Trans Texas Corridor TTC 69 hearings make Businessweek


Link to article here.

Meetings begin in Texas toll road plan
By MICHAEL GRACZYK
Associated Press
Businessweek
January 14, 2008
The biggest construction project ever attempted in Texas comes under public debate beginning Tuesday in the first of a series of town hall meetings about a proposed 4,000-mile network of superhighway toll roads.

The Trans-Texas Corridor, or TTC, as it has become known, was initiated six years ago by Gov. Rick Perry. It has rankled opponents who characterize it as the largest government grab of private property in the state's history and an unneeded and improper expansion of toll roads.

Texas Department of Transportation officials and Perry have defended the project as necessary to address future traffic concerns in one of the nation's fastest-growing states. They also say the project is vital because of insufficient road revenues from the state gas tax and the federal government.

"This state has to look outside the box and the traditional ways we've been doing things the last 50 years," Perry spokesman Robert Black said.

The TTC would crisscross the state -- for the most part roughly paralleling existing interstate highways -- with up to quarter-mile-wide ribbons of separate highways for cars and trucks, rail lines, pipelines and utility lines. The cost of the project has been estimated at approaching $200 billion, and it could take as long as 50 years to complete.


In what the agency says is an unprecedented step, department officials were heading to Texarkana on Tuesday in northeast Texas for the first of 11 meetings over the next four weeks to answer questions about the project.

Backers of the TTC already have been accused of backroom political dealing, mounting a propaganda campaign and caving to foreign ownership.

"We really are getting ripped off," says Terri Hall, of San Antonio, who heads TURF -- Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom. The group is suing the transportation agency, alleging its promotional campaign violates a ban on state officials using their authority for political purposes.

"Once people really understand all that's going on, and what's at stake, it really does have massive, massive implications," she said.

The first phase of the TTC, envisioned as part of a superhighway stretching from Oklahoma to Mexico, was planned by the Cintra Zachry consortium. It's composed of Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte SA of Spain, one of the world's largest developers of toll roads, and Zachry Construction Co. of San Antonio.

Its legal representative is the firm of Bracewell & Giuliani, the home firm of GOP presidential candidate and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who counts Perry among his supporters.

The Spain-based company would get to operate the roads and collect tolls. State officials insist the land and road would continue to be owned by the state like any Texas road. They also say they have an obligation to make the best deal possible for financing regardless of the address of the contractor.

Hall argues elected officials in the counties affected by the project have "sold out to the road lobby" and succumbed to courting.

And Sal Costello, whose Austin-based Texas Toll Party has been opposing the TTC, speculated transportation officials should expect a cool reception at the meetings, which he said he won't attend.

"These meetings will change nothing," he said.

Some 580,000 acres will be needed for the project, primarily in rural areas that will take "some of the best farmland in the state," says Texas Farm Bureau spokesman Gene Hall.

"The fact of the matter is, every highway in the state of Texas was once private property somewhere," Black said. He noted there was opposition in the 1950s to the vast Texas farm and ranch road system and the interstates of the 1960s.

"A thousand new people are coming to the state every day," he said. "Our population will double in roughly the next 40 years. Our current transportation infrastructure cannot meet that challenge."

Other meetings this week were planned in East Texas for Carthage and Lufkin, both areas in the path of the long-anticipated Interstate 69, one of the proposed legs of the TTC. It would run from the Mexico border in far South Texas, skirt the Houston area and into East Texas toward northwestern Louisiana.

Besides I-69, the Trans-Texas Corridor as proposed also would include new superhighways that parallel existing Interstates 35 and 37, major north-south routes through the center of the state, and I-10, the 800-mile main east-west artery from Orange to El Paso.

An environmental study for the I-69 project undergoes a separate scrutiny at public hearings starting next month. The series starting this week is designed to focus more on the overall TTC project.

Trans Texas Corridor TTC-69 comment period extended

The TTC (Trans Texas Corridor) is one of the controversial, massive new tolled trade corridors under the control of foreign companies. At the Town Hall Meetings, TxDOT tried to “sell” the public on a controversial privatized, tolled trade corridor from Laredo to Texarkana. TxDOT requested proposals from two private consortiums, Cintra and Zachry, of course, who will not only build, but also buy the rights to control one of our country’s trade routes.
In documents uncovered through TURF’s lawsuit against TxDOT for using taxpayer money to promote toll roads and the TTC and for illegally lobbying elected officials, TxDOT’s response to the overwhelming opposition to the TTC 35 project is to hire a PR agency to convince the public foreign-controlled toll roads are a brilliant idea. TTC 69 plans to convert existing highways into privately controlled toll roads, making Texas taxpayers pay twice for the same stretch of road.

The TTC-69 comment period has been extended. Texans should submit comments to keeptexasmoving.com or mail them to I-69/TTC, P.O. Box 14428, Austin, TX 78761.

TxDOT hires spin doctors to sell Trans Texas Corridor at Town Hall Meetings

The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) is quite proud of itself for what it calls an unprecedented “public outreach” effort for the Trans Texas Corridor TTC-69 project. What it calls “outreach” is clearly a propaganda campaign using public relations firms and political strategists to “sell” the public on a privatized, tolled trade corridor from Laredo to Texarkana. TxDOT requested proposals from two private consortiums, Cintra and Zachry, of course, who will not only build, but also buy the rights to control one of our country’s trade routes.

In documents uncovered through TURF’s lawsuit against TxDOT for using taxpayer money to promote toll roads and the TTC and for illegally lobbying elected officials, TxDOT’s response to the overwhelming opposition to the TTC 35 project is to hire a PR agency to convince the public foreign-controlled toll roads are a brilliant idea. TTC 69 plans to convert existing highways into privately controlled toll roads, making Texas taxpayers pay twice for the same stretch of road.

TxDOT plans to hold a series of Town Hall Meetings ahead of the official LEGAL public hearings for TTC 69 in order to butter-up an unsuspecting public or to divert critics AWAY from registering their opposition on the official LEGAL record at the public hearings to follow. In most cases, you’re doing good to get folks to attend a single government meeting much less two within two weeks, so TxDOT is enticing people to attend the Town Hall Meetings over the hearings by saying people can get their questions answered at the Town Halls.


So it should be no surprise that it’s the Town Hall Meetings that will be run by spin doctors and PR firms, hardly a “public information” forum. TxDOT documents show the purpose of the Keep Texas Moving ad campaign and these Town Hall Meetings is to win public approval for their controversial projects.

The people of Texas struck fear into the hearts of the Texas Legislature forcing it to pass a private toll moratorium. What’s clear is that the Legislature didn’t stop this train wreck nor did it rein-in this out-of-control agency that is now misusing taxpayer to promote its own agenda. TxDOT’s behavior demonstrates why there are laws prohibiting the government from using its power and OUR money against the taxpayer. The citizens have the deck stacked against them when their own government forcibly takes their money and uses it to clobber them. Instead of defending the taxpayers, Attorney General Greg Abbott is defending TxDOT’s actions in court. And where is the Travis County District Attorney’s office? Have we no law enforcement in Texas?

There’s BIG MONEY on the table and the road lobby, bond investors, and global corporations wanting to ship their cheap (lead-laden, poisoned) goods into the U.S. isn’t about to let a little thing like democracy or public dissent get between them and their billions. Far worse is our government complicit in these deeds that are more responsive to lobbyists than the public who pays the bills. Unless the courts or Legislature steps in, the taxpayers will not only be victims of illegal bullying by their own government, but also left holding the bag for generations to come. Is there no justice?

How free trade keeps shipping American jobs overseas


Link to article here.

Wonder how free trade, college, and jobs relate to toll roads? Our Nation's so-called "free trade agreements" are the reason why the Trans Texas Corridor is being built and handed over to a foreign company (Cintra) to reap MEGA profits for the next 50 years. China and multi-national corporations want a new trade corridor to ship cheap Chinese goods into the U.S. at Texas taxpayers' expense. The project requires 580,000 acres of private Texas land to benefit Cintra and China, not Texans. It's the worst eminent domain abuse EVER to befall our country. So in the name of "free trade," we're now sending so many high paying jobs overseas, that the expensive college education you just mortgaged your home to pay for was for nothing. U.S. News and World Report is now suggesting those students take blue collar jobs. This election year we can this to the mantra: it's the jobs, stupid!

College Not Necessary for Many New Careers
January 2, 2007
by Phyllis Schlafly, Eagle Forum

U.S. News & World Report, which has made a name for itself by ranking and announcing the Best Colleges every year, is now ranking and listing the Best Careers for young people. A comparison of the latest lists shows a shocking disconnect and makes for dispiriting holiday reading.

While the price of a college education has skyrocketed far faster than inflation, many careers for which colleges prepare their graduates are disappearing. U.S. News' Best Careers guide concludes that "college grads might want to consider blue-collar careers" because B.A. diploma holders "are having trouble finding jobs that require college-graduate skills."

Incredibly, U.S. News is telling college graduates to look for jobs that do not require a college diploma. Among the 31 best opportunities for 2008 are the careers of firefighter, hairstylist, cosmetologist, locksmith, and security system technician.

Where did the higher-skill jobs go? Both large and small companies are "quietly increasing offshoring efforts."



Ten years ago we were told we really didn't need manufacturing because it can be done more cheaply elsewhere, that auto workers and others should move to Information Age jobs. But now the information jobs are moving offshore, too, as well as marketing research and even many varieties of innovation.

The flight overseas includes professional as well as low-wage jobs, with engineering jobs offshored to India and China. Thousands of bright Asian engineers are willing to work for a fraction of American wages, which is why Boeing just signed a 10-year, $1-billion-a-year deal with an Indian government-run company.

Society has been telling high school students that college is the ticket to get a life, and politicians are pandering to parents' desire for their children to be better educated and so have a higher standard of living. John Edwards wants the taxpayers to guarantee every kid a college education, and Mitt Romney says more education is the means for Americans to compete in a global economy.

But it doesn't make sense for parents to mortgage their homes, or for students to saddle themselves with long-term debt, in order to pay overpriced college tuition to prepare for jobs that no longer exist. Tuition at public universities has risen an unprecedented 51 percent over the past five years.

President Bush calls the loss of U.S. jobs "the pinch some of you folks are feeling." I guess his words are designed to show his "compassionate conservatism," but the reality is far more than a pinch.

U.S. News offers this advice for the nerds who still spend five to six years earning an engineering degree despite increasingly grim prospects of a well-paid engineering career: "Look for government work." Or maybe you can be an "Offshoring Manager" and be part of the process of shipping your fellow graduates' jobs overseas.

A Duke University spokesman said that 40 percent of Duke's engineering graduates cannot get engineering jobs. A Duke University publication suggests that the best prospect for good engineering jobs is for the U.S. government to start another major project like going to the moon.

U.S. News warns us that "government is becoming an employer of choice." Corporations are getting leaner, but government can continue to pay good salaries, with lots of vacation days, sick leave, health insurance and retirement benefits, because government rakes in more tax revenue in good times and can raise taxes in bad times; and if the Democrats win in 2008, we can expect government to expand even more.

Presidential candidates have gotten the message from grassroots Americans that we want our borders closed to illegal aliens. Headlines now proclaim "Immigration Moves to Front and Center of G.O.P. Race" and "G.O.P. Candidates Hold Fast on Immigration at Debate."

But G.O.P. candidates haven't yet gotten the message that jobs are just as big a gut issue as immigration. The Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey conducted December 14-17 reports that, by 58 to 28 percent, Americans believe globalization is bad because it subjects U.S. companies and employees to unfair competition and cheap labor.

Where are the limited-government fiscal-conservatives when we need them to refute the notion that the best an engineering graduate can hope for is a job with the government? Are the fiscal-conservatives too busy chanting the failed mantra of "free trade" even though it has resulted in millions of good American jobs being shipped overseas?

When are we going to call a halt to the way globalism is destroying U.S. jobs by foreign currency manipulation, theft of our intellectual property, shipping us poisonous seafood and toys, and unfair trade agreements that allow foreign subsidies (through the so-called Value Added Tax) to massively discriminate against U.S. producers and workers?

Casteel gets promoted as a pay-off for pushing toll roads?

Link to story here. I find it hypocritical that TxDOT claims it's out of money yet creates two new high level jobs for pro-toll bureaucrats. Not only does TxDOT have misplaced priorities, it looks like a big pay-off for those willing to push toll roads on a public who doesn't want a new toll tax to drive on what we've already paid for!

Local TxDOT official promoted to new job in Austin
01/08/2008
By Patrick Driscoll
Express-News

San Antonio's toll road guru, David Casteel of the Texas Department of Transportation, is getting promoted to the agency's Austin office.The 45-year-old Casteel, named director of TxDOT's district office here in November 2003, will fill a newly created job as , assistant director for district operations.

Starting Feb. 1, he'll oversee TxDOT's 25 district engineers.

"I want to make sure that our TxDOT districts have all of the resources we can provide them to work with local officials to solve local mobility problems," TxDOT Director Amadeo Saenz said in a statement.

Another new position, called assistant director for innovative project development, will be handled by Phil Russell, who has been in charge of the Texas Turnpike Authority Division since 1998.


And Beaumont District Engineer John Barton will take over as assistant director for engineering, which Saenz vacated in September when he replaced Michael Behrens, who retired.

Casteel arrived in San Antonio just as the first studies for toll roads were wrapped up and Bexar County commissioners were seeking board members for their new Regional Mobility Authority to oversee tollways. Seven months later, he unveiled a startup toll plan for U.S. 281 and Loop 1604 that has since morphed through several variations.

