San Antonio Toll Party and TURF Founder, Terri Hall, was honored to speak at the Freedom March in Washington D.C. July 12, sharing the stage with national activists, talk show hosts, authors, and elected officials, including Howard Phillips, Naomi Wolff, Chuck Baldwin, and Ron Paul. The subjects covered ran the gamut from American foreign policy, the problems and power of the federal reserve, the Real ID, and Constitutional government, to the North American Union, and the Trans Texas Corridor/NAFTA Superhighways.

Below is the text of the speech Hall delivered to the crowd of 12,000 patriots from all over the country:

I think the words of a patriot of the past, Thomas Paine, that were uttered on December 23, 1776, reflect where we find ourselves again today in America.

He said:

“THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.

Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.”

Is that not so true today? Fellow Patriots, the Trans Texas Corridor and the widespread proliferation of toll roads, particularly the use of public private partnerships to exploit the eminent domain powers of govt and join it with the financial self-interest of private corporations, that is about to befall not only Texas but our country, is nothing more than an all out assault on our freedom: the freedom to travel, the freedom to own private property, the freedom from oppressive taxation and overbearing government. And that, my friends, is tyranny! Though not easily conquered, it can and must be crushed.

The NAFTA Superhighway, known as the Trans Texas Corridor to Texans and called a myth by those trying to silence the truth, is very real and even has some segments already under construction. It’s a 4,000 mile, multi-modal network of toll roads, rail lines, utilities, telecommunications, and pipelines of all sorts. It will be up to 1,200 feet wide (4 football fields wide) and will take a total of 580,000 of private land. Two foreign companies partnering with an American company have been given the rights to develop the TTC, which includes the right to build the most lucrative segments without being subjected to competitive bidding, leaving the taxpayers to subsidize the parts that aren’t toll viable.

The TTC will literally bisect whole cities and towns slicing them in two giving residents, farmers, and schoolchildren no access to the other side of this 1,200 foot wide tollway. In fact, the law states the private operator only has to build overpasses where the corridor intersects state hwys and interstates so on TTC-35 there are only 5 exits in the entire state of Texas!

So make no mistake, this nightmare called the TTC is alive and well. We’ve personally attended most all of the nearly one hundred TTC hearings since 2006. When more than 40,000 Texans have gone on record against it, politicians take notice. But instead of KILL this nightmare, they try to find new ways to put lipstick on their pig.

There was a recent announcement disguised as a victory for angry farmers and ranchers, where TxDOT said it would now expand the existing highway system to build TTC-69 instead of building a massive new corridor through rural Texas. But guess what? There’s always a catch when billions of dollars are to be made, and when multi-national corporations are chomping at the bit to get their cheap Chinese goods into the U.S. exploiting cheaper Mexican ports, Mexican trucks, and Mexican labor.

The private “partners” conducted toll viability studies and found the new corridor route wasn’t a money-maker because it bypassed all the urban areas where beleaguered commuters could be forced to pay tolls to get out of congestion. So they had to go back to the “free” roads that would have been the toll operators’ primary “competition” to their toll revenues.

So now they’re going to toll those existing roads and kill any competition. See how this isn’t free market? Oh they’ll tell you your free lanes will still be there, but they’re fixin’ to do what they’re about to do to a freeway near my home, and that is, toll the existing freeway lanes and make the only free lanes, frontage roads. Calling it highway robbery isn’t hyperbole! So it was really the private operators, not TxDOT or the politicians, that changed the route of the TTC-69 and, believe me, it’s no victory. It can still be a 1,200 wide privatized, foreign-controlled toll road with most of the profits leaving our country.

Within TWO weeks of that announcement, TxDOT signed a public private partnership contract with ACS of Spain and Zachry of San Antonio that gives them 12% guaranteed annual profits, a no bid right to cherry-pick the most lucrative segments to build, and they’re not even bringing their own money to the table since 3/4 of the construction cost will be paid for with YOUR MONEY…that’s right Texas lawmakers are stealing YOUR federal taxpayer backed bonds and loans to build the NAFTA superhighway and give all the profits to Zachry and ACS of Spain!

We’ve been brow beat with a pack of empty talking points by Reason Foundation and many libertarian think tanks, that these public-private toll deals are the silver bullet to funding infrastructure without having to raise taxes, because the private partners bring all the money to the table, not cash-strapped govt, and it’s the private partner, not the taxpayers, who carry the financial risk.

