Link to World Net Daily article here.

However, I’d like to correct one thing for the record, I told Dr. Corsi that I think every single politician in our local delegation has taken money from Zachry. I haven’t tracked down every single local legislator, I stopped looking when I hit an overwhelming plurality! See for yourself on our “Follow the Money” posts here and here. There are also other web sites that track campaign contributions more closely like www.followthemoney.org and www.cleanuptexaspolitics.com.

THE NEW WORLD DISORDER
Trans-Texas Corridor paved with campaign contributions?
San Antonio construction company, capital consortium from Spain stand to gain
By Jerome R. Corsi
World Net Daily
July 12, 2006

The contractors building the Trans-Texas Corridor – a massive statewide transportation network critics claim is an important part of the controversial proposed integration of the U.S. and Mexico – have made large contributions to the campaigns of Texas politicians, including Republican Gov. Rick Perry.

As WND has reported, opposition is mounting to the little-publicized efforts by the Bush administration, aided by corporate and political elites of the U.S., Mexico and Canada, including the Council on Foreign Relations, to push North America into a European Union-style merger. Critics of the Trans-Texas Corridor see the massive project – ironically funded by Spain – as part of this movement to integrate the U.S., Mexico and Canada.

Terri Hall, director of a taxpayers’ group called the San Antonio Toll Party, told WND, “there is not a single politician in our entire Bexar County delegation that has not taken money from H. B. Zachry, Jr.” Zachry Construction Corporation, headquartered in San Antonio, has entered into a limited partnership with Cintra, a capital consortium based in Spain to undertake the TTC construction.

“Zachry owns San Antonio,” Hall told WND, “and he has spread his money inside and outside Bexar County [where San Antonio is the county seat] to make sure he drives the highway lobby.” The San Antonio Toll Party is grass roots movement and political action committee opposed to the Trans-Texas Corridor.

Although WND could not confirm Hall’s charge that every local politician has accepted money from Zachry, she and others are naming quite a few names.

“The politicians in Austin are listening to the highway lobby rather that the citizens who put them in office,” Hall told WND, adding, “you will not understand the politics of the TTC until you track down Zachry who has a long and distinguished money trail to offices of our state politicians.”

The non-partisan Institute on Money in State Politics provides data that support Hall’s contention. Analyzing 39 records of campaign contributions made by H.B. Zachry, Jr., the Institute concludes Zachry contributed $112,112 in campaign contributions – 92.2 percent to Republican candidates. The largest of these contributions went to Gov. Perry, two contributions totaling $35,000.

Perry is currently running for re-election against Democratic challenger Chris Bell, a former congressman from Houston, and two independent candidates.

When WND contacted Perry’s campaign organization for comment on campaign contributions by Zachry and other contractors who stand to benefit from TTC construction, Perry’s campaign spokesman Robert Black said: “Gov. Perry got lots of campaign contributions from contractors who got nothing in the TTC bidding. If a contributor was giving money to Gov. Perry for any other reason than that Gov. Perry’s policies are best for Texas,” Black emphasized, “then they should keep their money.”

Another group opposing TTC construction, Campaigns for People, a 501(c)(3) organization in Austin, argues that between Jan. 1, 2001, and Dec. 31, 2004, the Texas Department of Transportation, or TxDOT, awarded over $14.3 billion in contracts to build and maintain roads in the state. More than 40 percent of this total – over $6 billion – went to the “Top 10” TxDOT contractors, who gave $1.1 million in political contributions.

In 2003, House Bill 3588 in the Texas Legislature amended the Texas Transportation code to give the state the broad, new powers needed to build the Trans-Texas Corridor. According to Campaigns for People, top contractors who sought to benefit from the TTC construction contributed heavily to the campaign to pass House Bill 3588:

The TxDOT Top 10 and TTC Bidders gave generously to legislators who ultimately had a say over the content and passage of HB3588. These interests made over $2.7 million in campaign contributions from January 1, 2001 to December 31, 2004. These special interests steered more than half of this money to elected officials who either held statewide leadership positions in 2003 or who sat on key House or Senate Transportation committees.

