Over here in the Piney Woods, we call that,
"Ponyin' up the big bribe money to get the contract..."
(A few miles east and south of here, the word is "lagniappe"...)
Posted on 07/12/2006 3:26:46 AM PDT by Trupolitik
The contractors building the Trans-Texas Corridor – a massive statewide transportation network critics claim is an important part of the controversial proposed integration of the U.S. and Mexico – have made large contributions to the campaigns of Texas politicians, including Republican Gov. Rick Perry.
As WND has reported, opposition is mounting to the little-publicized efforts by the Bush administration, aided by corporate and political elites of the U.S., Mexico and Canada, including the Council on Foreign Relations, to push North America into a European Union-style merger. Critics of the Trans-Texas Corridor see the massive project – ironically funded by Spain – as part of this movement to integrate the U.S., Mexico and Canada.
Terri Hall, director of a taxpayers' group called the San Antonio Toll Party, told WND, "there is not a single politician in our entire Bexar County delegation that has not taken money form H. B. Zachry, Jr." Zachry Construction Corporation, headquartered in San Antonio, has entered into a limited partnership with Cintra, a capital consortium based in Spain to undertake the TTC construction.
"Zachry owns San Antonio," Hall told WND, "and he has spread his money inside and outside Bexar County [where San Antonio is the county seat] to make sure he drives the highway lobby." The San Antonio Toll Party is grass roots movement and political action committee opposed to the Trans-Texas Corridor.
Although WND could not confirm Hall's charge that every local politician has accepted money from Zachry, she and others are naming quite a few names.
"The politicians in Austin are listening to the highway lobby rather that the citizens who put them in office," Hall told WND, adding, "you will not understand the politics of the TTC until you track down Zachry who has a long and distinguished money trail to offices of our state politicians."
The non-partisan Institute on Money in State Politics provides data that support Hall's contention. Analyzing 39 records of campaign contributions made by H.B. Zachry, Jr., the Institute concludes Zachry contributed $112,112 in campaign contributions – 92.2 percent to Republican candidates. The largest of these contributions went to Gov. Perry, two contributions totaling $35,000.
Perry is currently running for re-election against Democratic challenger Chris Bell, a former congressman from Houston, and two independent candidates, Carol Keeton Strayhorn and Kinky Friedman. Both oppose the TTC.
When WND contacted Perry's campaign organization for comment on campaign contributions by Zachry and other contractors who stand to benefit from TTC construction, Perry's campaign spokesman Robert Black said: "Gov. Perry got lots of campaign contributions from contractors who got nothing in the TTC bidding. If a contributor was giving money to Gov. Perry for any other reason than that Gov. Perry's policies are best for Texas," Black emphasized, "then they should keep their money."
Another group opposing TTC construction, Campaigns for People, a 501(c)(3) organization in Austin, argues that between Jan. 1, 2001, and Dec. 31, 2004, the Texas Department of Transportation, or TxDOT, awarded over $14.3 billion in contracts to build and maintain roads in the state. More than 40 percent of this total – over $6 billion – went to the "Top 10" TxDOT contractors, who gave $1.1 million in political contributions.
In 2003, House Bill 3588 in the Texas Legislature amended the Texas Transportation code to give the state the broad, new powers needed to build the Trans-Texas Corridor. According to Campaigns for People, top contractors who sought to benefit from the TTC construction contributed heavily to the campaign to pass House Bill 3588:
The TxDOT Top 10 and TTC Bidders gave generously to legislators who ultimately had a say over the content and passage of HB3588. These interests made over $2.7 million in campaign contributions from January 1, 2001 to December 31, 2004. These special interests steered more than half of this money to elected officials who either held statewide leadership positions in 2003 or who sat on key House or Senate Transportation committees.
Simply stated, according to Campaigns for People, contractors who sought to benefit when TTC was built contributed to the political campaigns to achieve their objective.
It's to be built with extremely limited public oversight. Except for the corridor east and roughly parallel to Interstate 35 (TTC-35), it's a road system most Texans can hardly imagine will ever be built. But road builders and toll bond financers from around the world are lining up to participate. These interests contributed $166,000 to amend Texas' Constitution and more than $2.7 million in Texas' last two elections to turn the nation's largest toll road project into a reality.