Currently, more than 70 miles of toll roads are planned in San Antonio. Construction could start this year on an 8-mile tollway along U.S. 281 north of Loop 1604, with fees starting at 17 cents a mile in 2012 and rising with inflation.

Talk for years was that Casteel would move on to bigger and better roles within TxDOT. Such speculation didn't wear down even after toll critics organized in 2005 and began turning up the heat on elected and appointed officials.

"If someone does a good job and they're respected by everyone, there's usually professional growth that follows," Mobility Authority Chairman Bill Thornton said. "I view this as positive for David, and I view this as positive for us."

Toll critic Terri Hall, founder of Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom, said she wasn't surprised either but questioned why TxDOT leaders would create two high-level positions when they're running out of money to build new roads.

"I just think it highlights what's wrong at TxDOT," she said. "They've got a really bad case of misplaced priorities."

Casteel, an engineer with bachelor's and master's degrees from Texas A&M University, joined TxDOT in 1983 as a summer hire in Graham. He worked in Bowie, College Station, Vernon and Big Spring and has been a district engineer since 1997, working in Childress, Corpus Christi and San Antonio.

Asked for his parting words for San Antonio, Casteel said the city should think big about its highways, freight rail and public transportation.

"We're a big city, we're going to be a big player in the state and national economy as years go by and we need to not let our transportation system go lagging," he said.

Will TxDOT Chair’s death upend toll road debate?

It's clear the current crop of transportation commissioners is committed to selling out the Texas taxpayers by hawking-up our PUBLIC FREEways to the highest bidder on Wall Street. This is the legacy Ric Williamson and Rick Perry will leave...pushing an agenda the Texas taxpayers have repeatedly rejected and representing private interests over the public good.

The Texas Transportation Institute study showed merely indexing the gas tax to inflation would meet our future transportation needs, de-bunking Commissioner Holmes' claims of an unacceptably high gas tax increase below. It's time for all of these bureaucrats to go. Replace the transportation commissioners, who are joined at the hip with the road lobby, with a single ELECTED commissioner! The sooner the better!

Texas transportation commission chairman's death could upend toll-road debate
Monday, December 31, 2007
By MICHAEL A. LINDENBERGER / The Dallas Morning News
The death of Ric Williamson, the fiery, whip-smart chairman of the state transportation commission, could upend the still-roiling debate over toll roads in Texas in the New Year.

Mr. Williamson died Saturday of a heart attack at age 55, sending shock waves through the nearly 15,000-employee department he led as well as the political and policy circles where his combative style and pro-toll-road agenda had engendered enormous change – and criticism.

 Also Online
 
 
12/30/07: Ric Williamson, transportation chief who championed toll roads, dies

Always careful to credit Gov. Rick Perry, a close friend and former roommate, Mr. Williamson emerged as a lightning rod in recent years as he pushed to let private companies build and operate toll roads throughout Texas.

"We are [expletive] running out of money," he told The News in a wide-ranging interview a week before his death, allowing his usual thoughtful, precise vocabulary to give way to frustration over continued resistance to the governor's toll road policies. "It absolutely boggles my mind how men and women elected to make courageous decisions in leading this state cannot focus on the simple fact that our congestion is rapidly approaching an intolerable level."

It was Mr. Williamson's sometimes-abrasive approach that has those who clashed with him hoping his successor will take a more conciliatory tone and a balanced approach to the state's problems. One of those critics, Sen. John Carona, D-Dallas, chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee, said he is hoping that Mr. Williamson's successor will support raising state gas taxes to help reduce the need for tolls.

Even Mr. Williamson's supporters acknowledge that he often bruised feelings. Still, fellow members of the commission say he was indispensable.

"Ric was focused laser-like on the issues, well read and always researched things thoroughly," said commissioner Ted Houghton of El Paso.

Mr. Williamson was focused on finding a way to pay for the new roads and added lanes that Texas' booming metropolitan areas need – even as such traditional revenues as gas taxes failed to keep up with costs. In general, new roads in Texas will have to be toll roads, Mr. Williamson said often in recent months.

Plenty of powerful voices have disagreed, however.

Last session, the Texas Legislature passed a partial moratorium on a centerpiece of Mr. Perry's strategy, slowing his plans to privatize toll roads. Mr. Williamson spent most of 2007 criticizing the moratorium as an example of fuzzy-headed legislative intrusiveness. But he also led a vigorous effort to work around the new rules, and within months of the session's close unveiled a list of more than 80 highway projects eligible for toll roads.

Those stormy debates are expected to carry into 2008.

A new panel will study the concept of private toll roads this year and report to the Legislature. In addition, and perhaps far more significantly, an independent sunset review commission will begin the top-to-bottom examination of TxDOT that all state agencies must undergo every 12 years.

No one expects the latter process to be free of conflict.

Mr. Carona said a new chairman will give TxDOT a less abrasive style.

"I think it will moderate the case for toll roads," Mr. Carona said. "Chairman Williamson was singular in his focus on the usage and expansion of toll roads. And as much as he will be missed, a change in leadership will undoubtedly result in a more multi-pronged approach."

A spokesman for the governor said Monday that it's far too early to comment on a replacement for Mr. Williamson, who was a close friend of Mr. Perry's for more than 20 years. Whoever is selected can begin serving immediately but will have to be confirmed by the state Senate next year.

Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano and a member of the transportation committee, said the sunset review panel's findings will help set the course for when the debate with the Legislature resumes in 2009.

"That commission is going to start meeting fairly quickly, and there will be some very creative and very innovative ideas that will come to the forefront," she said.

But the toll road debate won't be the same without Mr. Williamson, she and others said Monday.

"I think he was a very strong advocate for that [pro-toll-road] position," Ms. Shapiro said. "We probably won't have another chairman who will be as strong. But that doesn't mean that position and those ideas about toll roads and privatization will go away."

She's right, Mr. Williamson's fellow commissioners said Monday.

Mr. Houghton said Mr. Williamson and the governor had been pushing for private toll roads because they are a solution that works.

"All four of us are committed to this approach, and we understand the issues," Mr. Houghton said. "The issues are this: We are out of money."

Commissioner Ned Holmes of Houston agreed.

"We have to have a new methodology to fund our highway program," Mr. Holmes said, speaking in support of private toll roads. "The traditional ways of funding are just not adequate, and they are not likely to be. I don't believe those changes [embraced by TxDOT in recent years] will fall apart now."

He said higher gas taxes – the most often touted alternative to tolls – won't work, because rates would have to soar far beyond any acceptable level to provide the needed revenue. "That's not going to happen."

But Mr. Carona and others said more modest increases in the gas tax would greatly reduce, though not eliminate, the need for private toll roads in Texas.

Terri Hall, a grassroots activist who has led a citizens' group to sue TxDOT over its toll road push, said Mr. Williamson sometimes embraced a with-us or against-us approach when communities resisted his push for toll roads.

"I think you always knew where you stood with Ric Williamson," said Ms. Hall, whose group is called Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom. "You knew he was never going to back away from his position, no matter how many citizen concerns he heard. He'd stick to his gun no matter what."

She said she hopes the sunset review will recommend doing away with the commission and replacing the body with a single elected commissioner.

In the meantime, though, the dynamics of the toll road debate will change without Mr. Williamson. How much they change could depend on how involved Mr. Perry decides to be in pushing the policies he relied on Mr. Williamson to champion.

Mr. Carona said the governor will have to step up his involvement in the discussions if he wants to see his side advocated as strenuously as it has been by Mr. Williamson.

Ms. Hall agreed.

"I truly think there was only one Ric Williamson," Ms. Hall said. "How significantly his absence will affect the debate really is up to the governor. The governor has really leaned on Ric Williamson to take his hits for him."

WHAT'S NEXT FOR COMMISSION?
The state transportation commission's next scheduled meeting is Jan. 31 in Victoria. Though chairman Ric Williamson died Saturday, the four remaining members can continue to act with full authority. Possible scenarios:

• The four members can elect a temporary chairman, who will preside until Gov. Rick Perry appoints a permanent chairman.

• The governor can appoint Mr. Williamson's successor, who could begin serving immediately but would be subject to a Senate vote in the next legislative session in 2009.

• The new chairman could be one of the four existing members or the fifth to be named by Mr. Perry.

SOURCE: Dallas Morning News research

TURF makes top 20 headlines for 2007 & Hall named Political Person of the Year by Walker Report

Terri Hall-Walker Report's "Political Person of the Year"

Dominating the top three headlines on Walker Report, (there were many more) it is a no-brainer to name Terri Hall the "Political Person of the Year." The stay at home mom of six has made more impact, single-handedly on her community than anyone we know. She exemplifies the expression, "one person can make a difference."

Walker Report salutes Terri Hall, "Political Person of the Year."
__________________________________________
 
Walker Report's Top 20 Headlines of 2007
TURF dominated the top 3!

1. Home Schooling Mom named San Antonian of the Year (Dec.-17th)
2. TURF files federal lawsuit vs. MPO Policy Board (Oct. 23rd)
3. TURF Press Conference to file injunction to stop vote (Nov.-19th)

Transportation Commission Chairman Ric Williamson dies at age 55

Links to articles here and here.

Transportation Commission Chairman Ric Williamson will be remembered as the most stalwart Texas advocate of privatizing our public freeway system. What some called innovative and visionary, many called double taxation and highway robbery. Certainly, no one would have wished this would be the way Williamson would end his time on the Commission. Our hearts go out to his family.

Williamson was a lightning rod of controversy and known for his abrasive style and unretractable support for what's known as public private partnerships (or PPPs). He relentlessly pushed the wholesale shift from gas tax funded freeways to a network of privatized tollways in the hands of foreign companies and unaccountable bureaucrats.

Texas Monthly's Paul Burka summarizes the public sentiment this way in a Star-Telegram article:
In a column published in July, Texas Monthly's Paul Burka described the blunt-spoken Mr. Williamson as "the most hated person in Texas, public enemy No. 1 to a million or more people," having tried in vain to put the brakes on the frenzied dash to build privately run tollways.

Transportation Chairman Williamson dead at 55
By MATT CURRY
Associated Press
Dec. 31, 2007
DALLAS — Texas Transportation Commission Chairman and former longtime state lawmaker Ric Williamson died Sunday of an apparent heart attack, officials said. He was 55.

Williamson died at Weatherford Regional Medical Center just after 1 a.m., Texas Department of Transportation spokesman Chris Lippincott said.

"It is a great shock, everyone is very surprised to hear this news," Lippincott told the Associated Press. "He certainly left his imprint on the commission and on the state with the vision he had for transportation."

Gov. Rick Perry said Williamson was a longtime friend who will be greatly missed. The two were conservative Democratic colleagues in the Texas House during 1980s. Both later joined the GOP.

Williamson served in the Legislature for more than 20 years.

"Ric's passion to serve his beloved state of Texas was unmatched and his determination to help our state meets its future challenges was unparalleled," Perry said in a written statement. "He will be missed beyond words. Our thoughts and prayers are with the Williamson family during this very difficult time."


Perry named Williamson to the transportation commission in 2001, and he became chairman in 2004. The five-member commission oversees the Texas Department of Transportation.

State lawmakers heavily criticized state transportation policy on toll roads and private contracts during this year's legislative session.

The agency has traditionally been a pay-as-you-go organization, building roads with money collected from gas taxes and fees.

But under Perry and his appointees to the commission, notably Williamson, the agency has increasingly shifted to relying on toll roads and borrowed money to speed construction. The change has prompted intense criticism from the public and lawmakers.

Legislators from rural areas were concerned about private property rights. Those from urban districts complained of toll roads financed and owned by foreign companies.

"We were moving faster than most government agencies move and it spooked some people," Williamson said in June.

TxDOT Executive Director Amadeo Saenz said Williamson was a visionary.

"As a member and chairman of the Texas Transportation Commission, he brought passion and focus to meeting many of the challenges facing Texas today and for generations to come," he said.

Williamson served in the Legislature from 1985-98, and was on key committees such as the House/Senate Budget Conference Committee, Appropriations (vice chairman) and Ways and Means.

He received a bachelor's from the University of Texas at Austin in 1974 and went into the natural gas production business.

Survivors include his wife, Mary Ann; three daughters; and two grandchildren.

Services were pending.

____________________________________

RIC WILLIAMSON 1952-2007
Key figure on Texas transport issues dies
By JOHN MORITZ
Star-Telegram staff writer
December 31, 2007

 Then-state Rep. Ric Williamson, right, talks with Rep. Jim Rudd of Brownfield in March 1991.
He stuck to his beliefs and willingly took heat for it Related story
View, sign the guest book for Mr. Williamson External Link
AUSTIN -- Ric Williamson, one of Gov. Rick Perry's closest friends and advisers and his point man at the Texas Department of Transportation, died early Sunday of an apparent heart attack.

He was 55.

Mr. Williamson, a seven-term state lawmaker from Weatherford, had had two heart attacks since being appointed to oversee one of the state's largest bureaucracies during a period of intense controversy and this year expressed concern that a third one might prove fatal. Still, his death at a hospital near his home in Weatherford sent shock waves through the Capitol communities that had been largely dormant during the holiday season.

"Anita and I are heartbroken at this sudden loss of a confidant, trusted advisor and close personal friend of ours for more than 20 years," Perry said in a statement. "Ric's passion to serve his beloved State of Texas was unmatched and his determination to help our state meets its future challenges was unparalleled.

"He will be missed beyond words."

House Speaker Tom Craddick, who had served with Mr. Williamson during his career in the Legislature from 1985 until 1998, said, "He dedicated his life to public service, and I have fond memories of the time we served in the Legislature together."

