An A319 Captain reports his concerns about the deteriorating quality of maintenance at his air carrier.

Narrative

Maintenance at Carrier 'X' Airline is operating near the tilting point (as expressed by Mechanics as well) and is flirting with a catastrophic disaster! Upon pushback I felt some vibration at the nose area under my feet. Shortly thereafter; after starting the No.1 ENG; we got three ECAMS - ELAC Pitch 1 Fault; ELAC Pitch 2 Fault and ALT Law. We trouble shot the problem with Maintenance Control to no avail and went back to the gate. Immediately the A319 was taken out of service. Maintenance informed us the airplane had just come out from 1 week in the maintenance hangar and they had an issue with the Flight Controls they could not resolve.Just last week; the same flight number; I had an issue with an airplane that when I taxied out I sensed an unusual nose vibration. When I got to the gate; the Mechanic explained that the airplane had just come out from a Heavy maintenance check and the nose wheel assembly was replaced but the oil had not been serviced?! On the same flight on another day; I had to refuse the airplane due to fire in the APU from hydraulic leaking and a long History of Avionics SMOKE ECAMS that were continuously resolved by merely cycling circuit breakers (CB's). On my commute flight this morning the airplane experienced START problems with IGN 'B' failing. And a First Officer I flew with on a previous flight just had an integrated drive generator (IDG) failure. Couple this with the managerial style currently at our carrier; poor communications interdepartmentally; excessive and dangerous cost cutting that allows airplanes to fly to the minimum standard MEL/FAR's; and we are seriously flirting with disaster; that only the NTSB will then de-identify. No life should ever be lost; change the course we are currently on. A potential disaster. This is the second time in as many weeks; I have had an encounter with my company's maintenance; that shows me that the management of this airline is content to live in a world of MEL's; that were only intended to be a fall back; or an exception. Maintenance is being farmed out to lowest bidder and no one is really fixing anything or servicing things when they should. Also; yesterday; the airplane came from hangar with not even flight manual limit for oil quantity in #2 engine.