Read this uncanny report of the vote totals of her last election. Seem like coincidence to you?
Category: General
Wanna know how much power private toll operators will have over you? Read this!
Family tending to child dying of cancer charged over $43,000 in toll fines and had the refinance on their home blocked! Read about it in theNewspaper.com.
California: Toll Road Charges Cancer Patient’s Family $43,638
Family pays more attention to helping ease suffering of teenage daughter than to tolls. Officials charge family $43,638.
The Newspaper.com
12/23/05
The Orange County, California Transportation Authority claims the family of David and Elizabeth Casillas owed $43,638 in toll road penalties. The couple admits that it used the 91 Express Lane toll road in Corona without a working transponder between September 2003 and January 2004. The majority of the unpaid trips involved taking their sixteen-year-old daughter Camie to and from the Children’s Hospital of Orange County for treatment of type-ALL leukemia.
“We’re just enjoying our time with her,” Elizabeth Casillas, 35, said. The family, at times, kept an around-the-clock vigil in Camie’s hospital room.
Easing their daughter’s suffering was the only thing on the couple’s mind — they gave little thought to the unpaid tolls, which only amounted to $140.84. They expected to pay both the tolls along with a reasonable penalty sometime later. Instead, officials charged the family nearly $500 for each of the ninety untolled trips.
“I figured they would have sent me a $50 fine or something,” Elizabeth Casillas told the Press-Enterprise. “When you have a sick child in your car, that is the last thing on your mind.”
Casillas had a FasTrak transponder in the car, but it was linked to a bank card account that had closed. Casillas failed to update the account.
Ignoring the family’s plight, toll road officials recently forced the family to pay a $10,000 settlement by blocking their attempt to refinance their home to pay medical bills. This penalty came on top of a stroke that disabled David Casillas, 31, last July and Camie’s death from cancer last December.
Source: Couple’s violations add up: $43,638 (Press-Enterprise (Riverside, CA), 12/21/2005)
U.S. Addiction to Foreign Money Means Trouble
Here are some choice quotes from the article…
“It’s an addiction. Every day, the United States sucks in more and more of it from abroad, just to keep the nation going.”
“Over half the national debt is now financed by foreigners”
“I guess everyone wants to keep this game going…But if one of the countries we’re most dependent on drops out, it could be like a bank run.”
“Then, there’s our personal savings rate, which has been hovering near zero.” (See related article. Average savings hits all-time low…high gas prices have eaten up discretionary income; it’s not the time for tolls!)
“We need the money because we’re not saving any. We need it from anyone who has a spare yen to lend us.”
Sound like a house of cards to you?
U.S. Foreign Money Addiction Means Trouble
Saturday December 10, 12:58 pm ET
By Ellen Simon, AP Business Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — It’s an addiction. Every day, the United States sucks in more and more of it from abroad, just to keep the nation going. We speak, of course, about foreign money.
At our current rate of trade and budget deficits, foreigners need to purchase $2 billion in dollar-denominated assets each day just to keep the dollar stable, said Axel Merk, who manages $60 million at Merk Investments and runs the Merk Hard Currency Fund.
Over half the national debt is now financed by foreigners, according to Roger Ibbotson, chairman of the financial consulting firm Ibbotson Associates in Chicago and a professor at Yale School of Management. That’s been true since 1980, but the difference now, he says, “is the scale of the game.”
“I guess everyone wants to keep this game going,” Ibbotson said. But if one of the countries we’re most dependent on drops out, it could be “like a bank run.”
David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor’s, is also concerned. “If this money stopped coming, the dollar would take a dive and U.S. bond yields would have to come up. That would constrain capital spending and housing and slow down the U.S. economy.”
Foreign investments in U.S. bonds and equities set a record in September, the last month for which data is available.
Foreigners bought $1.01 trillion in U.S. securities in the 12 months ending in September, up from $866.6 billion for the same period in 2004, according to U.S. Treasury International Capital, which tracks foreign purchases of U.S. securities.
Why did foreign investors’ interest in the U.S. intensify?
For one thing, investors can get a better return on U.S. bonds than they can in their home countries. Yields in the United States have been near 4.5 percent, while yields on Euro bonds are closer to 3.2 percent and yields on Japanese bonds are near 1.5 percent.
Second, our massive trade deficit has sent tens of billions of dollars abroad, as imports increased while exports declined, which has helped foreign business owners sock away plenty of dollars. And our budget deficit means the federal government keeps issuing more debt.
Then, there’s our personal savings rate, which has been hovering near zero.
“We need the money because we’re not saving any,” Wyss said. “We need it from anyone who has a spare yen to lend us.”
