New York's bridges are falling down

Good grief! If the MTA weren't hemorrhaging money on account of poor management and corruption, there would be plenty left to take care of the bridges. Politicians have only themselves to blame for their own incompetence in this sorry state of affairs. Privatizing bridges is the dumbest idea ever. What about just TRYING HARDER to do your job as a politician, and figure this out instead of throwing up your hands, calling it quits, and privatizing everything.

@Uraniumfish All this sounds so frightening doesn't it? its as if the city is going down the tubes..

@Uptowngirl: And you put NYC on a pedestal. It seems that if you do that, it will fall off.

This privatization trend is not just endemic to NYC, though. It's happening all over the country in several industries - and I find it all very scary.

That's just unfortunate and ridiculous. Especially in light of the 7-train extension discussion we've got going on in another thread.

@Uraniumfish Maggie Thatcher did it in London years ago with mixed results so if the US is indeed going down that road they would be wise to tread cautiously for in many cases accountability didn't improve and costs in fact skyrocketed instead of being controlled.

Privatizing jails is the world's worst idea, evah.

Whaat?? privatizing jails??? where ? when?

Are you kidding? It's been around for a while now. Not sure if it's been done in New York yet, but definitely in the midwest, with horrifying results.

@Uraniumfish guess have not being attention but I do agree it must be horrific. What a bad idea!

@uptowngirl They're basically jailing people for almost no reason because the police get kickbacks from the jails, and the jails are set up to earn a profit only if all the cells are full.

Like I said: worst idea, evah.

@Everybody: In a way, I'm not surprised about privatizing work. The government is so wasteful. They would rather pay an outside outfit a ton of money to do something they could do themselves. They claim hiring an independent contractor to do the work, saves them money. In reality, they are right. They don't have to pay benefits. They simply pay one flat fee, based on the terms of the contract they enter into, and go from there.

@Uraniumfish Do you mean prisons?

@hhusted: If you hate New York so much, why do you live here?