Political beginnings

Mr. Williamson, who in the private sector operated a natural gas company, was a conservative Democrat in 1984 when he first won a seat in the Texas House, representing a largely rural district west of Fort Worth anchored by Weatherford. He arrived at the House just before his 33rd birthday as Texas was reeling from a slump in the oil industry that strained the budget.

Along with other conservative Democrats and many of the then-outnumbered Republicans, Mr. Williamson pushed for steep cuts in state spending in an effort to hold the line on new taxes.

During that period he befriended Perry, another rookie lawmaker with similar West Texas roots and conservative Democratic leanings. Both would become Republicans as their careers advanced.

Perry was elected agriculture commissioner in 1990 and lieutenant governor in 1998. In December 2000, he ascended to the Governor's Mansion as George W. Bush prepared to become president.

Within a few months of taking office, Perry named Mr. Williamson to the transportation commission and made him chairman in January 2004.

Ambitious plan

Leading the commission, Mr. Williamson became one of the chief crusaders for Perry's ambitious Trans Texas Corridor, a system of toll and free roads intended to ease urban congestion.

The plan's toll roads plan generated the most controversy, with critics denouncing the state's contract with a Spanish company to build and operate the roads. Critics also said the plan would involve massive taking of private land.

During the 2007 legislative session, Mr. Williamson often butted heads with lawmakers who had expressed reservations over the pace of the toll road building plan.

State Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, who leads the Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee, said in January that Mr. Williamson's abrasive style was undermining his effectiveness.

Mr. Williamson, Carona was quoted as saying, "has worn out his welcome in many communities across the state. I think it would be in the best interests of the state that he step aside."

Carona and Mr. Williamson would later mend fences, and in a statement the senator praised his one-time adversary.

"In over 20 years of service to Texas, during a time of conflict and sweeping change, Ric Williamson exemplified courage, commitment and dedication," Carona said. "His ability to see far into the future, coupled with his command of process and the here-and-now, ensure his place in our history books when the story of 21st century Texas is told."

In a column published in July, Texas Monthly's Paul Burka described the blunt-spoken Mr. Williamson as "the most hated person in Texas, public enemy No. 1 to a million or more people," having tried in vain to put the brakes on the frenzied dash to build privately run tollways.

But Burka also described Mr. Williamson as a visionary who had "the most inventive mind that has passed through the Legislature" in modern history.

In the same column, Mr. Williamson told Burka that the strain of being in the Transportation Department hot seat was taking a toll. "Since I've started this," he said, "I've had two heart attacks, and I'm trying to avoid the third one, which the doctors tell me will be fatal."

Funeral arrangements were pending Sunday. Survivors include wife Mary Ann; daughters Melissa, Katherine and Sara; and two grandchildren.

Bait & Switch: TxDOT pulls projects after CAMPO Board stuck their necks out to toll FREEways

Now even the pro-tollers are beginning to experience what the rest of us do in dealing with TxDOT....betrayal, empty promises, and an elaborate shell game. Just like Bexar County Commissioner Lyle Larson said, working with TxDOT is like working with a "snake oil salesman."

Wear: What did TxDOT not know, and when?
Steamed senator wonders why TxDOT pulling funding for toll road plan after politically risky vote in October
By Ben Wear
Monday, December 17, 2007
Kirk Watson is not happy.

State Sen. Watson, you see, and 14 of his Central Texas colleagues pretty much put their posteriors on the line in October, approving a toll road plan despite gathering evidence that voting for tollways can be hazardous to your political health.

Then, in late November, less than two months later, the Texas Department of Transportation decided to cut off spending on new construction starting in February, a move that could threaten those Austin toll projects.

 
What Watson has asked TxDOT, and what others are wondering: What exactly did TxDOTnotknow about its financial pressures around Columbus Day, when the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization board he chairs was authorizing five toll roads that TxDOT had conceived and pursued for four years?

That toll road vote, as Watson repeatedly pointed out in a letter last week to Texas Department of Transportation Executive Director Amadeo Saenz, was based upon a commitment from TxDOT that it would furnish up to $700 million of the $1.45 billion cost.

 
In fact, the words "committed," "commitment" and "commitments" appear a total of nine times in the three-page letter from Watson. The senatorial grinding of teeth jumps off the page.

 
Watson's angst results from the TxDOT decision late last month to issue no more construction contracts for new or expanded roads after Jan. 31. That would include the five Austin toll roads, in theory, but it would also knock out several key nontollway projects, including a widening of FM 1460 that helped persuade Seton to build a hospital on the two-lane road east of Round Rock.

 
"What specifically has changed in the mere two months since the Department committed to providing $500 million to $700 million to fund the highway improvements it requested?" Watson asked in the letter, one of 21 questions he had for the agency.

 
TxDOT officials had been saying since the legislative session ended in May that money was tightening up, due, they said, to rapid inflation of highway costs, cutbacks in federal transportation grants and increased maintenance costs. And also because of — the element that conspiracy theorists believe is motivating all of this — the Legislature's decision in the spring to block some of the private toll road contracts the agency had in mind.

 
The Transportation Department says that its financial plans were based on raking in billions of dollars in concession payments from the private companies that would build and operate a couple of dozen Texas tollways for a half-century or more. Much of that money, unless and until the Legislature loosens the reins, would be gone.

 
But the immediate crunch also was affected, to the tune of $1 billion, by a decision made by TxDOT itself. The agency, saying highway pavement was deteriorating, elected in the past few months to spend $2.1 billion on maintenance this year rather than $1.1 billion.

 
The agency put out a report in the spring on pavement conditions (right during the heat of the legislative toll road debate) showing that the percentage of Texas roads rated "very good" or "good" had decreased from 87.93 percent in 2005 to 87.22 percent in 2006. That 0.8 percent degradation was enough, apparently, to spur a near doubling of maintenance spending.

 
The state has also lost $666 million in federal funding over the past year, with another $259 million cut imminent and strong prospects for another $700 million loss next year. All told (or tolled, if you will), that's another $1.6 billion gone.

 
TxDOT officials have been talking about those federal cutbacks, the whole thing, for the past year, and the pavement discussion dates to the spring.

 
Even so, the commitment for the Austin toll road plan was presented as solid, as money in hand.

 
Saenz hasn't replied to Watson's letter, though he and his staff are working on it. Twenty-one answers to a steamed senator can't just be dashed off.

 
But I asked Texas Transportation Commission Chairman Ric Williamson about this last week. Williamson, who usually can be counted on to offer a fascinating mix of political polish and combativeness, didn't disappoint.

 
"We fully expect to be treated to another round of nonsense from people who don't want to accept responsibility for their actions," Williamson said, prefacing that with an assurance he wasn't talking about any specific individual. Of course. "So TxDOT becomes the repository of fear and suspicion and whatever else."

 
D'oh! Watson, along with an overwhelming majority of the Legislature, voted for the bill that limited private toll road contracts. Then Williamson opened his fist, figuratively speaking, and gathered up an olive branch.

 
"We don't blame Kirk for being mad," he said. In fact, Williamson said, cities like Austin, San Antonio, Dallas and Fort Worth that have made "aggressive and perhaps painful efforts" on tollways can expect favor from the commission.

 
Not quite a guarantee to give Austin the promised money, but close.

 
As for what changed in the past two months, well, TxDOT's basic explanation is that the agency has been trying to analyze and react to a rapidly changing fiscal picture and that it took until November to decide what to do.

 
That's unlikely to be much comfort to any CAMPO board members who find themselves giving concession speeches on election night in the next year or two.

Vanity Fair takes on Giuliani’s connections to the Trans Texas Corridor

We started to send out word connecting the dots between Macquarie, Cintra, the law firm Bracewell & Giuliani and Presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani last spring. Finally, the mainstream press is starting to look into Giuliani's crooked deals that involve the Texas Governor and many of the special interests that dominate Texas. It's clear Cintra and Macquarie are trying to buy themselves a U.S. President!
_______________________________________
Risky Business

A Tale of Two Giulianis

On the back of 9/11, Rudy Giuliani refashioned himself as a national hero, a top presidential candidate—and, through his consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, became a very wealthy man. But the questionable backgrounds of some of the firm’s clients make one wonder what Rudy wouldn’t do to make a buck. As Giuliani’s former crony Bernard Kerik faces trial, the author uncovers troubling signs of greed, poor judgment, and conflict of interest.

by Michael Shnayerson January 2008

Rudy Giuliani
Giuliani has failed to mention that certain policies he champions would benefit clients of his firm. Photographs by Nigel Parry/CPi.

On a late-spring day in 2001, Rudy Giuliani’s divorce lawyer stood on the steps of the New York State Supreme Court Building and told reporters the shocking truth. His client, the mayor of the city—beleaguered by an angry wife who wanted more money—had only $7,000 to his name.
Perhaps it wasn’t quite the truth. Just a year earlier, the mayor had $400,000 to $800,000 in pension and retirement funds due him, and now he had a $3 million book deal. Still, in New York City, what was that for a powerful man of 57? Not much.

Three months later came 9/11.

Whatever deal Donna Hanover finally struck to end her marriage, she must feel cheated, because Giuliani is now worth somewhere between $18 million and $70 million. A chunk of his personal fortune has come from giving speeches, month after month, for a standard fee of $100,000. Much of it, though, has been earned as founder and chief rainmaker of his consulting company, Giuliani Partners. Headquartered in a 24th-floor office overlooking Times Square, it has reportedly earned more than $100 million in the past six years.

That office is a cheery one, filled with sports mementos (a wooden seat from the old Yankee Stadium, a football signed by Jets legend Joe Namath), the accoutrements of the ex-mayor’s passions (among them a beautiful wooden humidor for expensive cigars), and, on almost every flat surface, silver-framed photographs of his 53-year-old third wife, Judith Nathan. On his wooden desk sits a little sign with the inscription i’m responsible. It was here, over these last six years, that Giuliani placed calls to make things happen for his clients—many of them engaged in some aspect of the security industry that boomed as a direct result of 9/11.

Rudy Giuliani
Giuliani’s firm capitalizes on his 9/11 experience by specializing in security technologies.

These days Giuliani’s office sits mostly empty as he canvasses the country for money and votes in his bid to become the Republican nominee for president in 2008. Is he even still working for Giuliani Partners? It’s a relevant question, because if he isn’t—and, really, how could he be in these busy weeks of campaigning before the first Republican presidential primaries?—then he shouldn’t be drawing a salary from the firm. According to a former top Federal Election Commission official, that would be a breach of election law: the firm would in effect be making undeclared campaign contributions.

The answer, from Giuliani Partners C.E.O. Mike Hess, is that “Rudy is no longer involved in the day-to-day operations of Giuliani Partners. He maintains his ownership interest.” To the point of whether Giuliani is still earning money from Giuliani Partners, the answer seems a bit delphic, especially after a Washington Post article from October 30, in which Giuliani Partners spokeswoman Sunny Mindel described Giuliani as still working part-time for the company.

To anyone who has followed Giuliani’s meteoric rise in business, that dodge is unsurprising. There are, it seems, at least two Rudolph Giulianis. One is the crusading former U.S. attorney and 9/11-bedecked ex-mayor of New York, cloaked in the six core values prominently featured on Giuliani Partners’ Web site: Integrity. Optimism. Courage. Preparedness. Communication. Accountability.

The other Rudy Giuliani is the one who has brazenly built a business on his 9/11 fame. Some of his clients have been large, established companies, such as Aon, the global risk-management firm that lost 175 people in the World Trade Center attack; Entergy, which operates nuclear power plants; and Delta Airlines and U.S. Airways. But a number have been scrappy little penny-stock start-ups, one of them backed by an S.E.C.-disciplined stock swindler. These are the players who have needed Giuliani most, to promote them, to open doors for them in government or business, or merely to lend them his name, at a very high price, so they can boost their stock or get bought by bigger fish. In doing business with these companies, Giuliani has sometimes created at least an appearance of poor judgment, or greed, or both. But if the crusading ex–U.S. attorney understands the importance of appearances, the other Rudy Giuliani seems oblivious to them.

From the Archives
“Cheer and Loathing in New York,” by Gail Sheehy (June 2000), about the showdown between Rudy and Hillary in that year’s Senate race—before Rudy bowed out

“Giuliani’s Princess Bride,” by Judy Bachrach (September 2007)

“Crazy for Rudy,” by Michael Wolff (June 2007)

Illustration by Risko.

Perhaps, as his most critical biographer, Wayne Barrett, suggests, Giuliani thinks his 9/11 aura will simply repel any unsavory stories about his business associations. Or perhaps he feels that, as long as no laws are broken, business is business. But those around him know enough to worry. Last year, when a binder full of confidential Giuliani campaign documents was either stolen or lost in Florida, and the contents found their way to reporters, a handwritten list of potential trouble spots in the candidate’s résumé seemed especially revealing. There, with the obvious sticky subjects—the messy divorce from Hanover, and subsequent wife Nathan—was a single word: business.

Giuliani has done an astounding number of business deals in the last six years—so many that the sheer volume may be the real reason they’ve evaded much serious scrutiny so far. But, taken together, they begin to suggest a not very attractive shape, and you don’t have to be a Democrat to see it. All you have to do is pick up a pencil and start to connect the dots.

Prescription for Trouble

Purdue Pharma is a good place to start. The drug company, based in Stamford, Connecticut, was the firm’s first client. It’s one of the firm’s biggest clients today. It’s also one whose problems Giuliani himself has worked to resolve.

