So, large corporations buying up privately owned water systems were just the first harbinger…

Jane!

It is the Las Vegas model for the whole country now, total front for
organized crime marketed as civic capitalism.

Did you hear Harry Reid talk about how the mob put a bomb in his wife’s car when he was fighting them in Vegas

Jane says:

I suppose Hurricane Katrina was a “fiscally responsible” event. The result? Deterioration, leading to mass privatization.

I’d put it more like, “The result? Deterioration, and permanent evacuation, leading to ethinc cleansing “lite,” leading to mass privatization.

Megacorps: vampires for the 21st century. Hope we all survive them long enough to see stakes driven through their sclerosed capitalist hearts.

Thanks for the alert, Jane…..(except for my blood bressure), I’m grateful to know of this.

On the bright side, Cochabamba saw the defeat of privatized water in Colombia - I’m hoping disaster capitalism will see the megacorps driving a bridge too far.

My favorite internet curmudgeon-Jim Kunstler-writes:

“We’re in a strange collective psychic bubble. We’d like to forget about all these troubling rumors of hardship and bad weather and just get on with the daily task of making a living and paying for stuff and enjoying our customary entertainments. The comforting ceremonies of everyday life seem to continue. The freeways are still full of cars. Nancy Grace comes on TV dependably at 8 p.m. and is there deploring the latest pervert arrest. The baseball season has ramped up and the teams are criss-crossing the nation in their chartered airplanes. The stock market is actually going up — what’s wrong with that?

But there’s an equally eerie vibe out there that things are seriously out-of-whack. We’re on the edge of something. We’re at the entrance of a dark passage where some of the ceremonies of daily life meet resistance. You go to the WalMart and five of your six credit cards are refused. Uh oh. It begins to dawn on you that you’re spending a quarter of your take-home pay filling up the gas-tank every week. There’s no dial tone when you pick up the telephone. How could all the supermarkets in town be out of rice? The local hospital just declared bankruptcy. The neighbors down the street auctioned off all their furniture in the driveway last week. Why does the cat pick up so many ticks these days?

Events are not through with us this year. They’ll keep moving where they will whether we believe in them or not. I’m hardly even convinced that it matters who wins the presidential race this year. It could end up being the world’s biggest booby prize.”

Crumbling infrastructure is just another piece of this vast “eerie vibe out there.” Republicans call us “chicken littles” and we call them “do nothing cassandras.” Meanwhile, reality lurches from one disaster to the next.

He won’t even try to fight the Bush mob even though there’s been no bomb threat.

The sky is falling the sky is falling.

That’s what they say.

Gee, private entities buying infrastructure, charging tolls (for roads) and other extra tariffs.

Whatever these leeches do with what they are allowed to purchase, I somehow doubt that maintaining them for the public good will be a primary consideration.

Overseas Utilities Look To America For Opportunity

“Cochabamba saw the defeat of privatized water in” Bolivia.

[my high school geography teacher would kill me….]

Seems to me that the Clintons as a team are looking for a second bite of that apple. The infrastructure was one of the problems that has been talked about since they were in office, and it doesn’t seem to me that it had much of a priority position then. Why would they think I would think anything’s changed? Didn’t fix it then; likely won’t fix it now.

OT but was looking for yo yesterday evening - Sir, No Sir! was on Sundance Channel last night. Though I’m sure you’ve probably seen it many times.

Wasn’t the sky; it was a bridge in Minnesota!

. . .and downstairs we were just speculating on the next “bubble”

kinda answers that now don’t it

just the thought of Carlyle forming an infrastructure fund sends the bp a surgin’ . . .anyone care to guess the date of it’s genesis . . .anyone ? bueller . . .

of course it could be the same Carlyle geniuses deciding to get in to the CDO business last july, when even the marxist dfh’s knew it to be a loser

Yea, been a while. I like Winter Soldier better but who cares what I like!

No bomb threat but there always the potential, “Harry boy, how your been. Nice family you got there. They fly airplanes and stuff, right. Be a real shame if they was to fall out of the air kinda like that Wellstone’s plane did, know what I mean, Harry boy?”

‘Course, what’s the point of stepping up to the plate if you don’t intend to swing the bat? In Reid’s case, it might have been to last long enough to get a book deal.

Well, don’t forget, one of the reasons Bill became known as the triangulator was having to deal with the Newt crowd in the House and Senate so it becomes a matter of getting what he could, not necessarily what was most needed.