Simply stated, according to Campaigns for People, contractors who sought to benefit when TTC was built contributed to the political campaigns to achieve their objective.

It’s to be built with extremely limited public oversight. Except for the corridor east and roughly parallel to Interstate 35 (TTC-35), it’s a road system most Texans can hardly imagine will ever be built. But road builders and toll bond financers from around the world are lining up to participate. These interests contributed $166,000 to amend Texas’ Constitution and more than $2.7 million in Texas’ last two elections to turn the nation’s largest toll road project into a reality.

Black resists any insinuation of collusion. “The TxDOT contracts were awarded on an open bid process,” Perry’s campaign spokesman told WND. “These TTC opposition groups are typically ‘conspiracy theorists’ who think we’re giving Texas land away to Spain. The State of Texas will still own TTC highways, even if Cintra has the right to lease them and collect tolls.”

WND could find no reference on the websites of either the San Antonio Toll Party or Campaigns for People that TTC highways were going to be ceded to Spain.

Today, there are some 50,000 miles of interstate highway in the U.S., yet TxDOT has proposed building 4,000 miles of Trans-Texas Corridor superhighways in Texas over the next 50 years. The TTC project at full development will involve the removal of as much as 584,000 acres of productive Texas farm and ranchland from the tax rolls permanently, while displacing upwards of 1 million people from their current residences.

“We may not need to build all 4,000 miles,” Black asserted. “But the population of Texas is going to double in the next 40 years and our Texas interstates are already strained. The days of building a 50-year old Eisenhower interstate system are over. TTC is a new model for America.”

A close reading of the 4,000-page Environmental Impact Statement, or EIS, posted on the Trans-Texas Corridor website reveals on page 3 the NAFTA purpose of the TTC-35 project, which generally runs parallel to Interstate-35. Under the subtitle “enhance economic vitality,” the EIS notes that “approximately 75 percent of America’s commerce with Mexico travels through Texas. Increased access and mobility within the study area would improve the movement of people, goods, and services and potentially lead to new employment and business opportunities.” This, contend critics, makes clear that the TTC-35 project is not “just a highway needed for anticipated Texas growth,” but rather a NAFTA-inspired highway, intended to grow Texas by vastly increasing NAFTA commerce with Mexico.

The 11 separate corridors planned will permanently cut across some 1,200 Texas roads, with crossover unlikely for much of the nearly quarter-mile-wide corridor planned to be built. Dozens of small towns in Texas will be virtually obliterated in the path of the advancing Trans-Texas Corridor behemoth. While supporters, like Perry’s administration, call it a necessity, critics says the TTC appears to be the test case for future development of a NAFTA superhighway that would extend north through Oklahoma City, Kansas City and Duluth into Canada, largely parallel to I-35.

“I don’t know if the TTC is going to extend to Oklahoma,” Black commented. “I can only speak for Texas.”

Nor does Black have any insight into the plans of investment bankers and international capital funds that are unlikely to allow a four-football-fields-wide highway just end at the Texas border, without first approaching Oklahoma, and the other states on the anticipated I-35 path north, to consider accepting their capital to extend the road.

Posted on TxDOT’s Trans-Texas Corridor website are contracts signed by TxDOT that indicate Cintra has paid over $1 billion for the right to negotiate a final construction contract with the state. Cintra Concessions de Infraestructuras de Transporte, S.A. of Spain plans to recover through tolls an investment that is estimated to exceed $180 billion for the full 50-year build-out of the TTC 4,000-mile network.

Cintra won the contract with TxDOT as a result of a competitive bid, said Black. “Cintra promised the State of Texas the best bang for the buck. Besides, they threw in to the deal over $1 billion that the State of Texas could use however we want to.” WND can find no description of the competitive bid process on the Trans-Texas Corridor website, nor any identification of the losing bidders.