The story begins in the winter of 2002, when top executives at Purdue Pharma called Giuliani Partners for help in solving an apparent security problem. Their best-selling painkiller, OxyContin, had proved popular in a way they hadn’t anticipated. Plant employees were accused of smuggling pills out for black-market sale. Ever since the drug’s introduction, in 1996, Purdue had claimed it was less addictive than other painkillers because it was designed to release its narcotic incrementally over 12 hours. The problem was that thrill seekers, especially teenagers, had figured out that one had only to mash the pills to get the drug’s full jolt all at once.

Giuliani assigned one of his new business partners, Bernie Kerik, to solve the security problem. As Giuliani’s former police commissioner, Kerik had the know-how to secure the plant in no time. He took on other security challenges as well, as head of his own offshoot, Giuliani-Kerik L.L.C., while Giuliani Partners grew in broader ways. The ex-mayor seemed not to anticipate the metastasizing public-relations disaster that Kerik would become.

Soon after Purdue Pharma became a client, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (D.E.A.) declared that OxyContin might be responsible for 464 drug-related deaths in just two years. According to The New York Times’s Barry Meier, whose 2003 book, Pain Killer, recounts the OxyContin story, many of the deaths were traced to prescriptions doled out at “pain management” clinics around the country, especially in Appalachia. Purdue Frederick, the affiliate marketing the drug, knew exactly where its drug was being overprescribed: it downloaded sales data from around the country. But the company’s top executives did nothing to tighten the drug’s distribution. They didn’t want the federal government to do it, either.

Giuliani met personally with Asa Hutchinson, then head of the D.E.A., to discuss the agency’s investigation of OxyContin. According to Meier, Hutchinson repeatedly called D.E.A. officials to ask why they were continuing their OxyContin inquiry. To help quell doubts about the drug, Giuliani agreed to chair something called the Rx Action Alliance, through which pharmaceutical and health-care professionals would educate the public about prescription-drug abuse. The Rx Action Alliance was barely heard from again, aside from a few mentions in laudatory articles about Giuliani. But Giuliani’s reassurances seemed to have the desired effect. Instead of tightening distribution, the Food and Drug Administration gave the drug a pass.

The story might have ended there had it not been for a determined U.S. attorney in western Virginia named John Brownlee. A straight arrow appointed by President George W. Bush in 2001, Brownlee listened to heartbroken parents in his region recount their children’s fatal overdoses from OxyContin. He launched an investigation to determine whether Purdue had known exactly what it was doing when it downplayed OxyContin’s addictive powers. If it had, that was criminal.

As Brownlee later testified, “Purdue’s counsel fought hard and did the very best to protect the requested information and records.” Still, by the summer of 2006, he was ready to file criminal charges against the company and three of its top executives. That was when Giuliani stepped in, now as a company lawyer.

“When we had meetings,” Brownlee told Meier about Giuliani, “he was the lead counsel and the lead spokesman for the company.” Despite his best efforts, Giuliani was unable to dissuade Brownlee. Purdue would have to plead guilty to “misbranding” OxyContin and pay a huge fine; its three top executives would have to plead guilty, too.

Brownlee gave the company a deadline of October 24, 2006, to accept those charges or go to court, in which case additional charges would be filed. That night, Brownlee would later tell the Senate Judiciary Committee, he got a call at home. On the line was Michael Elston, chief of staff for Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty. Brownlee knew that McNulty worked directly for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. According to Brownlee, Elston said Purdue complained that it needed more time. Brownlee told the committee, “I told him to leave it alone, to go away, and he did.”

The next day, Brownlee held to the deadline. Purdue and its top three executives accepted their guilty pleas of misbranding. A week or so later, Brownlee found his name on a list compiled by Elston. On it were names of U.S. attorneys whom officials wanted to be considered for firing.

Last May, Purdue agreed to fines and penalties of $600 million. The three top executives paid fines collectively of $34.5 million and were placed on three years’ probation. As of this writing, one of the three executives, general counsel Howard Udell, is still at the company. Two civil suits for damages related to OxyContin abuse are pending, one filed by the attorney general of Kentucky and one as a class-action suit on behalf of more than 200 plaintiffs in Nova Scotia.

Somehow, Brownlee’s name was cut from the list of U.S. attorneys to be considered for firing—the list that would soon grow so notorious. He remains a U.S. attorney in Roanoke, Virginia. OxyContin is still on the market, though with strict advisories. Marianne Skolek, whose daughter, Jill, died of respiratory failure after being prescribed OxyContin, says the advisories have come too late: thousands of Americans are hooked on the drug. “And those people will stay addicted,” she says, “unless they’re fortunate enough to go to a very good rehab center and kick it.”

The Quiet Lobbyist

“Part of our business would be security consulting, part would be business-improvement consulting, part would be crisis management, and part of it would be, possibly, legal work,” Giuliani explained in an interview with Vanity Fair three years ago, when the magazine first took an interest in Giuliani Partners. Other companies already dominated those fields. But none had the hero of 9/11 at the helm.

New clients loved basking in Giuliani’s glow. For makers of novel high-tech security hardware, for companies providing security or needing it, just being associated with Rudy Giuliani was worth the hefty retainers—in at least one case, $175,000 a month. Once he’d signed on to help, he could call high-ranking Republican officials and get a private hearing. In public, he could reach the whole country, his speeches reported by eager media as news. He could weave a client’s message into remarks about national security—though not always telling his audiences that an issue he was advocating might also benefit that client.

So it was with Nextel, the wireless-phone company, which hired Giuliani Partners to talk up a change it wanted in its bandwidth on the radio spectrum. Nextel’s airwaves had an unfortunate tendency to cause interference with the two-way radios of firefighters and police. The answer, the company suggested, was for the Federal Communications Commission to move Nextel from the narrow bandwidth segments it currently owned—near ones used by first responders in a crisis—to a nice, fat, more valuable stretch of the spectrum where Nextel wouldn’t interfere with anyone. In speeches and on talk shows, Giuliani pushed the idea as a great boon for national security—often without mentioning that Nextel had become a client of Giuliani Partners’.

Nextel got its new spectrum space. Giuliani Partners got an undisclosed up-front fee, plus l.2 million Nextel stock options with a strike price of $4.50 per option. When Nextel’s stock shot up in advance of a buyout by Sprint, Giuliani Partners made about $15 million.

Giuliani also failed to disclose his consulting contract with a Florida entrepreneur named Hank Asher when in 2004 he talked about him to a magazine writer who was profiling Asher. In fact, the writer was this writer, and the magazine was Vanity Fair.

Asher was, and remains, a complicated, fascinating character. A high-school dropout, he had strung together a bunch of computers and harnessed their combined power to sift through vast databases. He eventually developed a far more powerful system called Matrix that had the Orwellian capacity to fish out likely terrorists from vast troves of cross-referenced information. After 9/11, Asher had interested the Bush administration and numerous state law-enforcement agencies in acquiring Matrix. He had a problem, though: in his youth, he’d been a cocaine smuggler. Asher had come clean, and gone so far as to help the D.E.A. stop other traffickers. But if he was going to interest the government in his system, he needed some very heavy character references. Who better than Rudy Giuliani?

“The first time I met him, he did a demonstration for us at my office,” Giuliani told Vanity Fair after Asher casually suggested the ex-mayor might talk about him. “When I saw it I immediately realized that this was a technology that would have been very helpful to us even when I was the mayor and putting together programs for reducing crime to help us find serial killers, abductors of children, and of course terrorists.” Giuliani knew all about Asher’s sketchy past, but he was all right with it. “It seems to me that what Hank has been doing for some time is in essence to make up for some of the mistakes he may have made,” Giuliani said. “Those mistakes are way, way behind him. He’s a law-abiding person and a person who wants to contribute.”

No mention was made, either by Giuliani or by Asher, of the contract Giuliani Partners had signed with Asher to promote Asher’s company, Seisint. Asked about it recently, Asher acknowledged, “I was a client then. It just never came up.”

According to an affidavit filed by an outraged Seisint shareholder and reported by The Washington Post, the contract that Asher basically rammed through his board of directors in December 2002 called for Seisint to employ Giuliani Partners for two years at a fee of $2 million a year. Giuliani Partners also received 800,000 warrants with an exercise price of $10. The shareholder’s affidavit declared that Seisint had received no financial benefit from the contract. “The defendants cannot point to a single benefit that Seisint received as a result of the Giuliani contract.” (Both sides later agreed to settle the suit.)

That was, perhaps, a bit harsh. By talking up Asher—without acknowledging the $4 million he was being paid to do so—Giuliani may have helped persuade Reed Elsevier, the global information company that owns LexisNexis, to buy Seisint in July 2004 for a reported $775 million. (“I’m not sure we were even aware of Giuliani,” says Reed Elsevier spokesman Patrick Kerr. “The strength and potential of the company—those were what mattered.”)

Pushing Pennies

The Seisint story demonstrated another Giuliani approach: working for warrants, which allow the holder to buy stock at a specified price any time before a specified date. The ex-mayor knew better than anyone the value of his name to companies trying to raise money or go public or score a big sale. Some of the publicly traded companies were penny stocks, trading for less than five dollars a share. But if, helped along by the Giuliani name, they happened to hit it big, Giuliani would hit it big, too, as the share price exceeded the exercise price of the warrants, and he could cash those warrants in.

Working for warrants had its downside, though. It put Giuliani in business with typical denizens of the penny-stock world—dreamers and the occasional scam artist—flogging long shots. It also put the ex-mayor in the position of appearing to sell his name and endorsement for cash. Perhaps the worst such case was Applied DNA Sciences. Giuliani Partners’ brief hookup with the Los Angeles–based biotech is a story both alarming and absurd.

This over-the-counter penny-stock company had been founded in 2002 to market an anti-counterfeiting invention, based on the research of one Dr. Jun-Jei Sheu, a Taiwanese scientist. Dr. Sheu had figured out how to embed the DNA of plants in almost anything, from driver’s licenses to dress labels to DVDs. Since each sample of plant DNA was, like human DNA, unique, this “embedded” DNA could serve as an immutable identification marker.

Unfortunately, the company hadn’t perfected the other half of the equation: a marketable scanner that could “read” the DNA. Without that reader, the embedded DNA would be of no use. By August 2004, says one former insider, “the company had no product, no sales, and no hope of signing any customers in the immediate future.” (Jim Hayward, current C.E.O. of Applied DNA Sciences, replies, “The company did have the technology to sell. But how does one sell biotechnology without a scientist on board?”—since Dr. Sheu was in Taiwan.)

The first payment of $500,000 to Giuliani Partners nearly cleaned out the company’s bank account, leaving it with $1,832 in cash and $4.8 million in liabilities. This wasn’t promising. Even less so was the fact that a backer and major shareholder of Applied DNA Sciences was Richard Langley Jr., an S.E.C.-disciplined stock swindler. (“When Giuliani Partners was retained,” says managing director Steven Oesterle, “Mr. Langley was not a member of the management team, nor was he involved in any discussions, negotiations, or other activities related to Giuliani Partners.”)

Langley had colluded in a classic pump-and-dump stock scheme in the mid-1990s. A worthless penny stock called Pollution Control International was promoted by a circle of brokers, all of whom appeared to be in on the con. Those sales pushed the stock up just long enough for the insiders to cash out their chunks before it fell back to earth.

One of the brokers Langley did business with, as it turned out, was an F.B.I. agent working undercover for exactly the sort of dragnet that Rudy Giuliani orchestrated in his years as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Langley had little choice but to plead guilty and cooperate with the F.B.I. On October 2, 2007, after years of hearings during which he was allowed to remain free, his case was finally closed.

Somehow, despite his guilty plea and a cease-and-desist order from the S.E.C. prohibiting him from participating in penny-stock offerings, Langley was able to help start Applied DNA Sciences in 2002. When a marketable “reader” failed to materialize, the company issued one press release after another that suggested amazing partnerships in the offing. The partnerships were real, though somewhat hypothetical without the reader, and they generated no revenues. They did, however, help keep the share price afloat, and Langley routinely sold chunks of his stock. As a former U.S. attorney who spent a lot of his time going after Wall Street criminals, Giuliani might have noted the almost daily appearance of Langley’s name on S.E.C. filings as a seller of Applied DNA shares. Apparently, neither he nor his colleagues ever did. (“As strategic consultants, Giuliani Partners provided advice regarding business practices and opportunities,” says Oesterle. “There was nothing brought to our attention to go beyond the agreed-upon scope.”)

Applied DNA’s prospects were decidedly shaky. And yet, as Giuliani later noted admiringly to Vanity Fair, “they were raising a great deal of money.” The main source of that capital, however, was a dubious Manhattan investment bank called Vertical Capital Partners. The firm had been founded only two years before. Yet, it had already been fined $75,000 by the National Association of Securities Dealers and suspended from underwriting for six months. In addition, the association had personally fined Vertical’s president, Ronald Heineman, $50,000. A year later, Heineman and Vertical were also fined $22,500 for violating the S.E.C.’s disclosure policy on research reports.

No one at Giuliani Partners noticed these red flags, either. (“Vetting service providers for Applied DNA was not Giuliani Partners’ responsibility,” says Oesterle.) What mattered was that Vertical was getting ready to deliver $5,482,993 to Applied DNA in new capital from Wall Street investors. When an in-depth article, by Edward Iwata, on the biotech’s rocky ride appeared in USA Today, on March 18, 2005, Giuliani Partners awoke from its torpor. Within three weeks, it ended its contract with Applied DNA and abandoned all hope of exercising its warrants. It kept its fees, though: $1.25 million in all.