Bill became known as the triangulator

That’s what they called it?

I’m sitting about 10 blocks from that fallen bridge as I type this. The state has put a rush job on the construction (I’m sure there’s plenty of payola involved there, too) in order to show some progress in time for the Republican convention here in the fall. I think they’d love to make our putz of a Governor, Tim Pawlenty, the VP bid for Grampy McCain. Personally, I’d love to see that. It would rid us of an odious governing agent and Minnesotans would come out in droves, attesting to the downfall of the “Minnesota Miracle” and the Republican involvement in it. We used to have good roads, good schools, good infrastructure. This state is now a poster child for the ills Jane has described. Come on Grampy, grab you some Pawlenty!

This issue came up in a roundabout way as an op-ed in the Sunday Sacramento BEE. My question for the Republican Legislators is what % of profit should the private sector expect to reap from the tax payer dollar?

There is just NO SHORTAGE of bad public policy on the right.

Why does Jane hate capitalism?

Because she has no where to pin her flag.

bom dia pups

It may be bad public policy, but it’s not bad for the policy makers on the right. Enriching themselves and their cronies is all they care about.

what up bits

Breaking News

US Dropping Charges Against “20th Hijacker” - but will try five others in Military Tribunals (including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed), after five years of secret detention, isolation from legal processes and waterboarding.

Yeah, emptywheel did a post on that this morning

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05.....rbert.html

Link to very good piece by Herbert in the NYT concerning younger voters. He claims that this generation is positively un moved by gooper rhetoric about the evils of govt and wants more of it- INCLUDING universal health care…

Good read

Actually, I think Iberdrola will be very very good for New York State, since their interest is in wind generated power(they already own Community Energy in PA and those wind turbines on the mountain tops are a sight to behold).

It’s estimated that it would take $225 billion annually for the next 50 years (11 trillion dollars) to fix all the problems just in our surface transportation systems. That doesn’t even touch dams, levees, or our drinking water systems. Our infrastructure has been allowed to crumble, and who’s waltzing in to sweep it up at bargain basement prices? Well, the Carlyle Group and other civic-minded capitalists, of course.

so this is now even worse then most of us predicted;

not only has our infrastructure been used to give tax gifts to the wealthiest people on the planet, they will also make even more money by rebuilding the structures they themselves profitted from by their destruction

holy friggin crap

we have GOT to make it CLEAR, “the commons”, services we all need and use CANNOT be given to for profit oranizations

they cannot

Whatever these leeches do with what they are allowed to purchase, I somehow [doubt] that maintaining them for the public good will be a primary consideration.

Ain’t no doubt about it, darlin’; that one’s about as sure as the sun coming up and going down. :-( Leeches can be beneficial; these suckers get every drop of blood and leave a corpse.

Do I see in the future a two-hour documentary, hosted by Mrs. Dan Senor, to begin a public debate of these issues? NOT!

Great post, Jane. I finally got around to buying a copy of Shock Doctrine. Now I just have to carve out time to read it.

Seein ya in the daylight!

One thing I can tell you from my experience is that ‘deregulating the utilities’ has been a complete disaster in terms of infrastructure - no one has any incentive to build, expand or do maintenance. Anyone remember that circumstance about 8-10 years ago in Ohio where electricity prices went through the roof? One of the causes, I read from an Ohio state report, was the fact that not only were all the generating plants that were scheduled to be off-line for maintenance not available — several others that should have been operating could not because they failed..because they had not been given proper maintenance.

Sell the water pipes buried under public roads to a private company- and they now own a virtual monopoly- there will not be TWO sets of water mains—how much will they charge for water?

Well to steal a line from National Lampoon’s Vacation—”How much ya got?”

The army corps of engineers is bad enough. Imagine how much better they would be if they were privatized.
/snark

Want to sell me your drive way? I’ll let you know later the charge for entering and leaving your house..

How fuckin stupid can people get?

It’s like the ultimate stake being driven through the heart of the old “New Deal”. Republicans everywhere rejoice in their greed and avarice as they dance on the grave of FDR.

As long as corporations are legal considered as having the same rights as an individual this bs will continue. I don’t think this is Marx’s idea of the withering away of the state to be replaced by a corporatocracy.

How fuckin stupid can people get?

Is infinitely an option?

You don’t really want to know, it would be too depressing.

