Free Republic

Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s clashes with conservative activists are nothing new: A bitter battle over racial preferences and liberal judges has raged in the tight-knit world of Lone Star politics since 2001. In the days following George W. Bush’s election to the presidency, the newly minted Gov. Perry had a chance to prove his mettle by nominating justices to fill two Texas Supreme Court vacancies. Following Ronald Reagan’s unsuccessful 1987 nomination of Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court, conservative activists had been awakened to a new kind of politics — the politics of judicial nominations — and Perry’s selection...

The "American Heritage Invention and Technology" magazine has an article on interstate highway bridge construction. The article was prompted by the collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis a few years ago. The legal weight limit for semi-trucks was quoted as 80,000 pounds. This weight limit is what interstate highway construction in America is designed to carry. The article also mentioned that Nevada has found one in 14 trucks exceed the 80,000-pound legal limit. It was not clear from the article if the legal limit of 80,000 pounds is a federal limit and applies anywhere in the United States or...

The U.S. Department of Transportation will make no attempt to stop Sen. Byron Dorgan's effort to kill the Cross Border Demonstration Project, The Trucker learned Friday afternoon. Earlier this week, Dorgan, a Democrat from North Dakota, included language in the Fiscal Year 2009 Omnibus Appropriations bill that the senator said would finally bring to an end “the Mexican long-haul trucking program in the U.S. started by the Bush Administration.” The bill, not to be confused with the stimulus package, allocates federal funds for the remainder of the fiscal year. Sources have told The Trucker that LaHood has indicated he will...

Trans Texas Corridor is dead, TxDOT says 10:50 AM CST on Tuesday, January 6, 2009 By MICHAEL A. LINDENBERGER / The Dallas Morning News mlindenberger@dallasnews.com AUSTIN – The Texas Department of Transportation announced this morning that it has officially killed the Trans Texas Corridor, saying that despite the project's visionary aspects, "it is clearly not the choice of Texans." Direct link to article...

CorridorWatch, a Fayette County-based group that has been active in opposing the Trans-Texas Corridor plan, wants to go beyond the Sunset Advisory Commission’s recommended shakeup of state transportation leadership. The group, led by David and Linda Stall, recommends that TxDOT answer to an elected six-member board led by a chairman appointed by the governor. CorridorWatch makes it recommendation, along with various other reactions to the Sunset commission staff’s recent report on TxDOT, in written comments submitted as part of the sunset process. TxDOT, like all state agencies, “sunsets” after 12 years unless the Legislature acts to keep it alive. As...

MONTGOMERY The state Senate may have been locked down for most of the year, but it did find time to endorse a widely discredited urban legend spread by the John Birch Society. The upper chamber passed a joint resolution April 10 sponsored by state Sen. Rusty Glover, R-Semmes, claiming that Canada, Mexico and the United States are moving toward a "North American Union" and working on construction of a "NAFTA Superhighway" to link the countries and report edly destroy their sovereignty. "It's about retaining independence," said John McManus, the president of the John Birch Society, in a phone interview Mon...

Several Oklahoma legislators are concerned that individuals and organizations are quietly working on plans to create a privately-operated tollway in Oklahoma. Many referred to Spain-based Cintra, which has been involved in the development of a proposed Trans-Texas Corridor. Cintra also took over the operation of the Indiana East-West Toll Road from the Indiana Department of Transportation in 2006. Oklahoma State Sen. Randy Brogdon and state representatives Eric Proctor, Richard Morrisette, Scott Inman and Charles Key all expressed concern that efforts to open up Oklahoma to a privately operated tollway system were being kept out of the view of the general...

Topeka — Agreements with Mexico and Canada are setting the stage for construction of a huge highway that will gobble up Kansans’ property and jeopardize U.S. security, representatives from a wide range of groups said Monday. “Through incrementalism, apathy and inattention, our national sovereignty is being sacrificed on a cross of greed, socialism and globalism,” said state Rep. Judy Morrison, R-Shawnee. Morrison has introduced House Concurrent Resolution 5033 urging Congress to withdraw from further participation in the North American Free Trade Agreement and Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America. At a hearing before the House Federal and State Affairs...

There's been a lot of talk about the new Trans-Texas Corridor — the next-generation "super-highway" — and opinions are varying. Now the debate is coming to Lufkin's doorstep. On Monday, the American Land Foundation, Stewards of the Range and TURF will hold a workshop at Lufkin's Pitser Garrison Civic Center on how to stop the Trans-Texas Corridor 69. The event runs from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. A portion of Texas citizens have voiced their opposition to the TTC-69 in public meetings held by the Texas Department of Transportation, but believing they are not being heard, four cities and their...

Topic: Globalism The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) is planning on building a new super highway system called the Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC). The Trans-Texas Corridor will not be just another interstate and will it will be used by more than just automobiles. It will include 10 lanes for traffic, two high speed rail tracks, four standard rail tracks, utility lines, oil pipelines, and gas pipelines. The Trans-Texas Corridor will consist of many corridors segments that are 1,200 feet wide, with each mile consuming 146 acres of land. This land is currently ranch and farm land that is being taken by...

