From politics (moderates who lean to the right) to Pogo (drools during poker stare) to rants (Whatcha expect from savvy, sassy sexagenarians?) to raves (Have you had your kudo today?) -- we never take ourselves too seriously.
We do, however, reserve the right to slaughter an occasional sacred cow. And in case we fail to mention it -- we will never forget....
In '007 they took a little trip Obama and Shill'ry down the mighty Mississip. They took a bit o' bacon and took a bait of beans And we caught the lyin' Moonbats in the town of New Orleans.
BO and Shrillary are leading a Democrat backwash to Naw'lins to save the city. Oh, yeah.
They're gonna plug the dikes with tax dollars, bullion the natural flow of the Mississippi, re-finance flood-plain homes, dump sand dollars to halt impeding Gulf erosion, and levy (levee?) enough funds to float sunken casinos.
And in their spare time -- they're gonna rebuild bridges, clean up crime on Canal Street, polish brass railings, replant thousand-year old cyprus trees, re-hang the moss, refurbish a Streetcar named Desire, replace flop houses with half-way houses, make cheap wine from stagnant water, exchange every bulldozer for a Cadillac, provide free housing to illegal immigrants in those empty hillside trailer parks, and offer subsidized vacation packages to tourists.
Oh yeah. Almost forgot.
And blame Bush for everything: from Luziannah government graft, to Category 5 hurricanes, to Katrina, to sending Col. Jackson to fight the British in 1814, for allowing the French to lay claim to the region in 1718.
** Such as those ever-caring congress-critters giving themselves NOT a raise, but an "automatic cost of living adjustment." After they raised minimum wages 70 cents, of course. The average annual income for congress-critters is now approx. $185,000. Not bad. Especially when most of their other expenses are classified as "perks."
** Older men (such as Herb) who forget that top steps on a ladder aren't.
** Folks who cheer when Bonds blasts another one outta the park. And I don't even watch baseball 'cept during the playoffs. And if the Yankees aren't playing, I don't even watch then. I just don't care for Barry Bonds. On or off steroids.
** Like NOT banning all products made in China until those screw-heads stop poisoning U.S. pets and children.
** Politics. Especially not participating in any more debates. BO has given himself a nice exit excuse: he's going back to "doing the job" he was elected to do .....
There oughta be a law that members of congress who run for a higher office should resign their seats. Let's see how many REALLY wanna put their annual "automatic cost of living adjustment" incomes on the line.
** Be-littling ole FRED! for wearing expensive shoes on a <ahem> non-political poli-stumpin' golf cart ride through the Iowa fairgrounds.
Shoes???
The way ole FRED! looks, he shoulda stayed home in his bedroom slippers. The man is sick, I tell ya. Sick.
And then Jeri dresses him in that polo shirt with his man-boobies bouncing in the hot sun. Not pretty. Sad, actually.
::::shaking head ::::: The man is too sick to be in this race.
** Such as allowing an illegal immigrant to leave her sanctuary to protest illegal immigration.
Why not arrest the woman as soon as she steps outside the hole she's been hiding in ..... Call it "Groundhag Day."
** Let the Chinese and Spanish North American Union financiers replace the MN bridge that collapsed .....
Why use taxpayers' money to replace a bridge on the designated SuperHighway route between Mexico and Canada?
** Will the GOP recruit Sandy "Burglar"Berger to steal docs from the "First Lady's Archives" that Shillary won't release from Bill's Internationally-funded Presidential Library? Whoever heard of a First Lady needing to "close" an archive -- must less having one, anyway??!!
Must be some powerful anti-Hillary info in those files .... Will the Swift Boat Vets jump ship and join an "Open-the-Archives-Truth Barge"?
** If Ron Paul were to withdraw from the race for the Presidency, would his supporters roll up their bed-sheet banners and (please) go home? Unlikely. They're a lot like a bad case of poison oak: the more you scratch, the more it spreads.
** The same can be said for Huckabuck and Brownpuck. Take down the tents, boys. The revival is moving to the next county. How about century?
** And what did Kathy Lee actually do to be criticized for leaving the Regis and Kathy Lee Show? Wasn't that what her critics wanted? She deserves to live her life in privacy (which she did when she left to care for a parent with Alzheimer's.) Why not include her in the reunion show? Heck --- bring her back and call it ANOTHER VIEW: Regis and Joy and Kelly and Kathy Lee.
