Trump Floats Nonsense Idea of Privatizing Airports and Dams

[struggle4progress]

KEVIN DRUM
APR. 12, 2017 3:34 PM

... The Obamacare effort has already crashed and burned. His tax plan apparently won't work with Obamacare in place, so now he's delaying that to take another run at health care. He doesn't have anywhere near enough support for his infrastructure plan, which is why he's desperately scanning the horizon for weird ideas to fund it. And the wall hasn't gone anywhere yet. It may yet make progress, but even Trump admits it won't cover anything close to the whole border.

On foreign policy, he's crashed and burned on his immigration plan; reversed himself on Russia; launched a strike on Syria with no apparent follow-up plan; still has no proposal for defeating ISIS; caved in to China on Taiwan; and has gone soft on trade.

So what has he done? He's signed a few bills reversing some Obama executive orders, but that's about over since the easy stuff has an early May deadline. He produced a kinda-sorta budget, which was even deader on arrival than most presidential budgets. He managed to pick a name off a list and nominate him to the Supreme Court, something he apparently considers a helluva hard day's work. Beyond that, he's tweeted, convened some "listening sessions," held a couple of rallies, watched uncounted hours of TV, played lots of golf, and generally developed a reputation as the laziest president in anyone's memory ...

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/04/trump-floats-nonsense-idea-privatizing-airports-and-dams

[procon]

1. He's treating the presidency like he's a celebrity booked for a cameo appearance

on a TV reality show. He walks on camera, repeats the same idiotic, nonsensical lines that confirm he really is as stupid as we all feared, then exits the set and goes home. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

[duncang]

2. Sounds good to me

Privatize them under a llc or other ways to evade possible prosecution. Run them to the ground and pull as much profit as possible out. If it looks like bye-bye dam or airport going under give you ceo and board big golden parachute bonus's and bug out. What harm could that do?

[brooklynite]

3. Maybe not a great idea to privatize airports, but not "nonsense"

Many European nations, including the social democracies may people here love, have privatized airports. This does NOT equate to privatizing air traffic control. It's fundamentally a facilities management job.