NCLB gave us grade schoolers literally throwing up under the pressure of high stakes testing. It gave us a cottage industry of prep books filled with multiple choice exercises. It gave us the discontinuation of art and music classes to provide time for TAAKS practice ( i.e.) teaching to the test.
WASHINGTON, Dec 18 (Reuters) - The Bush administration will finalize changes on toll road regulations on Friday that it says will make privatizing infrastructure more efficient, counter to the view of leading Congressional Democrats that it will rob states of revenue and drive up tolls.
A Department of Transportation spokesman told Reuters on Thursday that details of the rule will be published in the Federal Register and will go into effect on Jan. 18.
The rule will require states to charge public toll authorities fair market value to lease roads built with federal assistance, in the hopes of making the authorities equal competitors with members of the private sector, said Doug Hecox.
"When a company wants to come in and bid for the work, they need to have some idea as to what the value of that would be," Hecox said. The transportation department worked with states on the regulation changes, he said.
"In some states they may give the first pick or first chance to public agencies before they give it out to the private sector. In that case, it's a little risky because there's no guarantee they're going to be choosing the fair market value," he said.
Just in time for the recession! Thanks George, now we need worry that artificially high toll road cost will start eating into our slim reserves as the recession gathers steam.
There is an old line used by leftists trying to salvage Marx's reputation from the horrors of Stalin's Gulag and the collapse of the Soviet economy. "Communism did not fail, it has yet to be tried. Today's Houston Chronicle article, Capitalism failed? Or did we fail capitalism? , is the right wing equivalent complaint. Ironically, they are both probably true, and both totally irrelevant defenses .
The problem with both Marxian socialism and Laissez-faire capitalism is that they both posit the existence of human beings of particular , consistent motivations. For the Marxists, men are basically altruistic, that the culture of capitalism corrupts them. For the high priests of the laissez-faire state, men are basically self-seeking and our salvation is in pitting them against
each other.
Given these flawed first presumptions, how could anyone ever take seriously the unalloyed application of these schemes in organizing real human societies?
Thus, the profit margin you were so quick to criticize ends up being far less in the long run than the bloatedness that often is our government.
Several commenters had their say and made some good points. I occurs to me that I have never laid out my case against using the free market as a check on government. Simply stated the "free market can't be a check on government because not everything can be measured in dollars and cents, nor do we have the "free market" the writer seems to believe. Finally, as long as elections are financed by the corporations and individuals with the big bucks the smart marketeer will do what we expect marketeers to do: rig the game in his favor.
LINK "Given where natural gas prices are, if wholesale power prices remain low, the consumer can expect to see lower prices," Reliant spokeswoman Pat Hammond said.
If electricity rates do drop, it would come just as many of the state's power markets - including most of the Houston area - complete the transition to deregulation.
The last vestige of regulation, the so-called "price-to-beat rate" that companies like Reliant and TXU had to offer to customers in their home regions, will disappear on Jan. 1.
Let's talk deregulation and prices below the fold...
In Texas, and all the other states who have adopted simlar models of utility deregulation, there will be hell to pay. It seems that Repugs understand theoretical markets, but not human nature, and not human greed at all.