Well, all you have to do is dig into any one of the 3 contracts in TX and those in other states (Indiana, Illinois, and Virginia) to know that not one of those things is true. First of all, a toll is a tax! Second, there is no risk to the private operator when 3/4 of the construction cost is being paid by the taxpayers and when the state grants investors a non-compete agreement that prohibits any expansion of or building of free roads surrounding their tollways guaranteeing congestion on free lanes for a half century or more and indebting us for generations. One contract even gives TxDOT a financial incentive to lower the speed limit on the competing “free” interstate, I-35, to drive more traffic to the high speed Trans Texas Corridor,

Our government has become the puppet of private industry and they’ve figured out how to team-up to make billions off the public’s roadways. These highways belong to WE THE PEOPLE, not the government, not the road lobby.

They have NO right to steal our land in the name of “public use” when it’s really about private gain and big government profiteering that will relegate those who cannot afford the tolls to second class citizens. Eminent domain has always been used for roads, but now for the first time, the government can literally steal your land, pay you next to nothing for it, and give it to a private company for private profit. It’s the Kelo vs. New London case applied to roads.

In Texas, they even passed a law, called quick take, that allows the govt to vacate the landowner within 90 days of notice of condemnation whether or not your case is settled. This almost guarantees the landowner will have to take the state’s offer, because who can re-locate hundreds of head of cattle in 90 days without compensation?

There is a massive war going on in this country between the pro-privatization special interest groups and freedom loving Americans. The laws have already been dramatically altered to allow these PPPs, and this Administration and Governors like ours, Rick Perry, and Indiana’s, Mitch Daniels, have orchestrated a shift away from an affordable, gas tax funded freeway system to a new policy of prolific and oppressive toll taxation. They’re planning to toll the living daylights out of urban commuters in order to give their cronies government-sanctioned monopolies over YOUR roads that you depend for daily living.

Today we are in uncharted territory at $4 a gallon for gas, above the inflation adjusted high of 1980. The mentality inside this building is that no matter what they decide to charge us in new toll taxes, that motorists will pay it. They know we have to get to work. We won’t have real alternatives.

This is oppressive taxation on top of skyrocketing fuel costs. There’s only so much money in the family budget that can go to transportation before it takes money away from the necessities. We already see the dramatic decline of the standard of living in America in a very short period of time. It’s only going to get worse, they tell us, in order to condition us into accepting the globalists’ agenda.

So isn’t this what we’re conditioned to accept in government? We’re endlessly being asked to tighten OUR belts, while both our state and federal governments squander our gas taxes on frivolous earmarks that don’t even pertain to roads, like the bridge to nowhere?

How about TxDOT spending $9 million of taxpayer money to wage an ad campaign to advocate tolls roads and the Trans Texas Corridor? TURF filed a complaint with the Travis County District Attorney’s office immediately upon learning of this illegal use of taxpayer money. The DA’s office did nothing. So we filed a lawsuit in civil court to stop TxDOT from spending anymore of our money on taxpayer funded lobbying.

• Through our lawsuit we’ve discovered that indeed TxDOT has been engaging in illegal lobbying. They can’t say they’re not lobbying when invoices show they’ve hired 5 registered lobbyists to the tune of $100,000 a month to lobby elected officials in Washington particularly targeting local elected officials in the path of the Trans Texas Corridor.
• We found documents that show the purpose of the ad campaign is to “neutralize” toll and TTC opponents and to target counties opposed to the TTC in order to turn the tide of opposition.
• PR firm stated this in their proposal: “The political environment needs to be changed to make it less hostile to the TTC.”  The goal of the campaign is to define the benefits of the TTC to the majority of Texans and help inoculate it from negative attacks.”

• They’ve conducted push polls on the taxpayers’ dime to garner support for the TTC.
• TxDOT was told by the Transportation Commission to show the “DOUBLE TAXATION” claim of toll opponents is untrue, which is illegally engaging in a political policy debate when state agency’s are to implement, not shape of make policy. The testimony from someone in the State Auditor’s office found TxDOT is knowingly ginning-up false gas tax numbers and funding figures in order to push toll roads!

I’m afraid this doesn’t stop in Texas. Just weeks ago, a new lobby group called Transportation Transformation or T2 announced that not only TxDOT, but 3 other state DOTs have officially teamed up with the bond investors and private toll road and corridor interests to directly lobby Congress here in Washington for more public private partnerships and toll roads.

This is a recipe for tyranny! We must demand political reform to ensure checks and balances and put the power back in the hands of the PEOPLE as the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees a free people.

