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Constitution & Law
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Constitution & Law Articles
Title: NAFTA Superhighway Ready To
Roll
Source: Worldnetdaily
URL Source:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?
ARTICLE_ID=56304
Published: Jun 22, 2007
Author: Jerome Corsi
Post Date: 2007-06-24 19:14:39 by wudidiz
Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, has vetoed a series
of bills passed by the Texas Legislature, clearing the way
for the
Texas Department of Transportation to begin
construction on the four-football-fields-wide new
Trans-Texas Corridor along
Interstate 35 (TTC-35) from the
Mexican border at Laredo north to the Oklahoma border south
of Oklahoma City.
On Friday, June 15, Perry vetoed an eminent-domain reform
bill passed by the Legislature. Provisions in the bill would
have
made prohibitively expensive the acquisition of the
thousands of acres of private land needed to construct the
Trans-Texas
corridor.
In vetoing the bill, Perry's office issued a press
release claiming House Bill No. 2006 "would vastly expand
the cost to Texas
taxpayers of public projects to the point
where they grossly outweigh the bill's benefits."
Steven Anderson, director of the Institute for Justice's
Castle Coalition, objected.
"With this veto, Governor Perry has left every home,
farm, ranch and small-business owner vulnerable to the abuse
of eminent
domain," Anderson said in a press release.
Anderson's organization is a national grass-roots
advocacy group that works to block private-to-private
transfers of property
using eminent domain.
A month earlier, on May 18, Perry vetoed House Bill No.
1892, a measure that would have imposed a two-year
moratorium on
beginning construction on the Trans-Texas
Corridor parallel to Interstate 35.
In that veto message, Perry claimed the bill "jeopardizes
billions of dollars of infrastructure investment and invites
a potentially
significant reduction in federal
transportation funding."
As WND previously reported, these measures were approved
overwhelmingly by the Texas Legislature, with HB 1892
passing
the Texas House by a 137-2 margin. HB 2006 passed
with 125 of the 150 votes in the House and unanimously in
the Senate.
When HB 2006 cleared the Texas Legislature, the Federal
Highway Administration Chief Counsel James D. Ray wrote a
letter
to the Texas Department of Transportation, or TxDOT,
threatening to hold federal highway funds from the state if
Perry signed
the bill into law.
Perry's veto message strongly suggests the FHWA's threat
was heard loud and clear in Austin.
On learning that Perry had vetoed the eminent-domain
legislation, Corridor Watch, a public advocacy group that
opposes the
TTC project, responded immediately.
Corridor Watch posted on its website: "It sure didn't
take TxDOT long to shake off the legislative session and
resume their
headlong rush to use every available loophole,
exception and remaining authority to build toll roads and
grant toll road
concessions just as fast as possible."
http://www.corridorwatch.org/ttc/index.htm
Corridor Watch also noted that in the 49 bills Perry
vetoed June 15 were measures that would have required TxDOT
to consider
using existing highway routes for future TTC
routes and a bill that called on the Texas attorney general
to study the impact of
international agreements on Texas.
To ward off the possibility the Texas Legislature would
fight back, Perry threatened to call a "Special Session" to
resolve
transportation issues should members vote to
override his veto on HB 1892, the moratorium issue.
The 80th Texas Legislature wrapped up its 140-day session
May 29, immediately after Memorial Day.
Now, sponsors would have to reintroduce these bills in
the next legislative session and start all over again. The
Texas
Legislature only meets every other year, unless the
governor calls a special session for a specific agenda.
According to Bloomberg.com, the last time the Texas
Legislature overrode a governor's veto was more than a
quarter of a
century ago, in 1979.
As WND has previously reported, the $180 billion needed
to build the 4,000-mile TTC network planned for construction
over
the next 50 years will be financed by Cintra
Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte, S.A., a
foreign investment
consortium based in Spain. Cintra will
own the leasing and operating rights on TTC highways for 50
years after their
completion is complete.
WND has also reported Perry has received substantial
campaign contributions from Cintra and Zachry Construction
Company,
the San Antonio-based construction firm selected by TxDOT to build out the TTC.
WND has established that Cintra is represented in the
United States by Bracewell and Giuliani, Republican Party
presidential
candidate Rudy Giuliani's Houston-based law
firm.
Even though TTC superhighways will be built by a private
investment consortium from Spain, Texas conveniently can
make use
of the recent Supreme Court case Kelo v. City of
New London, 545 U.S. 469 (2005).
