Link to Wall Street Journal article here.

In case you’re wondering how ports connect to the toll roads, here’s how. The County Judge, Mayor, TxDOT, tolling authority, Greater Chamber, and San Antonio Free Trade Alliance have all promoted the NAFTA Superhighway (read more here and here) known as the Trans Texas Corridor (a 4,000 mile network of toll roads to transport foreign goods imported into the U.S.) in Texas.

This corridor purposely connects to existing I-35 south of San Antonio so that foreign cargo can stop at San Antonio’s new inland port, literally called the Port of San Antonio (noted in the San Antonio Business Journal, October 2005), at Kelly USA. In so doing, our politicians and the globalist free trade camp are inviting untold crime and drug smuggling to San Antonio. Read on…

On the Waterfront–Still
Why did Congress kill a measure to keep felons out of U.S. ports?
By John Fund
Wall Street Journal
October 2, 2006

Congress is patting itself on the back for passing the Port Security Act last Saturday. But the day before, a House-Senate conference committee stripped out a provision that would have barred serious felons from working in sensitive dock security jobs. Port security isn’t just about checking the contents of cargo containers, it also means checking the background of the 400,000 workers on our docks.

U.S. harbors are filled with workers convicted of serious crimes. Just last year the Justice Department filed a RICO suit charging that the 65,000-member East Coast-based International Longshoremen’s Association is a “vehicle for organized crime.”

But the House-Senate conference drastically watered down a Senate-passed requirement that aligned the standards for hiring dock workers with those used at airports and nuclear plants. The statute still bans workers who have been convicted of treason, espionage and terror-related offenses–a mere handful at most. But a seven-year time-out period on hiring those who’ve committed crimes such as murder, bribery, identity fraud and the illegal use of firearms was dropped in the dead of night at the behest of unions fearful that too many of their members could lose their jobs.

“The security stakes are too high to trust serious felons who could be manipulated or bribed by people trying to smuggle a nuclear device or chemical weapon into our ports,” says Sen. Jim DeMint, sponsor of the dropped provision. Security analysts echo his fears. They say terrorists working with truck drivers could plant a bomb aboard a cruise ship or pack a 40-foot cargo container with explosives. Stephen Flynn, a former U.S. Customs official now with the Council on Foreign Relations, told ABC News that “if a bomb went off in a seaport, we would likely see a closing of the seaports, bringing the global trade system to a halt and potentially putting our economy into recession.”

Officials at several ports echo these concerns. “There is a gaping hole in port security,” Byron Miller of the Charleston, S.C., port, the nation’s sixth largest, told me. “Right now, by law we cannot do background checks on 8,000 people who work at this port.” He noted that a state bill to provide for background checks was killed last year after unions applied a full-court press against it.

The problem is massive. The Department of Homeland Security recently investigated the ports of New York and New Jersey and found that of 9,000 truckers checked, nearly half had criminal records. They included murderers, drug dealers, arsonists and members of the deadly MS-13 gang. It concluded that these security gaps represent “vulnerabilities that could be capitalized by terrorist organizations.” A dock worker who has been convicted of smuggling drugs is a potential danger. “Instead of bringing in 50 kilograms of heroin, what would stop them from bringing in five kilograms of plutonium?” asks Joseph King, a former Customs Service agent who now teaches criminal justice at New York University.

All this explains why the Department of Homeland Security supported Mr. DeMint’s bill even while it prepares its own administrative rules that would track much of the DeMint amendment’s ban on hiring serious felons for dock employment. “It’s important the restriction on felon hiring be codified into law,” one department official told me. “If it’s in a statute, we can’t then be pressured to weaken our regs during the upcoming rule-making period, activist judges will be less able to throw them out and a future president can’t alter them as part of a political deal.”

That such a political deal is possible can be seen by the clout of the unions who were able to gut the felon ban in the House-Senate conference committee. Sen. Daniel Inouye, a Hawaii Democrat, assured colleagues he would fight for the ban in conference but in reality fought to have it weakened. His staff even called Port of Charleston officials and told them their port would be shut down if the DeMint amendment became law. Mr. Miller can’t confirm the call was made, but other port officials remember it. Mr. Inouye’s office declined to respond to my questions about his role other than to send me an e-mail claiming the senator “supported the [DeMint] provision.”

