SPP puts U.S. under UN in health crisis

Link to article here.
The Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) signed by Bush, the Prime Minister of Canada, and President of Mexico in March of 2005 is the framework for the NAFTA Superhighways, known as the Trans Texas Corridor in Texas. For more on the SPP go here.

U.S. under U.N. law in health emergency
Bush's SPP power grab sets stage for military to manage flu threats
August 28, 2007
By Jerome R. Corsi
8/23/06
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com

The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America summit in Canada released a plan that establishes U.N. law along with regulations by the World Trade Organization and World Health Organization as supreme over U.S. law during a pandemic and sets the stage for militarizing the management of continental health emergencies.The "North American Plan for Avian & Pandemic Influenza" was finalized at the SPP summit last week in Montebello, Quebec.

At the same time, the U.S. Northern Command, or NORTHCOM, has created a webpage dedicated to avian flu and has been running exercises in preparation for the possible use of U.S. military forces in a continental domestic emergency involving avian flu or pandemic influenza.

With virtually no media attention, in 2005 President Bush shifted U.S. policy on avian flu and pandemic influenza, placing the country under international guidelines not specifically determined by domestic agencies.

The policy shift was formalized Sept. 14, 2005, when Bush announced a new International Partnership on Avian and Pandemic Influenza to a High-Level Plenary Meeting of the U.N. General Assembly, in New York.

The new International Partnership on Avian and Pandemic Influenza was designed to supersede an earlier November 2005 Homeland Security report that called for a U.S. national strategy that would be coordinated by the Departments of Homeland Security, Health and Agriculture.
The 2005 plan, operative until Bush announced the International Partnership on Avian and Pandemic Influenza, directed the State Department to work with the WHO and U.N., but it does not mention that international health controls are to be considered controlling over relevant U.S. statutes or authorities.

Under the International Partnership on Avian and Pandemic Influenza, Bush agreed the U.S. would work through the U.N. system influenza coordinator to develop a continental emergency response plan operating through authorities under the WTO, North American Free Trade Agreement and the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

WND could find no evidence the Bush administration presented the Influenza Partnership plan to Congress for oversight or approval.

The SPP plan for avian and pandemic influenza announced at the Canadian summit last week embraces the international control principles Bush first announced to the U.N. in his 2005 International Partnership on Avian and Pandemic Influenza declaration.

The SPP plan gives primacy for avian and pandemic influenza management to plans developed by the WHO, WTO, U.N. and NAFTA directives – not decisions made by U.S. agencies.

The U.N.-WHO-WTO-NAFTA plan advanced by SPP features a prominent role for the U.N. system influenza coordinator as a central international director in the case of a North American avian flu or pandemic influenza outbreak.

In Sept. 2005, Dr. David Nabarro was appointed the first U.N. system influenza coordinator, a position which also places him as a senior policy adviser to the U.N. director-general.

Nabarro joined the WHO in 1999 and was appointed WHO executive director of sustainable development and health environments in July 2002.

In a Sept. 29, 2005, press conference at the U.N., Nabarro made clear that his job was to prepare for the H5N1 virus, known as the avian flu.

Nabarro fueled the global fear that an epidemic was virtually inevitable.

In response to a question about the 1918-1919 flu pandemic that killed approximately 40 million people worldwide, Nabarro commented, "I am certain there will be another pandemic sometime."

Nabarro stressed at the press conference that he saw as inevitable a worldwide pandemic influenza coming soon that would kill millions.

He quantified the deaths he expected as follows: "I'm not, at the moment at liberty to give you a prediction on numbers, but I just want to stress, that, let's say, the range of deaths could be anything from 5 to 150 million."

In a March 8, 2006, U.N. press conference that was reported on a State Department website, Nabarro predicted an outbreak of the H5N1 virus would "reach the Americas within the next six to 12 months."

On Feb. 1, 2006, NORTHCOM hosted representatives of more than 40 international, federal and state agencies for "an exercise designed to provoke discussion and determine what governmental actions, including military support, would be necessary in the event of an influenza pandemic in the United States."

NORTHCOM and other governmental websites document the growing role the Bush administration plans for the U.S. military to be involved in continental domestic emergencies involving health, including avian flu and pandemic influenza.

NORTHCOM participated in a nationwide Joint Chiefs of Staff-directed exercise – code-named Exercise Ardent Sentry 06 – to rehearse cooperation between Department of Defense and local, state and federal agencies, as well as the Canadian government.

A pandemic influenza crisis was one of the four scenarios gamed in Exercise Ardent Sentry 06, involving a scenario of a plague in Mexico reaching across the border into Arizona and New Mexico.

As has been customary in SPP documents and declarations, the Montebello, Canada, announcement of the North American Plan for Avian & Pandemic Influenza acknowledges in passing the sovereignty of the three nations.

The announcement says, "The Plan is not intended to replace existing arrangements or agreements. As such, each country's laws are to be respected and this Plan is to be subordinate and complementary to domestic response plans, existing arrangements and bilateral or multilateral agreements."

Still, the SPP plan argues the risk from avian and pandemic influenza was so great to North America that the leaders of the three nations were compelled "to work collectively and with all levels of government, the private sector and among-non-governmental organizations to combat avian and pandemic influenza."

Moreover, the SPP plan openly acknowledges, "The WHO's international guidance formed much of the basis for the three countries' planning for North American preparedness and response."

WND previously reported NORTHCOM has been established with a command center at Peterson Air Force Base, tasked with using the U.S. military in continental domestic emergency situations.

WND also has reported President Bush signed in May two documents, National Security Presidential Directive-51 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive-20, which give the office of the president extraordinary powers to declare national emergencies and to assume near-dictatorial powers.

Following the Montebello summit last week, the SPP North American Plan for Avian & Pandemic Influenza was published on a made-over SPP homepage redesigned to feature agreements newly reached by trilateral bureaucratic working groups.

NYT: Pennsylvania’s war over tolling existing interstate, I-80

Link to article here. The Director from the University of North Texas is rather clueless to what's happening in his own state! The article claims "experts" have never heard of another existing interstate being converted to a toll road, but such a plan is alive and well all over the U.S., with Texas being ground zero.

Existing interstate I-35 is slated to be tolled from San Antonio to Dallas, along with portions of I-10 in Houston very soon with San Antonio to follow. Portions of state highways 121 in Dallas and 281 in San Antonio are also going to be converted if Governor Perry and his un-elected Transportation Commission have their way. A pilot program in the 2005 federal highway bill, SAFTEA-LU allows existing interstates to be tolled. The Texas Department of Transportation actually requested that Congress grant them the right to buy back (hence takeover) existing interstates in Texas so they can toll them and remove them from federal responsibility (Read more here.).

Texas is also the home of the highly controversial Trans Texas Corridor, frequently referred to as a NAFTA Superhighway until it became popular for the Bush Administration to deny their existence. This will be a 4,000 mile network of trade corridors to benefit multi-national corporations at the expense of Texas taxpayers, landowners, and commuters.

The New York Times owes it to its vast readership to find out what's unfolding all across the country, especially in Texas where Bush and his sidekick Texas Governor Rick Perry have literally led us as lambs to the highway lobby slaughter. They recently cooked-up "market-based" tolling which allows the government to charge the highest possible tolls using their government-sanctioned highway monopolies. Read this excellent commentary by one Texas journalist, William Lutz, here.

Pennsylvania Political War Over Planned Tolls on I-80
By Sean Hamill
New York Times
August 26, 2007
BROOKVILLE, Pa., Aug. 23 — Anthony Foote spends a lot of time driving his Kenworth T-600 truck on Interstate 80 in Pennsylvania. He prefers it to the state’s other east-west highway, the Interstate 76 turnpike, which can cost him $140 in tolls.

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Lisa Kyle for The New York Times
Traffic was heavy this week on I-80 in Pennsylvania. Some 21 million vehicles travel annually, 70 percent from out of state.

 
So the news that the state plans to impose tolls on I-80 was as upsetting to Mr. Foote as finding an ugly scratch in the purple paint on his rig.

 
“I hate paying tolls,” he said. “It eats up my profit. If this goes through, you’ll have a lot of truckers avoiding Pennsylvania — including me.”

 
Pennsylvania officials plan to build up to 10 toll areas along the 311-mile stretch of Interstate 80 in the next three years to help pay for road, bridge and mass transit projects and subsidies.

 
The move has sparked a political war between the bipartisan coalition of state legislators who approved the plan and two Republican congressmen who say it is a “shell game,” taking revenue from rural Pennsylvania to bail out the state’s urban areas.

 
“It’s absolutely horrendous for my district,” said one of them, Representative John E. Peterson, whose Fifth Congressional District covers about half of I-80 in north central Pennsylvania. “Every major bill like this should be measured by whether this will make people less likely to come here. And if this stays active, we’ll never get another distribution center or similar business again in my district.”

 
Paying for new roads with tolls, or adding tolls to sections of older urban roads, is common across the country. But experts say that imposing tolls on an entire interstate highway that had been free may be unprecedented, in part because the federal government typically bans tolls on highways paid for with federal money, as I-80 was.

 
“I haven’t heard of another one,” said Bernard Weinstein, director of the Center for Economic Development and Research at the University of North Texas, which has done a half dozen studies on the impact of toll roads. “But I think most states will eventually have to move to the user principle. Tolls are going to be the wave of the future.”

 
Pennsylvania’s plan is to generate about $950 million a year through the sale of bonds backed by tollway revenue and other state sources over the first 10 years, with about $500 million going to road and bridge projects throughout the state, and the remaining $450 million going to subsidize mass transit in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and other cities.

 
State officials say that about 70 percent of the 21 million vehicles that travel I-80 annually are from out of state, and 40 percent are commercial trucks.

 
After the State Legislature and Gov. Edward G. Rendell, a Democrat, included the toll plan in their July budget deal, Mr. Peterson and Representative Phil English surprised state officials on July 24 by quietly slipping an amendment into the House’s version of the federal transportation bill to prevent it.

But hardly anyone outside of Mr. English and Mr. Peterson’s offices believe it will still be there after the House-Senate conference committee meets on the transportation bill. Pennsylvania’s senators, Bob Casey and Arlen Specter, have both said they do not want to interfere in the state’s decision-making and will not help the two congressmen.

Even so, Mr. English and Mr. Peterson are not giving up, and they believe they have public opinion, and federal law, on their side.

The plan requires the approval of the Federal Highway Administration, a process that state officials hope will be completed in a year. Under a program called the Interstate System Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Pilot Program, states can add tolls to interstates paid for with federal money.

“It will fly only if the Federal Highway Administration decides it will fly,” said Mr. English, whose Third Congressional District covers about 30 miles of the western edge of I-80. “And this plan doesn’t fit the pilot program as proposed by Congress.”

