Link to article here. Our highway department and Legislature has handed their authority over road safety and efficient travel to a FOREIGN COMPANY! Ric Williamson actually said the private companies will determine the where the roads go (not Texas citizens and communities), now these HOGS AT THE TROUGH will determine the speed limits, too. In the Governor’s counterfeit private toll moratorium bill, SB 792, the Legislature allowed the State to make money if they drive more traffic to a foreign-controlled tollway! The reason the non-compete agreement (mentioned below) doesn’t prohibit the planned expansion of I-35 is because they plan to TOLL IT, too! Therefore, it’s not a “competing” FREE alternative!

Slower I-35 part of deal on toll road
By Patrick Driscoll
Express-News
11/04/2007

A recent toll road contract that shoehorns market incentives into a government monopoly would reward the state for lowering speed limits on Interstate 35, effectively steering drivers to the toll road.

The privatization contract for Texas 130 from Austin to Seguin, cutting a parallel path east of I-35, was quietly signed in March amid a legislative furor over whether to freeze such agreements. It includes a controversial clause that penalizes the state for widening or building competing roads.

If a project over the next 50 years — with some exceptions — interferes with Texas 130 toll traffic, the Texas Department of Transportation would have to pay Cintra of Spain and Zachry Construction Corp. of San Antonio for their lost profits.

But the state can also get credit, though not payment, for driving traffic to the tollway, including by lowering posted speeds on I-35.

Not that TxDOT would do that, and certainly not for financial gain, spokeswoman Gaby Garcia said.

“We don’t expect to be reducing speed limits on I-35,” she said. “They are set by traffic engineering studies and not by economic gain.”

But toll critics say a gate is open to the manipulation of I-35 traffic to ensure toll profits, and they don’t trust TxDOT as the sentry.

“Our highways are being hijacked for private interests,” said Terri Hall of Texans United for Reform and Freedom. “Who’s going to rein in this agency? It just baffles me.”

To change a speed limit on a road, TxDOT usually follows a complex formula based on the fastest pace set by 85 percent of motorists. But conditions such as crash rates could warrant lower speeds.

Laws and policies can also lower speeds, for reasons such as conserving gas.

“Speed limits are not arbitrarily set,” Garcia said.

But just as a speed limit giveth, sometimes it taketh away.

If TxDOT raises the speed limit on I-35, it must pay Cintra-Zachry for any toll losses, according to a maze of requirements in the 192-page toll contract and its 476 pages of support documents.

Oddly, any improvements to the freeway are exempt from the competition clause. Also exempt are projects in existing 25-year plans.

The contract doesn’t stop there — it also covers speed limits for the 40 miles of Texas 130 that will run from Seguin to south of Austin, where it’ll hook up with another segment that now loops around the city.

Cintra-Zachry will pay TxDOT $25 million upfront if the limit is set at 70 mph but will fatten the offer to $92 million for 80 mph and $125 million for 85 mph, which state law allows. The agency could opt instead to take a growing bite of profits.

Under the privatization deal, TxDOT’s first, Cintra-Zachry will finance, build and operate the $1.3 billion tollway in the hope of eventually turning a profit.

Motorists in cars will pay about 15 cents a mile, with rate increases capped to the annual growth of state domestic product. There will be no tollbooths — collections will be done with electronic tags and cameras.

Cintra-Zachry recently began a process to buy the land, and it expects to start construction in a year or two and open the roadway in 2012. The state will handle property disputes.

Link to Chronicle article here.

Kudos to TURF supporter Jenny Hurley for speaking up and questioning why this meeting with our elected officials and the Chamber of Commerce was going to be SECRET (which is standard operating procedure for Perry and his highway department)! Once again, it’s BIG BUSINESS teaming up with BIG GOVERNMENT to STEAL our land and hard-earned money to benefit multi-national corporations.

Turning U.S. 59 into I-69: controversial project is in motion
By Zen Zheng
Houston Chronicle
November 01, 2007

A controversial state plan to turn U.S. 59 into Interstate 69, which would run from Laredo to Texarkana, is gaining momentum.
On Oct. 26, I attended a workshop at Sugar Land City Hall held by the I-69 Alliance featuring Texas Transportation Commissioners Ted Houghton and Ned Holmes.

The meeting gathered engineers and planners from Texas Department of Transportation, county judges, county commissioners, municipal officials, economic development council and chamber of commerce heads from communities along the proposed I-69 corridor, as well as a few local residents concerned about the project.