Black resists any insinuation of collusion. "The TxDOT contracts were awarded on an open bid process," Perry’s campaign spokesman told WND. "These TTC opposition groups are typically 'conspiracy theorists' who think we're giving Texas land away to Spain. The State of Texas will still own TTC highways, even if Cintra has the right to lease them and collect tolls."
WND could find no reference on the websites of either the San Antonio Toll Party or Campaigns for People that TTC highways were going to be ceded to Spain.
Today, there are some 50,000 miles of interstate highway in the U.S., yet TxDOT has proposed building 4,000 miles of Trans-Texas Corridor superhighways in Texas over the next 50 years. The TTC project at full development will involve the removal of as much as 584,000 acres of productive Texas farm and ranchland from the tax rolls permanently, while displacing upwards of 1 million people from their current residences.
"We may not need to build all 4,000 miles," Black asserted. "But the population of Texas is going to double in the next 40 years and our Texas interstates are already strained. The days of building a 50-year old Eisenhower interstate system are over. TTC is a new model for America."
A close reading of the 4,000-page Environmental Impact Statement, or EIS, posted on the Trans-Texas Corridor website reveals on page 3 the NAFTA purpose of the TTC-35 project, which generally runs parallel to Interstate-35. Under the subtitle "enhance economic vitality," the EIS notes that "approximately 75 percent of America's commerce with Mexico travels through Texas. Increased access and mobility within the study area would improve the movement of people, goods, and services and potentially lead to new employment and business opportunities." This, contend critics, makes clear that the TTC-35 project is not "just a highway needed for anticipated Texas growth," but rather a NAFTA-inspired highway, intended to grow Texas by vastly increasing NAFTA commerce with Mexico.
The 11 separate corridors planned will permanently cut across some 1,200 Texas roads, with crossover unlikely for much of the nearly quarter-mile-wide corridor planned to be built. Dozens of small towns in Texas will be virtually obliterated in the path of the advancing Trans-Texas Corridor behemoth. While supporters, like Perry's administration, call it a necessity, critics says the TTC appears to be the test case for future development of a NAFTA superhighway that would extend north through Oklahoma City, Kansas City and Duluth into Canada, largely parallel to I-35.
"I don’t know if the TTC is going to extend to Oklahoma," Black commented. "I can only speak for Texas."
Nor does Black have any insight into the plans of investment bankers and international capital funds that are unlikely to allow a four-football-fields-wide highway just end at the Texas border, without first approaching Oklahoma, and the other states on the anticipated I-35 path north, to consider accepting their capital to extend the road.
Posted on TxDOT’s Trans-Texas Corridor website are contracts signed by TxDOT that indicate Cintra has paid over $1 billion for the right to negotiate a final construction contract with the state. Cintra Concessions de Infraestructuras de Transporte, S.A. of Spain plans to recover through tolls an investment that is estimated to exceed $180 billion for the full 50-year build-out of the TTC 4,000-mile network.
Cintra won the contract with TxDOT as a result of a competitive bid, said Black. "Cintra promised the State of Texas the best bang for the buck. Besides, they threw in to the deal over $1 billion that the State of Texas could use however we want to." WND can find no description of the competitive bid process on the Trans-Texas Corridor website, nor any identification of the losing bidders.
Last month, the Cintra-Zachry limited partnership stepped in to provide the $1.3 billion TxDOT needed to complete a toll segment of TX-130. In return, Cintra-Zachry obtained the concession to operate the toll segment of TX-130 for over 50 years.
Even though large segments of the Cintra-Zachry contracts have been archived on TxDOT websites, TxDOT has withheld key sections have from the public. TxDOT argues that revealing all details of the TTC transaction would compromise the release of information proprietary to Cintra-Zachry.
ping, please?
Excerpt:
On May 31, 2005, the Texas Attorney General’s office ruled that TxDOT must release hundreds of pages of the Comprehensive Development Agreement (CDA) kept secret in the TxDOT/Cintra Zachry deal to develop Trans Texas Corridor TTC-35. The portions of the CDA not yet publicly released include the conceptual development and financial plans. In June, 2005 Cintra Zachry filed a lawsuit against the Texas AG to keep the CDA details a secret. The CDA has yet to be released.