Last month, the Cintra-Zachry limited partnership stepped in to provide the $1.3 billion TxDOT needed to complete a toll segment of TX-130. In return, Cintra-Zachry obtained the concession to operate the toll segment of TX-130 for over 50 years.

Even though large segments of the Cintra-Zachry contracts have been archived on TxDOT websites, TxDOT has withheld key sections have from the public. TxDOT argues that revealing all details of the TTC transaction would compromise the release of information proprietary to Cintra-Zachry.

Read about it in Toll Road News here.

You read that right, TxDOT actually wrote financial incentives into this toll road contract that makes the tollway less safe via high speeds. While none of us wants to crawl along our expressways, there’s considerable debate over how high speed limits should go before it makes the roadway less safe. In fact, public safety groups have already urged the Transportation Commission to maintain current speed limits thorughout the state and TxDOT thumbed their noses at them, too, and raised them from 70 MPH to 80 MPH (read about it here) in spite of statistics that show that “nearly 40 percent of the 3,600 people killed on Texas roads in 2004 were speed-related crashes.” Well, in the Hwy 130 contract, TxDOT built in higher cash payouts for themselves for allowing higher speed limits on the tollway, up to $100 million MORE in cash up front if they allow an 85 MPH speed limit. Just another dangerous example of the Governor’s Transportation Commission and their profit-driven approach to transportation.

Here’s just a portion of the article:

TOLL ROAD NEWS
July 6, 2006

HWY 130 CONCESSION AGREEMENT

Speeds on new Texas 130 South TR major $-issue

Posted speed limits are a major financial issue in the terms of the toll concession for Texas State Highway 130 Segments 5 and 6 (TX130-S for South). The fine print of the concession agreement now available on the TxDOT website shows that posted speed limits are seen as a key to attracting large volumes of traffic from free-competitor I-35.

Exhibit 7 (Ex7) titled Compensation Terms provides that the concessionaire will pay TxDOT three radically different amounts of money depending on the legally enacted speed limits for the new tollroad (TR).

TX130-S TR route runs parallel with I-35 south of Austin toward San Antonio. It is 20 to 25km (15mi) to the east but serves much the same long distance traffic. If higher speed limits are posted on TX130-S then the improved travel times will attract more tollpayers.

Exhibit 7 provides for two approaches for the state to garner a share of higher speed toll revenues: (1) higher upfront concession fees or (2) a higher share of annual toll revenues.

$25m for 75mph, $92m for 80mph, $125m for 85mph

Most rural expressways in Texas were posted for speeds up to 70mph when the concession was negotiated but in the past month have been increased to 75mph (121km/hr). So without special treatment TX130 would now be posted 75mph. At that posted speed TxDOT only gets $25m upfront fee. Ex7.A.2 reads: “In the event TxDOT authorizes, within 180 days after the Service Commencement Date, a maximum daytime posted speed limit for passenger vehicles of 80 miles per hour on the Facility, other than in populated areas or other specific locations where design does not accommodate such speed, and TxDOT affirmatively elects in writing to waive increased revenue sharing under Part B respecting such posted speed limit, Developer shall pay to TxDOT an additional $67 million.” There is more refinement on the timing.

Then in Ex7.A.3 the agreement reads that if TxDOT authorizes 85mph for passenger vehicles the concessionaire must pay an extra $100m in upfront fee.

80mph is now the legal posted maximum speed on a 695km (432mi) stretch of I-10 and on 143km (89mi) of I-20 in the west of Texas so there is precedent for 80mph, but there are no highways yet with 85mph posted. In a peculiarity of the law on speed limits in Texas higher speeds are not flat illegal but “prime facie” (considered on their face) to be unsafe speeds and an offense.

There is a formula for refunding the speed-concession fee add-on if the speed limit raises are revoked. (Ex7.A.5)

See Express-News blog on this topic here.

Read Austin American Statesman article here.

Read Texas Toll Party’s take on Sal Costello’s blog.

See Express-News article here.