Houghton on Oct. 3 told me that the meeting was closed to the public without giving me an explanation. I decided to go anyway. And it turned out that I had a free pass that day. Jenny Hurley, an officer of the Fort Bend County Democratic Party, said she called the state after reading my article asking why the meeting would be closed to the public. One resident at the workshop also posed the question to Houghton. Houghton said:

I joked with Zen when I told him he couldn’t come.

Well, I need to begin cultivating my sense of humor.

Fort Bend County Commissioners Tom Stavinoha and Andy Meyers were among the local officials at the workshop. County Judge Bob Hebert sent his executive assistant D’Neal Krisch instead of making his personal presence.

Hebert on Oct. 3 said “we need the road” but later through Krisch clarified with me that he doesn’t have a formal stance on the issue or support the project. Krisch said the county chief welcomes the state effort in seeking local input on the project.

Houghton and Holmes urged local support to the project that they said would bring economic prosperity to the region through speedier cargo delivery to create more robust trade and thousands of new jobs along the route.

But the few residents at the meeting expressed skepticism and concerns about the impact on their quality of life with the creation of a gigantic network of highways, freight and high-speed commuter rails and infrastructure for water, electricity, oil and gas pipelines.

I-69 is part of the Trans-Texas Corridor plan that would eventually link Mexico with Canada through the U.S. heartland.

U.S. 59 is one of the two corridors picked by the state to form the I-69 network. The other corridor extends from Michigan and Illinois south through Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana and ends at the terminus of U.S. 77 and U.S. 281 in the Rio Grande Valley.

An environmental impact study for the project is being completed by the state before a series of town hall meetings and public hearings will be scheduled next year.

Houghton said his commission will form advisory committees to assist with the project’s planning and development. Each committee would have a maximum 24 members comprising the state transportation agency’s staff, local government leaders, port heads, economic development and chamber of commerce officials, and representatives of metropolitan planning organizations.

According to guidelines being considered, committees will be required to mobilize support from the community for the project and to sign agreements to not disclose confidential information furnished them.

Houghton said the goal is to begin I-69 construction within two to three years.

Link to article here.

Remember that this same law firm, Bracewell and Giuliani is the sole law firm representing the Spanish company Cintra who won the rights to build the Trans Texas Corridor. His firm also advised Cintra on the US 121 privatized toll road deal in the Dallas area that was later snatched from Cintra due to the controversy of gouging citizens with high tolls to drive on public highways and losing control of our public infrastructure to foreign companies.

Giuliani Still Working at Firm He Promised to Leave
By John Solomon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 30, 2007; A06
Ten months into his presidential bid, Rudolph W. Giuliani continues to work part time at the security consulting firm he promised to leave this past spring to focus on his pursuit of the Republican nomination.

Giuliani’s continuing involvement with a firm catering to corporate clients makes him unique among Republican contenders. It also complicates the task of separating his firm’s assets from his campaign spending.

Several of the firm’s employees do volunteer work for his campaign. And Giuliani did not decide until mid-June, six months after he entered the race, to bill his campaign for the cost of the security detail traveling with him on campaign trips; before then, the firm paid the expense.

Aides at Giuliani Partners in New York and with his campaign confirmed that he continues working part time at the firm. They declined to answer specific questions about the nature of his efforts, his compensation or the amount of time he spends there.

“Mayor Giuliani spends the majority of his time on the campaign,” Giuliani Partners spokeswoman Sunny Mindel said, declining to be more specific.

Federal election laws prohibit Giuliani’s firm from absorbing costs or providing services that legally should be covered by political donations, campaign experts said.

“This is a lawyer’s nightmare,” said Republican political consultant Scott Reed, who ran the 1996 presidential bid of then-Sen. Robert J. Dole (R-Kan.) but is not aligned with a presidential campaign in this race. “I don’t think the vulnerability is with voters on the level of his commitment to the race. The concern is really about FEC violations and whether anything this corporation does to help him essentially is making a contribution to run for president in the form of staff time, materials, travel billing or security.”

Giuliani’s aides said the firm and the campaign comply with all federal election rules and laws.

Giuliani formed the firm after he left the New York mayor’s office in 2002. He built upon the reputation he earned while helping the city recover from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to advise clients across the world on security issues.