Their multitude of fans can listen again to a whiney, wimpy, hen-pecked radio announcer vent about his wife and daughter while jousting with an intellectually inferior ex-soap opera diva (married to a hunk, btw) and his former songstress-partner who will once again entertain us with stories of the cutsie antics of her two children and a beloved (though once-wayward) hubbie who managed to advance from the football field to the broadcast booth without a trace of the ravages of steroids.
** I think it's wonderful that Carl Rove has resigned from public service. Or whatever you call his advisory role to the President. He deserves a break after almost single-handedly out-witting every dhimmocrat in congress for the last 8 years or so.
Can't wait to see who the libs will label as the next GOP fall-guy .... GWB is not up for reelection .... Tony Snow will leave soon .... I suggest they consider some totally ineffective Republican operative such as that idiot from SC .... what's his name? Graham. Lindsay. Ole Lindsay will be a much easier frog-marching target than, for example, Mitt Romney. I'm fairly confident that any bashing of Mitt will be done from a safe distance. One hapless media-mutt was enough to prove that cool and competent Mitt can swiftly become a Stormun' Mormon when confronted.
Mitt Romney continues to demonstrate his command of the issues. Observers credit his personal and professional credentials as well as his organizational prowess.
I've referred to him as the consummate candidate. MM's 2-part interview illustrates why.
Of course it's early in the campaign cycle, but let's get the naysayers out of the way before looking at Romney's success in the Iowa straw vote -- where he garnered nearly 32% of votes:
Romney "bought" the vote.
Rudy, McCain and ole [undeclared] Fred didn't campaign there.
It's early in the campaign.
Beginner's luck.
Straw votes mean nothing.
What do folks in Iowa know about what this country needs?
Look at who finished second and third and fourth ....
And oh yeah, he's Mormon ....
1. Campaigns have always cost money. Especially the campaign for the Presidency of the United States. Using one of ole Fred's quips: "If you can't run with the big dogs, stay on the porch."
Money PLUS organization (grassroots campaign organizers, chartering buses, and issues win campaigns. Romney had all three.
Note: Huckabee campaign officials deny directly funding bus transportation to Ames, but other groups supporting him did -- as did other "non-Romney" voter groups.
2. Not participating in Iowa may come back to haunt those who didn't campaign in this historic straw vote. Iowa voters were not impressed by the supposed "national" standings. The initial response is that none of the "front runners" wanted to waste their funds on a losing proposition (against Mitt) -- opting instead for "Iowa drive by's" while focusing on the New Hampshire straw vote.
Rudy is attempting a "post" campaign (he's in Ames TODAY and this week -- to "clarify" his message -- after the vote), realizing that his stance(s) on critical issues were too "liberal" for the heartland ...
Sen. John McCain didn't campaign in Iowa. He knew better than to rile up conservatives any more than he had already done with his immigration stance ... Yet he also will be in Iowa this week.
Even ole Fred -- who had neither the money, the organization nor sufficient time to decide to decide whether he was even running -- will visit Iowa this week. (Whether or not he'll be "campaigning" is up to interpretation. Maybe he has suddenly located a long-lost relative he wants to visit and will stop before his greeters to utter a few addages before riding off into the sunset on a leased tractor.)
Mitt Romney knew how critical the Iowa state straw vote would be in his candidacy.
3. Iowa is the first straw vote for the Presidency. Of course it's "early." That's why (before this year, of course), the results have ALWAYS been critical (i.e., relevant, important, significant, news-worthy, etc.) to the winner of the Republican nomination for President.
Team Romney knew this. So did the other candidates. So what changed?
One change of note: This year (as opposed to previous years when ANYONE who bought a ticket could vote), straw poll voters had to have proof of Iowa residency.
Another change of note: Team Romney literally canvassed the Iowa heartland with a campaign they will take nationwide. Which costs money. And especially organization. Which no other Republican candidate had or has. So rather than losing a critical (see above) straw vote -- they chose not to campaign.
The result: Iowa became a legitimate "straw" caucus focused on voting-issues and not the "straw" circus that Rudy's, John's, ole Fred's or even Ron Paul's minions wanted!
(Reference: note the number of out-of-state licensed vehicles that carried Ron Paul stickers, the voracity of his supporters and his low vote count .... )
4. Beginner's luck? This is politics. In politics, you "make" your own luck via an organization that garners resources around relevant issues which are succinctly and effectively communicated to the electorate. This is a political campaign. A campaign for the most prestigious office in the world. Regardless of the alibi for not participating -- if a candidate does not have the resources (fiscal and personnel AND a command of the issues which address the concerns of the electorate) -- you lose.