At the same time, economic growth in Europe and Japan has been weak, Wyss said. “The U.S. was the only large safe market where the yield looked reasonable.”
The gush of foreign money “is critical to keeping the U.S. dollar from collapsing, because we have a large trade deficit,” said Daniel Katzive, foreign exchange strategist at UBS. “If the deficit wasn’t financed, the dollar would fall until it reached a level where U.S. assets were more attractive to foreign investors.”
It’s simple accounting, he said: Cashflow in must equal cashflow out. “If it doesn’t, you have a big adjustment until you reach equilibrium.”
Some argue that the waterfall of foreign money has also prettied up U.S. Treasuries. A study released as part of the Federal Reserve Board’s International Finance Working Papers Series asserts that the yield on 10-year Treasury notes would be a full percentage point less without abnormally high flows into bonds. That’s because increased demand for U.S. Treasuries has pushed the yield on Treasuries lower than it would be otherwise.
Normally, Wyss said, foreign investors would be reluctant to stake so much on the Treasury market because they would be worried that a decline in the dollar would erode their returns.
But, in recent years, the Japanese and Chinese central banks have intervened to keep the dollar high.
“Central banks have trained investors that there’s not much risk there,” he said. “That scares me.”
Former RMA Exec Dir Tom Greibel takes job with highway engineering firm
So much for Williamson’s “No Scandal” policy…
Former Executive Director of the Alamo RMA (our tolling authority) Tom Greibel has taken an executive position at a highway engineering firm, Pape-Dawson Engineers in Austin. Read about it in the Biz Journal. Haven’t we heard plenty about this problem in the national news lately thanks to Abramoff? See one sample article. The conflicts of interest abound with TxDOT, our tolling authorities (RMAs), and the highway lobby.
Recent examples of local toll road conflicts of interest…we have JoAnne Walsh leaving her post as Executive Director of the MPO Transportation Policy Board, that allocates federal gas tax dollars to local projects, to take a lucrative job at a highway engineering firm Parsons-Brinckerhoff (Read our blog about it; she is also an ex-TxDOT employee). Now we have Greibel leaving his public, taxpayer-funded post to take a high-priced private sector job with a company who will directly benefit from his RMA connections and former employment with TxDOT, particularly on these lucrative toll road projects.
Commissioner Tommy Adkisson hits it on the head. It’s what he calls “legalized corruption” and it needs to stop!
Hutchison's official stance on toll roads…yet did endorse toller Casteel
Direct from her office is this statement:
The Senator does not support widespread tolling because it is contrary to Texas’ tradition of free, clear and well-maintained roads and because it imposes another tax on those whose taxes have already generated the revenue for highway construction. She believes that decisions to construct new toll roads should be made at the local level, after approval from voters. She strongly believes Texas should not impose tolls on existing freeways. In fact, when the federal highway authorization bill was debated last year, the Senate agreed to an amendment written by the Senator that prohibited Texas and other states from converting interstate highways to toll roads; however, the prohibition was not included in the final version of the bill.
Doesn’t make sense that she’d endorse a toller, Carter Casteel, given her strong statement against tolls. Does it?
Contact her office here:
San Antonio office: 210-340-2885
Austin office: 512-916-5834
Washington DC 202-224-5922
Here’s another statement made by the Senator which is also on our blog.
Highway privatization uses secret contracts as standard operating procedure
It’s standard to keep the contracts secret even after the contracts are signed, too!
The Great Ontario Toll-Road Cover-Up; Highway 407 bidding is cloaked in a veil of CIA-like secrecy.
Some choice quotes from the article by Peter Samuel…
All information the government chooses to release is being held in a secure government office called a Data Room, and the bidding teams are forbidden to talk to any outsiders about it, including the press. I have learned its photocopy machine is a slow, old clunker. Hope someone doesn’t get a bullet for leaking that.
Living in the United States, I might expect this kind of secrecy from a government getting bids for a new stealth fighter plane for the armed forces, or maybe for a communications system for the national police, But what possible justification could there be for keeping secret any information at all – except details of individual accounts – about a road, especially a publicly owned road? Ontario claims to be a democracy, I believe…
…Since Canadian Highways International Corp. has all the information about the road, any secrecy only disadvantages the other bidders. Ms. Reid was silent when I pointed this out. When I asked why there is such secrecy, anyway, she said it was necessary to protect “confidential commercial information”
Whose confidential information? What confidential information? This is a public business undertaking being sold. Surely, its balance sheet and accounts and performance are not a matter of secrecy – sorry, confidentiality – in a democracy. Ms. Reid had run out of answers. Poor woman.