Mr. English argues that the pilot program was intended to let states use new toll revenue for road maintenance and improvements, not mass transit.

But Joseph G. Brimmeier, chief executive for the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, said he was confident Pennsylvania’s program would pass muster.

“We put together a package that helps solve the funding crisis in Pennsylvania for the next 50 years,” he said. “It solves the crisis without raising one cent of taxes. And here we are four weeks into this debate, and I don’t hear any plans from them to help solve these problems.”

Both Mr. English and Mr. Peterson said they liked the financing idea that Governor Rendell first proposed: leasing Interstate 76 to a private company to generate revenue. But state officials could not garner support for it, and the tolling plan, which includes raising rates on the rest of the existing tollway system as well, was approved instead.

Mr. Brimmeier said what upsets him the most about the representative’s efforts is that they “try to pit one part of Pennsylvania against another.”

When asked about the toll plan, many drivers on I-80 sounded resigned.

“I’d have to pay it, and I’d still go on 80, but I wouldn’t be happy about it,” said Dawn Toporcer, a fourth-grade teacher from Lordstown, Ohio, who was shopping with her two daughters for school at the Prime Outlets at Grove City, a regional outlet mall on Interstate 79, about three miles south of I-80.

Grove City was specifically chosen as the site for the mall 15 years ago because of its location near the intersection of the two interstates, said Michelle Czerwinski, a mall spokeswoman. The mall attracts millions of customers who get there by traveling I-80, and imposing tolls on the highway would hurt, she said.

“It’s just going to be a negative,” Ms. Czerwinski said. “Any kind of toll plan would slow down the traffic.”

TxDOT ad campaign draws ire


Link to article here.

Jaime Castillo: TxDOT's 'outreach' plan reaches deep into taxpayers' pockets
By Jaime Castillo
San Antonio Express-News
08/21/2007

Even if it's just for a moment, let us give credit where credit is due.

The Texas Department of Transportation has realized — finally — that it has an image problem when it comes to convincing Texans of the need for a vast network of toll roads and the Trans-Texas Corridor.

The realization, however, comes with a price tag of $7 million to $9 million that, rather than going to build highways, will fuel an advertising campaign centered around a memo titled, "Keep Texas Moving: Tolling and Trans-Texas Corridor Outreach."

This is where I get off the track. Outreach?

The nerve of state highway officials to use such a term after years of helping fan the flames of skepticism among Texans for a tolled highway system.


The time for outreach would have been, say, two years ago, if not more.

Take, for example, the Trans-Texas Corridor, the 50-year plan favored by Gov. Rick Perry to build a superhighway of toll roads and rail and utility lines.

For more than a year and a half, Cintra, a Spain-based company, and its minority partner, Zachry Construction Corp. of San Antonio, fought tooth and nail in court to keep certain things — like how it would be financed — out of the public eye.

During that time, Texans also were expected to swallow other problematic revelations concerning the deal.

Those included the news that Dan Shelley, Perry's onetime liaison to the Legislature, left the governor's office to become a lobbyist for Cintra, where he had worked as a consultant prior to joining Perry's staff in the first place.

Then, 40 days before the Nov. 7, 2006, general election — a campaign which saw Perry vilified for his support of toll roads — TxDOT suddenly released the details of the Cintra/Zachry pact as if to say all's well that ends well.

To put the whole situation into perspective, TxDOT now wants to spend millions of dollars of public money to make you feel better about the public information it fought to keep you away from two years ago.

But TxDOT is hardly the king of hypocrisy in this situation.

Consider state Rep. Warren Chisum, chairman of the budget-writing House Appropriations Committee.

Not that I disagree with Chisum's summation of the need for a public relations blitz.

"I wonder what for?" he was quoted in Tuesday's Express-News as saying. "So people wouldn't hate 'em so bad?"

But Chisum went on to say that the money would be better spent fixing roads.

What a great idea! Surely Chisum used similar logic when he helped write the state's latest two-year budget.

Right?

Wrong.

Continuing what has become a biennial shell game, Chisum participated in crafting a budget that diverts one-tenth, or $1.6 billion, from the state highway fund to pay for things that have nothing to do with building and maintaining roads.

Sadly it's nothing new.

From fiscal year 1986 to 2005, nearly $8.7 billion of the fund was spent on non-highway items, including state historical and arts commissions and law enforcement functions with the Department of Public Safety.

In other words, Chisum, a Pampa Republican who was first elected in 1989, has been there nearly every step of the way as the Legislature as a whole became all too accustomed to robbing money from the state highway fund.

The state has grown by leaps and bounds, while the gas tax — the main source of revenue for highway building — has remained stagnant since 1991.

But thanks to the decisions of top elected officials, it's doubtful whether all the advertising pros in the world can put this Humpty Dumpty together again.

Help wanted: sound transportation policy; Rick Perry is raising taxes to benefit road contractors

OPINION: Help wanted: sound transportation policy
by William Lutz
Lone Star Report
August 27, 2007

The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) says it needs to spend $9 million in taxpayer money to sell its vision of transportation policy to the public.

Maybe if TxDOT pursued rational transportation policies, the public support would follow, and it could spend that $9 million building and maintaining roads.

Listening to the state's transportation officials, including Gov. Rick Perry and Commissioner of Transportation Ric Williamson, talk is like reading a cheap imitation of a George Orwell novel.

Borrowing money and deficit spending are called "innovative financing techniques." The term "public-private partnerships" is used to describe mortgaging public property. Tax hikes are called "market-based" or "value-based" tolling or "market valuations." Government-sanctioned monopolies are referred to as "introducing competition to transportation financing."


Here's why Texans ought to be concerned.

Borrowing carries a price tag. The Texas Constitution has traditionally eschewed deficit spending and required existing revenue to pay for existing spending. Now, the state wants to build most of its roads by borrowing, either publicly or by getting a private firm to agree to borrow money, build a road, and collect tolls.

There's no such thing as free money, and often bond lawyers request concessions in exchange for the money fronted to the state. Many of these private financing arrangements prohibit the state from building free roads near a toll road, or require it to pay a stiff penalty if it builds a competing free road or wants out of the deal.
Secrecy. A 2005 transportation bill exempts draft copies of many road deals from public disclosure - even in the face of criminal subpoenas.

Prior to 2007, the terms of these deals weren't even public until after the contracts were signed, and the terms set in stone. In 2007, the Legislature provided some additional transparency, but more sunshine is still needed to ensure informed consent from the public.

No checks and balances. The ability of TxDOT to rent state highways to private vendors without a legislative appropriation basically gives TxDOT a license to print money, without going though the usual appropriations process. The Constitution wisely gives the Legislature the power of the purse, and state assets should be pledged only in response to a public legislative appropriation.

The state also takes some highway spending "off-budget" by allowing the creation of regional mobility authorities to build state highways. Even the state auditor cannot precisely calculate how much the state spends on roads.

No fiscal restraint. TxDOT officials often claim that it would require a $1.20 increase in the gasoline tax to build needed infrastructure without tolling. This figure is a cost estimate of every project that a region might want to build in the next few years. Both the Governor's Business Council and the State Auditor have taken issue with TxDOT's calculations.

It also shows a lack of priorities at the agency. Most Americans would love a longer vacation, a fancier home, and a nicer car. But their wallets get in the way. Every day, Texans take their limited resources and differentiate between wants and needs. The government should do so also.

Tax hikes. Remember when Bill Clinton referred to taxes paid by the well-to-do as "contributions," as if payment of taxes were somehow voluntary? Remember how much fun Republicans had lampooning all the rhetorical games Clinton played to avoid referring to his "deficit reduction" plan as a tax hike?

Well, it's happening again. In the 2007 transportation compromise, Perry insisted on "market-based tolling," whereby the tolls for new highways are set above the cost to build and maintain the road. Perhaps one could call a toll a "user fee" if the amount of the toll reflected the cost of building and maintaining the road (though even that's debatable). But when money is taken from a government-sanctioned toll road monopoly and used to build other free roads, that's a tax.

Simply stated, Perry is raising taxes.

These bad transportation policies are being promoted not only here but also by the U.S. Department of Transportation and in other states like Indiana, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. But just because George W. Bush likes something doesn't make it right or conservative.

There is a better alternative. It starts with the recognition that building roads is a legitimate function for government, as recognized by the U.S. and Texas constitutions.

Further, user-based fees such as gasoline taxes and auto registration fees are appropriate ways to fund that service, provided that all revenue from those fees goes to roads.

Then, the state should do for transportation what it is already doing in health, education, and welfare policies - look at costs. Why has the cost of building roads increased so quickly? Is this legitimate? Are there ways to reduce these increases?

Registration fees should be adjusted so that overweight trucks pay their fair share. The relationship between damage to a road and weight is exponential, and the registration fees and taxes should reflect that. The gas tax should be adjusted to acknowledge that, on a per-car basis, the gas tax has declined due to improved fuel economy in cars and trucks.

Once the state has gone though that process, then and only then should discussion of tolling begin.

It's time to stop pushing public policies that primarily benefit a select few highway contractors and investment bankers at the expense of the motoring public.

Instead, let's put a spirit of public service back into TxDOT and enact transportation policies that provide accountability and frugality. Those policies wouldn't take a $9 million PR campaign to sell to Texas voters.

Despite threats from the feds, TxDOT forced to abandon Cintra bid for Hwy 121

State Highway 121 was wrested from the grip of a foreign company, Cintra, and it's now in the hands of the North Texas Toll Authority (NTTA), despite threats of sanctions from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). Talk about brazen! However, 16 miles of this 26 mile project are already built and PAID FOR WITH GAS TAXES (it's INEXCUSABLE that it's now converted to a toll road!). To make things worse, SB 792 allows even our public tolling entities to charge the HIGHEST POSSIBLE TOLLS! The FHWA's behavior, repeated threat letters of withholding our federal highway revenue, then backing off thanks to Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, then threats of sanctions, it's clear the Bush Administration is a wholly-owned subsidiary of corporate hogs at the trough!

The FHWA is charged with protecting the public interest, and not only have they flouted that responsibility, they rabidly PROMOTED a foreign interest OVER the public's, ON OUR DIME! James Rae at the FHWA let the cat out of the bag a few months ago, that the FHWA, Texas Transportation Commission, Perry, and Bush truly believe in state run capitalism (which is really fascism). This is beyond appalling...this has to be a criminal dereliction of duty!

