Brad Plumer at Ezra Klein's place covers the upsides and downsides of leasing or selling off our roads and bridges to private corporations.
The main problem here isn't just that transportation infrastructure is being privatized. The problem is that it's being sold off to foreign investors and the like. Plumer's buried lede:
The first is to sell off assets that have already been built. This is what Indiana did in 2006, under Governor Mitch Daniels, when it leased its 157-mile Indiana East-West Toll Road to an international consortium of investors for $3.8 billion.
So we're leasing and selling one of our most necessary assets -- our ability to traverse a geographically large and sprawling nation -- to foreign interests. Shouldn't that raise serious alarms?