Link to article here.

Note the statements of these elected officials about how these tolls punish commuters, and hurt people dependent on these roads with no other alternatives (and, no, Mr. Governor, frontage roads aren’t equivalent alternative expressways). Where are the Texas elected officials saying the same thing? When government inks binding contracts for 50+ years with private companies (driven by profit, like all companies), their financial decisions are not necessarily in the best interest of the taxpayers or local economies. FYI, it’s not the most expensive toll road in the U.S., SR 91 in CA is higher costing 85 cents a mile for 8 miles in peak travel times. See how Macquarie plans to more than double truck toll rates on the Indiana toll road here (scroll down to section called “Skyway first domino to fall“)
These public-private deals are one-sided, sweetheart deals for the private enities and it’s the taxpayers who get left holding their empty wallets as we see billions nationwide sucked out of our economy and going overseas. How much money can we stand to lose (whether it’s exporting manufacturing, exporting our agriculture to less regulated nations with cheaper labor, or sucking money out of our economy for foreign controlled toll roads) before our economy and way of life collapses?

Lawmakers: ‘Just say no’
By LAUREN HOUGH
The Journal
September 24, 2006

LEESBURG — After the frenzy of rush hour had ended, local lawmakers gathered Friday morning to send out impassioned cries on behalf of their commuting constituents.

The park and ride lot at the Dulles North Transit Center was transformed into a stage for a press conference, called by representatives of AAA Mid-Atlantic, to protest a proposed increase of nearly 100 percent in the tolls on the Dulles Greenway.

The 14-mile highway, also known as VA 267, runs from Leesburg to the Dulles Airport and is privately owned by the Toll Road Investors Partnership II, L.P. (TRIP II).

On July 19, TRIP II Chief Executive Officer Tom Sines filed a new toll schedule application with the State Corporation Commission (SCC), detailing plans to raise the $2.70 toll for 2-axle vehicles to a total charge of $4.80 in the next five years.

The now-contentious proposal is for an increase AAA Mid-Atlantic Public and Government Affairs director Mahlon “Lon” Anderson calls a “significant wrong.”

“(Motorists) will be charged nearly $10 a day to commute,” Anderson said. “It’s just too much.”

For Anderson and the four lawmakers, including U.S. Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., who gathered on behalf of their constituents, the message was simple: Just don’t do it.

“It’s a bad deal for motorists,” Anderson said. “It’s not fair.”

If the proposed increases are accepted, the cost of using the highway will skyrocket to 34 cents per mile, making it the most expensive toll road not only in Virginia, but also in the entire United States.

Many in attendance at the press conference were directed to take the Greenway to the commuter lot, and, to their own chagrin, were charged the full $2.70 toll for riding just one short mile.

“From the beginning, this road was to be a public/private partnership. Today, there is no public in this partnership. This is a company bent on turning this road into a cash cow,” said U.S. Rep. Frank R. Wolf, R-Va.

Wolf said that the Macquerie Bank of Australia, which owns the road, made more than a billion dollars in revenue last year, according to their Web site.

“Many commuters who live in this area have no choice when it comes to how they get to work.They must rely on the Greenway.”

Wolf pointed to other toll roads throughout the country, such as the Pennsylvania and New Jersey Turnpikes, which charge anywhere from three cents to six cents per mile.

He calculated that the average commuter, who now pays $1,350 in tolls to travel to work 50 weeks a year, will spend $2,400 in 2012 just to travel on the Greenway.

Of the estimated 64,000 daily travelers on the highway, thousands are West Virginians on their way to work, Capito estimated.

“This is going to have a huge influence on their ability to get to work everyday,” the Congresswoman said.

Many of her constituents choose to live in West Virginia for the quality of life the state offers but keep their jobs in Washington, D.C., she said.

That choice, however, comes at a price, in the form of an increased length and time of their commute.

Raising the toll on such a frequently traveled road would create more of a burden on those residents, who use the highway not only for work, but also to get to the mall or the airport, Capito said.