Mitt Romney, for those who haven't noticed, is neither a "beginner" nor simply "lucky." He is a consummate and experienced executive -- politically and organizationally. Check his corporate and political resume if you have questions about his credentials.
5. If "straw" votes mean nothing this year, why have they been so significant in the past? If they are no more relevant (as some bloggers suggest) than online polls or newspaper surveys -- why have state straw votes previously been described as an indicator of national (or even regional) voter preferences???
... maybe when and if you agree with the results, you're more likely to accept the "relevance" of the results?
6. What do Iowans know?
They know Mitt Romney.
Iowans have historically taken pride in being the first state to cast their straw votes as indicators of the front-runner(s) in the campaign for the presidency. By location, they are the heartland of our nation and represent the grassroots of America's philosophy, America's concerns and America's future.
They also know that candidates who failed to campaign -- for whatever reason (or those such as Brownback who use negative telephone and email tactics) -- failed to respect the historical relevance of the Iowa straw vote .... Showing up "after the fact" (such as Rudy is doing this week) will have little impact on the initial insult to their intelligence, either ....
7. Look at who finished second? Third? Fourth? etc.?
Someone had to finish second, third, fourth, etc. Consider regionalism (in lieu of "favorite son" status -- call it "favorite cousin" status), as an indicator of Huckabee's finish. Nothing wrong with the guy. He supposedly campaigned very little in Iowa. Didn't need to. The former Arkansas Governor didn't need to remind folks of his heritage or philosophy.
It also appears that Brownback's campaign of negative phone calls and emails had minimal effect against Romney or for his campaign.
The issue should be "look at who finished first!" A former conservative governor of one of the most liberal states in the nation won a straw poll in a moderate-to-highly conservative state located in the heartland of this nation!
8.And, oh, yeah -- he's Mormon ....
So?
A group of allegedly Evangelical Christians attempted to distract Iowa voters with this "reality" yesterday. Didn't work then. Won't work in November.
Nor did Brownback's negative run of phone calls and emails.
Americans recognize (in spite of detractors) that Mitt Romney is not a candidate for pastor-in-chief. He's a candidate for the President of the United States.
Iowa knows the difference. That's why they overwhelmingly chose Mitt Romney in their straw vote yesterday.
-- Convincingly, too. Attracting 31.5 percent of 14,000 eligible voters.
Naysayers are pointing out that 20,000+ voted in the last straw vote -- suggesting that had Rudy, McCain or ole Fred actively campaigned, the turn-out would have been greater.
Maybe. Maybe not.
This year, voters were required to provide Iowa ID to cast a vote.
Which may be one reason Fred, Rudy and John -- i.e., the other front "leaders" stayed home and why Ron Paul failed to challenge anyone except the no-shows.
Congratulations to Team Mitt. His "investments" in Iowa will go far beyond the state's borders. Hopefully, the Iowa grassroots organization will take him all the way to the White House.
From Dubai Ports to Spanish Toll Roads -- More than a Leap of Truth?
Pro-NAU folks suggest that opponents of NAFTA are loonies, isolationists, Buckley-ites, paranoids -- whatever fits to distract attention from the REAL issues at hand.
Proponents may deny correlations among "integrated immigration," the Texas Superhighway, the SSP, the I-35 corridor, Canada-Mexico-US catastrophic planning, free trade, Mexican truckers on US highways, highway funding and toll roads in Texas, eminent domain issues, the availability of private and international funds -- but they can't deny the presence of the North American Union plan or the role(s) of "legitimate" entities such as the Council on Foreign Affairs to determine America's future by hidden agenda ....
Here is a comprehensive and critical (i.e., important) report. Please read it before it's too late to stop those "correlations" that will weaken American sovereignty and open our heart-land to international investors.
We MUST have congressional oversight AND public hearings. It's time that our leaders STOP the clandestine, backroom deals being waged by appointed corporate moguls to undermine the security and future of this nation.
(1) When completed, the highway will run from Mexico City to Toronto, slicing through the heartland like a dagger sunk into a heifer at the loins and pulled clean to the throat. It will be four football fields wide, an expansive gully of concrete, noise and exhaust, swelled with cars, trucks, trains and pipelines carrying water, wires and God knows what else. Through towns large and small it will run, plowing under family farms, subdevelopments, acres of wilderness. Equipped with high-tech electronic customs monitors, freight from China, offloaded into nonunionized Mexican ports, will travel north, crossing the border with nary a speed bump, bound for Kansas City, where the cheap goods manufactured in booming Far East factories will embark on the final leg of their journey into the nation's Wal-Marts.