Texas officials say they were forced to abort the Cintra concession
Toll Road News
August 23, 2007

SH121
Texas

Texas officials have revealed that in the past few days they discussed with the FHWA canceling the past approval of NTTA taking over SH121, together with canceling the Cintra concession. They got an assurance the cancelations would get Texas back in compliance with federal procurement law. They have sent us copies of two letters on the SH121 crisis both dated Tuesday Aug 21 TxDOT-FHWA, and FHWA-TxDOT.The first TxDOT-FHWA letter responds to Richard Capka's blistering Aug 16 attack on Texas' handling of the SH121 procurement which he cited as clear violations of federal law and regulations.

Addressed to Janice Brown, FHWA rep in Austin TX the letter is signed by TxDOT deputy Amadeo Saenz and foreshadows actions taken today by the governing Texas Transportation Commission (TTC). It says they will consider canceling the Cintra procurement and canceling the decision (called a minute order) previously approving NTTA for SH121.

The letter then says: "We request FHWA concurrence that (these) actions...will be sufficient to bring TxDOT into compliance with federal law and not be subject to (sanctions)..."

The letter adds that further FHWA action on environmental clearance of SH121 is "critically needed" to move forward on SH121.

The response from FHWA rep Brown to TxDOT's Saenz says that the two proposed cancellations would indeed bring TxDOT into compliance with federal law and remove the basis for federal sanctions. It also says FHWA is working for "timely completion" of the environmental review.

TxDOT unpersuaded NTTA bid better but decision was local

Texas officials say it was their assessment Cintra provided the sounder proposal but that they had agreed to devolve responsibility to the Dallas-Ft Worth area council of governments' Regional Transportation Council (RTC) which preferred the late proposal by the North Texas Tollway Authority (NTTA). Under Texas law SB792 they say they are required to defer to the RTC despite their doubts about the choice of NTTA's proposal.

At the Texas Transportation Council meeting today the two cancellations were made:

Agenda item 8a passed as a new minute order notes that a RFQ for SH121 was issued March 2005 and after shortlisting a formal RFP was issued mid Aug 2006. Feb 28 the commission "conditionally awarded" the concession or comprehensive development agreement to Cintra.

However the instructions to proposers authorized TxDOT to suspend or terminate concession contract negotiations at any time - providing for cancellation of the procurement.

The resolution passed today says simply: "The commission has determined that it is in the best interest of the state to terminate the CDA negotiations with Cintra..." and "It is therefore ordered that the procurement... is canceled."

Agenda item 8b outlines the origins of the NTTA move with the RTC asking on Mar 26 if NTTA wanted to top the Cintra bid. NTTA submitted a huge document (almost entirely fluff and puff - TRnews) May 18, but the RTC accepted it. June 28 the TTC set the RTC to negotiate some substance with NTTA giving them 60 days to produce a project agreement plus another 45 days for financial close.

Today's minute order cancels those requirements giving the parties more time, saying environmental clearance is likely to take longer than the 60 days. The department has to come back to the commission with additional agreements to enable NTTA to take over SH121 for a period of up to 50 years.

Deal not done until the money arrives

Texas officials say the deal is far from done yet. One official said he has doubts that NTTA can come through with the financing promised the RTC. They think NTTA has stretched its borrowing power to, and perhaps beyond, prudent limits.

But caught between FHWA protests and the RTC-NTTA, and the requirements of SB792 they say they had no other alternative.

The officials say the RTC has taken a gamble with NTTA now that the Cintra procurement has been cancelled.

"If the NTTA doesn't come through it is back to square one. We have to start a procurement all over again."

The three bids back in February

We were given the bids by the three finalists in the procurement won by Cintra in February, socalled Form Ks. Cintra's offer more than doubled the next from Skanska with Macquarie a bit further behind in third place. See table nearby.

Cintra says accept TTC decision

José Lopez, Cintra’s Austin-based director issued a statement after the Commission meeting:

"While we believe our proposal – with its guarantee of $7.3 billion in new and additional revenue to the Metroplex for SH121 and other transportation projects – was the better option for the state and Dallas-Fort Worth, we respect the commission’s decision.

"We want to thank the commissioners and the staff at TxDOT for the time and consideration they have devoted to this issue. We know they are working diligently to address the serious mobility challenges facing Texans, and we wish them, NTTA and the Regional Transportation Council only the best as they move forward with SH 121 for North Texas drivers.

"...we look forward to continuing our work in Texas, the U.S. and around the world assisting officials meet the increasing demands on infrastructure by improving roadways, relieving congestion and enhancing driver safety in the most cost-effective and efficient ways possible."

Agreement reached NTTA, Regional Council and Dallas District TxDOT

NTTA, the regional council and Dallas District of TxDOT say they have finalized an interagency project agreement for SH121. Jorge Figueredo the new executive director of NTTA signed the draft agreement and submitted it to TxDOT. After it is signed by the executive director of TxDOT NTTA will have 45 days to financial close and delivery to TxDOT of over $3.3b - $2,500m plus $833m representing 49 future annual payments. In return they get a 50 year lease of SH121 and the rights to the toll proceeds in a kind of public sector concession.

Bill Hale of TxDOT Dallas office and Michael Morris of the RTC said in statements today that fuel tax funds are not doing the job of generating revenues needed. They see monetization of toll projects like SH121 as the only way to build needed new roads.

SH121 is 42km (26mi) long running northeast-southwest in the northern part of the greater Dallas area from US75 toward Dallas Ft Worth Airport. It crosses the Dallas North Tollway at about its midpoint and somewhat parallels the Pres Geo Bush Turnpike some miles to its north. It runs through Collin, Denton and Dallas counties.

SH121 is being built as a 12 lane highway with 2x3 toll lanes in the center as expressway and a pair of 3-lane one-way frontage roadways on either side which hit cross streets at signals. Slip lanes will connect the toll expressway roadways with the frontage roadways for access and egress from the tolled lanes in a common Texas configuration.

Tolling will be all-electronic at highway speed - no cash collection.

The vast passions and political energy invested in controlling SH121 should give it a place in tollroad history.

Feds threaten sanctions if don't give Hwy 121 back to Cintra!

Richard Capka federal highway administrator has sent a blistering letter to Texas authorities saying the US Government will subject it to extra scrutiny for a period of two years - read: long delays - if it persists with procurement on SH121 in violation of federal contracting laws. FHWA legal counsel Robert Rae several weeks ago made criticisms of the proposed cancellation of the toll concession with Cintra in favor of the North Texas Tollway pointing out the legal problems posed. But Capka's new letter turns up the heat substantially threatening serious sanctions against Texas.

Texas DOT's procurement for the 121 project in accordance with Texas law SB792 "violates federal law" the letter says bluntly.

The letter dated Aug 16 spells out two breaches of federal law involved in the state's handling of SH121:

- acceptance of the NTTA bid after the competitive procurement process had selected Cinta

- acceptance of a public sector bid in competition with private bids

TxDOT's procurement process in SH121 "works against the very foundation" of federal provisions for competitive procurement, Capka writes. This is because NTTA was permitted to bid after the terms of Cintra's bid had been public released - at the time TxDOT said it had selected Cintra.

"Allowing a bid submission after closure of a project's selection is an egregious violation of the basic requirements of a fair and competitive process. Here the final bid submitted by Cintra, along with many other proprietary details of Cintra's submission had been disclosed and were publicly available at the time NTTA submitted its proposal."

This contravenes 23USC112.

The letter accuses of TxDOT in its implementation of SB792 of having introduced "uncertainty and doubt" into the procurement process.

TxDOT's second violation of federal law, the Capka letter says is allowing a public entity to bid against a private entity: "Federal regulations specifically prohibit a public entity from bidding again a private entity," says Capka citing 23CFR636.112


FHWA regulations do not allow federal aid funds to participate in any violation of federal law, therefore a variety of sanctions will be imposed.

The letter announces:

- withdrawal of the special exceptions program (SEP-15) waiver granted to expedite SH121 and two other unnamed highway projects for accelerated environmental clearance

- withdrawal of approvals for TIFIA federal loan and Private Activity Bonds support

- a request for reimbursement of the US Government for its expenses in incurred in considering and evaluating the TIFIA loan associated with SH121

- no future federal funds for SH121

- additional oversight and approval requirements for future Texas applications so long as Texas breach of federal law is not remedied

- more "far reaching compliance measures" if Texas violates federal law again

The letter ends on a conciliatory note saying that FHWA believes that TxDOT can come into compliance with federal law even at this late date - an apparent allusion to the Texas Transportation Commission not having signed off on the NTTA deal for SH121. The letter appears to be saying Texas can still be in compliance with federal law if it calls off aborting the Cintra procurement, and rejects the proposed long term lease to the NTTA.

That very subject is up for discussion at the Texas Transportation Commission today.

The letter leaked in Texas and is the subject of a Texas newspaper report this morning.

TxDOT uses gas tax money to lobby for toll roads

Link to article here.
Texas Department of Transportation Uses Gas Tax Money to Lobby for Toll Roads
Activists urge investigation of Texas Department of Transportation lobbying on behalf of toll roads.
The Newspaper.com
August 24, 2007

Keep Texas Moving logoThe Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) has been spending millions on a public relations project designed to lobby the public and the legislature on the benefits of toll roads. The San Antonio Express News reported Monday that an internal TxDOT memo entitled "Keep Texas Moving: Tolling and Trans-Texas Corridor Outreach" suggested the agency would spend $7-9 million promoting the tolling concept. In February, the state auditor's office chided TxDOT for hiding lobbying expenses behind other, legitimate expenses.

"A total of $4.5 million associated with the 21 invoices described above was charged to the incorrect activity," the audit report stated (view excerpt). "For example, $52,000 of a $628,000 invoice that was charged to engineering was actually for public relations expenses."

The multi-million dollar public relations campaign began in June with paid advertisements and a slick website called Keep Texas Moving, which promotes the 4000-mile Trans-Texas Corridor proposal. Expected to be up to 1200 feet wide, the toll road will cost between $145 and $183 billion to construct and require acquisition of 9000 square miles of land. Terri Hall, founder of Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom, opposes the Trans-Texas Corridor and today sent a letter to Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle urging him to open an investigation.

"It's not only an inappropriate and wasteful use of our gas tax dollars by an agency perpetually claiming it's out of money for roads, but it's illegal for a public agency to take a policy position and use the public's tax money to sell them something using an under-handed PR campaign," Hall wrote.

Source: Dont like toll roads? TxDOT is talking to you (San Antonio Express News (TX), 8/24/2007)

Three amigos, erasing borders?

Link to article here

The Three Amigos, Erasing Borders?
Wesley Pruden / The Washington Times:
Published: 08-22-07
Some of the folks who gave President Bush a country lickin' on his immigration "reform" are spoiling for another round with him. The reason why is on display at the "Three Amigos" summit in Canada. Mr. Bush and President Felipe Calderon of Mexico are guests of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper for another workout of a vaguely described scheme called the Security and Prosperity Partnership, which the White House says is nothing more than three amigos getting together to swap yarns, pull a cork and talk about NAFTA writ large.