In this case, the Supreme Court decided that eminent
domain could be used to seize private property from U.S.
citizens even
though the purpose of the land seizure was to
benefit a private corporation. The Supreme Court case said
nothing that would
imply the private corporation involved
would have to be a U.S. firm.
In a question-answer format on the TTC website, a "myth
vs. reality" answer explains how TxDOT plans to use what is
known
in Texas as "quick-take" eminent domain authority.
The site explains that a Texas state law (passed as HB
3588) allows a quick-take seizure of private property "if
TxDOT and
the property owner cannot reach an agreement" on
just compensation for the land involved.
Under this law, TxDOT can seize a property on the 91st
day after the landowner is served with an official notice of
quick-take,
regardless how vociferously the landowner
protests.
WND has reported TxDOT is moving moving to apply its
four-football-fields-wide NAFTA superhighway plan of
building new
train-truck-car-pipeline corridors to the
states of Oklahoma and Colorado in a design that stretches
from the Mexican border
at Laredo, Texas, to Denver, Colo.
WND has also documented that NASCO (North America's
SuperCorridor Coalition, Inc.), a Dallas-based trade
association
supporting the development of Interstate
Highways 35, 29 and 94 as international trade corridors, has
the state of Oklahoma,
the Minnesota Department of
Transportation and TxDOT as members.
The Federal Highway Administration has designated the
Ports-to-Plains Corridor as a "High Priority Corridor" on
the National
Highway System.
WND repeatedly has reported the Federal Highway
Administration is promoting public-private partnership
projects to bring
private capital to expanding superhighway
projects, consistent with extending the TTC network north
into Oklahoma and
Colorado.
The Federal Highway Administration has constructed a
section of its government website dedicated to explaining to
the states
and the highway construction industry how laws
and investment banking structures with foreign capital
investors can be designed
to work along the public-private
partnership model.
WND has documented that a major purpose of the TTC
projects is to connect U.S. roads with Mexican ports on the
Pacific,
such as Lazaro Cardenas.
Mexican ports are being increasingly used as an
alternative to West Coast ports such as Los Angeles and Long
Beach as a
cheaper, non-union alternative for the import of
millions of containers from China.
WND has reported the Department of Transportation plans
to start a Mexican truck demonstration project as early as
Aug. 15,
despite continuing objections from Congress.
Click for Full Text!
Bracewell & Giuliani, the ‘guiding’ law firm
on the privatization of Texas State Highway
121
By Jerry Mazza
Online Journal Associate Editor
Jun 8, 2007, 00:32
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What, you didn’t know a
candidate for the Republican presidential
nomination is a partner in the Dallas law firm,
Bracewell
& Giuliani? It’s among the nation’s
largest, with 400 attorneys and nine offices
worldwide. And now
B&G is exclusively representing the Spanish
company Cintra through the privatization of Texas
State
Highway 121. Anybody want to call
Congress and let them know? It’s right here in the
linked March 26 Dallas
Business Journal.
Yup, Rudy’s at it again,
milking the old cash cow, the 9/11 sheriff routine
to those sympathetic (rich and wannabe richer)
Texans. The client, Cintra, has signed an
agreement with the Texas Department of
Transportation to finish the State
Highway 121 toll road by 2011, a quarter century
faster than possible through traditional sources
(i.e. American workers),
according to the Texas Department of
Transportation (TxDOT). What you should also know
is that the toll road is part of
the NAFTA Superhighway and construction of the
Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC).
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Independent
Journalist Cliff Kincaid nails it in his
article
Giuliani Linked To “NAFTA Superhighway”:
“Evidence s
hows that NAFTA, the North American Free
Trade Agreement involving the U.S.,
Canada and Mexico, is being expanded
without congressional approval or
oversight as part of a plan to create an
economic and political entity known as
the North
American Union.” This is “the project
that has people in Texas and around the
nation up in arms.”
Kincaid quotes
freelance writer Dianne M. Grassi, who
originally
broke the story of Rudy’s law firm on
the TTC
toll-road project. She
comments, “Most interesting to the whole
story is not only has Giuliani’s
involvement in the
NAFTA Superhighway not ever having been
publicly addressed, but how a foreign
company is awarded the building of a
mass highway system, versus maintaining
it, for the first time in U.S. history,
and negotiated by the law firm of the
top
Republican candidate running for
President of the United States.”