Ever wonder why private investors would dare throw their money into these monstrosities after the Laredo toll road failure? Look no further than the non-compete agreement. We can be guaranteed that NONE of these CDAs (see definition here), or public-private partnership toll contracts, will be free of non-compete agreements. These multi-billion dollar deals simply won’t happen unless the government, ie- TxDOT, agrees NOT to improve or expand free lanes or build any other new FREE roads to compete with the private toll revenue cash cow revenue stream! That ensures gridlock on free roads from now on. Toll roads don’t solve congestion, they manipulate it for profit!

Laredo road was tollway gone wrong
Patrick Driscoll
Express-News Staff Writer
07/09/2006

More than a year after state officials bought and reopened the failed Camino Colombia Toll Road near Laredo, taxpayers still are footing the bill.

But Texas Department of Transportation officials remain optimistic.

Eventually, the 22-mile tollway will make enough money to cover operation and maintenance costs, and someday the state will get back the $20 million it paid for the road, said Amadeo Saenz, an assistant director for TxDOT.

“I’m comfortable that we are going to get our money back,” he said.

The Camino Colombia Toll Road opened in October 2000 after a decade of cobbling together political backing and $90 million from private investors.

Motorists paid $3 a car and $16 a truck to skirt Laredo and travel quickly from the Colombia Solidarity Bridge to Interstate 35.

But investors’ dreams of getting rich from truck traffic generated by the North American Free Trade Agreement soon faded.

Maybe 75 trucks and 400 to 500 cars a day used the two- and four-lane road in the first year instead of the projected 1,500 trucks and 300 cars, said Peter Samuel of Toll Roads News.

Revenues probably were about 6 percent of what was expected.

“That 94 percent undershoot must be one for the record books,” he said.

The fiasco was billed as Texas’ first privately financed toll road in the interstate era, and was nearly the nation’s first. Today, as the state turns increasingly to toll roads to speed up highway construction and ease traffic congestion, Camino Colombia is a poster child for how wrong toll plans can go.

Figuring out why the numbers were so bad leads to a list of actions and inactions involving federal, state, local and even Mexican authorities as well as the operators:

Wrangling over truck inspections has postponed a NAFTA provision to let Mexican truckers drive into the United States instead of switching trailers at the border, and the rural Camino Colombia was built for such a direct shot.

Investors knew another bridge closer to Laredo would open months before their toll road did, but they didn’t know local politicians soon would get federal and state grants to build a free road directly linking the competing bridge to I-35.

Investors also banked on officials designating the Colombia Solidarity Bridge as the area’s only hazardous cargo crossing, which would have fed steady truck traffic to the toll road, but it didn’t happen.

Mexico’s failure to build a better road connection on its side of the Colombia Solidarity Bridge.

The Camino Colombia Toll Road tanked in its first year, and by January 2004 was auctioned back to the bank for $12 million. Four months later, the bank sold the road to TxDOT.

The toll road’s president, Carlos Benavides, said he should have worked harder to get solid agreements with government officials, especially Laredo leaders, to ensure promises were kept and timelines on competing projects were more predictable and forgiving.

“That is what’s required in all these projects,” he said. “You have to have that support because you can’t compete against government.”

Samuel of Toll Roads News concurred, saying investors probably should have sought a non-compete agreement.

“In a way, (government) competed away the traffic from the investors,” he said.

Avoiding a repeat

TxDOT officials didn’t have such problems corralling competing projects when they sold their first toll bonds.
When $2.2 billion in bonds went to market in 2002 to help fund the first 49 miles of Texas 130 east of Austin, they included a non-compete clause to keep investors happy.

TxDOT agreed not to build road projects that would threaten projected traffic on Texas 130, which limits what can be done to I-35. Exceptions include projects for maintenance, safety, passenger rail and anything already planned for the next 25 years.

Of course, it’s easy for an agency to predict and control a toll road’s competition when most of the competing projects will come from that agency.

“We knew exactly what projects were coming on line — TxDOT controlled many of those,” said Phil Russell, director of the agency’s turnpike division. “We knew what the deal was and Wall Street gained some comfort.”