The clients have included civic leaders in Mexico City, who sought Giuliani’s expertise on law enforcement strategies; companies that wanted to build a post-Sept. 11 security plan; and those that sought strategic advice on how to win business in the growing homeland security sector.

Giuliani’s firm has grossed more than $100 million since its formation. It has employed many of the same political insiders who worked around Giuliani during his mayoral years, such as former chief of staff Anthony V. Carbonetti, former fire chief Thomas Von Essen and former corporation counsel Michael D. Hess. It also includes former FBI executive Pasquale J. D’Amuro, a highly regarded terrorism expert.

Last year, Giuliani earned about $4.1 million from the firm, according to the presidential campaign financial disclosure report he filed in May.

Because the firm represents many security interests, some of which might have business before the federal government, Giuliani faced questions about his continuing employment there. He announced in April that he planned to leave the firm to concentrate entirely on the campaign.

“I’m largely out of it, and I’m pretty much going to be out of it at some point pretty soon,” he told reporters on April 4 while campaigning in South Carolina.

Six months later, he continues to do some work at the company.

Aides refused to discuss the exact nature of the work, but Hess, in an interview with The Washington Post earlier this year, provided some insight into Giuliani’s role in the firm since he became a candidate.

“When Rudy is here, he is hands-on,” Hess said in late April. “He does discuss all the different matters. When we get a client, sometimes they are people Rudy knows and sometimes others of us know or hear about them. Invariably, a new client will want to meet with Rudy, and this was frequent a while ago, and it has become less frequent as he is going around on his campaigning.”

Hess said Giuliani also tries to attend the firm’s strategic meetings when he is in New York, gatherings that resemble the early-morning staff meetings he held as mayor.

“Over the years since we’ve been here, we do have frequent meetings. They varied with the time Rudy has. Sometimes Rudy is in New York a lot, and sometimes he is here less,” Hess said. “They are reminiscent of staff meetings that we had in City Hall. He was somewhat famous for having the 8 a.m. meeting with about a dozen or 15 commissioners. Likewise, we have staff meetings here.”

During an interview in June with CNBC‘s Larry Kudlow, Giuliani said that he was spending no more than 10 percent of his time doing work for the firm while he was campaigning and that he planned to take a leave of absence.

“I would have thought during the general election, but it seems to me nowadays, with all these things moving up, probably sometime during the primaries,” Giuliani said about the timing of his leaving. “But right now I’d say I’m 95 percent campaigning, maybe 5 to 10 percent trying to settle up last-minute things.”

Giuliani has ended another of his more lucrative private ventures — giving paid speeches. The former mayor, popular on the motivational speaking tour, earned about $11 million in speech and book fees last year but stopped giving such speeches in February.

Giuliani falls in the middle of the presidential field when it comes to job commitments. Several candidates have full-time jobs as members of Congress, such as Democratic Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and Barack Obama (Ill.), GOP Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), and Republican Reps. Duncan Hunter (Calif.), Tom Tancredo (Colo.) and Ron Paul (Tex.).

But the two Republicans closest to Giuliani in the polls — former senator Fred D. Thompson (Tenn.) and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney — are multimillionaires who have no private-sector jobs.

Reed said if he were managing Giuliani, another multimillionaire, he would have advised the candidate to step aside from his firm as soon as the race started.

“I think it always is wise to close down all of these other efforts . . . so that, one, you give the campaign 100 percent, and two, you don’t give your political enemies possible ammunition,” he said.

One concern among ethics experts is that Giuliani’s continuing affiliation with the firm might create a public perception that clients with business that could be affected by a Giuliani presidency might hire the firm to curry favor.

The firm’s past clients had many connections to government. They include:

• Purdue Pharma, which resolved a lengthy Drug Enforcement Administration investigation into the security of its OxyContin painkiller with only a fine, with the Giuliani firm’s help.

• A confessed drug smuggler who hired Giuliani to help ensure that his company could do security consulting business with the federal government in the post-Sept. 11 period.

• The horse-racing industry, which hired Giuliani’s firm to review the security of its betting systems after a wagering scandal shook public confidence.

• BioOne, a company that can do biological cleanups, such as its cleaning of a Florida media building after the 2001 anthrax attacks.

• Energy giant Entergy, which hired Giuliani’s firm to help tighten its security.