So I ask you, have we had enough? I cannot help but be inspired by the resolve of another patriot, Patrick Henry, who said in his famous speech that sparked a revolution:

“Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

We need to ask ourselves, will we allow our government to shackle us with oppressive taxation just to get to work and go about daily living? Will we allow this Administration and the state governments aiding it to carve a 1,200 ft wide swath through the heartland of America and sacrifice what vestige of private property rights we have left in the name of foreign trade and commerce? Or will we continue to fight a new revolution, a taxpayer revolt, a political movement to stop the Trans Texas Corridor, the NAFTA superhighways, to stop tolls across Texas and America, preserve private property rights, our way of life and our precious freedoms bought with a price from those who came before us?

They, those who have sold out American freedom in favor of the almighty dollar and the intoxication of power, aren’t counting on you and me and this freedom movement taking our government back. But as for me, and I think all of you here today and the hundreds of thousands who couldn’t be with us, the resounding answer is: give us liberty!

Link to article here. More proof that toll lanes don’t solve congestion, they actually create congestion for profit.

New Virginia Toll Lanes Designed to Create Congestion
Illegal political donations helped give Australian company full control over Virginia transportation until the year 2087.
The Newspaper.com
July 8, 2008

Illegal political contributions helped an Australian firm land a lucrative toll road deal that grants the company unprecedented power over Northern Virginia’s transportation future. Last week, Transurban wrote and asked state lawmakers to return checks that the Melbourne-based toll road operator had written in violation of federal campaign laws (details). But the deal these contributions helped bring about has already been finalized.

In June, the US Department of Transportation created a first-of-its-kind $1.6 billion financing package that consisted of tax-free bonds, loans and state taxpayer grants to support the project that will add a pair of High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes to the Interstate 495 Capital Beltway just outside of Washington, DC. To this amount, Transurban only added $349 million of its own capital — less than the cost of interest — toward the construction of the toll lanes (details).

In return for that small investment, Transurban received from Virginia officials the right to demand payment from state taxpayers any time that improvements are made to a number of free roads near the Beltway. In effect, the contract between the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) and Transurban is designed to ensure the area remains sufficiently congested so that motorists will have an incentive to pay to use the toll lanes.

For example, VDOT can make no changes, expansion or improvements to the free lanes on the Beltway until the year 2087 unless the agency first consults Transurban. VDOT agreed that if any such changes were made to the general purpose lanes without Transurban’s explicit approval, they would at least be made in such a way as to guarantee the company maintained a high level of profit.

“If the department [VDOT] determines that additional traffic lanes on the Capital Beltway Corridor are in the state’s best interests, the department shall consult with the concessionaire [Transurban] as to an appropriate strategy to implement such additional traffic lanes,” the contract states. “At the department’s sole discretion, [it shall] permit the construction of additional lanes as part of the project with a view to minimizing any detrimental impact on the project or its ability to generate revenues…”

In the past, most toll road deals included “non-compete” clauses that strictly prohibited transportation departments from making improvements to nearby, competing roads. They did so because free-flowing traffic on alternative routes would hit the toll road’s bottom line. Simply put: why take a toll road, when there’s a free alternative?

Explicit non-compete provisions have become politically controversial, and as a result companies have recently embraced a more subtle approach that accomplishes the same goal. For example, the contract for the State Highway 130 toll road in Austin, Texas included a provision giving the Texas Department of Transportation a financial incentive to lower the speed limit on the nearby Interstate 35 freeway. As first reported by TheNewspaper last year that, this provision was designed to create congestion and inconvenience for the motorists who choose the free alternative route (details).

For the Beltway project, improvements such as adding additional free lanes to the highway are absolutely permitted — for a price. The contract considers any improvement to the Beltway to be a “Department Project Enhancement” which means that Virginia taxpayers must pay Transurban for the right to improve the free portion of the highway. Given VDOT’s stated lack of funding, adding an extra monetary premium to the cost of any improvements effectively gives the foreign company the ability to prevent such projects from happening.

The effect is not limited to the Beltway. The contract specifies that payments called “compensation events” must be made in the event that the state decides to improve the connections between the Beltway’s general purpose lanes and the Dulles Toll Road or any “improvements to I-66 outside the Capital Beltway Corridor” made over the course of the next eighty years.

An “independent engineer” determines how much compensation Transurban will receive by calculating an expected traffic impact. This means that the more the public is likely to use a free alternative, the more Transurban is paid. In Sydney, Australia, for example, the Lane Cove Tunnel toll project contained a provision requiring the state government to narrow the lanes of a nearby free road to generate congestion that would drive motorists into the tunnel. After the state decided to postpone the narrowing until after an election, the toll road concession was paid A$25 million (US $24 million) for that compensation event.

Transurban’s control goes beyond lane improvements. Although the stated purpose of the “high occupancy” part of the toll lane project is to encourage motorists to carpool, the contract contains a provision directly designed to discourage any increase in the number of motorists sharing rides.