And this NAFTA Superhighway, as it is called, is just the beginning, the first stage of a long, silent coup aimed at supplanting the sovereign United States with a multinational North American Union.
Even as this plot unfolds in slow motion, the mainstream media are silent; politicians are in denial. Yet word is getting out .....
"Construction of the NAFTA highway from Laredo, Texas to Canada is now underway," read a letter in the February 13 San Gabriel Valley Tribune. "Spain will own most of the toll roads that connect to the superhighway. Mexico will own and operate the Kansas City Smart Port. And NAFTA tribunal, not the U.S. Supreme Court, will have the final word in trade disputes. Will the last person please take down the flag?" There are many more where that came from. "The superhighway has the potential to cripple the West Coast economy, as well as posing an enormous security breach at our border," read a letter from the January 7 San Francisco Chronicle. "So far, there has been no public participation or debate on this important issue. Public participation and debate must begin now."
Federal and state officials, however, say the Superhigway compenent of the NAU concept is a myth.
Unless, of course, you piece together the announcements made by participants in the planning:
Take, for instance, North America's SuperCorridor Organization (NASCO), a trinational coalition of businesses and state and local transportation agencies that, in its own words, focuses "on maximizing the efficiency of our existing transportation infrastructure to support international trade." Headquartered in borrowed office space in a Dallas law firm, the organization, which has a full-time staff of three, advocates for increased public expenditure along the main north-south Interstate routes, including new high-tech freight-tracking technology and expedited border crossings. It has had some success, landing federal money to pilot cargo management technologies and winning praise from the Bush Administration. Speaking at a NASCO conference in Texas in 2004, then-Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta congratulated the organization for its efforts. "The people in this room have vision," Mineta said. "Thinking ahead, thinking long term, you began to make aggressive plans to develop...this vital artery in our national transportation system through which so much of the NAFTA traffic flows. It flows across our nation's busiest southern border crossing in Laredo; over North America's busiest commercial crossing, the Ambassador Bridge in Detroit; and through Duluth and Pembina, North Dakota, and all the places in between."
A few years ago NASCO put on its home page a map of the United States that more or less traced the flow that Mineta describes: Drawn in bright blue, the trade route begins in Monterrey, Mexico, runs up I-35 and branches out after Kansas City, along I-29 toward Winnipeg and I-94 toward Detroit and Toronto. The colorful, cartoonlike image seemed to show right out in the open just where NASCO and its confederates planned to build the NAFTA Superhighway. It began zipping around the Internet.
The organization soon found itself besieged with angry phone calls and letters. "I think the rumor going around was that this map was a blueprint and it was drawn to scale," says NASCO executive director Tiffany Melvin. (Given the size of the route markings, that would have heralded highways fifty miles wide.) Ever since the map went live, NASCO has spent a considerable amount of time attempting to refute charges like those made by right-wing nationalist Jerome Corsi, whose recent book The Late Great USA devotes several pages to excoriating NASCO for being part of the vanguard of the highway and the coming North American Union.
No such plan(s) exist, say the NASCO spokespersons ....
(2) Another star in the constellation of North American Union conspiracies is the Mexican deep-water port of Lázaro Cárdenas. Located on the Pacific coast of the state of Michoacan, the port is undergoing a bonanza of investment and upgrades. According to a 2005 article in Latin Trade, the port is adding a terminal that could provide enough capacity to process nearly all of the cargo that comes into Mexico, making it "the logical trade route connecting the United States and Asia," in the words of the Mexican officials overseeing its overhaul. Since it's the only Mexican port deep enough to handle Super Panamax container ships from China--the most efficient means of shipping products across the Pacific--it's an attractive alternative to the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, which are unionized and increasingly congested. (More than 80 percent of Asian imports come in through these two ports.)
Of course, if cargo switches from Los Angeles to Lázaro Cárdenas, more and more manufactured goods will have to travel through Mexico to reach their US destination, and there will be a significant uptick in the northbound overland traffic. The Kansas City Southern Railroad company is already betting on that eventuality, spending millions of dollars to purchase the rail routes that run from the port up to Kansas City. At the same time, a business improvement group called Kansas City SmartPort, whose members include the local chamber of commerce, is pushing for Kansas City, which is already a transportation hub, to transform itself fully into a "smart port," a kind of intermodal transportation and cargo center. The group recently advocated a pilot program that would place a Mexican customs official in Kansas City to inspect Mexico-bound freight, relieving bottlenecks at the border. The notion of a Mexican customs official on American soil fired the imaginations of those already disposed to see a North American Union on the horizon, and SmartPort staff have been fending off angry inquiries ever since.