Proof Cintra and Macquarie are partners…SA toll starter system didn't have competitive bidding at all!
The two “competing” bidders to build San Anotnio’s toll starter system are Cintra (Spanish Consortium) and Macquarie (Australian consortium). How are partners billed as competitors? No matter what scenario, Cintra-Macquarie gets the contract and hence control that guarantees a certain level of profit for the next 50+ years. See history of public-private partnerships (or PPPs here) that guarantee anywhere from 12%-19% GUARANTEED annual profit, well above inflation, which means toll rates will be far higher than TxDOT is letting on…
Cintra and Macquarie were partners on Ontario, Canada’s 407 Express Toll Route (ETR).
Cintra and Macquarie are partners in Indiana toll road project!
Cintra and Macquarie are partners in Illinois toll road project!
Cintra and Macquarie are partners in Madrid toll road project!
Austin American Statesman reporter takes on the secret toll plan corruption of Mike Krusee and Rick Perry
It’s about time Krusee, Perry, Williamson, and Cintra-Zachry get exposed for who and what they really are! Great work, Ben!
Tolls are a slippery slope
A supporter forwarded this article to me and it really hits the nail on the head regarding tolls. Those of us who have followed this issue any length of time already know this isn’t about traffic relief or TxDOT being out of money. It’s not about free market or what we normally associate with privatization. This is about monopolistic sweetheart deals for the few at the expense of free expressways for all taxpayers!
Read this analysis on the National Motorists Association web site.
Houston Chronicle says: Toll Road Foes Crank Up Intensity in SA!
Read the article in the Houston Chronicle here.
Notice how much column space is devoted to toll proponents versus those of us against Perry’s toll plans. The reason for the article is our rally and the building of a political movement that crosses party lines and draws the attention of gubernatorial candidates. This is an issue that could well shape the outcome of the next gubernatorial election, and yet they allow Perry’s henchmen more space for their unanswered “claims” than we get to dispel them!
The article confirms what we’ve been saying about the tolling of 281 up into Comal County! Regardless of the promise from TxDOT IN WRITING to the Comal Judge that TxDOT wouldn’t toll 281, here’s what the article affirms: “The initial plan calls for tolled lanes on U.S. Highway 281 for the few miles just north of Loop 1604, but later the lanes would be extended into Comal County and north to the Blanco County line.”
To Ms. Brechtel, we’re not interested in voting on and approving every highway project, we are asking to vote on any toll roads (whether traditional or Perry’s shifting of existing freeways to tollways) that will increase our taxes and potentially be given to a private conglomerate to control in order to gouge Texans!
Toll-road foes crank up intensity in San Antonio
Politicians join opposition groups in denouncing plan for pay highways
By JOHN W. GONZALEZ
Houston Chronicle San Antonio Bureau
Jan. 27, 2006
SAN ANTONIO – Preliminary construction of the city’s first tollway was abruptly halted earlier this month for an environmental impact reassessment, but the debate about clogged highways hasn’t slowed a bit.
Anti-tollway rhetoric turned caustic at a recent roadside rally where politicians joined 200 residents in denouncing state plans to build tolled lanes amid the city’s clogged far-northside freeways.
Comptroller and independent gubernatorial candidate Carole Keeton Strayhorn said that if she’s elected, the Texas Department of Transportation “will not do whatever the hell they want to do.” “We’re not going to roll over and have them railroad a tollroad down our throats,” added Bexar County Commissioner Tommy Adkisson.
Supporters point out need
While demanding relief for traffic congestion, tollway foes assailed the five-year-old proposal’s necessity and expense. The first 3.5 miles of the project will cost $83 million to build, and motorists will pay an estimated 15 cents a mile to drive on it. “A couple of overpasses would certainly resolve a great majority of the traffic jam that’s been created out here,” said auto dealer Ernesto Ancira, who made one of his dealerships available for the anti-tollway rally. He opposes addition of tolled lanes to freeways.
Proponents say new lanes — free and tolled — are badly needed on several local arteries, and perennially inadequate government funding for highway projects makes tolled lanes a crucial part of the long-term solution to road snarls.
Upward trends in population growth and home and business construction in northern Bexar County are expected to continue, officials said.
Yet, the state’s proposed solution will have to wait. The reassessment is expected to take eight months, and even without new snags, completion of the first tolled lanes isn’t expected until late 2007.
The initial plan calls for tolled lanes on U.S. Highway 281 for the few miles just north of Loop 1604, but later the lanes would be extended into Comal County and north to the Blanco County line. Parts of Loop 1604 and Interstate 35 also are targeted for tolled lanes.