But a remarkably diverse group of skeptics, including congressmen of both parties, critics of unrestrained global trade, conservative activists and left-wing academics and trade unionists, say it's free trade run amok.

The mysterious partnership is known only to the few by the acronym SPP. Most of the reporters at the Canadian summit can barely hide their languor, treating SPP as just another boring economic story White House reporters can't be expected to understand. The Associated Press describes SPP merely as "a way for the nations to team up on health, security and commerce."

Twenty-one Republicans and one Democrat have written to President Bush to tell him of "serious and growing concerns" in Congress about the "so-called" Security and Prosperity Partnership, and the House has adopted legislation barring U.S. transportation officials from even participating in meetings of the partnership.

The congressmen mostly seem miffed that the White House is undertaking far-reaching agreements with Canada and Mexico without telling them about it. The conservative skeptics say these agreements chip away national sovereignty — that the aim is to establish a North American Union, like the European Union, with unelected bureaucrats empowered to form a super-government to dispossess everyone but the elites. The liberal skeptics argue that "the super-government" would be a tool of the multinational corporations, eager to drive down wages and make wetbacks of everyone without a corporation big enough to plunder cheap labor.

The Mexican government, eager to export penniless Mexicans, is the most enthusiastic about the partnership and the billions of expected yankee dollars. Just two days after his election in 2000, Vicente Fox talked of his vision of a North American common market, a customs union, a common tariff, joint monetary policy and the "free flow of labor" across borders. It's difficult to imagine what Mr. Fox calls a "free flow" of labor if what we've had for decades hasn't satisfied him.

Bush chooses to ridicule opposition rather than deny charges of NAFTA Superhighways


...that tells me something. When the President was directly asked if he denies there is a plan in place to merge the 3 countries, he DID NOT DENY IT, but rather tried the ol' distraction method...look over here, aren't my opponents a bunch of wild-eyed nut jobs? Read this article and look at the comprehensive areas where they seek to "harmonize," "streamline," and "integrate." Notice who IS at the table, since we already know the public isn't...Corporations!

This sort of elitist snobbery is an insult to Americans and the citizens of the other countries as well. Something else I noticed they agreed upon in the closed door meeting, to obligate the American taxpayer to fight Mexico's drug war for them (rather than secure our border and get the Mexican government to do its job of rooting out their own drug cartels..Mexico is now the home of the richest man in the world, they have the resources, they just choose to allow their citizens to live in abject poverty while the wealthy ruling class ask the United States for hand outs). This provision showed up in the immigration bill under SPP. The grassroots defeated it, so what does Bush do? He unilaterally incorporates it into SPP policy AGAINST the will of Congress and the citizens of the United States.

What's the pricetag? To what does it obligate the U.S. taxpayers? Was this provision EVER debated by our elected representatives in Congress?....NO! We live under the Bush-Perry elitist oligarchy (it's no coincidence Perry gets a hit piece on the opposition in the Houston Chronicle today doing the same, ridiculing concerned citizens), and it's high time we start calling for impeachment while we still have a country!

Link to article below, here.

PREMEDITATED MERGER
Bush doesn't deny plans for N. American Union
President avoids question, ridicules 'conspiracy theorists' who believe it
Posted: August 21, 2007
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com

The leaders of the United States, Canada and Mexico conferred over the Security and Prosperity Partnership
MONTEBELLO, Quebec – President Bush today sidestepped a direct question about whether he'd be willing to categorically deny there is a plan to create the North American Union.

Instead, he ridiculed those who believe that is taking place as conspiracy theorists.

The exchange came at a news conference held by Bush, Mexico's President Felipe Calderon, and Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who met at a resort in the rural woods outside of Ottawa, Quebec, to discuss their latest work on the Security and Prosperity Partnership.

After the trio presented their prepared statement about the SPP, several reporters who had been selected in advance were allowed to ask questions.

When it came time for a question from a Fox News reporter, Bush was asked if he would be willing to categorically deny that there is a plan to create a North American Union, or that there are plans to create NAFTA Superhighways.

"As you three leaders meet here, there are a growing number of people in each of your countries who have expressed concern about the Security and Prosperity Partnership. This is addressed to all three of you. Can you say today that this is not a prelude to a North American Union, similar to a European Union? Are there plans to build some kind of superhighway connecting all three countries? And do you believe all of these theories about a possible erosion of national identity stem from a lack of transparency from this partnership?" was the question, according to a White House transcript.

Reporters at the news conference said he sidestepped, instead adopting the tactic that those who are arguing the European Union model of integrating nations into a larger continental union is being used in North America should be ridiculed.

He called it an old political scare tactic, to try to create a wild conspiracy and then demand that those who "are not engaged" prove that it isn't happening.

Bush's answer was:

"We represent three great nations. We each respect each other's sovereignty. You know, there are some who would like to frighten our fellow citizens into believing that relations between us are harmful for our respective peoples. I just believe they're wrong. I believe it's in our interest to trade; I believe it's in our interest to dialogue; I believe it's in our interest to work out common problems for the good of our people.
"And I'm amused by some of the speculation, some of the old – you can call them political scare tactics. If you've been in politics as long as I have, you get used to that kind of technique where you lay out a conspiracy and then force people to try to prove it doesn't exist. That's just the way some people operate. I'm here representing my nation. I feel strongly that the United States is a force for good, and I feel strongly that by working with our neighbors we can a stronger force for good.

"So I appreciate that question. I'm amused by the difference between what actually takes place in the meetings and what some are trying to say takes place. It's quite comical, actually, when you realize the difference between reality and what some people are talking on TV about."

Harper joined in. There's not going to be any NAFTA Superhighway connecting the three nations, he said, and it's "not going to go interplanetary either," he said.

Harper said the SPP discussions that were held concerned such pressing issues as jelly beans. He said the business interests expressing their desires for progress on the SPP noted there were different standards in the United States and Canada, and there was a discussion about whether those standards could be made uniform for the U.S. and Canada.

Bush's comments echoed the comments published just a day earlier in the Ottawa Citizen by David Wilkins, the U.S. ambassador to Canada.

"While conspiracy theories abound, you can take it to the bank that no one involved in these discussions is interested in, or has ever proposed, a 'North American Union,' a 'North American super highway,' or a 'North American currency,'" he wrote.

"The United States, Canada and Mexico are three distinct, sovereign countries that practice democracy differently," he wrote. "Each proudly defends its own interests. But our leaders also recognize that we share a continent in this post-Sept. 11 world, where terrorism is but one threat. We have a vested interest in working together to prevent potential threats outside North America – like those posed by pandemic flu or improperly labeled foods, for example – from penetrating our borders.

Wilkins wrote that the nations also are "exploring ways to detect radiological threats and coordinating emergency efforts along our borders in the event of a man-made or natural disaster. It just makes sense when you share thousands of miles of common border to share a common emergency-management plan."

He said another goal is to reduce the cost of doing business across national borders.


"The Late Great USA," which was criticized by President Bush at the conclusion of the SPP summit in Quebec
However, Jerome Corsi, a Harvard Ph.D. whose newly published book, "The Late Great USA," uses the government's own documentation to show the advance of a North American Union, said ridicule is the "last resort of someone who is losing an argument."

Such tactics, Corsi said, "underestimate the intelligence of people listening, and people realize that the argument wasn't answered."

At the news conference, he noted, Bush failed to respond to the Fox News question with a denial of the plans for a North American Union.

And, Corsi said, "Bush did not address the fact that Texas Gov. Rick Perry vetoed a two-year moratorium on the Trans-Texas Corridor project," believed to be the starting point for an eventual continent-wide grid of NAFTA Superhighways.

"Just to ridicule the idea, when he had a chance to categorically deny it, raises doubts in peoples' minds, especially when these meetings aren't transparent," Corsi added.

The meeting this week, which focused on economic issues, was attended by representatives of dozens of multinational corporations anxious to have their manufacturing and sales processes smoothed.

However, Corsi said, "not one person who objects is permitted inside the room."

At the same time, Bush did affirm that there is a plan under consideration for the United States to provide military assistance to Mexico's military in its battles in the drug war, although officials were not ready to announce what that plan includes.

The three national leaders simply affirmed that drug trade is a continental problem and would demand a continental solution.

The formal statement from the three leaders referred to the "opportunities and challenges facing North America and [the need] to establish priorities for our further collaboration."

They said the three nations already have agreed to a North American plan for avian and pandemic influenza, a "Regulatory Cooperation Framework," an intellectual property action strategy and a "Trilateral Agreement for Cooperation in Energy Science and Technology."

"The North American Competitiveness Council (NACC), announced last year in Cancun, has provided us with thoughtful recommendations on how we could strengthen the competitive platform for business," the statement said.

The statement said the Regulatory Cooperation Framework will allow various rules to be streamlined across borders.

"In the coming year, we ask our ministers to consider work in areas, such as the chemicals, automotive, transportation, and information and communications technology sectors," the statement said.

And the Intellectual Property Action Strategy "also gives us an invaluable tool for combating counterfeiting and piracy, which undermine innovation, harm economic development and can have negative public-health and safety implications," the three said.

Food safety and border security also were discussed. "Our governments will continue to address the safety of food and products imported into North America, while facilitating the significant trade in these products that our countries already have and without imposing unnecessary barriers to trade," the leaders said.

"It is sometimes best to screen goods and travelers prior to entry into North America. We ask our ministers to develop mutually acceptable inspection protocols to detect threats to our security, such as from incoming travelers during a pandemic and from radiological devices on general aviation," the statement said.

But protesters who staged events in Ottawa as the meetings were moving forward, warned of the integration and harmonizing the SPP seeks.

"The SPP is pursuing an agenda to integrate Mexico and Canada in closed-door sessions that are getting underway today in Montebello," Howard Phillips, the chairman of the Coalition to Block the North American Union, told an earlier press conference in Ottawa.

"We are here to register our protest," Phillips added, "along with the protests of thousands of Americans who agree with us that the SPP is a globalist agenda driven by the multi-national corporate interests and intellectual elite who together have launched an attack upon the national sovereignty of the United States, Canada and Mexico."

Connie Fogel, head of the Canadian Action Party, agreed with Phillips.

"Canadians are complaining that the SPP process lacks transparency," Fogel told the press conference. "Transparency is a major issue, but even if the SPP working groups were open to the public, we would still object to their goal to advance the North American integration agenda at the expense of Canadian sovereignty."