Goopers in California invented a great plan to deregulate the utilites- just to make sure it was workable, they had the energy companies write it. Before ya knew it- those energy companies were witholding power and selling it over and over to cause spikes in pricing and increased profits….Fuckin stupid people voted for this shit.

Someone needs to re-release a lot of the research on Enron and the results of their manipulation of the energy market, especially in California.

Meaningful oversight and a truly level playing field. Is that really too much to ask?

new bumper sticker:
The rich are the new middle class.
What does that make us?

Guess I owe you a beverage. What’s your choice?

Because the message pounded out by FERC and the Edison Electric Inst. and the utilities was that it would save consumers money. I think that in every state that deregulated, the consumers not only did not save money, but it has been even more expensive. As I recall, Virginia is going back to a regulated situation.

I suppose “coke” is not a favored company here at teh progressive blogdom

although the telecom break up has saved us tons

What all these brains forgot was the fact that FERC, the state PUCs, etc. required the utilities to sell their generating capacity. In order for the utilities to fulfill their feduciary responsibilities to their rate payers and their stock holders, they had to get at least ‘book value’ of their plants - and preferably MORE. So, in many cases, the buyers took on debt to buy the assets. Now that the utilities had no generating capacity of their own, they had to purchase it on the open market - the price of that energy now had a huge debt cost factored into it. There was no way that consumers could possibly get cheaper electric under those circumstances.

You’re talking to the guy who tried to start a “Just ice, please” campaign to boycott all soft drinks until there is more justice.

Except, if you notice, you now have a re-aggregation of the telecoms buying up other pieces that got split off and people like Verizon refusing to serve areas that are not profitable for them, like the state of Maine.

ice uses fluorocarbons Jim

gonna have to make it warm water me thinks

NPR had a piece where Pennsylvania is selling something like 500 miles of it’s interstate to a Dutch firm. At least the Europeans know how to do things. Anyone that’s been to Europe in the recent past knows their infrastructure makes the U.S. look like merely a 2nd world country. Greedy politicians and a dumbed downed electorate will do that.

Will any of these infrastructure operations be allowed to bid on rebuilding in Sichuan?

there needs to be a restriction on consolidation, this includes of course the media and telcoms

our work is much obi one

Raven, did you see this…

Laura’s upstairs with a new video…!

LOL. Ya got me there. Could explain why the effort went nowhere. (He said while swilling the last of a Diet Dr. Pepper).

This analogy may put some people off, but I proffer it nonetheless (notwithstanding its limitations).

Many think that America just can’t do government bureaucracy, hence privatization is always the preferred solution.

I recently watched (and TIVO’d) the 10 hour PBS documentary series “Carrier.” While I in no way support the glorification of war and the machines of death and destruction, I have to be impressed at the amazing breadth of excellent ops management portrayed in this series. Yeah, of course, it’s a vertical absolute command culture, but I was struck by how open everyone was with their opinions of everything pro and con, and the extent of the mutual respect all the way up and down the line (’cuz they’re all smart enough to realize the import of the whole “weakest link” thingy).

We in fact can do as a government, when we set our minds to it. And, huge privatized corporate bureaucracies can easily be shown to be less responsive to the public good (or individual redress).

The thing of it is that all of the old-line utilities and telecom systems got started with cooperation from municipalities, etc. They got to put their poles in the public right of way and conduit under the street or under the right of way FOR FREE. In the case of the TVA and the rural electric coops, there was government investment. Part of that was the recognition that this stuff is a common good and a benefit to all where it is(vs a detriment to places where it is not). Now, you have companies like Verizon which have decided that they can abandon their responsibilities as ’serving the public’, sell off their system(and get the profit on their assets, including the placement in the right of way which they got FOR FREE)and move on to someplace else which is more profitable. This leaves people in many areas(usually rural) with even fewer options for service.

Thanks, Jane, for your laser truth.

Canadian documentary The Corporation. Corporation=”legal” person and that personality profile is PSYCHOPATH.

John Edwards was talking clearly, simply and angrily about this stuff.

Patriarchal society enslaves the non-ruling class. Partnership society does not. Patriarchal, win/lose. Partnership, win/win. Patriarchal, war. Partnership, diplomacy.

As Blanche D. in Streetcar wistfully wailed, “I’ve always been dependent on the kindness of strangers.” Maybe some pscyhopathic bottom (feeding) line almighty dollar and self-aggrandizing corporate patriot (isn’t that what the Repubs in the Senate called the telcos) will make it all right and SHARE.