Six weeks into their work, crews stopped clearing trees from right-of-way along U.S. Highway 281 North on Jan. 12 after the Federal Highway Administration demanded a new environmental survey. Impact studies done in 1984, 2000, 2004 and last year were no longer adequate, officials said.
That move nullified a citizens lawsuit demanding a halt to the project. Aquifer Guardians in Urban Areas had joined an anti-tollway group, People for Efficient Transportation, in pressing the suit, which was dismissed Jan. 17.
“When you have these two groups coming together, it just shows the depth and the strength of our cause,” said Texas Toll Party regional director Terri Hall.
“It’s a nonpartisan issue. It’s about highway interests hijacking our freeways and turning them into tollways. It’s an outrage and that’s why the public is galvanized on this,” she said.
A vote for Houston
Houstonians, who use 83 miles of tolled highways operated by the Harris County Toll Road Authority, “got to vote on their tollways. That’s a big difference,” Hall said.
Both sides are honing their strategies during the hiatus. Some toll opponents are calling for a “regime change” in Austin, targeting Gov. Rick Perry and other elected and appointed officials who advocate this and other tollways.
Proponents, meanwhile, hope to convince motorists that the proposed tolled lanes are justified and well planned and are a sure-fire way to hasten — perhaps by decades — funding of other inevitable upgrades.
“The growth is there. The demand is there. The need is now and the state is going to address that in one fashion or another,” said Terry Brechtel, director of the Alamo Regional Mobility Authority, a new entity formed by Bexar County to work with the state on innovative transportation funding.
The authority’s five-year strategic plan calls for a “starter system” of 22 miles of tolled lanes on U.S. Highway 281 North and Loop 1604, with a long-term goal of 50 miles. Wherever tolled lanes are built, free lanes would remain and in some areas will be increased, the plan states.
No tollbooths would be needed because officials are contemplating an electronic pass-card system. And while a Texas contractor has partnered with a Spanish firm in bidding to construct and operate Texas tollways, the local authority insists it will oversee tolled lanes. But getting started on them is essential, Brechtel added.
Though many residents resist tolls, “the state is pretty serious about tolled lanes plugging a gap that we have in our funding of transportation,” Brechtel said. Besides, motorists will “still have the choice of the non-tolled system versus the tolled lanes,” she said.
Responding to residents’ complaints that they never voted on a toll proposal, Brechtel pondered: “Can you imagine what the state’s transportation system would be like if we voted on every highway?”
Instead, residents are invited to another round of public hearings — the first were in 2001 — likely to begin in mid-March.
TxDOT area engineer Frank Holzmann said the state started the first segment because it could be a few years before the state awards bids for larger tollway projects.
“It’ll probably be late 2007, early 2008 before the CDA would go through, so we wanted to try to get this infrastructure in before that time,” Holzmann said.
Brechtel said the project delay gives proponents time to acquaint the public with the role tollways could have in solving the region’s “transportation challenge.”
Read Sal Costello’s, Texas Toll Party Founder, timely and well-stated Letter to the Editor as a response:
Dear Houston Chron Editor,
RE: Toll-road foes crank up intensity in San Antonio (1/28/06)
I enjoyed your article, but it missed one important element. The new tolls that shift our freeways to tollways are not like any other toll road that we’ve seen in this country.
Traditional toll roads have been brand new roads utilized as a means of raising money to pay for them. With traditional toll roads, investors pay to build it only after viability studies warrant the investment, and the toll revenue pays for the road. The public gets the important choice between driving the toll road or the public expressway.
In contrast, ‘Freeway Tolls’ permanently take the option of a free expressway away from us. Freeway tolls privatize and toll our public highways, are created using our tax dollars, and they come without viability studies. These tax booths will never be removed. The revenue is a slush fund that is NOT tied to the toll road people are driving on.
The Comptroller found that the new Regional Mobility Authorities (freeway tolling authorities) are unaccountable bureaucracies that set the toll rate for the roads we’ve already paid for. A double tax. The unelected board members of the first freeway tolling authority in Texas were found to give NO BID contracts to themselves and their friends: http://www.window.state.tx.us/specialrpt/ctrma05/
People for Efficient Transportation is not an anti-toll group, we are FOR traditional toll roads. But, we are AGAINST Gov. Perry’s freeway tolls that convert our public highways into tax collecting machines.
Sincerely,
Sal Costello
Founder of People for Efficient Transportation (TexasTollParty.com)
Austin, TX
Feel free to submit a clarification of your own to the Houston Chronicle.