Daniel Gross has an article in Slate about the Indiana Toll Road sale.
If a governor told you there were a way to spread pork, raise funds for infrastructure investment, promote jobs, avoid raising taxes, and put a dent in the trade deficit—all in one fell swoop—you might think he had a bridge to sell you. And you’d be right. Only in this case, it’s a toll road. And instead of a sale, how about a long-term lease?
Mr. Gross goes on to explain the benefits of toll road privatization. He then goes on to discuss the opposition:
I got the sense that the toll lease made Hoosiers uneasy for reasons they couldn’t quite articulate. It’s not like the buyers could uproot the concrete and move it to Queensland, Australia, or Seville, Spain.
. . .
I think the uneasiness has more to do with what it says about the peculiar fiscal climate in the United States. How is it that in the richest nation on the earth, localities simply don’t have the cash to do necessary maintenance on basic infrastructure, the political will to raise such funds, or the competence to run such easily profitable operations? Why are they being forced to sell off long-term cash cows for short-term cash?
Leasing or selling a public asset is a classic one-shot—a short-term measure that bolsters the balance sheet today but that can’t be repeated. While politicians like Daniels focus on getting through the next few fiscal years with minimum pain, foreign companies are thinking about how to get rich off of tolls for the next three-quarters of a century. From Gov. Daniels to his former boss, President Bush, there’s a troubling unwillingness to align governmental resources with the express goals and responsibilities of government. At the federal level, we rely on China’s central bank to buy our bonds and fund basic operations. As a result, our tax revenues wind up in Beijing—as interest payments. At the state level, Indiana is relying on foreign companies to lease public infrastructure like toll roads. And under these arrangements, tolls—taxes people pay for driving—are being paid to foreign shareholders of foreign companies.
The entire article is worth a read.
People are starting to draw a picture by connecting what’s going on.Indiana is selling the Tollway because all the wealth is leaving this country and has to be replaced to run government.It’s a trend everywhere. Part of this same picture is China fillng all of Wal Mart shelves.Everytime I go into Wal Mart I get this mental picture of 10 yr old Chinese kids doing 18 hour shifts,so we can get all these bargains.This is why we defeated Communism, so it can rise again with Capitalism? Also part of it is the fight for and against open borders.If we shut down the illegals,will Construction and farming interests( and others)have to pay higher wages and go bankrupt( from their point of view)And there’s the threat of rising prices…lettuce $15 a head if illegals dont harvest it.. .Thats why we’re always hearing about the jobs americans ‘wont do’but illegals ‘will’. Americans have never been that way; we do any job,and no body works as hard as americans. The whole country is being sold out and its being sold out fastest by those who call themselves ‘conservatives’,although Clinton did his part of the dirty deeds too, we should remain bi-partisan in our assessments.
A solution always starts with defining the issues and that’s where we’re just at now,but the country is so polarized,we choose sides before we look at facts,so over all, it’s a bad scenario for this country.
I dont mean to undermine or complicate my argument,but now it’s the Dems who are joining the conservatives, but on the basis of ‘immigrant rights’ ( legal and illegal lumped together)along with the church.Its not easy to sort out.
Please name the legislaters that opposed MAJOR MOVES in 2006; esp. democrats.