Going Protectionist Over a Fantasy Highway [Reason libertarians on TranTexas Corridor]

Reason Magazine ("libertarians") ^ | September 24, 2007 | Shikha Dalmia and Leonard Gilroy/Reason Foundation

[lonewacko_dot_com]

...[The building of the Trans-Texas Corridor] is all too sinister for Jerome Corsi, the Vietnam War veteran who helped lead the Swift Boat charge against John Kerry. Corsi has knitted disparate strands of each of these separate road projects to help convince fellow xenophobes such as Pat Buchanan, Phyllis Schlafly, Lou Dobbs and the John Birch Society that the corridor is the first leg of a secret federal project called the NAFTA Superhighway, a four-football-field wide monstrosity that would run from Mexico's Yucatan to Canada's Yukon...

Yet even Texas Rep. Ron Paul, a libertarian Republican candidate for president, has fallen for the paranoia. You'd think that Paul would be chanting hosannas to anything that facilitates free trade, but he too fears that the "superhighway" is part of a scheme by foreign companies to erode U.S. borders and create a North American Union combining the United States, Mexico and Canada -- complete with a single government and a common currency called the "amero."

Superhighway opponents regard even routine dialogue between the three neighbors as a treasonous assault on U.S. sovereignty. They are apoplectic about the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP), a forum created in 2005 for bureaucrats to discuss such radical topics as how to snag terrorists before they enter the continent and how to speed up cross-border traffic for just-in-time deliveries...

[WOSG]

“I’m not against the idea of building a highway from Mexico to Texas, but whoever wants to build it better obtain the land themselves, not using eminent domain.”

That’s simply not done with roads and for good reason. Getting 100% agreement on a 300 mile strip of land 500 feet across from the hundreds of landowners is impossible.

ED should be used only when necessary and for public purposes. But roads is exactly the case. (and few other cases are as strong, maybe electrical and utilities but that’s it.)

[wolfcreek]

“Tell me which factor does I-69 fall down on?”

Personally, I don’t care about I69, I’ll never use it and unlike TTC35, don’t know anyone who will be effected. (might even be a viable alternative to TTC35) (the Feds have decided I10 and I69 are top priority for now)

I just came back from traveling through 8 southern states, all interstate highways. I came to the conclusion Texas has been screwing us. Setting us up for all these toll roads and such. There are sections between Waco and Dallas that have been under construction for over 30 yrs. This state has turned into Louisiana, corruption deluxe. I wouldn't trust Rick Perry and his cohorts to wipe my butt.

[WOSG]

“Personally, I don’t care about I69, I’ll never use it and unlike TTC35, don’t know anyone who will be effected. (might even be a viable alternative to TTC35)”

YES, IT MIGHT BE. I think your comment makes my point, which is: Let us judge the road proposals as they are and not fold them up into a Vast RoadRing Conspiracy. TTC/Cintra is bad, but I69 may be fine.

“I came to the conclusion Texas has been screwing us. Setting us up for all these toll roads and such.”

I agree. We dont need these roads to be toll roads. If we really need them for the sake of international trade, for goodness sakes get the Federal govt to chip in and make it a proper interstate highway.