But spokespersons say that no such plan(s) exist ....
So how about the "potential" for such plans to exist?
Though the story of the highway has been seeded and watered in the fertile soil of the nationalist right wing--promoted by Birchers and Corsi, co-author of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth's book about John Kerry--it also stretches across ideological and partisan lines.
Like immigration and the Dubai ports deal, it divides the Republican coalition against itself, pitting the capitalists against the nationalists. And more than a few on the center-left have voiced criticisms as well:
Teamsters president James Hoffa wrote in a column last year that "Bush is quietly moving forward with plans...for what's known as a NAFTA superhighway--a combination of existing and new roads that would create a north-south corridor from Mexico to Canada.... It would allow global conglomerates to capitalize by exploiting cheap labor and nonexistent work rules and avoiding potential security enhancements at U.S. ports."
Democratic Congresswoman Nancy Boyda, from eastern Kansas, invoked its specter early and often in her improbably successful 2006 campaign against Republican incumbent Jim Ryun. A campaign circular inserted in local newspapers warned that "if built, this 'Super Corridor' would be a quarter-mile wide and longer than the Great Wall of China." Boyda told me that her attacks on the highway "hit a real nerve because enough people had the same concerns."
These concerns are most vocal in the state of Texas, where plans for the "Trans-Texas Corridor" have already begun:
Add up all the above ingredients--NASCO, SPP, Lázaro Cárdenas, the Kansas City SmartPort, the planned pilot program allowing Mexican truckers to drive on US roads--and you still don't have a superhighway four football fields wide connecting the entire continent.
Which is why understanding the persistence of the NAFTA highway legend requires spending some time in Texas, where Governor Rick Perry and his longtime consigliere, Texas Department of Transportation commissioner Ric Williamson, are proposing the $185 billion Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC), 4,000 miles of highway, rail and freight corridors, the first of which would run up from the border through the heavily populated eastern part of the state. Plans for the TTC call for it to be up to four football fields wide at points, paving over as much as half a million acres of Texas countryside. The first section will be built and operated by a foreign enterprise, and when completed it would likely be the largest privatized toll road in the country.
And unlike the NAFTA highway, the Trans-Texas Corridor is very, very real.
In 2003, amid a dramatic drawn-out battle over a legally questionable GOP redistricting plan, the Texas state legislature passed House Bill 3588. At 311 pages, it's unlikely that many of those who voted for the bill had actually read it (and many have come to regret their vote), but it received not a single opposing vote.
The bill granted the Texas Transportation Commission wide latitude to pursue a long-term plan to build a series of corridors throughout the state that would carry passenger and commercial traffic and contain extra right-of-way for rail, pipelines and electric wires.
So how does this relate to the Superhighway to run from Mexico to Canada?
Following the reactions of Texans who opposed the planned "toll" road and the summation by State Democrat Representative David McQuade Leibowitz:
What first triggered opposition was that under the plan, the new TTC roads would have tolls, something relatively novel in Texas. The state's Department of Transportation--known as TxDot--pointed out that the state's gasoline tax, which pays for road construction and maintenance, hadn't been raised since 1991, while population and commercial traffic were growing at a dizzying pace. Tolls, the governor and his allies argued, were the only solution. (Many TTC opponents propose raising the gasoline tax and indexing it to inflation.)
But opposition quickly spread, from those in metro areas concerned about the cost of their daily commute to ranchers angry that their land might fall under the TTC hatchet. According to Chris Steinbach, chief of staff for rural Brenham's Republican State Representative Lois Kolkhorst, when people in the district heard about the plan they responded by asking, "'Why would you want to do that?' It was a real front porch, rocking chair kind of question."
Meanwhile David and Linda Stall, a Republican couple from Fayetteville, Texas, began actively organizing opposition to the proposal. As early as 2004, they started bringing friends out to local TxDot hearings and launched the website Corridor Watch. By the time the 2006 gubernatorial election rolled around, a wild four-way race with incumbent Rick Perry pitted against three challengers, the TTC had become one of the most controversial issues of the campaign. Perry was re-elected with 39 percent of the vote, but with all three of his opponents campaigning passionately against the TTC, it was hardly a popular endorsement of the plan.