Other legislators were also involved in smothering the DeMint provision. The staffs of three members of Congress told me that Republican Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, a close friend of Mr. Inouye, also fought the measure, although his staff declined to publicly discuss the senator’s position on the bill. New York’s Rep. Peter King, the pro-union Republican who chairs the Homeland Security Committee, told the House that the list of proposed criminal offenses “includes vague and overly broad crimes” and supported the move “to narrow and limit the list.” Mississippi’s Rep. Bennie Thompson, the ranking Democrat on Homeland Security, told colleagues that “we should not play judge and jury” and opposed even the final statutory ban on felons convicted of treason and terror-related crimes. Steve Stallone, the communications director for the West Coast-based International Longshore and Warehouse Union, told the Daily Labor Report that barring felons from jobs at secure dock facilities would be “double jeopardy” and could push them back into crime to make a living.

But too many elements of the unions that now control the docks are already involved in crime. The DeMint amendment would also have had the added benefit of going a long way to cleaning up the Mafia control of many of our nation’s harbors. Too little has changed since 1954, when “On the Waterfront” depicted union corruption and violence. While less brutal today, tight union control of the ports remains a fact of life. Just ask the factory owners who had to endure parts shortages just months after 9/11 in 2002 as ports from Seattle to San Diego were forced to shut after a union slowdown paralyzed operations.

The Justice Department’s massive 400-page civil complaint against the International Longshoremen’s Association outlines the decades-long stranglehold the mob has exercised over docks from New York to Miami. The Associated Press review of the complaint concluded that “America already has a fifth column, of sorts, at work on its dock: gangsters who have made the piers friendly territory for drug smugglers and cargo thieves.”

The complaint details how since the late 1950s, two organized-crime families have controlled much of the business of the nation’s ports. The Justice Department complaint asserts that “the Gambino family exercises its influence at commercial shipping terminals in Brooklyn and Staten Island, and the Genovese family primarily controlling those in Manhattan, New Jersey and the Port of Miami.” The mob exacts its vengeance on those it suspects of ratting on them. Last October, reputed Genovese mobster Lawrence Ricci vanished while on trial on charges he directed International Longshoremen’s Association contracts to a mobbed-up drug company. There is speculation he was cooperating with authorities on the side. Whatever the motive of his killers, his body was discovered in the trunk of a car outside a New Jersey diner two months later.

Mob influence over the ports is so taken for granted that it even became a topic of discussion in one “Sopranos” episode, in which fictional boss Tony Soprano bemoaned the inadequacies of Newark, N.J., port security that he knew represented a potential threat to his own children.

Federal prosecutors want to oust the union’s longtime president, 83-year-old John Bowers, and three other members of the union’s executive committee and then have a court put the union into trusteeship, similar to the one the Teamsters has operated under for over 15 years. Union dissidents who have long unsuccessfully championed the right of union members to directly elect the executive committee have been supportive of the Justice suit.

Ever since congressional pressure killed the deal that would have turned over management–but not operation–of some U.S. port terminals to a Dubai company with a clean law-enforcement record, everyone has known that port security is a hot-button issue with the public. Pollster David Winston reported to members of Congress this summer that of all the proposed measures they would consider this fall the public most supported “strengthening port security with background checks for port employees.” Yet some of the same congressmen who whooped up public hysteria over the Dubai Ports deal decided to cave in when it came to cleaning up the waterfront of criminal elements.

The last time member of Congress kowtowed to union pressure on a national-security issue was in 2002, when then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle led an effort to block creation of the Department of Homeland Security unless federal union work rules applied to its employees. The ensuing political backlash became an issue in that year’s fall elections and helped defeat several members. Will someone dare to object to the bizarre favoritism Congress has just shown felons at our nation’s ports, or will the issue be swept under the legislative rug?

Link to article here.