Companies vying to build and operate state toll projects could enjoy the same protection, officials have said.

State officials gave such a nod last year when a consortium led by Cintra of Spain and Zachry Construction Corp. of San Antonio signed a contract to develop plans for the Trans Texas Corridor leg that will parallel I-35.

“They need to have an expectation that they can get a profit,” Texas Transportation Commission Chairman Ric Williamson said at the time.

The Trans Texas Corridor is a 4,000-mile network of toll lanes and rail lines that Gov. Rick Perry is pushing to be built across the state this century.

Numerous other government toll projects are planned in Texas cities, including more than 70 miles in San Antonio on Loop 1604, U.S. 281, I-35, Bandera Road and Wurzbach Parkway.

While non-compete agreements may help toll projects succeed, another lesson from Camino Colombia is that there are many ways to mess up, cautions David Stall of CorridorWatch.org, a critic of the Trans Texas Corridor.

“Everybody used their best crystal ball to get it right and they didn’t,” he said. “There are just an awful lot of variables and there’s a lot of projections.”

Matter of time

Though TxDOT’s first toll bonds were for Texas 130, which opens in stages later this year and next year, murky predictions and fate decided its first toll road would be the Camino Colombia. The agency reopened the tollway in September 2004 and started charging tolls two months later. However, the truck fee is $8, half of what it used to be, while the car fee is just $2.

Average traffic in 2005 was 418 vehicles a day, no higher than five years ago, but numbers this year are 29 percent higher than last year.

From November 2004 through March 2006, TxDOT collected $712,000 in toll fees, enough to cover $514,000 in operation costs but not enough for another $780,000 in maintenance.

When the profits are supposed to start rolling in isn’t known, Saenz said. But it’s just a matter of time before Mexican truckers are allowed to drive beyond a border zone, and just a few years away before Mexico opens a new road linking Monterrey to the Camino Colombia.

TxDOT officials aren’t worried about how long that takes, because they feel they got a bargain — paying $20 million for a road they say would cost $35 million to build. Though $90 million was invested, a large chunk was used to construct interchange ramps that were given to the state.

And as traffic grows around Laredo, the nation’s largest inland port, the road will be needed and even worthy of taxpayers’ continued investment, Saenz said.

“We probably would have built that road sometime in the future,” he said.

Link to Washington Times article here.

Is it time to rethink public transit in San Antonio? At least these Washington D.C. area residents have transportation options other than individual vehicle travel.

Cost of gas pushes motorists onto trains
By Christine Simmons
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
July 8, 2006

Some riders on the MARC Penn Line are fighting for space.

“When you get cars so full of people, you get people who are actually missing their stop because they can’t get to the door,” said Richard Lollis, 57, who rides the Penn Line. “It’s a real nightmare.”

Ridership on the Penn Line jumped 18 percent, from about 352,00 in February to about 416,000 in May, according to Maryland Area Rail Commuter, with three lines serving communities north of Washington.

More people have been using MARC, Metrorail and carpool services since the beginning of the year, officials said, partly because of higher gas prices.

“What we’re seeing is a lot of record days, and what we think is that we’re going to have a record year,” said Murray Bond, director of Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s marketing and sales. Six of Metrorail’s top 10 ridership days were recorded in the past three months, including one just last week, according to Metro records.

“My sense is that when it goes toward $3 a gallon — that’s a very sobering reality for people,” Mr. Bond said. He also attributed higher ridership to a good tourist season, road congestion and a natural increase in population and jobs in the Washington area.

The national average for a gallon of gas in February was $2.35. That month, Metro officials recorded about 15.1 million trips on the Metrorail. Four months later, there were about 18.7 million Metrorail trips as the national gas price average hit $2.87.

That’s about a 50-cent jump, according to the Energy Administration Information, which tracks, analyzes and forecasts fuel prices.