Texas spirit was alive and well at the Navasota DEIS public hearing on Feb. 28. Opposition groups, such as the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, came from as far as Washington, D.C. to give recorded testimony, and get a first hand look at TxDOT process procedures. Assistant Director of Communications, Leigh Strope, who attended the meeting on behalf of the 34,000 Texas Teamsters Union members, says, “Teamsters want to stop the dangerous trend of selling our roads and bridges to foreign investors so they can slap tolls on the driving public. We are also concerned because the Trans-Texas Corridor would form...

REFUGIO, Texas - With an abandoned Wild West-vintage town of storefronts slumbering just a block from old US 77, tiny Refugio is a place where myth and reality coexist in a ghostly silence. more stories like this Obama faces heat over aide's NAFTA remarks to Canadians Texas, Ohio could decide Dem nomination Canada says didn't misrepresent Obama over NAFTA McCain tags Dems on trade treaty NAFTA seen differently in Ohio, Texas And now this South Texas outpost is swept up in one of the more intriguing tests of myth vs. reality in today's political life: the battle over the so-called...

The proposed Trans Texas Corridor did not find any fans, or any support, in Fort Bend County this week. At public meetings hosted by the Texas Department of Transportation in both Katy and Rosenberg, speaker after speaker, many in emotional tones, voiced their opposition to the proposed transportation corridor. No one spoke up in support of the proposal at either meeting. The Tuesday night session took place at Katy High School’s Performing Arts Center with over 200 residents in attendance. The evening before at the Rosenberg Civic and Convention Center, a similar crowd showed up to voice their opinions. In...

The debate in Texas over a proposed 4,000-mile network of toll roads that will parallel the state's existing highway system is heating up More than 10,000 people have attended public hearings across Texas to discuss the proposed Trans-Texas Corridor, which has also been dubbed the "NAFTA superhighway." It is a project that is expected to cost an estimated $183 billion over 50 years. (hear audio report) Terry Hall with the group Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom warns the project will create widespread eminent domain abuse and involve foreign control of public infrastructure. "They're taking huge swaths of land, up...

A handful of Kendleton residents were among several dozen to speak out against the Trans-Texas Corridor at a public hearing Monday night in Rosenberg. “I personally think it's a slap in the face for Texas to take the land for pennies on the dollar, to put a road on it and to make you pay a toll for it,” said Jeremy West, one of the speakers from Kendleton. The Trans-Texas Corridor is a proposal for a network of highways, rail lines and utilities throughout Texas that would be financed by private interests who would seek to profit through tolls and...

HEMPSTEAD -- The Trans Texas Corridor may be the most controversial highway ever built in Texas. That is, if it ever gets built. All month, there have been public hearings throughout the area where people have been showing up in droves to oppose it. People don’t drive very fast on Odis Styers’ family ranch near Hempstead, but TxDOT wants that to change. “It’s quiet, it’s peaceful,” Styers said. “It’s a shame a road is gonna mess it up.” The road is the Trans Texas Corridor. The plans call for it to come through here, and with it: separate lanes for...

n what may have been the first hint of victory for opponents of the Trans Texas Corridor, a high-ranking Texas Department of Transportation official said Thursday he regretted his agency's communication failures and said one proposed version of the corridor, a 10-lane super highway with rail and utility pathways, will "probably not" be built in East Texas, based on the overwhelming resistance to the idea expressed at public hearings on the project this month. Phillip Russell, assistant executive director for innovative project development at TxDOT, was the keynote speaker at the Lone Star Legislative Summit at SFA Thursday, where he...

ROBSTOWN, Tex. — Leon Little’s farm here near Corpus Christi would not be seized for Texas’s proposed $184-billion-plus superhighway project for 5 or 10 years, if ever. But Mr. Little was alarmed enough to show up Wednesday night with hundreds of his South Texas coastal neighbors to do what the Texas Department of Transportation has been urging: “Go ahead, don’t hold back.” Don’t worry. Texans have gotten the message, swamping hearings and town meetings across the state to grill and often excoriate agency officials about a colossal traffic makeover known as the Trans-Texas Corridor, a public-private partnership unrivaled in the...

A so-called “NAFTA Superhighway” earned support from the city’s mayor and discussion among residents Monday during a public hearing on the Texas Department of Transportation’s I-69 project. TxDOT held a public hearing at the Brownsville Events Center Monday to explain the progress of the Trans-Texas Corridor, a future segment of Highway I-69, which will link the U.S.-Mexico border to the U.S.-Canada border. After a short presentation, the floor was open for comments. Among the local politicians, college students and retirees at the hearing there was a wide range of opinion on the project. According to Mario Jorge, district engineer for...

WEST COLUMBIA — When private property gets in the way of a road project, its owners will be moving out of the way, one way or another, in almost every case. With a widening of Highway 36 on the horizon and state and federal officials ready to drive the Trans-Texas Corridor through the Lone Star State, many land-owning Texans are preparing to defend their property from their own government. Brazoria County residents troubled by the looming eminent domain fights came to the Gulf Coast Christian Center on Saturday morning to voice their views to Tom Lizardo, chief of staff for...