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This story caught our eye this morning as a prime example of the costs incurred when citizens demonize government:

One year ago, Testwell Laboratories, a concrete testing company, and two Testwell officials were found guilty of falsifying results on major public works projects. On Thursday, the owner and five engineers at the company chosen to replace Testwell surrendered to face charges that they did the same thing on some of the same projects and hundreds of others.

They are accused of falsifying thousands of tests at Yankee Stadium, the Second Avenue subway, public schools and private buildings.

A 29-count indictment charges the six men and the company, American Standard Testing and Consulting Laboratories, under the state racketeering law. It accuses them of a money-making scheme that included falsifying the results of tests required by law to measure the strength and quality of concrete poured on projects in New York City and Westchester County and on Long Island. The decade-long scheme also included falsifying documents to get city licenses and manipulating government programs to get jobs for which they were not entitled, according to the charges.

Because we relied on a private company, who's sole purpose is to maximize profit, we are left with hundreds of sites around the New York City metropolitan area with possible weak concrete. Those who claim that market forces will cure our ills and provide safety mechanisms for our citizens are only left with one answer to this problem: the market will punish this company by putting them out of business. Voila! Problem fixed! Except that the rest of us citizens are left to clean up their mess (and be exposed to possible physical harm or death):

Concrete testing, such as the kind that is the subject of the charges against American Standard and Testwell, is a basic safety measure at construction sites, and investigators found irregularities in companies' work at the new Yankee Stadium, One World Trade Center and hundreds of other sites.

None of the nearly 3,000 test reports that prosecutors seized from the company contained legitimate results, according to one person briefed on the investigation. Among other projects for which tests results were falsified were: the Lincoln Tunnel, the air traffic control tower at La Guardia Airport, the Javits Convention Center; a building at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and the Intrepid Sea, air and Space Museum (italics ours).

The person briefed on the inquiry said there were cracks in the concrete at the airport and at the Javits Center, but they did not represent a serious structural threat.

Alice McGillion, a spokeswoman for the New York Yankees, said the testing irregularities had caused no dangers at the stadium.

"The stadium is safe," she said, and stressed that the new indictment, like the 2009 charges against Testwell, grew out the investigations that the Yankees themselves had conducted.

Does anyone seriously believe that the Yankees would shut down their new stadium to fix this problem? Of course not...it's business as usual.

Let's hope no one gets hurt.

Play ball!

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