Where have all the ethics gone? Long time passing.

Someone needs to re-release a lot of the research on Enron and the results of their manipulation of the energy market, especially in California.

Meaningful oversight and a truly level playing field. Is that really too much to ask?

As I brought up last week around these parts, The Smartest Guys in the Room is not to be missed re: Enron.

It shows absolutely shameful behavior by energy traders to jack up prices, such as calling a power plant and asking it to shut down.

And they did it!

This is the same crap going on wrt oil prices now.

Today, the dollar was up (the weak dollar supposedly being a main culprit of higher oil prices) yet so was crude.

Speculators are killing us (and the economy overall) running up oil price futures contracts to record highs almost daily, and Congress looks the other way.

Stopping additions to the petroleum reserve is a step in the right direction, but only a very small step. De-leveraging the commodities markets would have a far greater and immediate impact.

Natural gas as well.

great

Tell me about it! No cable, no DSL, no clear view to use satelite where I live.

Oh, and all that hype about more competitiveness from deregulation of AT&T, forget about it. I have never had a choice of which phone company to use the entire time. BellSouth has always been the only provider in my area.

That should be deregulation of I believe the phone companies.

RW,

Given the capital costs involved in their creation and maintenance, water utilities are natural monopolies. If population density and environmental conditions force communal sewage treatment facilities, those are also natural monopolies. They have to be regulated.

In our area, there are three or four (I forget right now) suppliers of fresh water. They fight over the right to supply new development, and it ain’t pretty.

BC

Everyone do a count for yourself of the transportation routes you use. Count the bridges you cross daily to any destination you count on reaching for the things you need. Know where the water is available if you have an issue where it isn’t coming from the tap or the well because you have no power. Some of these things may fail in a minor quake that the region has not seen, so be prepared to wait out the reply from the government. And you know how long you are likely to wait, hmm?

Deleveraging the commodities markets would be an excellent idea. Get the speculators out, or at least force them to put all their money on the line when they place a bet.

And that’s what it is, folks. Speculators are placing bets, it’s not much different from a high stakes poker table, except that you won’t be allowed to bet on margin at the poker table.

BC

I think that Krugman attacked the “speculator” hypothesis the other day as the cause of high oil prices….he says that the earmarks of a speculator fueled market are not there. He (and I) believes that the price run up is a longer term issue caused by increasing demand meeting supply that cannot be increased much- at least in the short run- and perhaps in the long…

The big discoveried of new oil just aren’t happening- and it appears that many OPEC nations have beeen lying about their reserves for years.

ctuttle at 60

you know the person who would wear that shirt is with his wife who is wearing the ’i’m with stupid’ with an arrow shirt…..

Thanks Jane. I think liberals have to find some accountants who can illustrate the value for all taxpayers of a dollar invested in infrastructure over a dollar invested in residential home building. The entire residential home building industry, including suppliers, is teaming with Reagan Democrats. If Democrats can show them that Democrats will help them transition into infrastructure construction, it’s a huge plus for Democrats. At the low end of the skill set, dry-wallers, painters, there will still be problems. Carpenters, electricians, earth moving, concrete, surveyors, general contractors, engineers, … will all imho make the transition pretty seamlessly.

National Suicide by design.

Our infrastructure problems can be solved by issuing our own money debt free, instead of borrowing it from the Fed or China. As Thomas Edison said, any nation that can issue 30 billion in bonds, can issue 30 billion in cash.

Read the Web of Debt by Ellen Brown, or google it to find her web site.

thus what we refer to as “the commons”

it would be impossible for any private interest to put together the infrastructure that’s required to provide most “commons”

does anyone really think verizon or sprint or ateeandtee could possibly afford the real estate that they have been using the establish their business?

or even the rent?

and those “commons” are used by every business, it’s how they get their water, their electricity and it includes the roads everyone uses to get to their establishment

these costs must be born by those who realize profit, that born income is not tax though that’s what it’s called, the revenue realized from businesses must be called something besides a tax

I prefer usage fees

in that scenario it will be very hard for a business concern to complain their taxes are too high, they would have to rather argue that they shouldn’t have to pay the bills they have themselves written against their profit margin

DISASTER CAPITALISM by NAOMI KLEIN Most amazing book - most amazingly brillaint woman author - READ IT and weep ! Then dry your eyes and pitch in to change the course of history with your new found knowledge.