Well, you reelected him NJ....sorry

who passed this bill.

Yup they did, and they were elected too.....time too clean house...

in a pissy mood anyway, what with all the negative fallout from his trip to England.

The companies that have "expressed interest" in the bidding, are also some of his biggest campaign contributors. Talk about sewer politics!

But that's ok; that's what False News (or Clarín, in the case of Argentina) are there for.

cancer rates sky rocket in Newarks notorious chemical alley.

utilities, roads, schools. Republican voters are the cancer eating away at this once great nation. I wish there was a vaccine for stupid.

And in NJ it is controlled by the Democrats.

The plan to privatize all of the infrastructure is in full swing. Remember, the tax payers paid for it, the right wingers refused to repair it, and now they're selling it to their corporate buddies. What in the hell is wrong with the Dems in NJ? BTW, I live in FL and our right wing radical legislature is busy privatizing the prisons and the public schools. If people don't wake up, the big boys will own everything.

Guatemala with the aid of the local powers, like financiers who came into New Orleans after Katrina & then Detroit. Global financial elites are viewing Buffalo & Baltimore now to privatize city operations, a la Disaster Capitalism. The water system in Balto. is a French or European company like other places in the US. The privatization of public schools is widespread, before that prisons. 'Charter' schools & cities sound too grand. I prefer to call it what it is-Profit Schools, Profit Water, Profit Prisons, Profit Cities, Profit Utilities, Profit Roads, Profit Parks. Everything is privately owned & managed by corporations, not the govt. or us for the common good, like earlier Company Towns.

Authoritarian capitalism already existed here up to & after the Progressive era in politics when some changes were made by workers & advocates, c. 1900 onwards. After the Civil War wealthy industrialists, corporations & investors set up operations where they owned practically everything-in mining towns, timber settlements, mills & factory towns & cities, whether in the US or overseas in Central America or the Pacific region. They were also investors in banks & transportation companies, railroad & shipping lines.

In the South during Jim Crow after the Civil War to the 1940s/1950s, black men & some women, & some poor whites were charged or picked up for minor offenses, or nothing & sent to to brutal labor camps & prisons where they labored in horrible conditions. Many disappeared from families forever. The camp/prisons charged them for housing, tools & made up expenses to keep them in debt & indentured for long periods similar to the debt peonage system in Latin America. I read of a young black woman searching for her missing brother who eventually contacted Eleanor Roosevelt for help but I don't think he was ever found.
Pulitzer Prize winning author Douglas Blackmon covered the subject in his excellent book, 'Slavery by Another Name' (2009) which was made into a PBS documentary.

In coal/timber camps & mill/factory towns workers paid the company owners rent for housing, bought food & household goods at the company store, paid for furniture at a company store. All prices were set by owners with no competition from other merchants. Laborers were paid in scrip, a paper currency issued by the company that was unusable outside the region. (Walmart was found paying workers in scrip at a Mexican facility several years ago). Companies owned the roads, real estate, schools & churches & in some ways the workers, like feudal landowners. The school teacher, doctor & some preachers were hired by the owners & on the company payroll. It was total dependency of the workers, who if they got out of line, owners would evict them or fire them using hired company security guards. Worker safety laws & conditions were absent until they were fought for & finally established in the mid-19030s & later.

Before FDR in 1933 there was no workmen's compensation, social security or retirement for old age. People who were elderly or sick could be seen on the streets. If healthy enough some were picked up & sent to labor camps. Safe food & water were first protected by the clean food & water act, 1907. This was a hard, exploitive period in US history that passed with New Deal & Post War era legislation, policy, unions & prosperity. Here's to better days ahead. ~~Hello Claire, glad to know you are here from MadFloridian; welcome.~~

They always said that we would be destroyed with our own weapons. Capitalism is a two edge sword.

The Christie bunch gave tax breaks to the same oligarchs that use the public water system, don't you think you can see the problem
Whoever made this law and whoever voted for it they have now turned the state into a city called DETROIT, and if you don't think so, look at that state and what they are doing to the public water system.
And for all of you right wingers that support this greed and lack of transparency, take a drink of water and then ask how much did this cost before and after, because some where along the line your property taxes are going to go up to pay for this greed

is operated by the Kean family, yeah that Kean family. Tom Kean is the most overrated Governor we've ever had.

People are screwed. Have a leak that could cost you 900.00 dollars or more if you don't discover it in time. No excuses you PAY!!!
6 days late off with your water, pay a hefty fine and your bill and we may if we have time will turn it back on. Good luck New Jersey

Starve government so it can't do its job, complain that "government isn't doing its job," and then hand the asset over to the one-percenters who will squeeze blood from a stone and leave nothing but crushed stone behind.

It's right there in the Republican playbook.

Private companies DO NOT INVEST in infrastructure. They just get the government to do it for them and then reap all of the benefits.

which is about the events that took place when a subsidiary of Bechtel took over the water of a town in Bolivia.

What happens in any corporate take-over is the purchasing party wants/needs to recoup the money spent on the acquisition, and then some. This happens in three ways -- increase rates and/or reduce employee rolls and/or delay or cancel maintenance or expansion.

So, what would happen is that Christie can improve NJ's bottom line by taking in the money from a private investor. Makes him look good and gives him another gold star in his plan to run for President.

In reality what would happen is that rates to water users would increase dramatically. At the same time, workers would be laid off and maintenance deferred on infrastructure. In a few years, the system would be completely broken. But by the time the bottom falls out, Christie would either be President or looking for work in another walk of life. Either way, he would never suffer any consequences for making such a horrible decision.