Free Republic

America’s declining Social Security program will be a contentious topic of debate for presidential candidates this year. Former president Donald Trump advocates leaving the program alone and has criticized Nikki Haley’s proposal to save the program by raising the retirement age. Similarly, President Biden has vehemently opposed any solutions that involve tampering with the program’s current structure.Despite all this political posturing, Social Security is going broke fast as Americans are saving less for retirement than ever before. Half of all Baby Boomers in the U.S. have no personal retirement savings. Endless promises from both Republican and Democratic administrations over the...

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...

Michigan drivers and taxpayers have been complaining about road and highway conditions for years. But the solutions policymakers have recently proposed ranged from the politically impossible, like raising the gas tax 45 cents per gallon, to financially-risky short-term fixes like borrowing billions in bonds to pay for teacher pension contributions so that money could be shifted to funding for roads. But it seems like Michigan lawmakers may be warming up to a long-term, sustainable, users-pay solution to achieving better roads: tolling. Lansing's interest in tolling has gone back decades but this year the state Legislature and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's administration...

The surface transportation construction industry has long had to rely on Washington for its prosperity. We spend most years holding our breath and hoping we will receive more Federal funding to fix our crumbling roads, bridges and highway systems. Currently in the United States, 7 percent of bridges are structurally deficient, and 19 percent of major highway pavements have deteriorated. Yet, our existing financing structure has few tools to address the looming reconstruction challenges facing existing infrastructure. In 2020, Congress passed a one-year extension of the Fixing America's Surface Transportation (FAST) Act. While the one-year extension of the FAST Act...

How an unprecedented strategy cut costs, shook up the status quo, and returned the US to the forefront of space exploration. On Saturday afternoon, the Florida thunderstorms broke just long enough for history to be made. After 10 years of slow and sometimes painful change, NASA finally took the historic step of taking an astronaut into orbit in a private spacecraft. While discussion of this remarkable event has been overshadowed by riots and lockdowns occurring across the US, the importance of this launch cannot be understated. It shows the success of an unprecedented policy of privatization, with immense, positive consequences...

In late April, President Trump and Democratic congressional leaders finally found something they agreed on: infrastructure. Outside the White House after a meeting with the president, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat, issued the pronouncement, “Big and bold.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the Democrat from New York, echoed the takeaway: “We agreed on a number, which was very, very good, $2 trillion.” Trump himself has been publicly quiet but didn’t dispute that he told the Democrats he “like[s] the number.” By May, this renewed spirit of cooperation had fallen apart, at least temporarily, with a second meeting collapsing...

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., the founder and editor in chief of The American Spectator. [Snip] FP: What inspired you to write this book? Tyrrell: The rogue himself. He is one of the most preposterous figures in American political history. [Snip] FP: Illuminate for us a few of the ingredients that make Bill Clinton a tortured man in his retirement. Tyrrell: He senses that he has failed as a President—there are many examples of this in the book. Hence you see his angry outbursts in the book. But he also, being a sociopath, cannot perceive that...

As the partial government shutdown drags on, the nation's air traffic controllers warn that it's putting the safety of air travel at risk. Here's a solution: Privatize the air traffic control system. On Friday, the Federal Aviation Administration announced flight delays at several major airports due to staffing shortages among air traffic controllers. That followed a statement released earlier in the week, in which the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, along with pilots' and flight attendants' unions, said that "air safety environment … is deteriorating by the day." The statement goes on to say that "we cannot even calculate the...

Here are two recent events you might have missed: In March, House speaker Paul Ryan was widely quoted as saying, “The last thing we want to do is pass historic tax relief and then undo that, so we are not going to raise gas taxes.”The next month, in California, Republicans submitted 54 percent more than the required signatures to put on the November ballot a measure that would repeal the 2017 state law increasing gasoline and diesel taxes. Meanwhile, roads in Los Angeles are in such bad shape that it costs the average driver $892 a year in additional vehicle...

COLORADO SPRINGS — Future private space stations may be sponsored by major corporations, which prompted a spirited discussion during a panel on the future of low Earth orbit at the 34th Space Symposium here. “I don’t want the Taco Bell International Space Station,” said Erin MacDonald, modeling and simulation engineer for Engility’s Space and Mission Systems Group. “I think it goes against what the public perceives the space station is supposed to be like.” While the International Space Station is unlikely to be rebranded by Taco Bell or any other corporation, if a new commercial space station is “paid for...

Six Kentucky community banks that could be competing for business have agreed to work together as charter members of the specialty $150 million Commonwealth Infrastructure Fund to finance public-private partnerships (P3) in Kentucky.In the next few months, CIF is expected to reveal one or more inaugural deals.“We are looking at five to 10 potential projects that should start sometime in 2018. We expect to make loans to two or three projects in 2018 after the underwriting process has been completed,” said John Farris, who manages CIF. “We believe we will lend out all $150 million over three to five years...

