Want to buy the Brooklyn Bridge? (for real)

[donsu]

http://www.stateline.org/live/details/story?contentId=169145


Want to buy the Brooklyn Bridge? It’s not for sale yet, but the Indiana Toll Road and the Pocahontas Parkway outside Richmond, Va., recently were leased to the highest bidders. And if Texas Gov. Rick Perry prevails, private firms will pay the Lone Star State $1.2 billion for the right to build a $6 billion toll road from San Antonio to Dallas.

-snip-

Several big deals were consummated in 2006, even as a resurgent economy and the return of surpluses gave most states a respite from penny-pinching. Another form of easy money – tax revenues from legalized gambling – also is helping to keep state coffers brimming. And states, like credit card-crazed shoppers, are borrowing more money than ever through the bond markets.

The prize of cash upfront is what’s driving the new phenomenon of states marketing public assets to private corporations.

-snip-

Govs. Rod Blagojevich (D) of Illinois and Matt Blunt (R) of Missouri are looking into auctioning off student loan portfolios. Blagojevich, who won re-election in November, also is renewing a push to lease the state lottery for $10 billion, promising the money will be spent on schools. (sure they will)

-snip-

In the Southwest, all eyes are on Texas as newly re-elected Gov. Perry pushes his “Trans-Texas Corridor,” a swath of toll roads, railways and pipelines that would cost $183 billion to build over half a century. Three of Perry’s gubernatorial opponents lambasted the first phase of the plan, in which a consortium of foreign firms has agreed to pay the state $1.2 billion and spend $6 billion constructing a 300-mile toll road between Dallas and San Antonio. (The deal is pending until environmental studies are complete.)

(can you say Super Highway?)

-snip-

The preceding article is excerpted from State of the States 2007, Stateline.org’s annual report on significant state policy developments and trends. The 48-page State of the States publication is now available. Our limited supply of print copies is already exhausted, but to order an electronic version, click here.
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all the snips hold info on what other things the states are selling out from under the public. you'd be amazed.

it's like america is being pimped.

[NYC Liberal]

1. You should see what the MTA tried here in NYC:

http://www.ahundredmonkeys.com/random_marketing/content_70_naming-consultants.htm

the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority is floating the idea of selling naming rights to everything from subway stations and bus lines to bridges and tunnels. Last month the authority quietly solicited proposals from marketing outfits who engineer these sponsorship deals.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who has even proposed selling naming rights to
New York's cherished public parks, makes no bones about aggressively pursuing corporate sponsorship deals for the city. How many other cities can you name with a chief marketing officer? Appointed last April, Joseph Perello's job is to "leverage the city's image and assets to generate new revenue streams for the city." He was formerly vice president of business development for the Yankees. His office generates statistics like "Every three years the authority moves the equivalent of every man, woman and child on the planet." Now that's a lot of eyeballs.

[ThomCat]

2. America is being sold off in pieces.

Soon there won't be any truly public space left except the places that are unprofitable.

Bloomberg has already turned over 300 of our city schools to private, for-profit, contractors. And he's planning to double that to 600. We're going to pay tax money through the nose to build a new massive sports complex in Brooklyn that nobody wants, so that sports teams can make an even more obscene profit, and all we're going to see for it is increased traffic, congestion, and the loss of an affordable residential neighborhood.

Everywhere you look, public space, public resources, and public infrastructure is being auctioned off.
x(

[mopinko]

3. puke, puke, puke and

i don't care too much what happens to the illinois lottery, but this bs about money for schools is what they told us when the lottery started here. never happened. money went into the general fund, school funding sagged anyway.
what crap, tho. just plain pigs at the trough.