The mindless privatization mantra

I didn't need the New York Times to tell me that Mitch Daniels was a Republican. The idiocy of the content of the op-ed on privatizing Indiana roads was enough to tell me that.

I find this kind of thing infuriating. Roads are a quintessentially public good that make no sense to privatize. None. Get that through your government-phobic heads, you idiots. If Daniels had taken even the most basic economics class, he would know that.

The fact that this is a stupid idea is so obvious that I find it difficult figuring out where to start explaining why. It's like trying to explain to someone why they shouldn't jab a serrated knife into someone's kidney.

First of all, it's a goddamn toll road. It's not that complicated to operate. The fact that Indiana can't make it work speaks more about the idiots in the Indiana legislature and red-state politics than it does about the fucking toll road. The biggest impediment to fiscal solvency is less government inefficiency and more an electorate that has been insulated against feeling the costs of public services, and a Republican party that fosters that ignorance in the name of "smaller government."

I guarantee you that if anyone had even bothered suggesting an initial investment in electronic toll passes or increasing toll charges to keep pace with inflation, the goddamn red state Republicans would have jumped on them as "tax increasers" and demanded they move aside for the "belt-tightening that the beaurocrats are too afraid to do."

So what happens instead? The state pays a foreign firm to do the rate increases for them, and they have to pay the profit margins of the company on _top_ of that. Moreover, toll regulation is no longer responsive to the electorate given the binding legal contract, so the private firm can do whatever the hell they want. And all they have to do to get out of the inflation cap on toll increases is convince a politician to remove the cap in the name of "reducing regulation and red tape." And Indiana no longer has the option of converting the road from a toll road back to a normal road when they figure out that tolling is a bad idea, and they come up with a better funding model.

And don't even get me started on the idea that selling public property to foreign firms is a solution to the trade deficit. That's like selling your house to your bookie and claiming that it solves your gambling problem.

Welcome to the modus operandi of the modern conservative.