"It should raise red flags to everyone that TxDOT offers NO written guidelines or criteria for what projects should or should not be a CDA project. Then when they make the deal, we can't see it. That is not open government Texans deserve." said Sal Costello, founder of People for Efficient Transportation. "Vendors propose projects to which TxDOT feels it must respond and thereby commit state road funds to private development projects."
"Gov. Rick Perry, the chief planning officer for the state of Texas, has directed his appointed Texas Transportation Commission, who governs TxDOT, to move forward with CDA's and what Perry calls 'innovative financing'. This fancy name means they’ll use our tax dollars and publicly funded right of ways to build toll roads, and charge us again for driving on them. The CDA's are one of the tools they use to keep the details of the highway robbery a secret." added Costello.
More:
http://salcostello.blogspot.com/2006/01/txdot-cda-event-sells-texas-for-profit.html
The Big Dig was political pork that consumed $15+ billion tax dollars. In contrast, the Trans Texas Corridor will pay for itself, being built with 99.9% private funds. Only an idiot or a liberal could fail to see that those are 100% opposite.
Can anyone tell me why this was moved to "General Topics" instead of News/Activism?
Because kook conspiracy theories aren't news.
This reads exactly like one of those liberal democrat kook websites. For comparison:
http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/news/board_political_donations.html
Payback: 99 percent of political donations from Halliburton's board of directors go to Republicans
WASHINGTON, Aug. 3 (HalliburtonWatch.org) -- Halliburton's board of directors has given $365,065 to Republican candidates and political action committees over the 2004 campaign season, a HalliburtonWatch analysis reveals. The board, comprised mostly of individuals from the energy industry, gave $365,065 (or 99 percent) to the Republicans and $4,000 (or less than 1 percent) to the Democrats. Halliburton's political action committee gave another $133,500 to political campaigns, with $120,000 (or 90 percent) going to the Republicans. The dollar amounts are current through June 30, 2004 and were obtained from the Center for Responsive Politics.
The biggest political donor on Halliburton's board is Ray Hunt, who is the chief executive officer of Hunt Oil, a privately-owned oil company with operations in the Middle East, Africa and South America. Its major oil production operations are located in the United States, Canada and Yemen.
Hunt, who inherited his "success" from his wealthy father H.L. Hunt, is notorious for protecting his inheritance by supporting pro-oil causes around the world, including fellow oil man President George W. Bush, who appointed Hunt as finance chairman of the Republican National Committee’s Victory 2000 Committee. During the 2000 campaign, Hunt was designated as one of the 241 Bush "Pioneers" because he raised more than $100,000 in campaign donations from his family, friends and colleagues. Former President George H.W. Bush's press secretary in the White House, Jim Oberwetter, had worked for Ray Hunt for nearly three decades.
Federal election records show that Hunt and his wife have so far donated $190,000 of their own money to the 2004 election cycle. All of that money went to Republican candidates or Republican political action committees.
One month after Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Hunt was appointed by President Bush to the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. He also serves as chairman of the board for the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and is a member of the National Petroleum Council, an industry trade group that advises the president on energy policy. Vice President Cheney also served as a member of the Council during his tenure as CEO for Halliburton. In addition, Hunt serves on the board of trustees for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a foreign policy think tank which often supports causes that benefit global oil and gas projects in the Third World. One of those projects, known as the Camisea Natural Gas Project, is located in the Peruvian Amazon rain forest where both Hunt Oil and Halliburton's KBR subsidiary will build a natural gas plant. Environmental groups say it is the most environmentally damaging project in the Amazon Basin. The (London) Independent newspaper reported that the project "will enrich some of [President Bush's] closest corporate campaign contributors" but that it "risks the destruction of one of the world's remaining pristine stretches of rain forest and threatens the lives of indigenous peoples."...
Wow! thanks for posting that Calpernia.
In favor of whom? Another Ann Richards? A drug-addled gadfly who will make Texas a national laughingstock?