North American Union threat gets attention of congressmen
Resolution aimed at blocking merger, funding of ‘NAFTA superhighways’
October 1, 2006
WorldNetDaily.com

WASHINGTON – While several members of Congress have denied any knowledge of efforts to build “NAFTA superhighways” or move America closer to a union with Mexico and Canada, four members of the House have stepped up to sponsor a resolution opposing both initiatives.

Rep. Virgil Goode Jr., R-Va., has introduced a resolution – H.C.R. 487 – designed to express “the sense of Congress that the United States should not engage in the construction of a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Superhighway System or enter into a North American Union (NAU) with Mexico and Canada.”

“Now that Congress is preparing to take up the issues of the North American Union and NAFTA superhighways, we are moving out of the realm where critics can attempt to disparage the discussion as ‘Internet conspiracy theory,'” explained Jerome Corsi, author and WND columnist who has written extensively on the Security and Prosperity Partnership – the semisecret plan many suspect is behind the efforts to create a European Union-style North American confederation and link Mexico and Canada with more transcontinental highways and rail lines. “This bill represents a good first step.”

Corsi explained to WND that the Bush administration is trying to create the North American Union incrementally, under the radar scope of public attention.

“Even today,” said Corsi, SPP.gov has a ‘Myths vs. Facts’ section that denies the administration is changing laws or working to create a new regional government. Unfortunately, the many references on SPP.gov to Cabinet-level working groups creating new trilateral memoranda of understanding and other trilateral agreements makes these denials sound hollow.”

The resolution introduced by Goode had three co-sponsors: Reps. Thomas Tancredo, R-Colo., Ron Paul, R-Texas, and Walter Jones, R-N.C.

The “whereas” clauses of the resolution lay out the case against the North American Union and NAFTA Superhighways as follows:

* Whereas, according to the Department of Commerce, United States trade deficits with Mexico and Canada have significantly widened since the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA);

* Whereas the economic and physical security of the United States is impaired by the potential loss of control of its borders attendant to the full operation of NAFTA;

* Whereas a NAFTA Superhighway System from the west coast of Mexico through the United States and into Canada has been suggested as part of a North American Union;

* Whereas it would be particularly difficult for Americans to collect insurance from Mexican companies which employ Mexican drivers involved in accidents in the United States, which would increase the insurance rates for American drivers;

* Whereas future unrestricted foreign trucking into the United States can pose a safety hazard due to inadequate maintenance and inspection, and can act collaterally as a conduit for the entry into the United States of illegal drugs, illegal human smuggling, and terrorist activities;

* Whereas a NAFTA Superhighway System would be funded by foreign consortiums and controlled by foreign management, which threatens the sovereignty of the United States.

The resolution calls for the House of Representatives to agree on three issues of determination:

1. The United States should not engage in the construction of a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Superhighway System;

2. The United States should not enter into a North American Union with Mexico and Canada; and

3. The President should indicate strong opposition to these or any other proposals that threaten the sovereignty of the United States.

“As important as this resolution is,” Corsi said, “we need still more congressional attention. Where is congressional oversight of SPP? We need congressional hearings, not just congressional resolutions.”

H.Con.Res.487 has been referred to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and to the Committee on Internal Relations for consideration prior to any debate that may be scheduled on the floor of the House of Representatives.

View all event photos

Today, more than 100 people gathered at the Alamo to take a stand against overbearing and abusive government as evidenced in the privatizing and tolling of our existing FREEways and Rick Perry’s massive Trans Texas Corridor, a 4,000 mile network of toll roads taking 580,000 of private Texas land and putting it in the hands of foreign companies for BIG profits. They brought dirt from their land and told Perry, “You’re not taking our land or Texas roads without a fight!” The San Antonio event was part of events across the state in 43 counties.

The highlight of the rally was remarks from State Comptroller and Gubernatorial candidate Carole Keeton Strayhorn who stood shoulder to shoulder with ordinary citizens in an unprecedented statewide revolt against Perry’s land-grabbing toll network and DOUBLE TAX tolls on existing FREEways. Then, the crowd joined Mrs. Strayhorn behind a “line in the sand,” in the spirit of Col. William Travis who drew his famous line in the sand marking the historic stand at the Alamo in 1836, and folks dropped their bags of dirt and gave a cheer while many started chanting “We want Carole,” and “No to tolls, and no to the TTC.”