Conservatives alongside many others denounce SPP Summit, North American Union

Leading Conservatives Denounce Bush on 'North American Union'
By Nathan Burchfiel
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
August 21, 2007

Ottawa, Ontario (CNSNews.com) - President Bush is meeting with other world leaders in Canada this week to establish, in part, a "New World Order" that subverts national sovereignty, according to some leading American conservatives who have taken a hard stance against the president over the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP).

President Bush is meeting in Quebec Monday and Tuesday with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexican President Felipe Calderon to discuss the SPP, which the U.S. government's Web site describes as a cooperative effort among Canada, the United States, and Mexico to "increase security and enhance prosperity ... through greater cooperation and information sharing."

Yet Howard Phillips, chairman of the Conservative Caucus, said at a news conference in Ottawa Monday that Bush is trying to develop a "New World Order" of centralized world government controlled by super-national bureaucracies. Phillips said some of the bureaucracies already exist, including the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and United Nations.


"George Bush and his daddy [former President George H. W. Bush] have both used the term 'New World Order.' It was used by Woodrow Wilson. It was used by Adolf Hitler. It was used by a number of people, and the New World Order relates to the desire of many people in the world to submerge national sovereignties to international institution." (See Video)

Other conservatives who joined Phillips at the news conference included author and columnist Jerome Corsi; John McManus, president of the John Birch Society; Tom DeWeese, president of the American Policy Center; and Bob Park, founder of Veterans for Secure Borders.

The SPP meetings (the fourth since 2005) have afforded little access to the media and no access to the general public except for leaders of some large corporations taking part in the concurrent North American Competitiveness Council. The secrecy has led activists on both sides of the political aisle to develop ideas about what might be happening behind closed doors.

Responding to protests staged in Ottawa Sunday by leftist, anti-government, anti-corporate activists, Phillips acknowledged a difference of approach. But, he said, "if we're all firing in the same direction, let's work together."

Conservative author Jerome Corsi criticized supporters of the SPP for labeling opponents "conspiracy theorists." (See Video)

"We're the Internet black helicopter conspiracy theorists?" asked Corsi. "What's going on over in Montebello behind closed doors? Is that not the real conspiracy?"

"Only to call us names does not answer the arguments we're making," he said. "We're called names because those supporting the Security and Prosperity Partnership wish to keep their secret agenda being advanced in secret, and we've ruined the party by exposing it."

Most recently, U.S. Ambassador to Canada David Wilkins called the opposition to the SPP "conspiracy theories." In an editorial in the Ottawa Citizen Monday, Wilkins said that "while conspiracy theories abound, you can take it to the bank that no one involved in these discussions is interested in, or has ever proposed, a 'North American Union,' a 'North American super highway' or a 'North American currency.'"

Wilkins further wrote that "security with prosperity remains the defining vision of the leaders' meeting" and that "each [nation] will continue to protect its own interests, but it makes sense, as friends and neighbors, to sit down together and see what we might accomplish better together."

Phillips responded by noting that Wilkins was appointed by Bush and represents an administration that "does not have a reputation for straight talking or accuracy ... ." And it’s high time for the SPP organizers to "tear down the wall of silence and let the people see what you are scheming to do," he said.

TxDOT to illegally spend taxpayer $ to push tolls...AGAIN!

It's not only an inappropriate and wasteful use of our gas tax dollars, but it's ILLEGAL for a PUBLIC agency to take a policy position and use the public's tax money to sell them something with an under-handed PR campaign. The State Auditor already found TxDOT "cooked the books" Enron-style on the Trans Texas Corridor mismarking funds as "engineering" when in fact, they spent it on PR. This is "an agency run amok", to quote Chisum himself, so why isn't the Attorney General prosecuting this blatant violation of the law? Let's back up the tough talk with ACTION to protect the taxpayers! When will the citizens see justice?

Then, TxDOT and House Transportation Chair Mike Krusee try to excuse using taxpayer money to lobby for the most expensive road tax by implying the public just doesn't "get" their message. No. we've got it loud and clear. What about "NO!" do they NOT understand??? TxDOT has arrogantly disregarded ANY public input, dismissed and ridiculed more affordable alternatives put forward by anyone other than themselves, and is purposely jacking up roads all over the State all at once and CAUSING TxDOT-induced congestion for the express purpose of getting us to cry "Uncle" and beg for tolls. Now they want to use OUR MONEY for "outreach?" What a JOKE! How 'bout you use our gas taxes to build FREEways, stop monkeying around with people lives to push the most expensive option to enrich your own pensions, and get on with it?

Don't like toll roads? TxDOT is talking to you
By Peggy Fikac
Express-News Austin Bureau
08/20/2007

AUSTIN — The Texas Department of Transportation, which complains about chronic underfunding, has launched a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign that promotes the divisive Trans-Texas Corridor plan and toll roads.The campaign is anticipated to cost $7 million to $9 million, according to a memorandum titled "Keep Texas Moving: Tolling and Trans-Texas Corridor Outreach" sent to transportation officials by Coby Chase, director of the agency's government and public affairs division.

Such use of state highway fund dollars is drawing concern and questions from some. Others, including the department, say it's an important effort to educate and engage Texans.

Put Rep. Warren Chisum, chairman of the budget-writing House Appropriations Committee, in the first category.


"I wonder what for? So people wouldn't hate 'em so bad?" he said of the campaign. "It's a waste of money, and they have no business out there trying to get public opinion to be in their favor."

Talk Back
• What do you think of the TxDOT advertising campaign?
The money would be better spent fixing roads, Chisum, R-Pampa, added: "It would probably take care of three or four potholes."

But Rep. Mike Krusee, House Transportation Committee chairman, said the campaign addresses lawmakers' concerns by explaining new financing methods.

"The Legislature has been beating TxDOT over the head for two years, telling them they need to explain what the Trans-Texas Corridor is and why it is necessary to the public. They've been telling TxDOT they are moving too fast — they are moving before the public and the Legislature has the chance to understand what they are doing and why," said Krusee, R-Round Rock. "I think it is the Legislature that has pressured TxDOT to do this sort of program."

If the outreach is effective, Krusee said, it could save money in the long run.

"Texas is losing money for roads by the hundreds of millions of dollars every year simply due to delay, because the Legislature and the public doesn't understand the need to move to a new finance method. And so an expenditure of a few million dollars could literally save hundreds of millions of dollars per year," Krusee said.

The agency's budget is more than $7 billion for fiscal year 2007 and more than $8 billion for fiscal year 2008.

The Trans-Texas Corridor — an ambitious transportation network — and toll roads have been championed by Gov. Rick Perry and others as necessary in the face of congestion and of gas tax revenues that can't keep up with huge transportation needs.

But the initiative has drawn widespread criticism over the potential route and the state partnering with private companies to run toll roads. Lawmakers this year sought to rein in new private toll projects.

The new campaign, as outlined in the memorandum obtained by the San Antonio Express-News, started June 1 with television, radio, print, billboard and Internet advertising meant to push people to the Keep Texas Moving Web site ( www.keeptexasmoving.com).

That site compares the Trans-Texas Corridor to "Eisenhower's Interstate System." Its toll road section lists a slew of benefits including "A Choice to Go Faster" and "More Roads, More Choices, More Time."

The campaign also will include direct mail pieces on Trans-Texas Corridor segments known as TTC-35 (parallel to Interstate 35) and TTC-69 (from East Texas to Mexico); training for agency representatives to appear on talk radio; and ads, events and guest editorials surrounding hearings on TTC-69.

Sal Costello, who founded the TexasTollParty.com group because of anger over the way tollways were being planned under Perry, said, "I just don't think an agency that has been ignoring the public and ignoring our representatives for years should be able to take our tax dollars intended for freeways and spend one dime on lobbying and selling their unaccountable schemes."

TxDOT spokesman Chris Lippincott said the aim of the campaign is to address concerns that the agency hasn't done enough outreach and the public hasn't had enough input. State law allows the agency to spend money on marketing toll roads, he said.

"The clearest and most often repeated criticism of the department during the legislative session was that we needed to do a better job of engaging the public. We heard that message loud and clear, and we're acting on it," he said. "You're going to see us expanding the way we talk with people instead of at people. We think that's really important."

Craig McDonald of Texans for Public Justice, which tracks money in politics, said the campaign appears to go beyond providing information, which he said isn't right although he knows of no law to prevent it.

"The tone of their public relations campaign seems to be to sell Texans on a very unpopular transportation scheme," he said. "That is, they are using our money to make us happy about spending money for every mile we drive through tolls."

Toll enthusiasts can hit the road

Link to article here.

Actually, the new market-based tolls unleashed in SB 792 will be much higher than 12-15 cents a miles. We're seeing toll rates more like 40 cents a mile, up to $1.50 a mile in Austin right now. Tolls are an inefficient, DOUBLE TAX, too easily raised on the whim of a bureaucrat whereas it takes an ACT OF CONGRESS to raise the gas tax. Let's put on a lid on this unaccountable, runaway tax, STOP the diversions of gas tax away from transportation, and get some fiscal sanity back into transportation, then we can look at the possibility of putting an adequate gas tax in place. Toll proponents need to take a hike...or as this columnists says, hit the road!

Toll enthusiasts can hit the road
By Paul Munshine
New Jersey Star-Ledger
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Last weekend I was vacation ing in the Poconos and I got talking to some of the locals. They were pretty steamed. It seems that Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell is pushing a scheme to impose tolls on the Pennsylvania section of Interstate 80.

I'm pretty steamed, too. If Pennsylvanians want to charge tolls on the roads they built with their own money, such as the Pennsylvania Turnpike, that's none of my business.

But I-80 was built with my tax dollars under a program begun by the esteemed Republican president Dwight Eisenhower. Now this Democrat wants to use the road as a cash cow. He isn't even pretending, as politicians usually do, that the purpose of the tolls is to fix up the road. Instead "Fast Eddie," as Pennsylvanians call their governor, wants to make a quick buck off the road to fund mass transit in Philly and Pittsburgh.

You can imagine how well that's going over in rural northern Pennsylvania. Several members of Congress are fighting the plan in the House. Rep. Phil English, a Republican, succeeded in getting a rider inserted in an appropriations bill that would ban the tolls. But the bill needs to win Senate approval and be signed by President Bush.

Here's where the plot thickens. You would expect Bush as a Republican to oppose the efforts of Rendell and our own Democratic governor, Jon Corzine, to balance their budgets through that form of fiscal trickery we have come to know as "asset monetization." Like Rendell, Corzine also flirted with the idea of putting tolls on our sec tions of I-80 and I-78, but Jersey drivers made it plain to Corzine that this was political suicide. So Corzine has to content himself for now with making a buck off our existing toll roads.

But you can't blame Democrats for this fiasco. In fact, it was the prior President Bush who pushed the change in federal law that permits imposing tolls on federally funded freeways. And the current President Bush's transportation secretary, Mary Peters, has been turning up in Pennsylvania to offer support for putting tolls on I-80.