It was e-mails sent from Eastern Panhandle commuters that first alerted the Congresswoman to the toll increase proposal, which she also opposed in a letter sent last week to the SCC.

“This is really a good example of why constituents want to make sure they make their voices heard,” Capito said.

It is also a cautionary tale for the state, which, in the midst of highway funding deficits, could look to charge residents tolls on certain roads.

“It’s looked to be a quick fix to get what you want,” Capito said. “Then you pay the consequences.”

Anderson said that toll roads, often public/private partnerships, are the straw that drowning governments reach for when they can’t find the funds to do what they need to do

He urged concerned citizens to voice their opposition to the proposed toll increases to the SCC during the public comment period, which closes on Thursday

The auto club has set up an online Legislative Action Center at http://capwiz.com/aaamidatlantic, where commuters can e-mail or mail their comments directly to the SCC.

“You’ve heard how much the corporation stands to make, and how much motorists stand to lose,” he said. “The message is simple: Say ‘no way’ to $10 a day.”

Link to Strayhorn’s editorial here. Link to competing editorial by ex-Transportation Commissioner here. This is the same guy who said we need all these toll roads AND we need to raise the gas tax AND to tie the gas tax to inflation at last September’s Transportation Leadership Forum here in San Antonio.

Strayhorn: On the roads; Trans-Texas Corridor to benefit special interests, not the public
By Carole Keeton Strayhorn, TEXAS COMPTROLLER
Austin American Statesman
Thursday, September 21, 2006

Do we really need a massive, foreign-owned toll road system in Texas? No.

Gov. Rick Perry and his special interest crowd at the Capitol are not listening to the people of Texas.

At 55 hearings across the state, thousands of hard-working Texans said, “No,” to Perry’s still secret deal with a foreign company to build toll roads across Texas.

The governor and his transportation officials insist on going forward with his Trans-Texas Corridor, the largest land grab in Texas history — seizing half a million acres of private property. Texas property belongs to Texans, not foreign companies.

I am adamantly opposed to the governor’s Trans-Texas Catastrophe. His secret agreement will allow a foreign company to own the for-profit toll road “concessions” for more than 50 years.

I have outlined a transportation plan that puts Texans first, not special interests. In a Strayhorn administration, we will once again have a transportation system that is the envy of the nation, with freeways not tollways.

My long-term solutions expand freeways using existing rights of way under two completed Texas Department of Transportation studies, increase efficiency and use of our existing rail lines and ports, expand telecommuting, and appoint an inspector general at TxDOT and a transportation ombudsman to listen to Texans. This protects Texas farm and ranch land, improves coastal evacuations, increases capacity of existing freeways and railways, and encourages family and environment friendly telecommuting.

Visit my Web site, www.onetoughgrandma.com, to learn more.

The Perry administration says we have insufficient funds for transportation and have to toll existing roads such as U.S. 290 in Austin and Houston, U.S. 281 in San Antonio, and Texas 121 in Dallas/Fort Worth. I oppose this double taxation.

The truth is that TxDOT’s budget has increased an incredible 117 percent under this administration. The transportation budget increased $8.2 billion to a total of $15.2 billion. By comparison, our state budget has increased $44 billion dollars, 45 percent in the same time. We have plenty of money; we need the courage to spend it wisely. In 25 years, just maintaining the current transportation funding would provide $190 billion for roads.

We have $4 billion in Texas Mobility Bonds approved on my motion in 2005, an additional $3 billion in revenue bonds approved in 2003, increased federal funds and increased tax collections at the state level. Texans have paid more in inspection fees and license tags in the past six years. Make no mistake, a fee or a toll collected by the government is a tax.

I stand with Texans from the Rio Grande Valley to the Red River who oppose the governor’s attempt to seize land and build tolls across Texas. I listened to the people of Texas, and the people of Texas are overwhelmingly opposed to this $184 billion boondoggle.

TxDOT is telling Texans they cannot stop this boondoggle — even if they elect a new governor. That is dead wrong. I will blast this corridor off the bureaucratic books, replacing it with my common-sense plan to address our transportation needs.