In addition, Giuliani’s firm created a spinoff called Giuliani Capital Advisors, which advised companies on bankruptcies and expansion in the homeland security marketplace. Giuliani sold that arm of the firm earlier this year.

Research editor Alice Crites contributed to this report.

Link to article here. Considering China’s provocative military actions (militarizing space by demonstrating their ability to explode satellites, stalking our ships off the coast of Japan, stealing military secrets most recently by hacking Pentagon computers and trying to buy the company that makes the Pentagon’s software to protect it from hackers) and its aggressive push to make the U.S. dependent on its steady stream of cheap goods (hence the reason for the Trans Texas Corridor and NAFTA superhighways), it’s foolish and dangerous to allow the Communist Chinese to control our infrastructure, too! This also highlights the problem of countries (like Australia, U.S., and China) investing public pension funds in these controversial and risky infrastructure deals when gas prices have risen unabated since Katrina.

State funds and banks lead China’s hunt
By Richard McGregor in Beijing
Published: October 30 2007 22:03

Link to article here.

Data add to gloom on US economy
By Francesco Guerrera, Jonathan Birchall and Daniel Pimlott in New York
Published: October 30, 2007

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007

__________________________________________

Link to article here.AP
Dollar Hits New Lows on Economic Data
Tuesday October 30, 2007
By Tali Arbel, AP Business Writer

Dollar Sinks to 26-Year Low Vs. Pound, Record Low Against Euro As Economic Data Disappoints

NEW YORK (AP) — The dollar fell to a new record low against the euro and a 26-year low against the British pound Tuesday after lower-than-expected consumer confidence data was released and ahead of Wednesday’s Federal Reserve interest rate decision.The dollar slid against the euro throughout the afternoon, as the euro peaked at $1.4440, the latest in a string of all-time highs against the dollar, before settling at $1.4434. The euro had finished at $1.4424 in New York late Monday, the same day it hit its last record of $1.4438.

The pound rose to $2.0679 in late New York trading Tuesday — a level last seen in 1981, when Diana married Prince Charles and Margaret Thatcher was prime minister.

The British currency was powered by expectations that the Bank of England will keep its benchmark interest rate at 5.75 percent next week. The pound had finished at $2.0619 in New York late Monday.

The Canadian dollar hit a new 47-year high of $1.0510 Tuesday, according to Dow Jones’ Interbank foreign exchange rates, before settling at $1.0488, down from $1.0495 in late New York trading Monday. The U.S. dollar bought 95.35 Canadian cents.

The Canadian dollar is a commodity-backed currency, benefiting when prices of its exports rise. Canada is a major producer of oil, and crude prices have risen 35 percent since August, hitting a string of record highs.

The euro and the Canadian dollar have been climbing steadily against the dollar, regularly touching new highs since August amid fears over the health of the U.S. economy — worries stoked by the subprime credit crisis and disappointing economic reports — and rising oil prices.

Tuesday saw the release of more disheartening economic data, as the Conference Board reported that its Consumer Confidence Index fell to 95.6 — its lowest level since October 2005 — from a revised 99.5 in September. It is the index’s third consecutive monthly drop and signals consumers’ insecurities over the economy and their jobs.

Other critical economic reports scheduled for the rest of week include an advance report on gross domestic product and the releases of figures on third-quarter manufacturing activity and October employment.

Markets expect the U.S. Federal Reserve to cut its key interest rate from its current level of 4.75 percent Wednesday — adding to an unexpectedly bold half-point cut last month.

Although lower interest rates can jump-start an economy, they can weaken a currency as investors transfer funds to countries where their deposits and fixed-income investments bring higher returns. Higher rates can boost a currency.

“The weakening of the dollar today came after the consumer confidence numbers came in. The market’s focusing more on economic data and what its implications are for December rather than tomorrow’s rate cut,” said Bob Sinche, head of global foreign exchange strategy at Bank of America Corp., adding that investors have already priced in a 25-basis point cut for October, and the dollar probably would not react strongly to tomorrow’s rate cut announcement.

The decline of the dollar makes U.S. exports cheaper abroad, which could boost corporate earnings and may increase tourism at home. However, prices of foreign-made goods, such as French wine and Canadian maple syrup.

In other trading, the dollar rose slightly against the Japanese currency to 114.77 yen from 114.59 yen, but fell against the Swiss franc to 1.1600, from 1.1651 Swiss francs late Monday.