And guess where else Peters has been hanging out? You got it: Texas. There she's been buddying up to Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican and a Bush protégé. Peters and Perry have been plotting with a Spanish firm by the name of Cintra to build a massive 4,000-mile network of toll roads called the Trans-Texas Corridor. One problem: Texas already has an excellent network of freeways. So how do the pols plan to get Texans to use the toll roads instead?

Texas Transportation Secretary Ric Williamson has provided the answer. In a 2004 Houston Chronicle article, he was quoted as telling Texans "in your lifetime most exist ing roads will have tolls." The I-80 effort in Pennsylvania, in other words, looks like just the first step in a national effort to convert the interstate system into a network of toll roads. Private corporations such as Cintra are ready to hand over billions of dollars up front against future toll collections.

The benefits for politicians are immense.

It's a disaster for drivers, however.

If you think those Pennsylvanians are peeved, give Dave Stall a call. He and his wife have founded a citizens' group to fight the Texas toll plans. When I got him on the phone, Stall told me that Texas plans to charge 15 cents a mile on toll roads. If you're driving a car that gets 27 miles per gallon, that's equivalent to approximately a $4-a-gallon gas tax.

"It's really interesting that there is a complete aversion to any increase in the gasoline tax by the governor, yet there is this rush to privatize and toll," he said.

Indeed it is. And it's really interesting that on the national level Bush claims to be firmly opposed to a mere 5-cent-a-gallon increase in the federal gas tax while his transportation secretary supports tolls. Let's say I want to drive from the Delaware Water Gap to the Ohio state line on I-80. That 5-cent gas-tax increase would cost me perhaps 50 cents. The projected toll, meanwhile, would be about $20.

That $19.50 difference explains why politicians of both parties are so hot on tolls. Every cent of a gas tax increase would go to transportation. But tolls provide a vast pool of money for lobbyists, lawyers, patronage jobs -- you name it.

By the way, if you're confused by the term "asset monetization," Stall has a definition that any Jersey driver will understand.

"It's Tony Soprano," Stall said. "He gives you an envelope on top of the table, and then he hands you another envelope under the table."

In 50 short years, we've gone from a Dwight Eisenhower approach to funding freeways to a Tony Soprano approach. Call me nostalgic, but I like Ike.

Stern: Toll Roads NOT needed, what is? An Adequate Gasoline Tax

Toll Roads are NOT needed
The Alternative to Toll Roads: An Adequate Gasoline Tax
By Peter Stern
Texas Monthly blog
Monday, August 20, 2007

A fuel tax, a.k.a. gasoline tax, is a sales tax imposed on the sale of fuel. The fuel tax in Texas is currently set at 20 cents/gal since being raised to that amount in 1991.

As in most instances throughout the U.S. the fuel tax collected in Texas is dedicated to the building and maintenance of roadways; however, often it is 60-percent of the tax revenue that goes toward this effort while 40-percent of the collection is used for more general purposes, e.g., public and/or higher education. Consequently, much of the revenue is diverted to other interests.


We are told by Governor Rick Perry and the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) that there is a vast shortage in the revenue for building and maintaining roadways and that the only method to improve that shortage is to generate toll roads.

Another reason for the lack of sufficient revenue from the collection of gasoline taxes is that the tax rate has been frozen in Texas since 1991. The reason for the freeze is unknown, at least publicly. Perry has been instrumental during his 2 terms as governor in continuing the freeze, frequently stating that increasing the gas tax is NOT an option. Furthermore, the Texas GOP has kept a platform of "No new taxes" and has supported the governor in maintaining the freeze on gasoline taxes.

So, apparently what we have in Texas is a self-imposed shortage of available financing to build and maintain roadways throughout the state. Six years ago Gov. Perry authorized TxDOT to "use whatever creative means available" to compensate for the shortage of financing and to generate more revenue for roadways. In reality, the meaning of that statement was for TxDOT and the legislature to develop the ways and means to build toll roads. The push for toll roads also was sparked by Perry’s wealthy pro-toll campaign contributors, which already had been determined and initiated when George Bush had been governor.

In conclusion, the shortage of revenue from the gasoline tax is self-imposed because of two reasons:

o The gasoline tax rate has been frozen since 1991
o Approximately 40-percent of gasoline tax revenue is being diverted to other interests.

Toll roads are NOT a cost-effective method of financing roadways. Generally, 80-percent of the toll revenue collected goes to the management, building and operations of the toll roads. It is not unusual for the state to contract the toll road to a private concern, e.g., on some toll projects the state has a 70-year contract with international toll maven CINTRA and its American partner Zachry Construction.

Because of the relatively inelastic nature of demand for fuel, in the short run the tax will be an effective source of revenue. In the long run, however, theory predicts that people adjust their consumption of petrol; that is, over a period of years, people will consume less as the price increases (by buying more fuel-efficient cars, for instance). Thus, some environmentalists have advocated a fuel tax as a way to reduce reliance on fossil fuels.

Still, the more intelligent alternative to toll roads is to permit the gasoline tax rate to increase naturally along with the inflationary index and cost-of-living factors and to ensure that 100-percent of the revenue collected from the tax goes to the building and maintenance of our roadways.

Gov. Perry has vehemently stated that he will NOT support increasing the gasoline tax.

However, if the state legislature agrees with and authorizes this effort, the revenue collected from adequate gasoline taxes will generate sufficient financing needed for building and maintaining our roads. Toll roads are NOT needed.

Highway Robbery and the NAFTA connection

Link to article here.

Highway Robbery of Texas Roads
By Cathie Adams, president of Texas Eagle Forum
Published: 08-20-07

Texas drivers are tired of traffic gridlock. We want new roads built sooner rather than later, but we do not want a Trans-Texas Corridor that would surely invite more illegal drugs and more illegal aliens.

Legislators have gotten our message but since both highway funds, the State Highway Fund (a gasoline tax) and the Texas Mobility Fund (bond money), have been pilfered for other uses, there is no money for road building.

Members of the Texas Senate Transportation & Homeland Security Committee met on August 7 to discuss this funding dilemma. Committee Chairman John Carona suggested a new constitutional amendment to protect the two existing highway funds from future abuses. He also recommended linking the state gas tax to inflation, in order to keep pace with the economy. Both ideas could be helpful in the future, but do nothing to remedy our current state of affairs.

A new funding scheme, public-private partnerships, was also discussed which allows foreign interests to lease our infrastructure for 50-99 years. Like highway robbers, those private investors would profit as much as 39 times the road building cost and then take their loot and leave the country. That’s a bad deal for Texans who currently own our infrastructure, want to continue to own it and furthermore want our taxes / tolls to be invested back into road building.

The committee has until 2009 to come up with funding solutions, but they would be wise to consider WHY the demand for new roads is so great because it is not just because of population growth. The elephant in the room that no one wants to tackle is the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA, which former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger called “the architecture of a new international system.”

When Congress approved NAFTA in 1993 with a simple majority of both chambers in a lame duck session, they ignored the U.S. Constitution’s requirement that the international treaty be approved by two-thirds of the U.S. Senate. Setting aside our U.S. Constitution has destabilized our borders with Mexico and Canada and created new and mounting crises.

NAFTA has encouraged manufacturers to leave our shores presumably to avoid government regulations and union wages, but at what cost to American workers? Is it fair to force American workers to compete with millions of Communist government-enslaved laborers who earn about 30 cents an hour in Asia?
NAFTA has created a U.S. trade deficit of $725.8 billion, 26% of that, almost $233 billion, is with China. The deficit is not only unsustainable, the Chinese government is now threatening to liquidate its $1.33 trillion of foreign reserves, including about $900 billion in U.S. treasury bonds, as a political weapon if the U.S. imposes trade sanctions to force revaluation of the Chinese currency, the Yuan. Such a move would cause our dollar to collapse!

More than American jobs and the dollar being negatively impacted by NAFTA, importing goods that America used to manufacture causes an enormous strain to our nation’s infrastructure.

As a hearty endorser of this “architecture of a new international system,” President Bush agreed to a Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP, www.spp.gov) with Canada and Mexico without Congressional approval or debate in March 2005. He then directed the U.S. Departments of Commerce and Transportation to begin merging their bureaucracies with their counterparts in Mexico and Canada. In 2006 he met with the presidents of Mexico and Canada in Cancun, Mexico, and this year he took time from his vacation in Crawford to attend another closed-door meeting with them in Quebec, Canada.

As the President and most members of Congress deny their unconstitutional actions, every state is forced to deal with the consequences of NAFTA and the SPP. Taxpayers must pay for an invasion of illegal aliens and drug traffickers, as well as deal with colossal levels of congestion on our roads.

The tragic Minneapolis bridge disaster last August shined light on the overweight danger to our nation’s infrastructure. Federal transportation officials claim that one-fourth of our nation’s bridges are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete, and one-third of our major roads are in poor or mediocre condition. They further claim that the cost to repair roads and bridges would be $461 billion and that traffic congestion is costing drivers $63 billion a year in wasted time and fuel costs.

Congress is just as guilty as state legislators in spending our highway funds on other projects. To counter their pilfering, they created a new federal program that grants cities $848 million aimed at discouraging people from driving, and in many cases by imposing new tolls or fees. Some in Congress also wanted to raise federal gas taxes, but President Bush quashed that bad idea. Thus far Texas legislators have also rejected a gas tax increase, but they embraced both toll/tax roads and public-private partnership funding.

When Texas taxpayers learned about Cintra, a foreign company public-private partnership, they were outraged. As a result, the legislature passed a moratorium on the public-private partnership scheme to build the Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC), the Texas segment of the NAFTA Highway that bisects the entire country from Laredo, TX to Duluth, MN.

Regretfully, Governor Rick Perry vetoed not only the moratorium, but also a law to require our Attorney General to study the impact of federal laws on our state and a good eminent domain bill aimed at protecting farmers and ranchers from the unfair taking of 580,000 acres to build the 12-lane TTC super-highway.

The unconstitutional NAFTA treaty and unilateral SPP agreement are undermining our nation’s sovereignty and security. In order for America to remain strong, we must be able to:

• Produce our own food;
• Manufacture our own military equipment; and
• Prevent foreign powers from obtaining access to our heartland.

Americans know that our roads have become busier, but few recognize that most of that traffic is due to the fact that we are importing goods that we used to manufacture. Even fewer are aware that as much as 60% of our food is now being imported or that much of our military equipment manufacturing has moved offshore. Yet federal and state lawmakers seem more committed to enabling elitist global interests, than fulfilling their constitutional responsibility to protect citizens from outside threats.

Each state should study the impact of NAFTA and the SPP within its borders, which would rightly lead to the repeal of both.

