Posted on 08/20/2021 7:04:26 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
LET’S BUILD INFRASTRUCTURE is preparing to launch formally in Washington, D.C., next week with a six-figure advertising blitz focused on pressing lawmakers to use privatization, rather than taxation, to pay for the infrastructure proposals debated in Congress.
The organization touts public-private partnerships and a process known as “asset recycling,” in which the government finances new construction and repairs by selling or leasing roads, bridges, water utilities, parking lots, and other infrastructure assets to private contractors instead of paying for them with public funding. The private operators in turn recoup costs by adding tolls or increasing user fees, such as water bills or parking fees.
The new group, helmed by two former mayors, Republican Mick Cornett of Oklahoma City and Democrat Michael Nutter of Philadelphia, has published virtually no information about its supporters on its website or how it’s paying for the wave of television advertisements.
There is scant information about Let’s Build Infrastructure anywhere on the internet. The website was registered anonymously in June and leaves no trace about its funding sources. Cornett and Nutter have not responded to requests for comment.
But a trail of evidence, including social media posts as well as nonprofit business registration and lobbying documents, suggests that toll road operators are affiliated with the pro-privatization push.
In 2019, Hans Klinger, a registered lobbyist for toll road operator Cintra, the U.S. subsidiary of the Spanish infrastructure conglomerate Ferrovial, S.A., served as director of a nonprofit called Invest in Texas Roads Now. The group promoted a partnership to build six new tolled lanes on an expressway near Dallas on Interstate 635 and four on Interstate 35 in Texas.
(Excerpt) Read more at theintercept.com ...
PING!
I’m against toll roads in principle. Roads should be paid out of the common tax base.
The problem with a “common tax base” arrangement is that a highway system inevitably takes on all the worst characteristics of an all-you-can-eat buffet. The quality of the food is poor and the customers consume too much of it because the pricing structure and system of paying for the meal gives every incentive to the customers to eat as much as they can.
China is involved somehow.
Can you even imagine the price gouging, the shutting down or overcharging of utilities, roads, water, bridges- anything they can do to cripple our nation they will do.
Roads should not be user pay, imo. Roads, police, fire, sewers, should not be user pay. It should not be funded by the federal government, but it should be generally funded.
Roads should not be user pay, imo. Roads, police, fire, sewers, should not be user pay. It should not be funded by the federal government, but it should be generally funded.
User pay means that some can’t use roads. How do they work if they can’t use roads? Are you prepared to support them for life, because they can’t afford to work?
That mindset you bring to the table here is exactly how we end up with welfare cases driving luxury cars and buying $300 Nike sneakers.
Sometimes that’s all a person can do.
A car isn’t the most expensive thing in the world, if that’s their only expense, outside of rent and all that. A person can run their car for $200/month.
The tolls could push the cost of his car into unaffordable territory.
Sometimes that’s all a person can do.
A car isn’t the most expensive thing in the world, if that’s their only expense, outside of rent and all that. A person can run their car for $200/month.
The tolls could push the cost of his car into unaffordable territory.
Do we want people enable to work or not?
Live close to your job.
Ride a bike to work. Walk to work. Hitch a ride with a co-worker.
You know … all the things Americans used to do before cars weren’t widely used.
Not all jobs are close to where you can live.
I don’t believe in public healthcare, but many on the board do. Roads are just one of those things that I believe should be paid out of the common tax base. It’s always been that way, right from the days of the Forefathers.
In Tombee portrait of a cotton planter( from the journal of Thomas B. Chaplin 1822-1890] In South Carolina the property owners were responsible for the roads, they rotated amongst themselves to level, fill and keep the roads. It has been years since I read it so the details are fuzzy.
I think that people doing their own roads will have uneven results as you travel. I don’t think that’s a positivity. I don’t think anybody wants to go from pavement to dirt to pavement to dirt to “Holy crap, this is road is cratery”.
Yeah, it’s not a thing for today but it really was fascinating— the whole book was pretty awesome IMO
If you have the government assume the responsibility of something that has limited capacity and unlimited demand, it will be used to excess and will eventually turn to crap. That’s what our transportation infrastructure has become. It’s a classic manifestation of the principle in economics known as “The Tragedy of the Commons.” Take a look at it and let me know what you think of it.
I know one thing. If I was ever in charge of operating a private road and let’s say the traffic was jammed up due increased numbers of people using it. I could do 2 things:
1) Add more lanes to accommodate the increased demand.
2) Double the tolls without adding lanes.
Both would end the traffic jams.
Easy choice for me, and my company’s stock price!
You clearly don’t live in the DC metropolitan area.
“You clearly don’t live in the DC metropolitan area.”
The failure of government in that area of the country doesn’t change what I said. In Texas, we’ve been expanding highways like mad, and now it’s being done without tolls (we had to get rid of Rick Perry first, who was owned by those same companies). The dirty little secreat is that highways are VERY CHEAP relative to what they provide...that is until you hand over control of them to people who change monopoly prices to access them...then they get a bit more expensive, typically 10-fold. That’s why these companies are SALIVATING at the chance to take control of these assets...after all, does anyone here think they’re just trying to ‘Make America Great Again’ or something?
You’d eventually have to add lanes. People would eventually get sick of your sh*t and go back to podunk roads if you just kept increasing tolls.
Look up “shunpiking” in relation to the Pennsylvania Turnpike . . . and that’s for a road that’s actually adding lanes as well as increasing tolls.
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