Posted on 10/13/2004 9:12:17 AM PDT by illumini
This is about more than just tolls or toll roads. This is about downtown real-estate values, and about big property operators like Trammell Crowe "getting totally well" through public/private "New Urbanism" schemes to restrict suburban growth by hammering commuters.
It's all about the squeeze play -- traditionally known in American political speech as "The Big Fix".
The problem for Texas conservatives and Real Republicans (as opposed to RiNO's) is that these initiatives are very closely tied to Gov. Rick Perry and the corporate-welfarist, social-liberal RiNO's that have taken over the Texas GOP. They totally control the party machinery.
It's a real headache. The ideal solution would be to defeat Perry in a primary and send all his appointees -- both Party and state -- packing, with their butts on fire.
Well now, that just gall's me. :>)
162 - "This is about more than just tolls or toll roads. This is about downtown real-estate values, and about big property operators like Trammell Crowe "getting totally well" through public/private "New Urbanism" schemes to restrict suburban growth by hammering commuters."
I think you have got this pegged there, just like the Wham-Bam-Tram in Houston is not about transportation, but really about property values along the route.
I think we need a FReeper analysis/study of what is really going on, long term.
Think we may be on our own here. There have been helpful, factual analyses from time to time of various statist initiatives of the Left, but the usual players (American Enterprise Institute, Cato Institute) might not be willing to take on corporate-welfare deals like this. This Big Fix may be big enough -- which is the key to conspiracies like this -- to sweep up or co-opt all the players capable of stopping it. Cato Institute might take them on, but I think AEI will be joining the Legions of Darkness on this one. One of the key strategies of the Left communitarians leading the New Urbanism, stated right up front, is to co-opt the biggest real-estate interests. Normally they'd have the academic Marxists and the Carterite/Clintonoid appointees in the bureaucracy on their side, but putting the biggest, bluest, and most eminently bribeable RiNO's on the team may just do it for them.
That puts people who just live here and pay taxes in something of a big, fat political bind. We can articulate issues, but with the RiNO's and their Rotarian employers' conspiracy driving working hours through the roof, who has time to help organize and politick?
Boiled down, you might say that the electorate's problem is that the RiNO's are holding us down on our desks while the Statists rape us all the way downtown and back.
That about get it?
Response: Is Austin a hotbed of Diversity?
Comment: Usually the two go together.
The corporate prison (like Chinese work farm)system is here too! ~Kind of makes one wonder.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1254347/posts
An update 10.23.04. Also, please see our website for a download of the TXDOT .ppt on bonds and "limiting alternatives", etc. Respectfully, Illumini
I don't invest much in the lotto but it is not enough for the highway system. Here is an update on our efforts to recall the locals who voted to toll existing roads.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1254347/posts
bump!
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