WHAT YOU CAN DO: It has taken more than a decade to realize the impact of the NAFTA “architecture of a new international system.” It cannot be repealed outright, but as citizens realize the source of the chaos in our communities, then they will influence their Congressmen as we have done with our state legislators in Texas. As for the SPP, ask your Congressman to co-sponsor HR 40 that would require discussion and debate of the president’s unilateral agreement. Congressional switchboard: 202-224-3121.

Looking ahead to the 2009 Texas legislative session, let us ask our representatives to pass another eminent domain bill to protect property owners from unfair takings and another bill to require the Attorney General Abbott to study the impact of federal laws, i.e. NAFTA and the SPP, on our state. Capitol switchboard: 512-463-4630.

SPP summit opens amid protests

Bush Seeks Neighborly Agenda
By DEB RIECHMANN
August 20, 2007

MONTEBELLO, Canada (AP) - President Bush and the leaders of Mexico and Canada worked Monday to craft a plan to secure their borders in the event of a terrorist strike or other emergency without creating traffic tie-ups that slowed commerce at crossings after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Bush, Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper want their homeland security experts to figure out the best way to protect citizens in an emergency, perhaps an outbreak of avian flu, without snarling business among the trading partners.

More broadly, the goal of the North American summit was to seek middle ground on shared concerns about the border and a host of other issues ranging from energy to trade, food safety to immigration. The three-way meeting at a highly secured red cedar chateau along the banks of the Ottawa River focused on administrative and regulatory issues, not sweeping legislative proposals for North America.

Few, if any, formal announcements were expected. The meeting served to address thorny problems between the U.S. and its neighbors to the North and South and bolster a compact - dubbed the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America - that serves as a way for the nations to team up on health, security and commerce.

Several hundred demonstrators protested on issues such as the war in Iraq, human rights and integration of North America. One carried a banner that said: "Say No To Americanada."

Calderon and Harper both want tight relations with Bush, yet don't want to be seen as proteges of the unpopular president or leave the impression that the U.S. is encroaching on their sovereignty.

To that end, Harper is asserting his nation's claim to the Northwest Passage through the Arctic.

The race to secure subsurface rights to the Arctic seabed heated up when Russia sent two small submarines to plant a tiny national flag under the North Pole. The United States and Norway also have competing claims in the vast Arctic region, where a U.S. study suggests as much as 25 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas could be hidden.

Canada believes much of the North American side of the Arctic is Canada's, but the United States says that the thawing Northwest Passage is part of international waters.

"We look at the Northwest Passage as an international waterway, and want the international transit rights to be respected there," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said. "But certainly President Bush will listen to what Prime Minister Harper has to say."

Harper also plans to raise concerns about new passport requirements for travelers, longtime U.S. restrictions on Canadian softwood lumber exports and the war in Afghanistan.

Harper has said Canada's military mission in Afghanistan will not be extended beyond 2009 without a consensus in the country and the Parliament. Canada has 2,500 troops in Afghanistan, fighting against the Taliban in the violet southern parts of the nation. Other countries, such as Germany ad Italy, restrict the use of their forces to more peaceful areas in the north.

With Hurricane Dean bearing down on Mexico, Calderon might have to cut his meetings short with Bush and Calderon. This is his first meeting with Bush since the U.S. immigration legislation died in the Senate. Calderon has called that a "grave error" and also is rankled by the Bush administration's newly announced crackdown on employers who use illegal immigrants.

It's unclear whether the United States will use the summit to announce a major new aid plan to help Mexico fight violent drug trafficking. U.S. anti-drug officials have been impressed with Caldron's crackdown on drug traffickers since he took office.

But Calderon has repeatedly pushed the U.S. to take more responsibility in fighting the two countries' common drug problem, including doing more to stop the flow of illegal U.S. arms into Mexico and trying to combat the demand for drugs north of the border. The issue of U.S. aid is a sensitive subject among Mexicans wary that U.S. help could lead to interventions that violate Mexican sovereignty.

Bush stepped off Air Force One and onto a red carpet at an airport in Ottawa where he was greeted by a bagpiper and a ceremonial honor guard dressed in red jackets and tall, black fur hats. Bush flew to the resort on the Marine One presidential helicopter, which landed in a grassy clearing along the water.

A few hundred protesters amassed at the gate of the resort. Police in riot gear used tear gas to hold back about 50 of them, who responded by flinging rocks, branches and plastic bottles. A line of police in riot gear jostled with about 50 demonstrators. A few hundred marched on the front gate of the summit compound shouting taunts.

"I've heard it's nothing," Harper said, dismissing the protests as Bush arrived at the Fairmont Le Chateau Montebello. "A couple hundred? It's sad."

Toll rate increases in Dallas, Houston...let the gouging begin!

Surprise, surprise, while it literally takes an Act of Congress to raise the gasoline tax, it only takes a whim of politicians to raise your toll taxes. Whether it's a public or private toll contract, they're gonna raid your wallet, quite handsomely. With TxDOT's trumped up studies insisting the government can a should charge more because their "surveys" have shown people would pay more to drive the toll roads, what do you expect? There is no longer any incentive to keep toll taxes as low as possible. Just like appraisal creep on your property taxes, tolls will start to increase annually at staggering rates. Why? Just because they can.
Link to article in Dallas Morning News here.

Tollway rates to increase in Sept.
Friday, August 17, 2007
By MICHAEL A. LINDENBERGER / The Dallas Morning News
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Driving without a toll tag is going to get more expensive for NTTA motorists beginning Sept. 29.

Also Online
Link: Learn more about the new toll rates

Rates vary across the Dallas area, but beginning next month, customers with a tag will pay a dime more than they do now at main lane plazas, while cash customers will pay a quarter more.

“Now is the time to get one,” said Rick Herrington of the NTTA. “Cash customers will pay 40 percent more than toll tag customers.”


The rate increase, which was approved by the NTTA board in November, comes just as the authority has begun a three-year transition to all-electronic toll collections.

More rate increases are likely, as local elected officials who set regional transportation policy have been urging the NTTA to adopt a more aggressive toll rate policy. The new State Highway 121 toll road, for instance, will open in 2010 with rates set about 14 cents a mile, and will increase every two years. The Regional Transportation Council has encouraged the NTTA to consider adopting that policy for all or most of its toll roads.

Despite the Sept. 29 increase, rates for the Mountain Creek Lake Bridge and the Addison Airport Toll Tunnel will stay at 50 cents.

__________________________________

The Harris County Toll Authority actually explains how one's tolls are stealing from you to pay for improvements elsewhere, while your fellow citizens who don't pay the tolls get road improvements courtesy of your wallet! Tolls are the most unfair distribution of taxes, stealing from Peter to pay Paul, Robin Hood, graft...you pick the term, but you get the idea, all under the guise of your tax dollars at work! View the Harris County Toll Authority web site for the news here.


August 10, 2007
Small increase. Big improvements. Coming soon.
Don't Forget: The 25¢ Rate Increase Takes Effect September 3, 2007


New Rates for Standard Two-Axle Vehicles
A detailed rate chart is available here (PDF files - 18.1KB), and an updated rate map will be available August 20, 2007, on www.hctra.org. Below is a summary of the rate changes for standard (two-axle) vehicles.

For the most part, the increases are 25¢ system-wide, but there are some exceptions. For example, entrance and exit ramps currently tolled at $1 will remain unchanged for standard (two-axle) vehicles. In addition, the Ship Channel Bridge rates will remain unchanged in order to bring mainlane toll rates and the Ship Channel Bridge toll rates closer to equal.

September 07 Toll Rate Increase Summary

2007 Toll Increase: The Facts

The Harris County Toll Road Authority is responsible for getting hundreds of thousands of drivers where they need to go each day-quickly and safely. Unfortunately, current tolls no longer provide the funds required to keep our toll roads in top shape and expand the system to meet the future mobility needs of our region. This is why Harris County Commissioners Court approved a system-wide 25¢ toll rate increase, effective September 3, 2007.

This increase represents only the third such increase in the Harris County Toll Road Authority's 20-year history, a testament to HCTRA's reputation as one of the most cost-effective, well-run systems in the nation.

What Your Tolls Pay For

Tolls collected on HCTRA roadways are used to fund maintenance and upkeep of the existing toll roads and to meet future expansion needs-without using tax dollars. All revenue generated from tolls is used to finance six major categories: operations, maintenance, construction projects, connectivity, debt service, and future projects.

In 2006, over 50 percent of toll revenue went toward maintenance, construction and connectivity projects, as well as new initiatives designed to enhance the future mobility of our region. Here's a preview of what's ahead at HCTRA to keep you up to speed:

Recent or Ongoing Enhancements/Capacity Improvements

South Sam Houston Tollway widening ($140 million)
West Sam Houston Tollway widening from White Oak Bayou to east of West Road ($9.1 million)
Sam Houston exit to SH 249: additional EZ TAG lane ($2.1 million)
Hardy Toll Road pavement reconstruction and widening ($21.6 million)
Westpark Tollway Dynamic Message Signs ($2 million)

Proposed Future Enhancements/Capacity Improvements

Continued conversion of cash and coin lanes to EZ TAG lanes
Additional electronic signage to better communicate in real-time with drivers
Real-time traffic cameras to facilitate better traffic management, faster response, and safer roads
Expansion of the Sam Houston widening between Gessner and West Road
Addition of two lanes to West Sam Houston Tollway, north of Briar Forest
Direct connector southbound SH 249 to westbound Sam Houston Tollway

New Projects

Thanks to legislation recently enacted by the Texas Legislature, HCTRA has the go-ahead to move forward on $4.5 billion in planned route expansions, some of which have been on hold for several years. These proposed mobility-enhancing new projects include:

Beltway 8 Northeast
Hardy Extension into downtown
Hempstead Highway (US 290) Managed Lanes
SH 288 Managed Lanes
Fairmont Parkway
Fort Bend Extension to 610

Congress tells Bush: Back off SPP agenda!

Link to article here.

Congress tells Bush: Back off SPP agenda
Lawmakers' letter warns 'stealth' effort to 'harmonize' could undermine security
By Jerome R. Corsi
World Net Daily
August 17, 2007

Twenty-two members of the U.S. House of Representatives – 21 Republicans and a Democrat – are urging President Bush to back off his North American integration efforts when he attends the third summit meeting on the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America next week in Montebello, Quebec.
They make it clear that continuing any such agenda at this point would be disregarding growing apprehension in Congress about the plans.

"As you travel to Montebello, Canada later this month for a summit with your Canadian and Mexican counterparts, we want you to be aware of serious and growing concerns in the U.S. Congress about the so-called Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) you launched with these nations in 2005," the letter said.
While the letter authors express their support for the president's "desire to promote good relations with our neighbors to the north and south," they are worried about the secretive manner in which SPP is being conducted and concerned it "may actually undermine our security and sovereignty."