Perry's going to win in a walk.
Thanks for the ping.
Most of Corsi's stuff ends up in chat. He repeats himself, over and over and over, as do most of the posters who respond to his foolishness.
Nonsense, the 85mph speed limit for the TTC has been publicly discussed and published for more than a year, and was one of the design standards when the project was conceptualized.
Star Locke
It's an awful lot of expense and effort to solve a problem that with a little political courage could be rendered moot by a Federal takeover of the Longshoreman's Union and a serious effort to make West Coast ports economically competitive.
MSNBC - 8/05: http://tinyurl.com/z8f6a
Lufkin paper and Free Republic - 12/05: http://tinyurl.com/h6qpf
The fact remains that this road will absorb private land
from owners who do not want to sell it.
Would you force them off their land? Some of these folks
hold grants from the Republic of Texas. How conservative
is that?
On my county road, most folks including yours truly are going for the Grandma (my better half is going for Kinky,
no counting for taste;-).
haha! I have managed to talk a few law students away from Kinky and toward "grandma".
I Vote for Kinky is a vote for Perry, that's "Why the hell not".
Trans-Texas Corridor PING!
Thanks, Jedidah.
Can anyone tell me why this was moved to "General Topics" instead of News/Activism?
Over here in the Piney Woods, we call that,
(A few miles east and south of here, the word is "lagniappe"...)
As have most of the roads, airports, schools, sewer, and water facilities that were built. Should we not have built those? What is the alternative, when there are 400,000 new Texans every year? Another Austin every 3 or 4 years?
Do you not realize that if this road isn't built in the country but instead I-35 is expanded (at a much higher cost) there will be many, many more property owners that will lose their land, since the existing state right-of-way isn't big enough? Why is it better to take land from 3,4,5, 10 times as many owners at a much higher price?
And even if you leave out some of the non-road elements, they'll have to be built sooner or later, so still more property owners will lose their land when those other corridors are built. The whole idea of the TTC is to lump all these different uses into a single corridor instead of a bunch of individual ones, where some of the land requirements can be shared (buffers, drainage, access paths) and thus reduce the amount of total land taken. So what's your alternative?
Would you force them off their land? Some of these folks hold grants from the Republic of Texas. How conservative is that?
So conservatives are supposed to show favoritism to those who have been here for 150+ years, while discriminating against newcomers? That's an odd thing for someone who only recently moved here to suggest. Which is more conservative, picking the route of least cost and least impact, or forcing many more times the number of property owners to forfeit some or all of their land at a much higher project cost? Especially when the rural option will be all privately funded, but the I-35/urban alterative would raise the cost so much as to require a portion be paid by taxes. And since there is already a backlog of projects because the current tax revenues aren't enough, without tolling a tax increase will be required. Seems pretty clear which is actually conservatism and which is old-style gov't planning.
On my county road, most folks including yours truly are going for the Grandma (my better half is going for Kinky, no counting for taste;-).
From your profile:
We moved here from Santa Fe, from Amherst NH, and from Issaquah WA. I liked the climate in Santa Fe, the culture of WA, and the small town values of NH. I am trying to find things to like about Texas.
Not to jump to too much of a conclusion, but it does remind me of all those Californians and Northeasterners from liberal areas that move to conservative states, start griping and trying to change things to like the places they left and vote for the liberals instead of the traditional conservatives. Hopefully I'm just interpreting that wrong. And let's be honest, Kinky isn't a conservative and the One Grandstanding Grandma was a Democrat who switched to the GOP only when the GOP swept the state, and now has switched to independent. After switching husbands 5 times. What makes you think she won't switch her positions if she somehow gets elected governor? She certainly has switched her interpretations during her tenure as Comptroller to fit whatever way her political wind was blowing.
Diddeldy - Are you a paid supporter of this nitemare? A lobbyist? Only a blind man could not see that this TTC is the biggest boondogle in history peddled on Texans.
I have only voted for a democrat once in my life and lived to regret it and I will be dead and buried before I vote for Perry again. The way I feel now(as well as my immediate family of 6, anybody but Perry.
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