if the state runs it? If the state needs more money, why doesn't the *state* keep the roads and charge more? Or is this about getting rid of the state employees who collect the tolls?

[peacebuzzard]

14. Meanwhile, U.S. airlines are up for sale to foreign investors

attention worldwide shoppers, big discounts in american corporations.....buy a piece of america here.....
http://money.cnn.com/2006/06/08/news/economy/congress_airline.reut/index.htm

[Roland99]

15. Buy American has a whole new meaning now, eh?

[peacebuzzard]

24. sure does,....what's that sucking sound? Oh, just the U.S.

going down the drain.
.......

This is exactly what our forefathers warned us about. It is time to take it to the streets.....It is time......

Recently Added
JUN 9 - Tilton urged his friend Speaker of the House Denny Hastert of Illinois to squash protections against foreign ownership of U.S. airlines earlier this week. We will have to act fast and collectively to protect our jobs and the U.S. aviation industry. Press Release: U.S. Airline Industry: Not for Sale
Call your Representative's office and ask them to co-sponsor the Oberstar-LoBiondo bill, H.R. 4542, in opposition of foreign control of U.S. airlines.
H.R. 4542 Co-Sponsors
AFL-CIO Against Foreign Control of U.S. Airlines

http://www.unitedafa.org/

Meanwhile in the back rooms of Congress the repubs are strong arming everyone to let this pass. Hastert is giggling gleefully along w/ the emperor. Just like the Dubai port deal, except, no press, no msm,,this one will slide quietly through. Heaven help us all.



on edit...this is a photo of the unions protest of excessive duty hours, hence fatigue. typical of flight attendants, pilots and now, the air traffic controllers.
not only are these groups dealing with massive pay cuts, extended duty hours, heftier work loads but now the union bashing taking place is brutal. How much longer before these jobs get out-sourced like the rest of the country. Wake up America, Do you hear the pounding at the door ??!!

[cap]

16. plus you get the added bonus of union-busting

all those good govt union workers are now non-unionized. They get to interview at the new company but at undoubtedly lower wages and fewer benefits. No job security.

Oh well... guess all those conservative anti-union folk in SC will get an eye opener...

[Orsino]

20. This is what we bought without our Iraq adventurism.

The hundreds of billions for the conquest and occupation aren't being spent where Americans need the funds.

[antigop]

22. USATODAY: States Looking to cash in assets

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-06-07-state-assets_x.htm

>>
States and local governments across the USA are preparing to cash in valuable public assets for one-time windfalls that could reap tens of billions of dollars.
Illinois hopes to get at least $10 billion by selling its lottery and an additional $15 billion for leasing all or part of the 274-mile Illinois Tollway. Missouri plans to auction its student loan portfolio. Pennsylvania is considering leasing its highways, and Chicago is studying a plan to lease Midway Airport to private investors.
>>

[drhilarius]

27. This just increases my love for the American tax payer...

who raises a stink when a 1 or, god forbid, 2 percent tax increase is purposed, never realizes that, down the pike (so to speak), it'll cost them much, much more.

[highnooner]

28. The US DOT is all over this

March/April 2006

The Return of Private Toll Roads
by Robert Poole and Peter Samuel

Private concessions offer an alternative to managing American highways.

http://www.tfhrc.gov/pubrds/06mar/06.htm