Blackwell: Lease Turnpike to Create $4-6 Billion Job Development Fund

Ohioans for Blackwell ^ | 1/26/06 | Gene Pierce

[Calpernia]

>>> They'll be run out of business even as monopolies. In fact, they'll be run out of business because they're monopolies.

There is another thought. What happens if or when the company goes bankrupt? Get's taken over? Board of Directors change?

USA citizens have no say in how the business operates.

Who knows who's hands the infrastructure will end up in.

And what the new owners will have planned. Our enemies could hold US business hostage by owning our major infrastructures.

I will post the companies I tracked tomorrow. I have to go run some more errands.

[Alberta's Child]

I suspect that's exactly why so many of the companies that get involved in these things are foreign-owned . . . because they are used to operating in a business climate in which major corporate conglomerates basically function as government agencies.

[Alberta's Child]

Our enemies could hold US business hostage by owning our major infrastructures.

Oh, sure. Like the government of China would have any ability to secure their "investment" in the U.S. What are they going to do -- close the New Jersey Turnpike one day in an attempt to shut down our busiest metropolitan area?

[Calpernia]

And that is not a consideration because?

AMERICA SURROUNDED, DO YOU SPEAK CHINESE?
by Lt. Col.Craig Roberts, Ret.

[Alberta's Child]

That Roberts guy must be selling books, or survival gear. That presentation reads like something from WorldNetDaily.

Anyone who believes that TWA Flight 800 was brought down by a terrorist missile has immediately discredited himself as far as I'm concerned. We've hashed through that a number of times here on FR over the last few years.

[Calpernia]

And your opinion of Roberts has to do with China being a communist dictatorship because?

You have no problem letting foreign entities buy our infrastructure?

You are totally convinced that their interests are pure investment and that enemies have no historic patterns with control and power?

[Alberta's Child]

This country went through the same kind of anxious hand-wringing when Japanese investors started buying up New York City real estate in the 1980s.

"The Japanese are going to own Manhattan!" people cried in anguish after Rockefeller Center was sold to Japanese interests." Rockefeller Center was later sold by those Japanese investors -- at a huge loss, too.

Someone has to explain to me how a foreign government can possibly "control" our infrastructure by buying up toll authorities that can't even pursue toll scofflaws effectively.

[Alberta's Child]

P.S. There's a reason why all these foreign companies are submitting the winning bids on these projects . . . it's because U.S. companies recognize a losing proposition when they see it.

Owning a toll road in our current political and economic climate is a bad business deal.

[Calpernia]

Toll roads are not the only infrastructure being sought.

Don't you remember, (2 yrs ago?) Bloomberg wanting to sell the Brooklyn Bridge. No one believed it. It sounded like a joke.

And, BTW, owning a building is 100% different then controlling major arteries.

[Alberta's Child]

If the U.S. Supreme Court -- in its ruling in the Kelo case -- has made it clear that private property can be seized by governments under eminent domain proceedings for purely economic reasons, then you can be damn sure that something like a bridge or highway could be taken back by the government in an instant if it wanted to.

This, in fact, is precisely why owning bridges and highways is such a bad business proposition . . . because the childish political climate in this country -- under which people have an expectation from birth that so many things like this must be "free" -- will make it difficult to run these things profitably over time.

[hinckley buzzard]

There's no reason to have a private venture make a profit on a road that tax payers already paid to build.

Right now the Ohio Turnpike is run by the Ohio Turnpike Commission. It is basically self-supporting through tolls, and is the best maintained of the interstate-type highways in the state.

Taxpayers per se did not pay to build it, users did. But regardless, isn't it more desirable if the private sector can take it over, rather than have an unnecessary government entity?

When the bonds were paid off, the original idea was to make it toll free, but then the maintenance and upgrading would have been the responsibility of the state Department of Transportation, a real half-assed bunch compared to the OTC. It would have meant a deterioration and eventual obsolescence of the highway, as it competed with every local politico in the state for funds to fix every road and highway, as well as all the other interstates. DOT projects are backed up a good ten years. The OTC has done a very good job, and has reinvested the "profits" into upgrading, adding exits, and six-laning the road pretty much as needed. If a private firm wants to pay for the privilege of running it, and the State can get funds for development, why not? Sounds like win-win to me.

[hinckley buzzard]

There's no reason to have a private venture make a profit on a road that tax payers already paid to build.

Right now the Ohio Turnpike is run by the Ohio Turnpike Commission. It is basically self-supporting through tolls, and is the best maintained of the interstate-type highways in the state.

Taxpayers per se did not pay to build it, users did. But regardless, isn't it more desirable if the private sector can take it over, rather than have an unnecessary government entity?

When the bonds were paid off, the original idea was to make it toll free, but then the maintenance and upgrading would have been the responsibility of the state Department of Transportation, a real half-assed bunch compared to the OTC. It would have meant a deterioration and eventual obsolescence of the highway, as it competed with every local politico in the state for funds to fix every road and highway, as well as all the other interstates. DOT projects are backed up a good ten years. The OTC has done a very good job, and has reinvested the "profits" into upgrading, adding exits, and six-laning the road pretty much as needed. If a private firm wants to pay for the privilege of running it, and the State can get funds for development, why not? Sounds like win-win to me.

[Calpernia]

Eminent Domain, to another country, can be seen as an act of war. Especially if they see that as losing face.