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4 responses to “Quote of the Day: Chuck Marohn”

1. 

   larryg

   August 29, 2013

   “…. stop making investments that cost more over the long term to service and maintain than they generate in wealth.”

   such a simple concept.

   Let’s start with schools.

   want an easier one to start with? Okay. Libraries.

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2. 

   reed fawell III

   August 29, 2013

   This quote is timely.

   One iteration of the problem was ably pointed out by others commenting on the Broad Street BRT. That is the growing trend of public funds being spent on fancy new technologies with fancy new names such as BRT. Often now these fancy name denote nothing more that highly expensive and counter productive versions of older more reliable technologies that get the job done better for a faction of the cost. For one of endless examples, how many ways have been dreamed up waste public money on promoters latest version of a trolley.

   Now we even have the dysfunctional Million Bus Stop to keep rain off the people waiting for for the damn thing when a $10,000 bus stop works better, and maintained for 2% of the annual cost of the new version.

   Hence too we buy a dysfunctional Billion Dollar “Crystal Mover” transit system to carry folks standing up at 42mph via underground tunnel for 1500 ft to an airplane gate. Moving sidewalks do it far better at %5 the cost.

   Far too often this is crony capitalism at its worse. More and more we find that public private ventures are being used to promote and build these boondoggles at public expense whether through bonds or direct funding.

   Do not get me wrong. Public funding can develop wonderful new technologies. Some of them have changed my life in highly positive ways.

   But the constant bane of responsible public servants who manage those funds is fighting off political influence, the false claims of private promoters, and procurements systems designed to raid public monies for the private benefit of those who’d mastered the art of milking the system. Indeed they end up controlling the system without any accountability for it if only because of the complexities of their products and how its financed.

   What is happening here today is akin the derivative tranche financing systems that burned down our economy last go round only a few years back.
   But, of course, it takes around ten years for the problem to metastasize. And by then the looters have long since slipped the noose of responsibility. Why? Well, because we allowed them to design the system that way.

   Ike long ago warned of the growing corruption of an out of control Military Industrial Complex. Believe me, here was a man whose life experience prepared him to know in exquisite detail exactly what he was talking about.

   Ike’s problem has not gone away. Indeed it is worse today. And the reason its worse is because far more private interests groups have joined the party. And they have found whole new civilian systems to corrupt.

   There is a race for the looting of public funds by means of “soft” corruption – the bad market study, the canned traffic study, the precooked private public task force study, the single source design build process, the sloppy construction management by private contractors and public officials allegedly working on the public’s behalf.

   Now more and more of these corrupt systems are turbo charged by the hype of highly speculative technologies that give who promote, assess, build and manage the system the tools and cover to magnify the projects financial risks exponentially. And along the way to line their own pockets with much of the public’s loss, and suffer absolutely no loss themselves.

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   1. 

      larryg

      August 29, 2013

      Did Reed just say Damn? Damn!

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3. 

   larryg

   August 29, 2013

   Look. It’s pretty damned dangerous when Reed and LarryG agree on something…..

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