What was once scattered resistance is now a full-fledged rebellion. The Stalls have pushed through a plank in the state's GOP platform opposing the corridor, which means the governor is now at odds with the official position of his own party. In March thousands of Texans from across the state attended an anti-TTC rally on the Capitol steps, and liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans came together to co-sponsor a moratorium on the plan. It passed the House and Senate, only to be vetoed by Governor Perry. (A considerably weaker version was ultimately signed into law.)
Perry's continued support of the TTC in the face of mounting opposition is more than just a political liability; it's begun to resemble Bush's Iraq policy in its obstinate indifference to public opinion. This, along with the fact that the federal government sent a letter to the state warning it not to pass a moratorium on the project, has fueled conspiracy speculations about what the real goal of the TTC is. Kelly Taylor, a John Birch Society member and Austin-based freelance contributor to its magazine, has been working hard to connect the dots between the TTC and the NAFTA Superhighway. "It first surfaced because it was a local toll issue," she told me over coffee. "That, in and of itself, was alarming enough--all the corrupt politics that happened to make it come about. Then we thought, Wait a minute, something's not right here, this is bigger than just a local toll issue."
Taylor may represent a certain fringe of the anti-TTC efforts (her name prompted some eye-rolling among other activists), but there's a whole lot of cross-pollination between local concerns about the TTC and the growing North American Union mythology. When I asked David McQuade Leibowitz, a Democratic State Representative from San Antonio, why the governor was so determined to build the TTC, he put his boots up on his desk, leaned back in his chair and said, "I think Texas is the first link in the highway to run from South America to Canada. One nation under God. We see bits and pieces of it. We don't see it all. It makes us cringe and sick to our stomachs."
A plan that makes some Texans sick to their stomachs drives others "nuts" for it's simplicity. Meet the Texas Governor's man with the plan:
Texas Transportation commissioner Ric Williamson is one of those Texas personalities who seem almost self-consciously to will themselves toward caricature. One Democratic staffer in the Capitol casually referred to him as Darth Vader; Texas Monthly recently called him "the most hated person in Texas." Owner of a natural gas production company before becoming a state legislator in 1985, he has lately been reincarnated as a transit policy wonk, a role he plays as a cross between mid-twentieth-century road builder Robert Moses and J.R. Ewing from Dallas: the planner as good old boy. He does not suffer from a lack of confidence. "We're the greatest state agency you'll ever interview," he told me at one point. With his good friend Governor Perry hemorrhaging political capital, it's fallen to Williamson to advocate for the corridor and draw fire from its opponents.
At first the press contact for TxDot told me Williamson wouldn't be available, but after I informed her I'd lined up dozens of interviews with TTC opponents, she called me back a week before my trip to Texas for this article to set up an interview. When I was ushered into Williamson's office, he was in the midst of a discussion with one of the four staffers who flanked him. At my appearance in the doorway, he made no move to acknowledge my presence other than slightly pulling out the chair next to him, where, apparently, I was to sit.
Williamson's case is straightforward: The state needs a whole lot of new roads it can't pay for. The sheer population growth in Texas, particularly in the urbanized area in the eastern part of the state that contains San Antonio, Dallas, Houston and Austin, combined with the projected increase in commercial traffic, has precipitated what Williamson says is an impending crisis. The TTC would provide the necessary increase in capacity at the low, low price the state can afford. "Our view is, you can run from the corridor if you want to," he told me, smiling, "but that's eventually what we'll build. Because that's where the fricking people live!" At that he shot up to walk over to a map of the state hanging on one wall, patting my shoulder with paternal authority as he passed. "It's so logical to me it drives me nuts."
At this point, the author of this investigative inquiry delves into the rationale for inviting foreign investors --
He's [Williamson] right about the challenges the state faces, but it's a long jump from the diagnosis to the cure. Opponents of the plan point out that, as conceived, the corridor will run parallel to the existing Interstate, possibly far from the same cities where it's supposed to relieve congestion. (TxDot says state law will require the roads to connect to Interstates, which connect to cities.) On top of that, the current plan employs a novel privatized financing mechanism that has many crying foul.
Under a comprehensive development agreement (CDA) signed in March 2005, the Spanish concern Cintra (in partnership with Texas-based Zachry Corp.) will pay the state for the right to develop the roads along the corridor, where it will be able to collect tolls and establish facilities within the right-of-way for fifty years. This kind of road-building deal is commonplace in other parts of the world, often in places where government lacks the ready capital necessary to develop large infrastructure projects. It's called a BOT, for build, operate, transfer. Until recently it was unheard of in the United States.
The arrangement has been heavily criticized for a number of reasons.
