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
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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