“The department agrees to pay the concessionaire, subject to Section 20.18, amounts equal to 70% of the average toll applicable to vehicles paying tolls for the number of High Occupancy Vehicles exceeding a threshold of 24% of the total flow of all permitted vehicles that are then using such toll section going in the same direction for the first 30 consecutive minutes during any day, and any additional 15 consecutive minute periods in such day, during which average traffic for a toll section going in the same direction exceeds a rate of 3,200 vehicles per hour based on two lanes,” the contract states.

This means if carpooling becomes popular on the Beltway, taxpayers could end up making multi-million dollar annual payments to Transurban.

Finally, the contract insists that if any homes happen to lie in the way of the the construction of the new lanes, Transurban will pay no more than the current market value to purchase the land in question. If the owner refuses to move, VDOT will condemn the property and confiscate it for the use of the private, for-profit company through eminent domain. The Beltway project, however, was designed to be built within existing VDOT right-of-way to ensure the exercise of this power would not be needed.

Transurban shares on the Australian Stock Exchange jumped 15 cents to A$4.60 today after the company announced quarterly earnings results. On Virginia’s Pocahontas Parkway, the company reported a 7.8 percent increase in revenue over the same quarter last year, despite a 6.9 percent drop in the number of motorists using the toll road. It credited the positive performance to an 11 percent toll hike in January and the cancellation of the discount previously given to transponder users.

Relevant excerpts from the Transurban contract are available in a 260k PDF file at the source link below.

Source: Comprehensive Agreement Relating to Route 495 HOT Lanes – Excerpts (Virginia Department of Transportation and Capital Beltway Express, 12/19/2007)

Link to article here.

ELECTION LAW
Toll Road Firm Made Illegal Contributions
Transurban Gave $172,000 To 90 Campaigns in 3 Years

Transurban gave money to Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D), foreground, and House Speaker William J. Howell (R). Both have pledged to return it. (By Steve Helber — Associated Press)

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 3, 2008; Page B05

Link to article here.

Toll road operator shifts into reverse
By Scott Rochfort
Sydney Morning Herald
June 20, 2008

TOLL road operator Transurban has become the first of an expected long line-up of major infrastructure companies to go to the sharemarket for a handout, after it yesterday announced plans to raise around $1 billion in capital in an effort to reduce the level of debt on its balance sheet.

In a stark reversal to Transurban’s deliberate strategy of gearing-up its balance sheet under former chief executive Kim Edwards in late 2006, the group’s new CEO Chris Lynch said the model of using debt to fund distributions was “not sustainable in this market”.

Advocating a “new investment proposition to the market”, Mr Lynch said the increased cost and difficulty in raising debt meant the company needed to return to a “more basic business philosophy”.

“This is more a fair dinkum business that we’re talking about here. What we’ve got are great assets and we’ve got strong cash flows that will grow coming off [the equity raising],” Mr Lynch said.

Transurban, operator of Sydney’s M2 motorway and Eastern Distributor and Melbourne’s CityLink, maintained its guidance of a 58c payout this financial year.

But in a rude shock to Transurban unit holders reliant on the distributions paid by the company, it said distributions would fall to 22c next financial year.

But Mr Lynch stressed the capital raising and new distribution policy would put Transurban on a sounder footing to allow it to fund new initiatives, such as Vancouver’s Port Mann Highway project for which it is shortlisted.

“We’ll have a lower yield than we would have if we targeted the aggressive debt-based distribution,” he said.

“But we’ll also have a much better growth story because we’ll have an underlying business that can do some things other than figure out how it’s going to feed this big distribution.”

Transurban said a placement of 120 million shares managed by UBS would be fully underwritten by the Canadian Pension Plan, with which it has partnered several toll-road projects.

A further 75 per cent of the group’s planned $239 million (29c per security) second half distribution reinvestment plan has been underwritten by UBS, and up to $100 million of stock will be offered to retail shareholders via a share purchase plan. The purchase plan will be capped at $5000 per unit holder and at a 2.5 per cent discount. In all, the raising will represent about 16 per cent of Transurban’s current market value.

Transurban shares remained in a trading halt yesterday but the move was enough to trigger a sell-off in other toll road operators, such as ConnectEast, the owner of Melbourne’s yet-to-open EastLink. Its shares plunged to a new low.

Macquarie Infrastructure fell 24c to $2.68, while the ports operator Asciano plunged to a new low of $3.32 on concerns it could be forced to raise capital to ease its crippling debts.

It is less than two years since Transurban started loading more debt on to its balance sheet.

At the group’s annual meeting in 2006, Mr Edwards argued the re-gearing of Transurban’s balance sheet would not raise its cost of debt.