“We did a lot of work for them,” Giuliani Partners’ C.E.O. Mike Hess told Vanity Fair at the time. “Hours and hours and hours of working with them, advising them, talking with outside people about them, developing marketing ideas with them, being creative … ”

As for Giuliani, he suggested to Vanity Fair that his firm’s due diligence had focused on Applied DNA’s technology, not on its financing or its founders’ backgrounds. “If the decision had been up front about getting options or warrants or stock,” he suggested, “then the complete due diligence would have been done at the time. Did we learn something from it? Absolutely.”

Today, Applied DNA Sciences is under new management. It has developed a marketable reader at last, says C.E.O. Hayward, and has booked its first revenues (though not, he acknowledges, its first profits: to date, the company has lost $95 million). “It has remarkable promise,” Hayward says. “From governments to consumers, so much can be affected by counterfeiting and product diversion,” everything from prescription drugs to toys. Now that it has the reader, Hayward says, “this is a company that can do well by doing good.”

Vertical Capital Partners has fared less well. In early 2007, it was hit with a cease-and-desist order from the S.E.C. for overcharging its clients. It now operates as Arjent.

The Homeland-Security Chief That Almost Was

Of the little companies that Giuliani Partners had business relationships with, many had some national-security angle. Ottawa-based Vanguard Response Systems (now Allen-Vanguard) hired Giuliani Partners to help it promote its Universal Containment System, which sold products such as foam-filled tents that could, according to Vanguard, mitigate the effects of a dirty bomb. Another was Bio-One, a joint venture between Giuliani Partners and Sabre Technical Services to promote a process for decontaminating buildings. Bio-One grew out of the tragic death, in 2001, by anthrax poisoning of an employee at the headquarters of the Sun tabloid in Boca Raton, Florida. The plan was to decontaminate the abandoned building using chlorine-dioxide gas, then have it serve as Bio-One’s headquarters. To prove the building was anthrax-free, Giuliani himself would walk across its threshold, news cameras snapping away.

Allen-Vanguard’s C.E.O., David Luxton, says Giuliani Partners did help him “understand the landscape and the players” in the U.S. security business, but “they stressed at the start that they weren’t in the business of finding business partners”—and were true to their word. The contract ended some time ago, Luxton says. As for Bio-One, Giuliani Partners says that it successfully decontaminated the Sun building. Managing director Steven Oesterle adds, “G.P. continues to be an active joint-venture partner with Bio-One.” But the press releases on Bio-One’s Web site end in the spring of 2005, and a spokesman for Sabre Technical Services declined to return calls from Vanity Fair.

How much better, though, might these and other alliances have fared if Bernie Kerik had become head of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security?

It was in early December 2004 that President Bush nominated Kerik for the job, acting on Giuliani’s personal recommendation. Within days, the nomination was doomed by a flurry of embarrassing allegations. The illegal nanny whose employment taxes Kerik had failed to pay was the least of it. The onetime police commissioner had engaged in at least two extramarital affairs, including one with flamboyant book publisher Judith Regan that included trysts in an apartment near Ground Zero—an apartment donated for the use of 9/11 first responders. Worse, when Kerik was the head of New York City’s Department of Corrections, a construction company suspected of having shady ties paid for $165,000 worth of renovations to Kerik’s own apartment. In return, it appears, Kerik pushed for an affiliate of the company to get a lucrative city contract, and discouraged any further investigation into the company’s purported Mob ties.

As Kerik bitterly resigned from Giuliani-Kerik L.L.C., the obvious questions arose: How much had Giuliani known of his old friend’s messy life, and when had he known it? What did all this say about Giuliani’s judgment? In November, a grand jury handed down formal criminal charges against Kerik, including tax fraud and obstruction of justice, and so those questions are swirling again.

But the most interesting question may be about business. If Kerik had landed the job, would he not have been in the perfect position, on behalf of the federal government, to buy lots of the very security products and services that Giuliani Partners had been nursing along and investing in? “Outrageous, hypothetical question,” replies Giuliani Partners’ Mike Hess.

Bank Shot

At the same time Giuliani was severing ties with Bernie Kerik, he was using his profits from Giuliani Partners to acquire a whole new business, one that had the potential to be far more profitable than his penny-stock plays. For $9.8 million, Giuliani Partners bought a financial firm in November 2004 and renamed it Giuliani Capital Advisors (G.C.A.).

It was, in fact, the investment-banking arm of Ernst & Young, the global financial-services company. Ernst & Young was happy to unload it: all too often, E&Y would have to turn down a lucrative new client because the U.S. trustee in a bankruptcy case found that the company had a conflict of interest with another client in another of its many divisions. Giuliani Partners had no such conflicts.

According to one bankruptcy expert, Giuliani was hands-off, to say the least, with G.C.A. “Rudy did nothing to support his team,” says the expert. “He didn’t even come to a Christmas party. It was all just income flow to him.” (Oesterle says that they “had an investment in G.C.A. and managed it on an arm’s-length basis.”)

Giuliani inherited a number of top-grade investment bankers from Ernst & Young, and as a result G.C.A. did participate in three major airline bankruptcy re-structurings—U.S. Airways, Aloha Airways, and Delta—through 2005 and 2006. G.C.A. made a reported $10 million for work in all three cases, but, as one bankruptcy expert notes, Giuliani chose an odd time to get into the bankruptcy business. Almost no one was going bankrupt. With interest rates at historic lows and cash readily available, a struggling company could simply refinance, borrowing more money to pay its debts, rather than go into Chapter 11. The airlines were a special case. They were staggering under high “legacy” costs: billions of dollars due in benefits and pensions to union employees. “You can’t modify collective bargaining outside of bankruptcy,” the expert explains, “so they were in bankruptcy to rid themselves of those obligations.”

The seasoned investment bankers of G.C.A. did their best in those airline cases, only to have their work tarnished, last May, by a Wall Street Journal report of a possible conflict of interest. G.C.A. in the Delta bankruptcy had represented the debtor—that is, the airline. It advised the airline on hundreds of matters, from which assets to sell to which health benefits to ask its union employees to do without, all in order to help get the airline out of bankruptcy. Among those many recommendations may have been one to steer business to Command Security, a security-guard company based in upstate New York, and “perhaps even suggest contract terms,” according to the Journal. Somehow, during Delta’s lengthy reorganization, G.C.A. failed to mention to the bankruptcy judge that Command Security had signed on as a client with another Giuliani offshoot. Giuliani Security & Safety (G.S.S.), renamed after the Bernie Kerik debacle, had taken on Command Security as a client for $175,000 a month. This contract began four months after G.C.A. started advising Delta. Additionally, Command Security was already a creditor of Delta’s: the airline owed it as much as $1 million for guard services rendered prior to Delta’s declaring bankruptcy in September 2005. As the Journal noted, a firm advising both a creditor and a debtor in a bankruptcy poses a potential conflict of interest. In response Hess says, “This is false. Command Security’s relationship with Delta Airlines pre-dated G.C.A.’s relationship with Delta by years. G.C.A. had no discussions with Delta regarding Command Security.”

Perhaps the fact that Command had become a client of G.S.S. was just an unfortunate coincidence. But how then to explain the curious way in which Command Security became a client of G.S.S. in the first place?

The chairman of Command Security is Bruce Galloway, who runs Galloway Capital Management in Manhattan, which reportedly manages $45 million in assets. So he would seem savvy enough to know that to hire Giuliani Capital Advisors he could just pick up the phone and call its number. Yet, oddly, he’d felt obliged to go through a Boca Raton friend of Giuliani’s named Richard Chwatt. “Richard Chwatt’s wife is very, very dear friends with Judith Nathan,” Galloway explained to Forbes, “and that’s how we got the relationship.” (Mike Hess told Forbes that the business “did not come about through the social relationship.”)

When Galloway signed on with G.S.S., in January 2006, he also signed a lucrative finder’s-fee agreement with Chwatt’s Jericho State Capital. By its terms, Jericho received $90,000 and a warrant for 350,000 shares of Command’s over-the-counter bulletin-board stock at $2 per share. (Soon after the contract was signed, the stock was trading for $2.60 a share.) If Command’s contract with G.S.S. was extended an extra year, Jericho would receive $7,500 a month plus a warrant for 150,000 additional shares. (Hess says that Jericho “introduced Command Security to G.S.S. but was not paid a finder’s fee by either entity.” But an S.E.C. filing by Command dated February 6, 2007, says that, “in consideration of the introduction by Jericho to the Company [Command] of Giuliani Security, the Company granted to Jericho a warrant” for 350,000 shares.)

Why on earth would Galloway agree to pay Chwatt all that money for an introduction he didn’t need? (After initially promising to answer questions about Giuliani Partners, neither Galloway nor a Command representative followed up.)

Chwatt, as it turns out, is not just a close friend of the Giulianis’ but also a significant fund-raiser. He and seven other members of his family have given $13,500 so far to the candidate. But that’s just the start of it. Last February, Chwatt hosted a Boca Raton reception for Giuliani, and he has raised more than $94,000 from donors in his area—earning him a place on the Center for Responsive Politics’ list of “bundlers” for the candidate. (Chwatt did not respond to messages left at Jericho.)

So everyone in the circle did well. Command Security paid $2.1 million to G.S.S., along with at least $90,000 to Richard Chwatt, and in return probably got an influential ally in Delta’s re-structuring. Chwatt got his $90,000—but also a lot more than that in warrants. For whatever leverage Giuliani gave him, Chwatt apparently repaid the favor by raising over $94,000 for Giuliani.

On its Web site, Chwatt’s Jericho State Capital advertises itself as a financing company for businesses that have “an immediate need for cash, for growth, or just plain survival who may or may not qualify for traditional loans or grants.” The Web site goes on to observe that “Jericho prides itself on its ‘Creative Financing Techniques.’ ” But in 1977 Chwatt was perhaps too creative: he was sanctioned by the S.E.C. for manipulating an initial public offering.

For all the money it was taking in from airline re-structuring, G.C.A. lost money in 2006. Eight of 22 original managing directors left that year. There just weren’t that many other airlines going into Chapter 11. The future looked bleak—and Giuliani decided to sell it. “The equity partners of G.C.A. got screwed,” suggests one person close to a number of the bankers. “They hoped their ship would come in—that they’d be able to monetize their equity investment, make $20 million per partner. Didn’t happen. Instead, they were shopped around like crazy. G.C.A.’s book [to sell the firm] was on the street a long time, but no takers.”

Finally, last March, Giuliani managed to sell G.C.A. for an undisclosed sum to a fast-growing Australian bank called Macquarie Group. In a New York Times article, an analyst suggested that Macquarie might have paid as much as $76 million for it. Another analyst scoffs at that and says the price was closer to $10 million—essentially what Giuliani had paid for it. A source at Macquarie, while not confirming the lower figure, allows that the higher figure is “wildly” off. (Hess says, “We don’t comment on fees or compensation.”)

Why would an Australian colossus like Macquarie buy a money-losing U.S. investment bank? Perhaps because Macquarie is making inroads—literally—in the U.S., acquiring the leases on state highways and operating them as toll roads, in Indiana and Illinois, with more states to follow. The toll-road business is highly controversial and involves politics right up to the top. It can’t hurt to have helped out a man who might be the next president. (A Macquarie spokesperson says the only reason for the purchase of G.C.A. was “new sectors and new locations for us,” and that Giuliani “was not involved in discussions for acquisition of G.C.A. by Macquarie.”)

Even before the deal, there had been only one degree of separation between Macquarie and Giuliani. Macquarie’s partner in a $3.8 billion Indiana toll road is a Spanish company called Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte, S.A. Cintra, in turn, is represented by a Texas law firm once known as Bracewell & Patterson, now called Bracewell & Giuliani.

Legal Eagles

For Giuliani, a law firm was the third leg of the stool. Not only did it fit right in with his other businesses; for the former prosecutor, appending his name to a large, established firm was a dream come true. But one in Texas?

The business marriage worked for the reason marriages often do: each partner could help the other. At 64, Bracewell managing director Patrick Oxford had accomplished a lot. A genial Republican with close ties to Senators Kay Bailey Hutchinson and John Cornyn, among other Texas stalwarts, he prides himself on his role in heading up his party’s delegation of lawyers in Broward County, Florida, in the aftermath of the 2000 election. Four years later, he took his strike force to Ohio and helped keep the tipping-point state in the Republican column. Oxford, then, had done about as much as any individual in the United States to determine the outcomes of the last two presidential elections. Yet Bracewell was overshadowed by larger Texas firms such as Vinson & Elkins, alma mater of former U.S. attorney general Alberto Gonzales, and Baker Botts, where former secretary of state James Baker presides. Giuliani would boost Bracewell’s profile, especially if he ran for president—and won.

To all who asked, Giuliani said he hadn’t yet made up his mind about entering the race for 2008. But the alliance with Bracewell in early 2005 was a move made by a man who knew exactly what he needed to shore up his prospects: credibility in the Republican heartland. Also, the money was good. Oxford agreed to give Giuliani Partners $10 million, to be split among its three senior partners: Giuliani, Mike Hess, and Daniel Connolly, according to a story in The American Lawyer. In becoming Bracewell & Giuliani, the Texas firm would also commit $25 million to establish a New York office. As the head of that office, Giuliani would be guaranteed at least $1 million a year, plus 7.5 percent of all fees generated by the office. Yet his commitment to the law firm was less than half-time: Mondays and Fridays.

