Well back in the "good old 50s', 1956 to be exact, when even conservative Republicans use to love America,  

.. President Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act, which called for the federal and state governments to build 41,000 miles of high-quality roads across the nation, over rivers and gorges, swamps and deserts, over and through vast mountain ranges, in what would later be called the "greatest public works project in human history." So vital to the public interest did Eisenhower, an old-style fiscal conservative, consider the interstate highway system, he even authorized the federal government to assume 90 percent of the massive cost.

Now fast forward to 2006:

On June 29, 2006, Mitch Daniels, the former Bush administration official turned governor of Indiana, was greeted with a round of applause as he stepped into a conference room packed with reporters and state lawmakers. The last of eight wire transfers had landed in the state's account, making it official: Indiana had received $3.8 billion from a foreign consortium made up of the Spanish construction firm Cintra and the Macquarie Infrastructure Group (mig) of Australia, and in exchange the state would hand over operation of the 157-mile Indiana Toll Road for the next 75 years. The arrangement would yield hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks for the consortium, which also received immunity from most local and state taxes in its contract with Indiana. And, of course, the consortium would collect all the tolls, which it was allowed to raise to levels far beyond what Hoosiers had been used to. By one calculation, the Toll Road would generate more than $11 billion over the 75-year life of the contract, a nice return on mig-Cintra's $3.8 billion investment.  

..snip..

Many similar deals are now on the horizon, and mig and Cintra are often part of them. So is Goldman Sachs, the huge Wall Street firm that has played a remarkable role advising states on how to structure privatization deals--even while positioning itself to invest in the toll road market.

Here are some other states that are lining up to give our country and our money away.  

Across the nation, there is now talk of privatizing everything from the New York Thruway to the Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey turnpikes, as well as of inviting the private sector to build and operate highways and bridges from Alabama to Alaska. More than 20 states have enacted legislation allowing public-private partnerships, or P3s, to run highways. Robert Poole, the founder of the libertarian Reason Foundation and a longtime privatization advocate, estimates that some $25 billion in public-private highway deals are in the works--a remarkable figure given that as of 1991, the total cost of the interstate highway system was estimated at $128.9 billion.

Congressman DeFazio from Oregon, a Democrat, of course, is doing battle on behalf of American taxpayers everywhere.  Maybe you would like to drop him a line to acknowledge his good fight and to wish him a Happy New Year..

I also encourage you to head over to Mother Jones to read the entire article.  It is another sad story about what corporatists, tax cutters, and pandering GOP politicians are doing to our country.  They are selling our parks, highways, military, and manufacturing to the highest bidder.  There is no pride in country, no pride in ownership, and no concern for national security.  There is no patriotism left in in the GOP and soon there will be no America.  Instead of The Constitution, school children will pledge allegiance to articles of incorporation and trade deals.