“MASON CITY: To get there you follow Highway 58, going northeast out of the city, and it is a good highway and new.” — Robert Penn Warren, “All the King’s Men” (1946) WASHINGTON — Appropriately, Warren began the best book about American populism, his novel based on Huey Long’s Louisiana career, with a rolling sentence about a road. Time was, infrastructure — roads, especially — was a preoccupation of populists, who were mostly rural and needed roads to get products to market, and for travel to neighbors and towns, which assuaged loneliness. Today, there is no comparably sympathetic constituency clamoring...

As state officials launch a project to add toll lanes to Interstate 270 and the Beltway, they also are exploring the benefits of privatizing maintenance of existing highway sections. The Maryland Department of Transportation last week began soliciting input from businesses on the estimated $7.6 billion plan to expand Interstate 495 through Maryland and I-270 from the Beltway to Frederick. A separate but related $1.4 billion plan calls for adding capacity to I-295. During a Sept. 21 press conference, Gov. Larry Hogan said his idea for relieving congestion on the state’s largest thoroughfares relies on finding a private partner to...

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump—like his opponent Hillary Clinton—spoke glowingly about infrastructure spending, alluding to Franklin Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration and Dwight Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway System as examples of how spending on roads, bridges and airports helped unite the country. For 2017, the American Society of Civil Engineers has given America’s infrastructure an overall grade of D+, estimating it would cost more than $4 trillion to upgrade properly. But President Trump’s $1 trillion dollar, 10-year infrastructure plan has so far moved along at a halting pace. This tortoise-like process may offer an opportunity to think more strategically about...

No city in America runs on anything resembling a free-market model. But Texas' major cities are probably the closest thing, with vast improvements to their economies and living standards to show for it. Their looser land-use laws mean that housing supply grows quickly, stabilizing prices. Their lighter tax and regulatory structure helps businesses locate there and grow. And—shenanigans from the governor's office notwithstanding—their openness to immigrants means they have cheap and robust labor forces.But one market-oriented aspect little discussed is Texas' approach to transportation. The state has 25 toll roads, more than any other state. They are particularly common in Houston and Dallas,...

Last Thursday, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan unveiled a $9 billion project to widen three of the state’s most heavily trafficked highways: I-270, I-495—also known as the Capital Beltway—and MD-295, the Baltimore-Washington Parkway. What the governor’s office dubbed the Traffic Relief Plan involves constructing two express toll lanes each way—or four total toll lanes—to all three highways. Widening the Capital Beltway and the section of I-270 connecting the growing commuter-city of Frederick to Washington, D.C., would cost an estimated $7.6 billion, which the state expects to be financed via public-private partnerships: Private companies would build and maintain the new toll lanes,...

President Donald Trump’s $1 trillion plan to rebuild America’s infrastructure may be unprecedented in size and ambition, but it mimics a controversial scheme championed by Vice President Mike Pence when he was the governor of Indiana. That’s why Pence is the public face of the Trump initiative, and executives from financial firms that helped privatize Indiana’s toll road are in the White House, busily sculpting Trump’s national plan. Pence and his allies like to boast about how Indiana sold control of major roads to private firms, claiming the move prompted corporations to invest money in infrastructure that would otherwise have...

Dozens of public transit projects around the country are in danger of stalling as the White House's plan to boost U.S. infrastructure fails to gain momentum - with thousands of jobs at risk. The uncertainty over these projects has worsened in recent days as President Donald Trump - who had vowed to make the week's focus infrastructure - faced a series of distractions, including a congressional hearing featuring former FBI director James Comey. The president, who had called for $1 trillion in new infrastructure programs to create millions of jobs, now faces an increasing probability that not only will his...

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) on Thursday proposed a $9 billion plan to widen three of the state’s most congested highways — the Capital Beltway, Interstate 270 and the Baltimore-Washington Parkway — in what he said would include the largest public-private partnership for highways in North America. The projects would add four toll lanes each to Maryland’s portion of the Capital Beltway (I-495) and to I-270 from the Beltway to Frederick. It would also widen the Baltimore-Washington Parkway (MD 295) by four toll lanes after taking over ownership from the federal government. Because of private-sector involvement, Hogan said, the plan would...

Americans are becoming only too aware of the financial tricks and deceit in which some of the nation's largest and most respected corporations engaged during the Clinton administration to pump up stock prices with fraudulently inflated profits. When the huge bubble no longer could be sustained the men and women at the top would bail out of their stock and pocket millions, leaving pensioners and other investors holding an empty bag. To market insiders these are known as "pump and dumps." While federal investigators are looking into the corporate malfeasance at Enron, WorldCom, Qwest Communications, AOL Time Warner and...