Politically so far, the move has paid off. By the middle of 2007, Giuliani had raised $4,788,168 in Texas, more than Hillary Clinton ($3,137,134), more even than the two closest Republican candidates combined (Mitt Romney’s $2,254,349 and John McCain’s $2,189,696). But in marrying into Bracewell, Giuliani has acquired a whole family of squirrelly relatives, from the firm’s own lobbyist-lawyers to the clients they represent.

Bracewell & Patterson has long been known for representing school districts. By the time Giuliani became part of it, in early 2005, it had also become the go-to law firm for major polluters: oil and gas as well as coal companies. Among its significant clients are Chevron/Texaco, Pacific Gas & Electric, Dynegy, Southern Company, Valero Energy, and Shell Oil.

Until recently, Citgo oil company was among those significant clients, but no longer. Last March, after a flurry of news stories, Giuliani was embarrassed: Citgo, since 1990, has been run by a state-owned Venezuelan petroleum company, and thus is currently controlled by the country’s president, Hugo Chávez. Giuliani had been knocking the virulently anti-American Chávez in speeches around the country. “We need a president who knows how to get things done, so we don’t have to be sending money to Chávez,” he declared in a speech in May. “Who would listen to Chávez if he didn’t have all this oil money?” In fact, Bracewell & Giuliani had been happy to take Chávez’s money: Bracewell had registered as a lobbyist for Citgo in April 2005, for $5,000 a month, right after Giuliani joined the firm. Bracewell finally ended its relationship with Citgo in June 2007.

Perhaps most unfortunately, Bracewell & Giuliani has supplied the legal and lobbying muscle to get new coal-fired power plants built all over the country. A dramatic example is the coal-fired plant called Desert Rock Energy Project, to be built by Sithe Global Power, a Bracewell client, on Navajo lands in Burnham, New Mexico. “To us, this is environmental injustice and economic exploitation,” declares Dailan Long, a Navajo activist. “We were never informed about this project thoroughly. The terms of the lease agreement have never been released to us.” Bracewell’s lobbyist Frank Maisano, the point man on Desert Rock, scoffs at that. “There have been more than 400 public meetings about the project over a four-year period,” he says. “They don’t have to disclose the terms of the lease. This is an agreement between Sithe Global and the Navajo Nation, and the lease is part of an ongoing process.” Maisano notes that the council of the Navajo Nation voted 66 to 7 for the plant. Long and other activists say the tribe’s elders have been misled about the environmental and financial impact on the community.

Howard Rubinstein, the well-known New York public-relations man who now represents Bracewell & Giuliani, has said that Giuliani “doesn’t lobby in any way” for the firm, and that lobbying makes up only about 2 percent of the firm’s earnings. So none of this really matters, nor do the contributions that the firm’s employees have made to Giuliani the candidate—at least $100,000 to date—or the contributions from the oil and gas companies: $545,058 as of mid-November 2007, way ahead of Mitt Romney ($309,933) and Hillary Clinton ($220,550). And, presumably, if Giuliani wins in November 2008, the firm would be known simply as Bracewell, not as Bracewell & President Giuliani.

The Road Through Texas Is Paved with Gold

Still, Giuliani’s presence at the firm may create some synergistic connections. Consider the Trans Texas Corridor debate.

For several years now, Texas governor Rick Perry has been pushing a plan that appalls many of his constituents—except, apparently, the most powerful ones—to outsource a spider’s web of new and improved state highways to Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte, S.A. To ease Texans’ fears that the state is putting its future roads in the hands of a foreign-owned company, Cintra is now partnered with a San Antonio construction company called Zachry. The roads envisioned in this $184 billion, 4,000-mile project are no mere superhighways. They’re three football fields wide. They will include not only a rail line but also pipelines that can carry oil, gasoline, or liquefied natural gas. Alongside the roads will be distribution centers. Cintra-Zachry will lease the roads and levy whatever tolls it likes. And it will also control the distribution hubs, and charge what it likes there too. “I don’t want to see transportation become another battle between the haves and have-nots,” says former Texas Democratic congressman Chris Bell. “And it could quickly become that.”

The roads of the Trans Texas Corridor, as currently envisioned, would cut wide swaths through hundreds of farms and ranches. “Eminent domain is a huge issue here,” says Democratic Texas state representative Garnet Coleman. “The biggest opposition has come from farmers and ranchers who are along the proposed roads.” Eventually, the corridor might be extended to Canada. Coleman calls it “a super-nafta corridor.”

The connections may be coincidence, but they’re striking. Cintra is a client in Texas of Bracewell & Giuliani. The company it’s most likely to work with to extend the corridor north is Macquarie, which already operates its Indiana toll road in partnership with Cintra. In early 2007, Macquarie bought a chain of some 40 local Texas and Oklahoma newspapers. Might it have bought those papers to control public opinion in advance of plans to build more controversial toll roads? Might it potentially have in Giuliani not only a legal partner for future toll roads but a political ally?

Bracewell spokesperson Melanie Hillis says that Giuliani has not worked on behalf of Cintra or Macquarie. A Macquarie spokesperson adds that Cintra used Bracewell before it became Bracewell & Giuliani. He says that Macquarie is as likely to compete with Cintra as to cooperate on any future toll roads. He also declares that the purchase of those newspapers was made by the Macquarie Media Group, a separate division with no connection to Macquarie’s toll-road business. “To suggest that the acquisition was made to control public opinion in advance of building toll roads is absurd and incorrect. The business continues to be run by the same management team, with the same editorial staff. No editorial influence has been exercised by the Macquarie Media Group.” Anyway, the spokesperson adds, “I don’t think it is correct to say that the building of more toll roads in the United States is ‘a highly controversial plan.’ ”

That might come as a surprise to the farmers and ranchers who face the prospective loss of their land through eminent domain, and the Texans who feel their taxes entitle them to state-built freeways, not foreign-run toll roads. At the least, they seem less likely to get a sympathetic hearing from a president whose law firm represents Cintra and whose investment bank was sold to an Australian bank that often partners with Cintra and wants to build more U.S. toll roads.

Perhaps Giuliani does have little or nothing to do with his law firm’s principal clients. With at least one smaller client, however, he clearly played a role, and that role appears, to say the least, unpresidential.

In early 2006, Bracewell & Giuliani reviewed a proposed bank purchase. The Spanish bank Santander wanted to buy 20 percent of Sovereign Bancorp of Philadelphia. Bracewell’s review recommended the deal, the New York Stock Exchange and the S.E.C. eventually approved it, and so Santander bought in for $2.4 billion. The story, however, was a bit more complicated than that.

The review, according to one Sovereign insider, was paid for by the Spanish bank and dismissed the concerns of shareholders opposed to the acquisition. As a result, says this source, Bracewell ignored dubious dealings by Santander, such as its donations to Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez’s political campaigns and its connections to Cuba and Iran (Santander was fined by the U.S. in 2004 for doing business with Cuba and has come under scrutiny for trading with an Iranian bank blacklisted by the U.S. for links to terrorism), not to mention the fact that its C.E.O. had been investigated for corruption. “I questioned why Rudy stuck his neck out like that,” the insider says. “Obviously it was for a fee, but with his long-term aspirations there didn’t seem like a lot of upside.” (Bracewell says that the firm was hired by Santander to assess the proposed investment and found that the bank “had fully and completely complied with all laws relevant to the transaction.”)

From the Archives
“Cheer and Loathing in New York,” by Gail Sheehy (June 2000), about the showdown between Rudy and Hillary in that year’s Senate race—before Rudy bowed out

“Giuliani’s Princess Bride,” by Judy Bachrach (September 2007)

“Crazy for Rudy,” by Michael Wolff (June 2007)

Illustration by Risko.

Almost immediately after the buy-in, Sovereign’s chairman, Jay Sidhu, resigned with a $44 million parachute. In November of that year, Giuliani gave a speech, for $100,000, at the Jay S. Sidhu School of Business & Leadership at Wilkes University, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

When the Chicago Tribune asked Bracewell managing partner Daniel Connolly about the timing of these events, Connolly said that Giuliani’s speech had no connection to the Bracewell review, which in any case was completed nine months before the speech. But a Wilkes University spokeswoman told the Tribune that, in fact, the university had identified Giuliani as a potential speaker in April 2006, formally asked him to speak in May, and signed a contract with him on June l3—two weeks after the Santander-Sovereign deal closed. (Giuliani’s speeches were arranged by the Washington Speakers Bureau.)

In the businesses that Giuliani built and bought these last six years, more deals have yet to be examined, more dots connected in the picture of his great financial success. But enough are there already, with lines between them, for a shape to have clearly emerged. It’s a picture of a politician leading a parade, as Mayor Giuliani so often did. Only the marchers behind him aren’t drum majorettes or wartime veterans or firefighters or police. They’re a ragtag band of Texas lawyers and energy lobbyists, penny-stock sharpies and security-industry entrepreneurs, agog with visions of the ultimate pay-to-play presidency.

With additional reporting by Christopher Bateman.

Michael Shnayerson is a Vanity Fair contributing editor.

State seeks "private partner" to build TTC 69

Remember that 69 was promised as an interstate, not a privatized and tolled Trans Texas Trade Corridor to benefit multi-national corporations, not Texans.

"The official memo has gone out."

Controversial Trans-Texas Corridor Plans Forge Ahead

12/4/2007

KLBJ News Radio 590
Copyright 2007

The official memo has gone out from the state's transportation department to two private companies to move ahead with plans to build a highly-controversial superhighway which critics say hurt Texas, and cause an erosion in commerce nationwide.

Plans for the Trans-Texas corridor were being formulated 16 years ago, but Governor Rick Perry's office says it "lacked the billions of dollars in funding needed to construct it". On Monday, two private companies were asked to submit detailed proposals on developing and financing the project, designed to provide a high-speed ground link between Laredo and Dallas. Under a preferred route, running parallel to I-35 near Austin, the route would bypass San Antonio, Austin, Waco and Dallas.


"It has no federal funding for it, and so it is up to the State of Texas to find funding for this interstate corridor," says Gaby Garcia, spokesperson for the Texas Department of Transportation. "We have no money set aside for this project. No federal funds are set aside for the interstate."

TxDOT has asked two firms, Zachry American Infrastructure, of San Antonio; and Cintra, a Spain-based toll-road operator, to front the project. Cintra would do business as 'Bluebonnet Infrastructure' on this project. Cintra currently operates an east-west toll-road in Indiana, as the result of a highly-protested takeover in 2005, approved by Indiana's governor at the time.

In an online fact-versus-myth page dedicated to the corridor, or "TTC/I-69" as the state calls it, Governor Perry says the road will be paid for entirely by private financing. When completed, it will be a totally toll-operated highway.

"[It's] a revenue-generating opportunity for a private partner to have a monopoly on transportation," says David Stall, of the group 'Corridor Watch.org', based in Fayetteville, Texas. "I mean, there's no free lunch and there's no free road. And when you layer-in a profit for a private partner that has a monopoly who is going to dictate the price of the infrastructure, absolutely they're going to pay for it."

Although there have been previous newspaper articles and maps illustrating the future main artery of the corridor paralleling I-35 and taking about the same path as the brand-new SH130, east of Austin (currently toll), the U.S. Route 59 was recently asserted as the official route for the planned highway. U.S. 59 connects Laredo with roughly west of Victoria, proceeds northeast to Houston, and roughly due north to Texarkana.

"We're concerned that this has been a project that has excluded public input," Stall says.

Some critics have also contested the plan in saying that it would divide some of the area's massive properties, farms and ranches by upwards of a one-half mile. According to Governor Perry's online "contention" versus "reality" publication, that statement is untrue. He says access roads and overpasses would be built in select locations to give property owners access to their lands. Other critics claim the highway would be built using eminent domain and the state could easily give far less than fair market value to property owners whose land the highway would consume for construction. The Governor claims that assertion is untrue and that property owners have every right to contest any offer made for their property, in court.

The state contends that the project "is needed to make transportation safer, faster and more reliable and to provide for better hurricane evacuation".

The entire Trans-Texas Corridor could take up to 50 years to complete.

© 2007 Emmis Austin Radio Broadcasting Company, Lp.: www.590klbj.com

Toll rates for 281 approved by MPO Board

Link to article here. See the TURF assessment of what happened at the MPO here.

ARROGANCE: “Nobody wants to pay tolls,” tolling authority board member Reynaldo Diaz said. “It's just a fact of life, it's going to happen.” That's the attitude of UN-elected appointees of the tolling authority (Alamo RMA). You're gettin' these toll roads rammed down your throats whether you want them or not....we're the elitists and we know best. Public vote? Bahumbug...we aren't going to trifle with a little thing like democracy! Of course, he doesn't tell you the overpasses have been paid for since 2003 and we don't need toll roads to fix 281, period! This is a money grab!

The article misstates how many pro-tollers showed up. The reporter was sitting in the front, I was standing in the back. When the tollers stood up, only the first 5 or 6 rows stood. A good chunk of the last several rows were filled with city and county employees as well as TxDOT staff. I only counted about 40 people in favor. Also, at least 40 of our supporters were stuck outside and not allowed in due to the room reaching capacity.

This is not representative government. Critics outnumbered proponents (who will profit from the roads) 3 to 1, yet they Board still voted in favor. What does that tell you? As long as 9 appointees whose jobs depend on them voting for the establishment, we'll NEVER have representation!We've been in front of this MPO for more than 2 years and no matter how many people turn out to oppose tolls, these bought and paid for board members continue to ram toll roads through! Let the people vote!
See the voting record of the MPO Board members after the first story.