The CDA includes a noncompete clause that could conceivably prevent the state from building necessary roads in the future because they would "compete" with a stretch of the privatized TTC. It's also expensive. A recent state auditor's report estimated the cost for just the first section of the corridor at $105 billion. TxDot portrays the deal as a clever way of getting the private sector to pay for public roads, but eventually the total cost of the project, plus a layer of profit for Cintra-Zachry, will be coming out of the pockets of Texas drivers. Finally, the timeline for development of the project, which will be constructed piecemeal, is based on which sections of the corridor Cintra has identified as "self-performing," according to Williamson--in other words, those sections that contain a high enough volume of toll-paying passengers that they will turn a profit.
Williamson argues that the state simply has no choice. Or, as he put it to one reporter, "If you aggressively invite the private sector to be your partner, you can't tell them where to build the road." But this seems, to put it mildly, pretty ass-backward. The point of transportation planning is to provide the infrastructure for people to move efficiently, safely and quickly from point A to point B, not to maximize the profits of some conglomerate that managed to win a state contract. You wouldn't want to place, say, fire stations across a city using the same logic that guides the placement of Starbucks. But that's more or less the way the TTC is unfolding.
"I always think of the corridor as a payday loan," said Kolkhorst's chief of staff Chris Steinbach. "You're going to get a little money up front, but you're losing the long-term gain you're charged by the people to oversee." As he said this I noticed his computer's screensaver, which featured an image of the Texas Capitol dome with a bright red banner Photoshopped in that read Everything Must Go!
Williamson, however, has many detractors who object to his plan. And they are standing their ground -- literally and figuratively.
In my conversations with people in Texas, it seemed that the privatized nature of the road was what got folks the angriest. Bad enough that drivers would face tolls, that ranchers would have their land cut out from under them, but all for the financial gain of a foreign company? "If you liked the Dubai ports deal, you'll love my TTC land grab," taunts an animated Rick Perry on one anti-TTC website. The cartoon goes on to portray Cintra as conquistadors clad in armor riding in to steal Texans' treasure.
"What really drives this is economic," activist Terri Hall told me. "It's about the money. We're talking about obscene levels of profit, someone literally being like the robber barons of old. And this is one thing that government actually does well, build and maintain roads."
Hall is an unlikely defender of the public sphere. A conservative Republican and an evangelical Christian who home-schools her six children, she first got interested in road policy when TxDot announced plans to toll the road near her house, which runs into San Antonio. Outraged, she brought it up with her local State Rep, and when that didn't work, she began organizing. She founded the San Antonio Toll Party (like the Boston Tea Party, she notes) by pamphleting at intersections and calling friends. "It's really like the old days, during the American Revolution...just fellow citizens trying together to effect change."
Hall soon became part of the broader anti-TTC effort, and though she originally thought she was just fighting a corrupt local government, she's come to view her battle in a much broader context. "There are big-time control issues," she said. "Someone is really jockeying around to control some things here in America. It explains the open borders, it explains our immigration issues, it explains our free-trade issues, what it's doing to the middle class.
"It really all started with NAFTA," she continued. "There've been people like Robert Pastor and the Council on Foreign Relations. All these secretive groups." She laughed nervously and apologetically. "It sounds like a conspiracy. But I do know there are people who have tried for a long time to go to this global governance. They see there's a way to make it all happen by going to the heads of state and doing it in a secretive way so they can do it without a nasty little thing called accountability. So they won't have to listen to what We the People want."
Hall had arranged to meet me in the San Antonio exurbs, in a home design center that doubled as a cafe. Outside, a thunderstorm lashed the windows with rain. As she spoke, her newborn son propped next to her swaddled and napping, it occurred to me that she was living the twenty-first-century version of the American dream. She and her husband had moved to Texas from California in pursuit of cheap housing, open space and a place to raise their family. Their web-design business was successful; their children healthy. Why, I found myself thinking, was she so upset about a road?
Ric Williamson must often ask himself the same thing. Just as the White House was blindsided by the opposition to the Dubai ports deal, just as NASCO was shocked to find that a simple schematic map attracted angry phone calls, just as the Commerce Department was shocked to find a simple bureaucratic dialogue the subject of outrage, so too have Perry and Williamson seemed ambushed by the zealous opposition of people like Hall.