Texans deserve the truth. Much of the work to get Texans from here to there has already been done — by TxDOT itself. In fact, I provided three reports to TxDOT to stop the Trans-Texas Corridor:

•TxDOT’s own 1999 state analysis, approved by TxDOT and then-Chairman David Laney, calling for the expansion of Interstate 35 using existing rights of way.

•The 2001 TxDOT Ports to Plains study that will relieve existing I-35 congestion by improving transportation from South Texas through West Texas using existing roads.

•My 1999 efficiency report that recommended increasing telecommuting to 10 percent. Family friendly telecommuting is up to 15 percent in my agency.

Tolling roads that were planned as freeways, and converting freeways to tollways is double taxation, and it is wrong.

I am adamantly opposed to tollways when we are awash in transportation funds, to double taxation and to seizing more than half a million acres of hard-working Texans’ property and turning them over to a foreign company. Texans are opposed to it, and the governor knows it. That is why he is postponing collecting tolls on existing roads to just after the election. The people of Texas will not be fooled.

In this election, there are two sides and one choice — the Austin political establishment and its land-grabbing, secret, foreign-owned tolls versus the people and their desire for freeways. I stand with the people. I will shake Austin up.

Strayhorn is an independent gubernatorial candidate.

Link to article here.

North American merger topic of secret confab
Meeting on integration of U.S., Mexico,Canada brings together top officials
WorldNetDaily
September 20, 2006

WASHINGTON – Raising more suspicions about plans for the future integration of the U.S., Canada and Mexico, a high-level, top-secret meeting of the North American Forum took place this month in Banff – with topics ranging from “A Vision for North America,” “Opportunities for Security Cooperation” and “Demographic and Social Dimensions of North American Integration.” While the conference took place a week ago, only now are documents about participants and agenda items leaking out.

Despite “confirmed” participants including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, former Secretary of State George Shultz, former Central Intelligence Agency Director R. James Woolsey, former Immigration and Naturalization Services Director Doris Meissner, North American Union guru Robert Pastor, former Defense Secretary William Perry, former Energy Secretary and Defense Secretary James Schlesinger and top officials of both Mexico and Canada, there has been no press coverage of the event. The only media member scheduled to appear at the event, according to documents obtained by WND, was the Wall Street Journal’s Mary Anastasia O’Grady.

(Story continues below)

The event was organized by the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and the Canada West Foundation, an Alberta think-tank that promotes closer economic integration with the United States.

The Canadian event is just the latest of a series of meetings, policy papers and directives that have citizens, officials and members of the media wondering whether these efforts represent some sort of coordinated effort to implement a “merger” some have characterized as “NAFTA on steroids.”

Nevertheless, opposition is mounting. And it’s not just coming from the tinfoil hat brigade.

Perhaps the most blistering criticism came earlier this summer from Lou Dobbs of CNN – a frequent critic of President Bush’s immigration policies.

“A regional prosperity and security program?” he asked rhetorically in a recent cablecast. “This is absolute ignorance. And the fact that we are – we reported this, we should point out, when it was signed. But, as we watch this thing progress, these working groups are continuing. They’re intensifying. What in the world are these people thinking about? You know, I was asked the other day about whether or not I really thought the American people had the stomach to stand up and stop this nonsense, this direction from a group of elites, an absolute contravention of our law, of our Constitution, every national value. And I hope, I pray that I’m right when I said yes. But this is – I mean, this is beyond belief.”

What has Dobbs and a few other vocal critics bugged began in earnest March 31, 2005, when the elected leaders of the U.S., Mexico and Canada agreed to advance the agenda of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America.

No one seems quite certain what that agenda is because of the vagueness of the official declarations. But among the things the leaders of the three countries agreed to work toward were borders that would allow for easier and faster moving of goods and people between the countries.

Coming as the announcement did in the midst of a raging national debate in the U.S. over borders seen as far to open already, more than a few jaws dropped.

Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo. and the chairman of the House Immigration Reform Caucus as well as author of the new book, In Mortal Danger, may be the only elected official to challenge openly the plans for the new superstate.