Metro expects 50 new rail cars to arrive by the end of the year. Metro’s six-car trains will become eight cars long, said Lisa Farbstein, a Metro spokeswoman.

Long-distance commuters are likely taking advantage of public transportation, too. About 85,000 more commuters rode the MARC train system in May compared with February.

“You see new faces, new people. They’ve parked their car — they just can’t afford to drive,” Mr. Lollis said, who is a member of the MARC Advisory Council, a group representing the train’s passengers. “By the time it gets to Union Station, it’s almost completely full. It’s really putting a burden on the system.”

Rhonda Smith, 49, of Halethorpe, Md., began riding the MARC Camden lines last January.

“I didn’t like the traffic, and gas prices were going up and up, so I started riding the MARC train. It’s more convenient, even though it’s getting more crowded lately,” she said.

Officials with the Maryland Transit Authority, which operates MARC, added 150 extra seats to the Penn Line last year, said Holly Henderson, an MTA spokeswoman. They are also adding 704 new parking spaces at Odenten Station and 150 to the Martin State Airport Station parking lot. A major relief may come if MTA finishes its seven-year negotiations with Amtrak to build an extra storage yard near Union Station. This would accommodate more trains on the MARC system, but Ms. Henderson was not sure whether and when officials would come to an agreement.

Meanwhile, ridership on the Virginia Railway Express, which spreads southwest of Washington, has stayed consistent so far and is slightly down from last year, said Mark Roeber, a VRE spokesman. He credits this to numerous delays, which VRE faced last fall during track maintenance and last month in stormy weather.

“It’s not just a perception. It’s a weariness. The riders become leery and tired of always facing an uncertainty or delay,” Mr. Roeber said. “To a consumer perspective, it becomes mind numbing.”

Commuters may be answering their mass-transit woes with other alternatives.

According to Max Fox, president of the parent company of carpoolworld.com, about 215 people requested a carpool match for the Washington metro area in June, compared with about 80 in February.

“In general, usership spikes when gas prices spike,” said Mr. Fox, who compared the numbers to those during Hurricane Katrina. “It’s simply when the prices go up, some people are inclined to cross that threshold of tolerance for gas prices, and they’re motivated to look for something.”

“They google for carpool, and they find our link,” he said. He has kept the same advertising for the past five years, so he attributes most of his increased business to fuel costs.

Nicholas Ramfos, director of Commuter Connections, said it’s the combination of aggressive advertising and gas prices that explains higher participation in the program he operates.

Created by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, Commuter Connections provides matching services for those traveling to the same destinations in the Washington metro area. About 300 more people applied to the program in May compared with February, Mr. Ramfos said. But recent mail solicitations and radio commercials for the program have targeted the fuel situation.

“[Commuters] could be standing at the pump … and then hear the ad and be thinking, ‘And I just spent $70 or $80, maybe I should be getting into a carpool,’ ” he said. “So there is some correlation.”

Link to AP story here.

As if there aren’t enough signs of economic slowdown and consumer financial ruin without the addition of tolls to every major highway in Texas, here’s more news pointing to Americans overspending to cover gas. It also confirms what many AP stories have said since the beginning of the year: Americans are in a negative savings pattern and have been for 12 straight months. Bulletin to pro-tollers: we don’t have any more money to take! Your toll roads are going to fail due to high gas prices and flat incomes!

More credit card holders paying late
7/3/2006
By: Associated Press

NEW YORK — Credit counseling agencies say consumers are storming their offices for help — just one sign that credit card holders are feeling a painful pinch.

Experts say rising interest rates and higher gas prices are squeezing consumers’ budgets. As a result, more people say, “Charge it,” then find it harder to pay the bills.

The American Bankers Association says the signs of distress are evident in a pulse-taking of late payments that ticked up in the first quarter. The president of one credit counseling group says consumers are carrying “exorbitant” debt with no savings to fall back on.

And with the Federal Reserve raising interest rates and income growth pretty much capped by a slowing economy, analysts say even more credit card bills, auto loans and mortgages stand to be paid late.