Grassi also
points out that “Cintra joined with San
Antonio, TX-based Zachry Construction
Corp. to help land the contracts,
in which Zachry owns a 20% interest. The Cintra-Zachry proposal for TTC-35
includes a private investment of up to
$6
billion in upfront payments for the
complete construction, design and
operation of a 316-mile toll road
between Dallas and
San Antonio, giving Cintra the right to
set tolls and keep toll road profits for
a period of 50 years, as it will for
each road it
has contracted..”
Grassi goes on
to say, “The NAFTA Superhighway and its
corridors will run from Southwestern
Mexico through Laredo,
Austin and Dallas, TX, into Kansas City,
KS, serving as an inland customs port.
The corridor will split in Kansas with
one
leg going to Winnipeg, Canada, through Omaha, NE. The other leg goes to
Toronto, Canada, through Des Moines, IA,
Chicago, IL, and Detroit, MI. . . .”
Additionally,
Terry Hall, founder and director of
Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom
(TURF), notes that “Giuliani
clients with an interest in acquiring
Texas roads and infrastructure have also
invested in his presidential campaign.
“This could
explain why Giuliani has spent so much
time fundraising in Texas. The monied
proponents of the Trans-Texas
Corridor, of which there are many, would
like to see this man become President.”
The big irony
here is that Giuliani was opposed to
NAFTA, that is, before he became a
private business dude with global
clients.
This kind of
conflict and mixing of interests rolls
into the criminal. Especially, as
Australian journalist Mark Coultan
points out
that
Cintra is a financial partner with an
Australian company, Macquarie, on a
toll-road project in Indiana. It seems
that Macquarie acquired the business and
assets of an investment bank known as
Giuliani Capital Advisors,
which sold, according to the Washington
Post, “for an undisclosed amount as
Giuliani was preparing his run for
president.”
The amount is between $76 and $100
million, Coultan writes. This for a bank
that ran up a net loss of $1.4 million
after generous
salaries to partners. The senior staff,
who own about 30 percent of the stock,
“will come with the deal.”
Coultan also
points just how greedy Rudy can be: “Giuliani
has also been criticized for taking
excessive fees at charity events.
One occasion involved the Queen Elizabeth Research Hospital in Adelaide,
where his reported $200,000 fee left
only $15,000
in net proceeds. After criticism, he
held a fundraiser in New York which
raised $75,000.”
Additionally, Dan Collins and Wayne
Barrett pointed out, in an Alternet
article,
Why Rudy Giuliani Can’t Stop Cashing in
on 9/11.” They wrote, “Giuliani
had never seemed particularly concerned
about
money -- he wouldn't have been scheming
so desperately for a third
$195,000-a-year term as mayor if wealth
had been his top
priority. But his sudden riches came in
handy. His settlement with his former
wife, Donna Hanover, in the summer of
2002
called for him to pay her $6.8 million
over three years as well as child
support. Hanover's lawyers estimated
that Giuliani's income
in 2002 was $20 million, a little more
than half from speaking fees and book
advances . . .”
Yet once Rudy
got a taste of living large . . .”he
quickly adapted to his new lifestyle,
demanding first-class flights and
accommodations for himself and his posse
when he traveled and purchasing a $4
million summer house in the Hamptons for
himself and Judy Nathan, whom he married
in 2003. The couple also have an
apartment on Manhattan's East Side worth
more
than $5 million, complete with Rudy's
Yankee diamond rings displayed in wooden
boxes, a lithograph of Winston Churchill
above
the fireplace, two white Churchill
porcelain figures and a Joe DiMaggio
shirt encased in glass. . . .”
So it all runs
together. Rudy’s profiting from a great
tragedy, selling out American interests
to foreign interests, major conflicts
of interest between his law firm
activities and the funding of his
potential run for the presidency, etc. A
half dozen writers point
out a common theme: Giuliani’s
insatiable greed as a last step into a
bent American Dream.
And once more I
ask you as I did in
Ground
Zero illnesses come back to haunt
Giuliani, is this really the
man you want to
be the Republican presidential
candidate, let alone your president? But
then look at that clown race and you
find the second runner,
Mitt, making his own Times’
headlines,
Romney’s Political Fortunes Tied to
Riches He Gained in Business.
Is this déjà vu
all over again, or just time for a major
change in the kind of people we elect to
lead this country? I sincerely hope the
latter, as well
as for a clean election for once.
Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer living
in New York City. Reach him at
gvmaz@verizon.net.
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1998-2007 Online Journal
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