Responding to a WorldNetDaily report, Tancredo is demanding the Bush administration fully disclose the activities of the government office implementing the trilateral agreement that has no authorization from Congress.

Tancredo wants to know the membership of the Security and Prosperity Partnership groups along with their various trilateral memoranda of understanding and other agreements reached with counterparts in Mexico and Canada.

Jim Gilchrist, co-founder of the Minutemen, welcomed Tancredo’s efforts.

“It’s time for the Bush administration to come clean,” Gilchrist said. “If President Bush’s agenda is to establish a new North American union government to supersede the sovereignty of the United States, then the president has an obligation to tell this to the American people directly. The American public has a right to know.”

Geri Word, who heads the SPP office, told WND the work had not been disclosed because, “We did not want to get the contact people of the working groups distracted by calls from the public.”

WND can find no specific congressional legislation authorizing the SPP working groups nor any congressional committees taking charge of oversight.

Many SPP working groups appear to be working toward achieving specific objectives as defined by a May 2005 Council on Foreign Relations task force report, which presented a blueprint for expanding the SPP agreement into a North American union that would merge the U.S., Canada and Mexico into a new governmental form.

Phyllis Schlafly, the woman best known for nearly single-handedly leading the opposition that killed the Equal Rights Amendment, sees a sinister and sweeping agenda behind the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America.

“Is the real push behind guest-worker proposals the Bush goal to expand NAFTA into the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, which he signed at Waco, Texas, last year and reaffirmed at Cancun, Mexico, this year?” she asks. “Bush is a globalist at heart and wants to carry out his father’s oft-repeated ambition of a ‘new world order.'”

She accuses the president and others behind the effort of wanting to obliterate U.S. borders in an effort to increase the Mexican population transfer and lower wages for the benefit of U.S. corporate interests.

“Bush meant what he said, at Waco, Texas, in March 2005, when he announced his plan to convert the United States into a ‘Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America’ by erasing our borders with Canada and Mexico,” she said. “Bush’s guest-worker proposal would turn the United States into a boardinghouse for the world’s poor, enable employers to import an unlimited number of ‘willing workers’ at foreign wage levels, and wipe out what’s left of the U.S. middle class. Bush lives in a house well protected by a fence and security guards and he associates with rich people who live in gated communities. Yet, for five years, he has refused to protect the property and children of ordinary Arizona citizens from trespassers and criminals.”

That’s unusually harsh criticism of a Republican president from one of Ronald Reagan’s most loyal supporters.

At least one of the nation’s daily newspapers has officially weighed in opposition to the mysterious plans for closer cooperation in security, commerce and immigration between the three North American nations.

Recently, the Pittsburgh Tribune Review questioned the unchallenged momentum toward merger.

“Will Americans trade their dead presidents for Ameros?” the newspaper asked in an editorial last month.

The paper chided efforts at replacing the U.S. and Canadian dollars and Mexican peso with “the amero” – a knockoff of the euro – along with the building of “a looming NAFTA-like superstate.” Citing the meeting between the three national leaders at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, in March 2005, the editorial warned: “Canadians, Mexicans and Americans who value the sovereignty of their respective countries should be concerned.”

The Tribune Review editorial saw synergy between the plans of the national leaders and the ambitious agenda of the Council on Foreign Relations – seen by many as a kind of secretive, shadow government of the elite. The CFR issued a bold report in the spring of 2005, shortly after the joint announcements in Waco by Bush and his counterparts.

“The Council on Foreign Relations published a report in May – “Building a North American Community” – calling for, among other things, redefining the borders of the three nations, creating a super-regional governance board and the North American Paramilitary Group to ensure that Congress does not interfere with whatever the trilateral union feels like doing,” said the paper. “Must the Bush administration happily sacrifice every shred of American sovereignty for the greater good of the New World Order?”

In fact, the CFR report is a five-year plan for the “establishment by 2010 of a North American economic and security community” with a common “outer security perimeter.”