But what people like Williamson don't seem to understand is how disempowered people feel in the face of a neoliberal order whose direction they cannot influence. For corporatists within both parties (Williamson, it should be noted, was a Democrat while in the Statehouse), selling port security or road concessions to a multinational is inevitable, logical, obvious. To thousands of average citizens in Texas and elsewhere, it's madness or, worse, treason. Both the actual TTC and the mythical NAFTA Superhighway represent a certain kind of future for America, one in which the crony capitalism of oil-rich Texas expands to fill every last crevice of the public sector's role, eclipsing the relevance of the national government as both the provider of public goods and the unified embodiment of a sovereign people.
For Williamson, this is progress; for Hall, it's an outrage and a tragedy. "We have so little control over our own government," she told me, the alienation audible in her voice, thunder punishing the air outside. "We are really the last beacon of freedom in the world--the land of the free and home of the brave--and we're letting it slip away from under our noses."
Whoopie cushions used to be the rage amongst pubescent boys. Older males fancy strippers. Cake is good. With or without gyrating dancers. As are gifts. Even gag gifts. In some circles, bringing your own pipe and getting bombed might be acceptable, but pipe bombs?
Ut uh.
And especially if the pipe bombs are in the trunk of a speeding car which is driven by two South Florida University students of Middle Eastern heritage. Even if they claim to have gotten "lost" (with one of those GPS thingies and a laptop computer in the car) miles and miles off their route to North Carolina (Fontana Dam, by any chance?) -- to find themselves speeding past a gas station eight miles from a South Carolina Naval base while supposedly looking for a gas station. With pipe bombs (fireworks?) in the trunk.
Ut uh.
Their attorneys said they were "scared young men."
They damn well better be.
And if they somehow weasel out of this mess, the rest of us should be as well.
Read it for yourself. Just don't try draw any correlation with the "praying imans" airport incident. That would be too simple.
Republicans had dominated politics ever since the Civil War. A Republican had been in the White House for 44 of the previous 52 years. They were the party of civil rights and, under the presidency of Teddy Roosevelt, the Republican Party became the party of environmental conservation, antitrust laws, and consumer protection.
Teddy Roosevelt was one of the most popular presidents in history, the youngest too. He was 42 when he took office. He was the first president to ride in an automobile and in an airplane, and the first to visit a foreign country while in office. He was a naturalist. He was an author of history. He published almost 50 books (books by this author).
After he'd served two terms, he announced that he would not seek a third term. He handpicked his successor, William Howard Taft, and then went off on an African safari. But when he got back, Teddy Roosevelt found that Taft had moved away from progressive principles and aligned himself with the conservative wing of the Republican Party.
Teddy Roosevelt ran against Taft in the primaries, won the primary in Taft's home state of Ohio, but eventually it was party insiders who picked the nominee, and they gave it to Taft. And so Roosevelt called for the creation of a new progressive party and accepted its nomination on this day in 1912. It was nicknamed the Bull Moose Party because Roosevelt said, "I am as strong as a bull moose, and you can use me to the limit."
He was in a three-way race with Taft and Woodrow Wilson, campaigning on a platform that called for income taxes, inheritance taxes, the eight-hour workday, and voting rights for women. He drew huge crowds wherever he went. In Milwaukee, October 14, 1912, on the way to give his speech, he was shot by a man six feet away, the bullet deflected by the speech in his pocket, along with a metal eyeglasses case. Roosevelt went on to give the speech, but Woodrow Wilson won the election. Despite Roosevelt making the best showing of any third party candidate in American history. He came in second.
And one of the results of his Progressive Party campaign was splitting the Republican Party between conservatives and progressives, and the progressives have never been in charge since.
I'm not sure this is totally accurate on all accounts, but Garrison Keillor sure knows how to tell a story ....
I thought of N. not long ago -- reminiscing about the times we had snow sledding (especially when D hit that conduit and broke three ribs. He never believed that we honestly thought his gasps for air were from laughter) and those fun-filled Saturday nights at The Cave where we danced until they told us they were closing .... I should have called her every time I remembered those times, to tell her and D how much those memories and times we spent with M&B meant to me ... She died in an accident this morning -- enroute to do those things she had always done: serving others. She and D loved all children and literally spent their life working with youth while raising their own .... I especially remember the twinkle in her eye and the nudge she would give D when he (often) blushed -- at a comment or a joke. She was a good person. A caring soul. A teacher who taught well beyond the last bell. She was one of my best friends in a time when mortality was not an issue. We lost contact for a few years .... Today, my loss is compounded. I don't think I ever told her (or D) how much I appreciated them. Enjoyed the times we shared. That I cared for them.
Rest in peace, dear friend. Rest in peace with the memory that you were loved by everyone whom you touched.