First toll lanes on 281 set for December 2010
Patrick Driscoll
Express-News
12/04/2007

Just one day after getting more public funds to help pay for a planned U.S. 281 tollway, a local agency Tuesday set a schedule to open the first toll lanes in December 2010.

Those 4 miles will run from Loop 1604 past Stone Oak Boulevard, according to the timetable approved by the Alamo Regional Mobility Authority board.


 

Another 4 miles, to Comal County, would open in June 2012, six years ahead of a calendar used in a finance study that had all 8 miles opening in stages from 2011 to 2018.

“The timeline schedule that we set on this is just screaming,” authority Chairman Bill Thornton said.

The tollway could open even sooner if the contractor works fast, collecting $10,000 for each day shaved off of each of the project's two segments.

But if the contractor's late, daily penalties would be $10,000 for the first 4 miles and $20,000 for the rest.

Motorists will ride free the first two months and pay just half-price the third month when each section opens. Full fees in 2012 will be 17 cents per mile for cars and will rise annually with consumer inflation.

The existing highway lanes will be replaced with non-toll access roads.

“Nobody wants to pay tolls,” board member Reynaldo Diaz said. “It's just a fact of life, it's going to happen.”

On Monday, the Metropolitan Planning Organization, an intergovernmental board that signs off on area tollway and highway projects, voted 12-4 to approve U.S. 281 toll rates.

The MPO board also shifted $43 million in public funds from other toll projects to help pay for U.S. 281 toll lanes. A total of $112 million in public money will subsidize the $476 million cost to ramp the system up.

__________________________

December 04, 2007
Board sets U.S. 281 toll rates
Express-News
It took toll roads to turn a quiet planning board into a red-hot public forum, and it took a vote Monday on setting toll rates to pack in a record crowd.

How they voted

 FOR

 

 
Windcrest Mayor Jack Leonhardt
 

Selma City Councilman Bill Weeper
 

County Commissioner Sergio "Chico" Rodriguez
 

County Infrastructure Director Joe Aceves
 

San Antonio City Councilwoman Sheila McNeil
 

San Antonio City Councilwoman Diane Cibrian
 

San Antonio Aviation Director Mark Webb
 

San Antonio Deputy City Manager Jelynne Burley
 

Texas Department of Transportation engineer David Casteel
 

Texas Department of Transportation engineer Clay Smith
 

VIA Metropolitan Transit board member Ruby Perez
 

VIA Metropolitan Transit board member Hank Brummett
 

 AGAINST

 

 
State Rep. Carlos Uresti
 

State Rep. David Leibowitz
 

County Commissioner Tommy Adkisson
 

County Commissioner Lyle Larson
 

 ABSTAINED

 

 
AACOG Director Gloria Arriaga
 

 ABSENT

 

 
San Antonio City Councilman Philip Cortez
 

San Antonio City Councilman Justin Rodriguez

Romney tied to private equity firm & Chinese company with access to military secrets

Haven't we seen that private equity deals, like the private equity toll road deals being perpetrated upon Texans (like the SH 130 toll road) are a bad deal all the way around for our Nation? Here's another reason to oppose them and to be informed about the presidential candidates' money trails...Giuliani has a few of his own.
________________________

WASHINGTON (CNN) - Congressman Duncan Hunter, R-California, who is running for President, called on Mitt Romney, another GOP candidate, to take a public stance on the proposed partnership between the private equity firm Romney founded and a Chinese-based company.

Before running for Governor of Massachusetts in 2002, Romney was the CEO and founder of Bain Capital Partners, a highly successful venture capital and investment firm based in Boston which currently manages more than $50 billion in assets, according to the company's website.

Last month, Bain Capital and China's Huawei Technology purchased 3Com in a deal valued at $2.2 billion. The deal gave the Chinese company a minority stake in 3Com, an internet security company.

Hunter says that 3Com has contracts with the U.S. Dept. of Defense. However, Bain Capital tells CNN 3Com does not contract with the U.S. government directly, and the Chinese company will not have access to sensitive U.S.-origin technology or U.S. government sales as a result of this transaction.
In a letter addressed to Romney, provided to CNN by Hunter's campaign, Hunter claims the Chinese company has ties to Saddam Hussein and the Taliban and asks Romney to come forward with a "clear statement" in opposition to the deal sealed last October.

The Bain Capital deal in question "can only be characterized as irresponsible," Hunter said in a written statement.
In September, other Republicans in the House called on the Bush administration to block the merger and proposed a resolution that says the deal "threatens the national security of the United States and should not be approved by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States."

Romney's campaign provided CNN the following statement in response to the request from Hunter, "Governor Romney is no longer involved in Bain Capital and their investment decisions."

Giuliani won't sever ties to law firm representing Cintra


Link to article here. Read more about how Bracewell & Giuliani is the sole law firm for the Spanish company, Cintra who is building the Trans Texas Corridor. His conflicts of interest are astounding!

Giuliani Will Not Sever Ties to His Firm
By MARC SANTORA
New York Times
DECEMBER 9, 2007
Rudolph W. Giuliani, seeking to stem a spate of bad news in his bid for the Republican nomination, defended himself Sunday morning from a vast array of questions about his personal integrity, his judgment and possible conflicts of interest because of business ties, among other issues.

As the solo guest on “Meet the Press,” Mr. Giuliani was by turns defensive, apologetic and indignant under the questions of Tim Russert, but the interview never grew heated and at points Mr. Giuliani seemed amused.

He said he would not sever his financial ties with Giuliani Partners, the security consulting firm he founded. He also disassociated himself from the opinions of one of his more hawkish foreign policy advisers, tried to explain why he missed meetings of the Iraq Study Group to give lucrative speeches and once again tried to explain his recommendation of Bernard Kerik to head the office of Homeland Security.

His personal life was also touched upon, when Mr. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York who was twice divorced, was questioned about the decision to provide security to his then-girlfriend, now wife, Judith Nathan, at taxpayer expense.


Mr. Giuliani was dismissive when asked about the work his law firm, Bracewell/Giuliani, has done on behalf of Citgo Petroleum Corporation of Houston, the American subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA).

Hugo Chávez, the socialist leader of Venezuela who derides President Bush as a genocidal murderer, controls the state company.

Mr. Giuliani laughed loudly as Mr. Russert posed the question and then went on to claim that the law firm represented Citgo “just in Texas.”

He was also asked about some controversial clients of his security firm, Giuliani Partners, including the government of Qatar.

Members of the royal family in the Gulf Country are suspected of sheltering Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. “The reality is Qatar is an ally of the United States,” he said.

Mr. Russert pressed him on why he simply did not sever his financial ties with Giuliani Partners and make a full list of clients public.

Mr. Giuliani said certain confidentiality agreements made that impossible but he did not explain why he still takes money from the security firm, which he founded, while he runs for president.
He said he was “not going to do more than what is absolutely required.”

The explanation seemed to run counter to his defense of his decision to drop out of the Iraq Study Group.

Mr. Giuliani missed several early meetings, and on those days instead gave speeches for which he was paid millions of dollars.

Mr. Giuliani said that it was not personal gain that compelled him to quit the group, a bipartisan commission that was tasked with assessing the situation in Iraq. Rather, he said, he feared that as he considered running for president, his political ambition could taint the findings of the commission.

Mr. Russert pressed the point, saying that Mr. Giuliani had told no one at the time that he was quitting because of his presidential ambitions. Mr. Giuliani claimed he mentioned his rationale to James Baker, the Republican head of the study group.

Often there are one or two difficult issues a candidate will have to deal with when going on the Sunday morning talk shows. But the tough and serious questions for Mr. Giuliani, who was reluctant to appear on “Meet the Press,” according to people familiar with the booking process, did not seem to stop. Though the interview touched on foreign policy, fuel standards and even remarks by a rival, Mike Huckabee, most of the questions were about Mr. Giuliani’s personal record and decision making.

It was a reminder of just how much the campaign has been struggling of late to drive the news rather than simply respond.

For months, Mr. Giuliani was setting the agenda of the Republican race. Last spring, he focused on 9/11 and pushed the theme as far as he could. Throughout the summer, he used crime and New York as a foil to position himself as tough. And he started the fall talking almost solely about Hillary Clinton and his contention that he was the best candidate to beat her.

Even the question of abortion seemed to work for him, at once allowing him to say that he was going to not shift his pro-life stand despite the pressures of the primary while at the same time repeatedly invoke his desire to appoint “strict-constructionist” judges.

But in the last month, he has yet to find a successful narrative to move beyond the questions that are being raised about him.

On his decision to appoint Mr. Kerik — now under indictment on corruption charges — to lead the New York City Police Department and later to recommend him to for a critical job in keeping America safe from terrorism as head of the Homeland Security Department, Mr. Giuliani said, “The mistake was I should have checked it out much more carefully.”

But he also once again tried to point to successes Mr. Kerik had as his police commissioner.

On the question of police protection for Judith Nathan, Mr. Giuliani said it was a security matter and not his call and that no one really likes to have security anyway.

Mr. Russert focused on the timing of when the security was provided, citing reports that she was given security before December of 2000, suggesting that the security argument was hollow because Mr. Giuliani’s relationship with Ms. Nathan was secret.

Mr. Giuliani said he misunderstood the timing of his affair, noting that they went public in May of 2000.

But the details of discussion seemed of little importance. Words like affair, mistress, secret, and girlfriend are not what a candidate wants to be discussion one month before the first caucus and primary contests.

It is perhaps a bit surprising the Mr. Giuliani waited so long to go on the program, since the scrutiny will likely now be much greater.

However, Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who is also seeking the Republican nomination, has also been reluctant to subject himself to tough questions. He is scheduled to appear on “Meet the Press” next Sunday.

State to study TxDOT's illegal use of taxpayer money to push toll roads

Link to post here. See info about TURF's lawsuit against the State for this misuse of taxpayer funds here.

State Affairs to study TxDOT ad campaign
Houston Chronicle
By Janet Elliot
November 29, 2007

Texas Department of Transportation officials may need running shoes to keep up with all the interim committee probes.

Yesterday, Speaker Craddick assigned House Appropriations to analyze the agency's finances going back five years. Today, he told State Affairs to "study the issue of using state funds to advertise government programs and services to discern if taxpayer dollars are being spent appropriately." He also wants the committee to consider legislation that will ensure that dollars are spent to benefit, not coerce, the public.

TxDOT has been under fire for a multimillion-dollar ad campaign on toll roads and the Trans-Texas Corridor. The agency has defended the $7 million to $9 million that it's spending on the Keep Texas Moving campaign as responding to demands from lawmakers and the public for more information.

The agency can expect tough questioning from the vice chairman of State Affairs, Rep. Ken Paxton, R-McKinney. He asked Craddick for a formal examination of how state agencies spend media and advertising dollars.

"I appreciate Speaker Craddick's decision to accept my request for an interim charge study to examine the issue of using state funds to advertise government programs and services to discern if taxpayer dollars are being spent appropriately," Paxton said in an email today. "While it may be appropriate, at times, for government agencies to educate citizens through public service announcements, I maintain that government should not ever spend the money raised from taxpayers to lobby the public."


_________________________________

Lawmakers to study TxDOT toll road ads
Janet Elliott
12/02/2007
Express-News
Austin Bureau

AUSTIN — A multimillion-dollar ad campaign on toll roads and the Trans-Texas Corridor will be under scrutiny next year by lawmakers who want to know whether the effort is designed to benefit or coerce the public.
The issue was added to a list of topics that the House State Affairs Committee will study leading up to the 2009 legislative session. Speaker Tom Craddick made the assignments last week.

In making the lengthy "interim charges," Craddick focused on some controversial bills that failed to pass during this year's session. They include outlawing so-called "sanctuary cities" for illegal immigrants and requiring voters to show photo IDs.

The Texas Department of Transportation, which is spending $7 million to $9 million on the Keep Texas Moving advertising efforts, also will have to answer to the Appropriations Committee about its current financial condition.

Agency leaders said in early November that a looming budget deficit — at least $1.8 billion by fiscal year 2012 — would force them to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from future road projects.

Craddick wants House budget writers to review transportation spending over the past five years, as well as examine alternative sources of revenue to sustain future transportation needs.

TxDOT spokesman Randall Dillard welcomed the review, saying it is "an excellent opportunity to fully explore the health of transportation finance in Texas."

State Affairs Vice Chairman Ken Paxton, R-McKinney, had asked Craddick, R-Midland, for the formal review of advertising spending by all state agencies.

"While it may be appropriate, at times, for government agencies to educate citizens through public service announcements, I maintain that government should not ever spend the money raised from taxpayers to lobby the public," Paxton said Thursday.

Transportation officials have said the campaign is a response to demands from lawmakers and the public for more information about why privately financed toll roads are necessary to relieve congestion..."

Hardy toll road extension in Houston approved by City Council, to connect to Trans Texas Corridor 69

Link to story here. Of note, this Hardy toll road extension is significant in that it connects with highway 59 which is slated to become the Trans Texas Corridor 69 privatized and tolled trade corridor. The BIG GOVERNMENT and BIG BUSINESS interests are mapping out their takeover of our FREEway system and turning it into a cash cow toll road system extorting money from motorists just to drive to make their daily bread.

Hardy extension gets the go ahead
Thursday, December 6, 2007
By Lee McGuire / 11 News



The Hardy Toll Road extension should be open within four years.
On Wednesday, the Houston City Council made possible the extension of the Hardy Toll road from where it ends now, at 610 North, to State Highway 59.

The expansion will also affect three nearby freeways.

The new, 3 1⁄2 mile extension of the Hardy Toll Road has everything to do with railroads.