Some see it as the blueprint for merger of the U.S., Canada and Mexico. It calls for “a common economic space … for all people in the region, a space in which trade, capital and people flow freely.”

The CFR’s strategy calls specifically for “a more open border for the movement of goods and people.” It calls for laying “the groundwork for the freer flow of people within North America.” It calls for efforts to “harmonize visa and asylum regulations.” It calls for efforts to “harmonize entry screening.”

In “Building a North American Community,” the report states that Bush, Mexican President Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin “committed their governments” to this goal March 23, 2005, at that meeting in Waco, Texas.

Alan Burkhart, who describes himself as a free-lance political writer, cross-country trucker “and proud citizen of one of the reddest of the Red States – Mississippi,” is another critic seething over these plans that seem to have a life of their own – with little or no real public debate.

“As time passes, American corporations will find it unnecessary to move their facilities out of the country,” writes Burkhart. “Our already stagnant wages will be just as low as those of Mexico. The cultures of three great nations will be diluted. Our currency will be replaced with the ‘Amero.’ And, we’ll be one giant step closer to the U.N.’s perverse dream of a one-world government.”

The Amero is not a new concept. It was first proposed by the Fraser Institute, a Canadian think tank, in a monograph titled “The Case for the Amero” in 1999.

In June, the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America made one of its most visible and public moves since it was first announced last year. In Washington, June 15, U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, Mexican Economy Minister Sergio Garcia de Alba and Canadian Minister of Industry Maxime Bernier joined North American business leaders to launch the North American Competitiveness Council. It was a major development that showed the March 2005 meeting was no fluke – and that the plans announced by the three national leaders then were continuing to take shape. The NACC was first announced by Bush, Harper and Fox.

Made up of 10 high-level business leaders from each country, the NACC will meet annually with senior North American government officials “to provide recommendations and help set priorities for promoting regional competitiveness in the global economy.”

Officially, the council has the mandate to advise the governments on improving trade in key sectors such as automobiles, transportation, manufacturing and services. The three countries do more than $800 billion in trilateral trade.

Gutierrez said the Bush administration is determined to develop a “border pass” on schedule despite worries about its implementation. The new land pass is to be in effect for Canadians, Americans and Mexicans by Jan. 1, 2008.

The U.S. executives involved in the NACC include: United Parcel Service Inc. Chairman Michael Eskew; Frederick Smith, chairman of FedEx Corp.; Lou Schorsh, chief executive of Mittal Steel USA; Joseph Gilmour, president of New York Life Insurance Co.; William Clay Ford, chairman of Ford Motor Co.; Rick Wagoner, chairman of General Motors Corp.; Raymond Gilmartin, CEO of Merck & Co. Inc.; David O’Reilly, chief executive of Chevron Corp.; Jeffrey Immelt, chairman of General Electric Co.; Lee Scott, president of Wal-Mart Stores Inc.; Robert Stevens, chairman of Lockheed Martin Corp.; Michael Haverty, chairman of Kansas City Southern; Douglas Conant, president of Campbell’s Soup Co. and James Kilt, vice-chairman of Gillette Inc.

The concerns about the direction such powerful men could lead Americans without their knowledge is only heightened when interlocking networks are discovered. For instance, one of the components envisioned for this future “North American Union” is a superhighway running from Mexico, through the U.S. and into Canada. It is being promoted by the North American SuperCorridor Coalition, or NASCO, a non-profit group “dedicated to developing the world’s first international, integrated and secure, multi-modal transportation system along the International Mid-Continent Trade and Transportation Corridor to improve both the trade competitiveness and quality of life in North America.”

The president of NASCO is George Blackwood, who earlier launched the North American International Trade Corridor Partnership. In fact, NAITCP later morphed into NASCO. A NAIPC summit meeting in 2004, attended by senior Mexican government officials, heard from Robert Pastor, an American University professor who wrote “Toward a North American Community,” a book promoting the development of a North American union as a regional government and the adoption of the amero as a common monetary currency to replace the dollar and the peso.