Then the Toll Party addressed the gathering giving credit to ordinary citizens and their efforts as the reason Perry finally caved and released the SECRET contract with Cintra-Zachry, “Without the constant pressure from citizens like you and without the leadership of Carole Strayhorn who has hammered this Governor and demanded this contract be made public, the contract would still be secret today.”

Next up, a grassroots push to elect true leaders and allies who will represent the PEOPLE, and the Corridor Summit in Austin, October 7. Read more here. Also, “Truth Be Tolled,” a documentary exposing the truth behind the privatization and tolling of public highways along with the shift toward foreign management of our public infrastructure is going on the road to Austin, Houston, and Dallas.

This is a guarded victory for open and transparent government and for the PEOPLE of Texas who have created the political pressure to make it happen! Until we wade through the 1,600 page document, we’re not certain if the financial details and totality of control this Governor handed Spanish-owned Cintra. The timing of this, 40 days out form an election where the Governor is losing ground daily due these toll issues is certainly suspect. But no matter, it’s a hard fought victory and our thanks to Carole Strayhorn for hammering the Governor to open up this secret to the light of day. The PEOPLE of Texas deserve to know what he’s sold us for.
Read Express-News here.

Read Star-Telegram here.

Read Dallas Morning News here.

Toll road contract at issue in governor’s race to be made public
By KELLEY SHANNON
Associated Press
09/28/2006

Previously secret parts of a contract to develop the Trans-Texas Corridor that have been a contentious issue in the governor’s race are going to be made public right away, state officials said Thursday.

The decision was announced at a Texas Transportation Commission meeting where a plan for the first phase of the proposed corridor was revealed. Because that plan is an update of an earlier proposal by the consortium Cintra-Zachry, all parts of that earlier document — including those that were kept secret for proprietary reasons — will be released, said Amadeo Saenz, assistant executive director for engineering operations at the state transportation department.

Consequently, a transportation department lawsuit attempting to keep the contract secret will be dropped, he said.

Republican Gov. Rick Perry, who proposed the Trans-Texas Corridor in 2002, has come under fire from opponents and anti-corridor activists in part because of the secret contract. Some are also mad because the giant toll road will take their land.

Cintra-Zachry proposed paying $7.2 billion to build the first segments of the corridor, running roughly parallel to Interstate 35. The Spanish-American consortium would invest $6 billion to build a state-owned toll road and would pay the state $1.2 billion and get to operate the road and collect tolls.

State transportation officials now say the private money invested could total as much as $8.8 billion. Perry’s aides have said the private construction is part of a growing trend across the country as government money for road construction dwindles.

Independent gubernatorial candidate Carole Keeton Strayhorn has been the most vocal Perry opponent in criticizing the Trans-Texas Corridor and the state contract with Cintra-Zachry.Over the summer, she attended several crowded public hearings along the corridor route to speak against the project.

Ultimately, Perry has said, the corridor would be a network crisscrossing the state and costing up to $184 billion. The corridor would be up to a quarter-mile across, consisting of as many as six lanes for cars and four for trucks, plus railroad tracks, oil and gas pipelines, water and other utility lines, even broadband transmission cables.

The Federal Highway Administration will have the final say on the first-phase plan released Thursday. Construction could begin by 2011, pending environmental clearance.

Read KSAT 12 coverage here. See the link to the Truth Be Tolled web site right on their home page (on the right).

Government has figured out a way to make money on public infrastructure. The plan is to convert existing Texas roadways into tollways and hand them over to foreign interests without a public vote. Many citizens are crying highway robbery.

Elected officials have passed laws unnoticed to simply pave the way. The political establishment is not listening to the people, but their voices will be heard.

This powerful documentary follows the process as citizens utilize their most important power as members of a democracy: freedom of speech and exercising their right to vote, especially when government goes awry and arrogantly ignores the will of the people.

View the trailer and send everyone you know to view the trailer and preview. Find out how to sponsor a screening here: www.truthbetolled.com.

View all the event photos

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.”