“Virtually the whole right of way is on railroad property,” said Harris County Judge Ed Emmett.


Meaning, not much except rail lines and some industrial freight businesses stand in the way of downtown Houston and a much quicker trip to the big airport and the Woodlands.

“Anything they can do to make it better they should do,” said motorist John Defoen.

Right now, Defoen totally avoids the interchange at the North Freeway and Loop 610; it's where the Hardy dumps out now, and at rush hour.

The Hardy extension will replace some north/south rail lines and the tracks themselves will move. On surface roads, crews will build rail overpasses at Lorraine, Quitman and Collingsworth.

Ending the temptation to play chicken with a train.
There are some houses in the way, probably fewer than a dozen, but the maps aren't finished yet.

In the big picture, the Hardy extension would expand beyond Loop 610, reach beyond I-10 and connect with State Highway 59 in both directions.
That would ease traffic pressure on Loop 610, Highway 59 and the North Freeway, moving 35,000 cars a day on to the Hardy extension.

"It certainly can't hurt there are enough problems right now with traffic, anything they can do to help would help,” said driver Mike Kurzy.

It’s an extension that’s been in the works for 20 years. Now, drivers have four more years to wait.

The target completion date for the Hardy Toll Road extension is December 2011. It'll cost about $200 million, and toll road officials aren’t ready to say just what it'll cost to drive it.

Comment: 'Those people' victims of poor highway planning

Guess it took a doctoral candidate in planning and problem solving to get the Express-News Editorial Board to print the concerns the citizens have brought forward for nearly 3 years now. Kudos to Mr. Forrest.

Comment: 'Those people' victims of poor highway planning
12/08/2007
By Jay Forrest

Jaime Castillo makes a number of good points in his column "McNeil just doesn't get the toll-related frustration of 'those people'" (Monday, Metro).I would add that as one of "those people," the narrow targeting of toll roads on U.S. 281 and Loop 1604 makes me a victim of extremely shortsighted planning and management, leading me to project an aura of incompetence upon the three primary perpetrators:

The Texas Legislature, which has distorted the "fair" funding option by reallocating "surplus" highway funds and refusing to release them back to the highway department as needed and by refusing to consider raising gasoline taxes as an inferior alternative.

The Texas Department of Transportation, which built highways all over San Antonio with no consideration of the fact they eventually would need to be connected, leading to exorbitant later costs that TxDOT later decided it could not afford.


 
The city of San Antonio and its past mayors and City Council members, who took the easy route by approving plans for high-density development without regard for the impact on traffic (and, more significantly, water) or pursing projects to ensure adequate transportation.

The tolling of the U.S. 281- Loop 1604 intersection provides a good example of why many of "those people" feel discriminated against. The "intersections" of U.S. 281 and Loop 410, Interstate 10 and Loop 410, U.S. 281 and Loop 1604 and more were built by TxDOT with no consideration of the fact they would need to be connected.

I am not aware of any other major highways or major arteries in Texas that were built without direct ramp connections (i.e., avoiding the traffic-jamming use of surface access roads with traffic lights).

For TxDOT to build and endorse such intersections is beyond incompetent. They should have been built properly, with plans for reasonable connection for the cost of the half-mile extended flying ramps that will correct this oversight and contribute significantly to the cost crunch that leads TX DOT to say the U.S. 281-Loop 1604 intersection requires tolls.

The proposed tolls for the ramps at U.S. 281 and Loop 1604 are discriminatory because, if nothing else, the remedial ramps being built between Loop 410 and U.S. 281 and Loop 410 and Interstate 10 are free. The installation of proper ramps at U.S. 281 and Loop 1604 are similar in that they correct mistakes by TxDOT planners.

There is a further issue that TxDOT views these tolls as a revenue generator. So those of us affected are being singled out to pay not only for the tolled lanes but also to build roads we don't use. Other drivers get to use ramps for free; why should "those people" pay for ramps and roads that are not tolled? This is a highly arbitrary, discriminatory and inappropriate tax.

I would not be against tolling existing roads so long as everyone in the state paid the same rates for the same vehicles — say, 2 cents a mile for all Texas highways instead of free for some and $2.50 or more a day for others.

Unfortunately, the cost of building facilities to toll all roads would be exorbitant and create a whole new bureaucracy. The same is true for Loop 1604 and the ramps for U.S. 281 and Loop 1604.

The $100,000 a mile spent to toll express lanes on Loop 1604 would be better spent on adding lanes. We already have a means of collecting taxes based on highway use; it is called a gasoline tax.

The real, fair and responsible funding answer lies in a higher gasoline tax in combination with the Legislature returning existing funds to TxDOT; finding other, more appropriate sources of funding for the causes currently using our gasoline taxes; and increasing the fees on the large trucks that destroy interstates and lead TxDOT into perpetual maintenance and highway upgrades.

Proponents of toll roads want me to feel tolling is fair. I think not. We are being asked to pay far more than "our fair share."

There is a reason we feel discriminated against.

Jay Forrest of San Antonio is a doctoral candidate in foresight and a consultant in long-range strategy, problem solving and opportunities.

US DOT announces plans to privatize 6 interstate highways to advance international trade


Link to the US DOT web site here. So for all the establishment, globalist media calling NAFTA Superhighways "conspiracy theory," feast your eyes on the government's own documents that show it's real and in plain view. Those promoting privatization of our existing tax-funded highways and building massive new trade corridors to benefit multi-national global corporations have come up with new names for the NAFTA superhighways: "corridors of the future" and "high priority corridors." No matter, if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it must be a duck!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, September 10, 2007
Contact: Ian Grossman
(202) 366-0660
DOT 95-07

U.S. Department of Transportation Names Six Interstate Routes as "Corridors of the Future" to Help Fight Traffic Congestion
I-95, I-70, I-15, I-5, I-10, and I-69 selected

The U.S. Department of Transportation today announced six interstate routes that will be the first to participate in a new federal initiative to develop multi-state corridors to help reduce congestion.

"We are using a comprehensive approach to fighting congestion along these major interstate routes. What we are doing represents a real break from past approaches that have failed to address growing congestion along our busiest corridors," said Deputy U.S. Secretary of Transportation Thomas J. Barrett.

Today's announcement follows a year-long competition to select a handful of interstate corridors from among the 38 applications received from public and private sector entities to join the Department's "Corridors of the Future" program aimed at developing innovative national and regional approaches to reduce congestion and improve the efficiency of freight delivery. The selected corridors carry 22.7 percent of the nation's daily interstate travel.

The routes will receive the following funding amounts to implement their development plans: $21.8 million for I-95 from Florida to the Canadian border; $5 million for I-70 in Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio; $15 million for I-15 in Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and California; $15 million for I-5 in California, Oregon, and Washington; $8.6 million for I-10 from California to Florida; and $800,000 for I-69 from Texas to Michigan.

The proposals were selected for their potential to use public and private resources to reduce traffic congestion within the corridors and across the country. The concepts include building new roads and adding lanes to existing roads, building truck-only lanes and bypasses, and integrating real-time traffic technology like lane management that can match available capacity on roads to changing traffic demands.

The Department and the states will now work to finalize formal agreements by spring 2008 that will detail the commitments of the federal, state, and local governments involved. These agreements will outline the anticipated role of the private sector as well as how the partners will handle the financing, planning, design, construction, and maintenance of the corridor.

# # #

Fact Sheets:

Interstate 95 (I-95)
Interstate 70 (I-70): Dedicated Truck Lanes - Missouri to Ohio
Interstate 15 (I-15) - California to Utah
Interstate 5 (I-5) - Washington to California
Interstate 10 (I-10) Freight Corridor - California to Florida
Interstate 69 (I-69) Texas to Michigan
Map of US higlighting the corridors described above.

U.S. representative wants Macquarie investigated

Link to article here. A dollar hike in tolls and a state commission ignoring the public opposition, sound familiar? That's what happens when the State hands over the PUBLIC'S highways to foreign corporations who don't care a lick about American motorists.

U.S. representative wants Macquarie investigated
By David Tanner
Landline Magazine
November 26, 2007

A U.S. representative from Virginia has asked the state attorney general to investigate the business practices of toll road operator Macquarie Bank.

In a letter dated Oct. 15, Rep. Frank Wolf, R-VA, a 14-term representative, asked Virginia Attorney General Robert McDonnell to investigate the financial workings of the parent bank whose subsidiary, Toll Road Investor Partners II, operates and collects tolls on the privately built Dulles Greenway.

The state commissioned the Greenway decades ago, but it was not built until 2003 and required financial backing from the private sector. The Macquarie subsidiary paid $533 million in 2005 for the right to operate the roadway and collect tolls for 51 years, when the Greenway will become property of the state.


 

TRIP II, a consortium of Macquarie Bank subsidiary Macquarie Infrastructure Group and other private investors, submitted an application in 2006 to increase tolls on the Greenway and implement congestion pricing during peak traffic times. The State Corporation Commission approved the increases in September of this year and the new tolls took effect in October.

Greenway tolls are scheduled to increase each year from $3 to reach $4 by 2012 for passenger vehicles in addition to congestion pricing being added during morning and afternoon rush hours. Truck tolls are based on the number of axles. A five-axle truck traveling the entire length of the Greenway currently pays $10.25, and the increase will take that total to $14 by 2012.

Wolf wants the toll increase overturned and the toll operator investigated.

“It is imperative that Macquarie’s financial records be scrutinized to ensure the firm has not violated the public trust by potentially circumventing our laws in order to raise tolls on the Greenway,” Wolf wrote.

Click here to read Wolf’s letter.

TRIP II officials responded by saying the need for toll increases is legitimate.

“All of the information provided to the SCC by TRIP II in relation to its toll increase application was factual, complete, accurate, and is on the public record,” company officials stated in October on the Dulles Greenway Web site, www.dullesgreenway.com.

During a public comment period prior to the approved increases, the State Corporation Commission received 600 public comments, most of which were in opposition to toll increases.

Wolf and several state lawmakers have also expressed concern.

In his letter to the attorney general, Wolf cites an Oct. 2 article in Fortune magazine in which editor-at-large Bethany McLean writes about Macquarie. Her article included the claim, attributed to Jim Chanos, that Macquarie was “engaging in an old-fashioned Ponzi scheme.”

Webster’s Dictionary defines a Ponzi scheme as “a fraudulent investment scheme in which funds paid in by later investors are used to pay artificially high returns to the original investors, thus attracting more funds.”

Macquarie officials have rebutted those assertions. Click here to read the Fortune article and click here to read Macquarie’s rebuttal.

Jaime Castillo:"Those people" comment discriminates against people based on where they live

Link to article here. View McNeil's comments on YouTube here.

Jaime Castillo: McNeil just doesn't get the toll-related frustration of 'those people'
12/02/2007
San Antonio Express-News

I've been invited in the past by immigration hawks to "go back to Mexico," even though I'm a third-generation U.S. citizen.And, from time to time, I've been lumped in with that vast media conspiracy which supposedly takes its p's and q's from an unseen deity named "Liberal."

But, to my knowledge, last week was the first time I was branded one of "those people" merely because of where my family lives.

For that, I have City Councilwoman Sheila McNeil to thank.

In an attempt to ease the fears of her East Side constituents, McNeil last week added another chapter to the ongoing public relations nightmare perpetrated by toll-road proponents.

She did so by telling a gathering of homeowners that they need not worry about proposed toll rates on U.S. 281, which could be made official today, because the folks who live and drive on the north central corridor can afford it.

"Most of the people who use this road live out in that area. That's who it impacts," she said in videotaped comments Wednesday that are now part of Internet lore. "Now when they start coming over here on (Interstate) 35, then we can talk.


"But right now the decision we're making next week is 281 and the folks who live and drive out there," she continued.

"And those people can afford a toll, because the average income out there is probably around two, three hundred thousand dollars a year."

At best, McNeil possesses an alarming ignorance of the city. At worst, she will stop at nothing to further her argument, including making up facts.

Express-News transportation writer Pat Driscoll, who blogged about the episode last week, noted the following:

"City stats say four out of five households in Council District 9, where half of the U.S. 281 tollway will be, earn less than $100,000 a year. More than half the district's households make less than $60,000."

Oops.

To be clear, as a resident along U.S. 281, I don't believe McNeil was trying to start class warfare. But her comments reveal that toll-road backers, after months and months of public discourse, still don't get the primary source of frustration for those who will be tolled.

It's not about whether someone can afford to pay 17 cents a mile to travel on a tollway. Heck, I can afford to pay parking tickets, but I don't rack them up on purpose just to save myself a few blocks worth of walking.

The issue, which admittedly is lost in the incessant frothing displayed by organized toll opponents, is that state transportation officials have never dealt from the top of the deck on the toll-road issue.

When it came to divulging financial details about the private partnership looking to build a section of the Trans-Texas Corridor, Gov. Rick Perry and his handpicked leadership of the Texas Department of Transportation did not just tell the public "no."

They also told the office of Attorney General Greg Abbott, which ruled that the information was public record, to go fly a kite for more than a year and half.

Similarly, it has long been known that the state's highway funding crisis is in large measure worsened by the fact that state lawmakers keep spending supposedly dedicated highway funds on non-road purposes.

So, acknowledging the anger that the practice generates, did Perry and toll fans lay down the law last legislative session?

Of course not. The biennial budget crafted earlier this year diverts another $1.6 billion from the fund.

Pardon me, Councilwoman McNeil, the issue is not whether a certain group of residents can afford something.

The issues is whether you, as chairwoman of the Metropolitan Planning Organization, will ever put your foot down for anybody outside your council district.

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