Pastor also was vice chairman of the May 2005 Council on Foreign Relations task force entitled “Building a North American Community” that presents itself as a blueprint for using bureaucratic action within the executive branches of Mexico, the U.S. and Canada to transform the current trilateral Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America into a North American union regional government. He was also prominent on the guest list in Banff.

Link to article here.

Republicans in Indiana know they’re in trouble since they IGNORED two-thirds of the electorate who opposed the sale of the Indiana toll road to foreign companies (Cintra-Macquarie, the same two companies vying to control our toll system in San Antonio, read more here). Now they’re trying to distance themselves from it…since Governor Daniels isn’t up for re-election, he’s trying to deflect the blame, but the truth is, the GOP ran ads intimidating members of their own Party to fall in line and vote for the toll road lease to foreign companies. It passed by two votes. Voting records don’t lie, but apparently Daniels thinks he can, especially when he says this lease doesn’t translate into a tax increase.

What, does he think, we’re stupid? Who’s going to pay back this foreign entity the $3.85 billion investment? The taxpayers! A toll is a tax, and when they privatize public infrastructure, it automatically increases toll rates due to a private company’s necessity of profits. Collin County officials here in Texas say “It (privatization) automatically translates into the highest possible tolls for our citizens” (read it here).

Also, Landline Magazine noted that Cintra-Macquarie is raising the truck toll rates on the Indiana Toll Road from $14 to $32 by 2010 (see for yourself here). That’s not a tax increase, Mr. Daniels? Nice try at “spin,” but the taxpayers see it for it is…a slush fund for government on the backs of commuters!

Then, the contract for this toll road lease has an absolution clause in it. This means the TAXPAYERS will bail out these private, foreign companies if the foreign management fails. Read the closing paragraphs below to see for yourself. Are we to believe these same companies won’t include some sort of absolution clause in their contracts with Texas?

Daniels: State Rep. not involved in Toll Road lease
I think it’s really unfair’ to make road pact issue in 2nd District race, governor says.
By JAMES WENSITS
South Bend Tribune Political Writer
Sep 20, 2006

SOUTH BEND — Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who stopped here Tuesday, exempted U.S. Rep. Chris Chocola, R-2nd, from any responsibility for the leasing of the Indiana Toll Road, saying the congressman played no role in the decision.

Daniels, who was responding to a reporter’s question, acknowledged his awareness that the Toll Road decision has popped up in polls as an issue in the congressional campaign between Chocola and Democratic challenger Joe Donnelly.

“I think it’s really unfair,” Daniels said of the situation, adding that “they can blame it on me” if people think $4 billion of new roads and jobs without a penny of tax dollars or passenger car toll increase is a bad idea.

“Chris Chocola had nothing to do with it.”

The governor, who was in town to address the opening session of the Association of Indiana Counties at the Century Center, also took a playful poke at State Rep. B. Patrick Bauer, D-South Bend, in response to Bauer’s earlier comment about the Toll Road lease revenue being “tainted” money.“For once in his life, Pat Bauer was right about something,” Daniels told the AIC crowd. “T’ain’t a penny of tax increase in there anywhere. T’ain’t a penny of passenger toll increase in there. T’ain’t money we’d ever have gotten any other way.”

At a news conference following his address, Daniels said he was just responding to Bauer’s comments, “I hope in good humor.”

Bauer, who once accused Daniels of “impersonating a Hoosier” during the last election, said Daniels “was trying to resume his role in the election when he played being a southern Indiana boy.”

The South Bend Democrat, who has been a staunch foe of the Toll Road lease, said the administration knows “there’s a real problem” in the lease agreement and noted that the legislation included an absolution clause.

“Absolution is what you get when you confess your sins,” Bauer said. “Therefore, they did something wrong, and the only penance will be paid by the people of Indiana when they pay constantly increasing tolls and see that money go overseas.” Bauer also disputed Daniels’ claim that the Toll Road was a financial loser.

“It never lost money,” said the legislator, citing the road’s $18.4 million in net income in fiscal year 2004 and $11.7 million in fiscal year 2005. “It wasn’t meant to be a cash cow.”