"For instance," the letter said, "measures that would make it easier to move goods and people across borders could have the effect of further weakening this country's ability to secure its frontiers and prevent illegal immigration."

The letter also cited documents obtained by Judicial Watch in a Freedom of Information Act Request that suggest, "Such secretiveness seems not to be accidental."

WND was among the first news organizations to obtain and publish the agenda and the list of attendees for a secret North American Forum meeting held at the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel in Banff, Alberta, Canada, from September 12-14, 2006. The meeting was closed to the press and the documents obtained by WND were marked "Internal Document, Not for Public Release."


President Bush with then-Mexico President Vicente Fox, left, and then-Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin in March 2005 at the inaugural summit of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (White House photo)
Judicial Watch also used a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain a set of notes from the Pentagon attendees at the secret Banff meeting.

One particularly disturbing comment was noted in the official conference record of the speeches given, as recorded in the "Rapporteur Notes" obtained by the Judicial Watch FOIA request. In Section VI of the conference, entitled "Border Infrastructure and Continental Prosperity," the reporter summarized as follows:

To what degree does the concept of North America help/hinder solving problems between the three countries?

Vision is helpful
A secure perimeter would bring enormous benefit
While a vision is appealing working on the infrastructure might yield more benefit and bring more people on board ("evolution by stealth")
Reflecting on those perceptions, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said, "It is not encouraging to see the phrase 'evolution by stealth' in reference to important policy debates such as North American integration and cooperation. These documents provide more information to Americans concerned about the Security and Prosperity Partnership. The more transparency the better."

The members also noted in their letter the amendment added by Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., to the transportation funding bill.

As WND reported, Hunter successfully offered an amendment to H.R.3074, the Transportation Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2008, prohibiting the use of federal funds to participate in SPP-related working group meetings in the future.

The members noted in their letter that, "This vote is an indication of the serious concerns felt by those of us in Congress and by our constituents about this initiative – concerns that will only be intensified if pursuit of the SPP continues out of public view and without congressional oversight or approval."

The last paragraph of the letter called upon the president "not to pledge or agree to any further movement in connection with the SPP at the upcoming North American summit."

The letter concluded that, "in the interest of transparency and accountability, we urge you to bring to the Congress whatever provisions have already been agreed upon and those now being pursued or contemplated as part of this initiative, for the purpose of obtaining authorization through the normal legislative process."

Signatories to the letter included the following members of the House of Representatives:

Rep. Terry Everett, R-Alabama
Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-California
Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colorado
Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas
Rep. Nancy Boyda, D-Kansas
Rep. Walter Jones, R-North Carolina
Rep. David Davis, R-Tenn.
Rep. Phil Gingrey, R-Georgia
Rep. John Boozman, R-Arkansas
Rep. John Duncan, R-Tenn.
Rep. Virgil Goode, R-Virginia
Rep. Tom Price, R-Georgia
Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, R-Florida
Rep. Sue Myrick, R-North Carolina
Rep. Jo Bonner, R-Alabama
Rep. Gary Miller, R-Calif.
Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa
Rep. Greg Walden, R-Oregon
Rep. Michael Rogers, R-Alabama
Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, R-Michigan
Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Alabama
Rep. Todd Akin, R-Missouri

Perry denies TTC part of push for North American Union

Link to article here.

Read Jerry Corsi's book, The Late Great USA, the Coming merger with Mexico and Canada, to see the irrefutable evidence for yourself. Search this web site for SPP, NAFTA Superhighway, or North American Union to connect the dots. Anyone who believes the Governor over ordinary citizens and documents available from our own government needs their head examined.

Remember Perry is pushing the Trans Texas Corridor (against his own Party's platform) to such a degree that he vetoed a bill that would have protected landowners from their land being taken and given to private interests for private gain, HB 2006, he vetoed the people's moratorium bill on privatized toll roads, HB 1892, and his ex-aide worked for the company awarded the bid to build the Trans Texas Corridor before and after working for the Governor. He barely won re-election running on strong border security, and, in less than a month after he won, flip-flopped and came out for open borders and a guest worker program. Perry's not looking out for you, and his word is for sale to the highest bidder just like our highways. While politicians and reporters are busy trying to marginalize watchdogs, our government is laying the groundwork for deep integration with Canada and Mexico through the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP). Since 19 state legislatures have passed resolutions against it, it's getting tougher for Perry and his crowd to make the "conspiracy theory" charge stick.

Perry's push for super highway raises conspiracy buzz
Some say it's part of a plan to create one nation in North America
By R.G. RATCLIFFE
Aug. 18, 2007
Houston Chronicle

AUSTIN — Black helicopters, the Illuminati, Gov. Rick Perry and the Trans-Texas Corridor are all now part of the vernacular of the global domination conspiracy theorists.

Perry's push for the Trans-Texas Corridor super highway is part of a secret plan, the conspiracy theorists say, to create the North American Union — a single nation consisting of Canada, Mexico and the United States with a currency called the Amero.

Government denials of the North American Union and descriptions of it as a myth seem to add fuel to the fire. A Google search for "North American Union" and "Rick Perry" returns about 13,400 Web page results.

"Conspiracy theories abound, and some people have an awful lot of time on their hands to come up with such far-fetched notions," said Perry spokesman Robert Black.


Perry enhanced the conspiracy buzz earlier this summer by traveling to Turkey to attend the secretive Bilderberg conference, which conspiracy theorists believe is a cabal of international monied interests and power brokers pressing for globalization.

And the conspiracy rhetoric is likely to ratchet up this week as President Bush meets with Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Quebec in their third summit to discuss North American relations under the Security and Prosperity Partnership.

"There is absolutely a connection with all of it," said Texas Eagle Forum President Cathie Adams. The Trans-Texas Corridor "is something not being driven by the people of Texas."

The first, and most controversial, leg of the Trans-Texas Corridor plan is a proposed 1,200-foot-wide private toll road to run from Laredo to the Oklahoma border parallel to Interstate 35. This TTC-35 would be built by a consortium headed by Spanish owned Cintra S.A. and Zachry Construction Corp. of San Antonio.

The seed of the North American Union controversy rests in the 1992-93 passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Under that treaty, Interstate 35 was designated informally as the NAFTA highway.

'Stealth' attempt

Fast-forward to March 2005 to Crawford, when President Bush, Harper and then-Mexican President Vicente Fox agreed to pursue the Security and Prosperity Partnership, SPP. The idea was to promote cooperation among the countries on economic and security issues.But conservative author Jerome Corsi — in his new book: The Late Great U.S.A.: The Coming Merger with Mexico and Canada — argues the SPP is a "stealth" attempt to wipe out the nations' borders and form a single economy like the European Union.

With an entire chapter dedicated to Perry's Trans-Texas Corridor plan, Corsi says the first step to integrating the economies is to integrate the transportation infrastructure.

"His (Perry's) actions have been to fight hard to build this toll road and not listen to the objections expressed by the people of Texas," Corsi said.

Corsi became nationally known in 2004 as the co-author of Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry. Corsi said extensive research shows the SPP has created working groups on the North American Union that answer to presidential Cabinet secretaries.

"This is more of a shadow bureaucracy, a shadow government already in effect," Corsi said. "Unless it is stopped, it will turn into a North American Union with an Amero."

The official federal Web site for the SPP has a section dedicated to busting the North American Union as myth.

"The SPP does not attempt to modify our sovereignty or currency or change the American system of government designed by our Founding Fathers," the site says.

But that has not stopped a growing opposition to the North American Union by groups such as the Eagle Forum, The Conservative Caucus and the John Birch Society.

'Wanted' individual

The North American Union also has been fodder for cable television commentators: CNN's Lou Dobbs and Fox's Bill O'Reilly.Perry fueled his role in the debate in June by attending the Bilderberg annual conference, a secretive closed-door meeting of about 120 business, government and media leaders from Europe and North America.

Republican presidential candidate and U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Lake Jackson was asked about the trip on the syndicated talk radio show of Alex Jones in June. Paul said the trip was "a sign that he's involved in the international conspiracy."

Jones' Web site features mug shot-like photos of Perry labeled "Wanted for Treason." Jones in an interview said Perry's trip and the Trans-Texas Corridor show a willingness by the governor to sell out Texas' infrastructure to international bankers.

"Perry is actively waging war, economically in the interests of the elites and neomercantilism," Jones said.

The 2001 book Toward a North American Community: Lessons from the Old World for the New by Robert A. Pastor, an American University professor and director of the Center for Democracy and Election Management, is cited by Corsi as the blueprint for the merger.

"I've never proposed a North American Union," Pastor said. "The only people who talk about a North American Union are those people who are trying to generate fear."

Belief in sovereignty

Pastor said greater cooperation between the three countries makes sense for both economics and internal security.Pastor said those promoting the conspiracy are doing so because of "historical xenophobia," "a fear of immigrants, mostly from Mexico" and a "traditional isolationism."

Black said there is no way the governor would support merging the U.S. with its neighbors.

"The governor is a firm believer in the sovereignty of the United States. Too many of our brave men and women have died defending it," Black said.

Left, right unite to protest SPP summit in Quebec

Link to story here.

Left, right unite to protest Quebec summit
By Julie Smyth
National Post
Friday, August 17, 2007

OTTAWA -- The far right and far left will find common ground next week as representatives from both political spectrums protest the summit between Canadian, American and Mexican leaders in Montebello, Que.

An ultra-conservative U.S. group calling itself the Coalition to Block the North American Union, made up of politicians and activists, as well as singer Pat Boone, will hold a news conference in Ottawa on Monday to oppose the two-day Security and Prosperity Partnership meeting of U.S. President George Bush, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and President Felipe Calderon of Mexico.

Members of the group also plan on going to the meeting to voice their concerns about what they deem secretive talks. They tried, unsuccessfully, to book rooms at the high-end resort hotel where the meeting is being held under intense security. They will go along in an attempt to engage anyone in discussion about their opposition to the leaders, all of whom share conservative values. The group is to the political right of Mr. Bush.

The coalition will make strange bedfellows with others protesting the summit, including the Green party and the People's Global Action Bloc, an activist organization that rejects capitalism and all trade agreements.

Howard Phillips, chairman of the U.S. coalition, said in an interview Friday that he will not engage in any violent protests or street demonstrations but is travelling to Canada to find others interested in his cause. He is upset he will not have access to the meeting or the hotel -- all protesters will be kept away from the building and grounds but the demonstrations will be videotaped and shown inside the summit meeting.

Mr. Phillips' group is opposed to a North American union and was against the North American Free Trade Agreement. It is concerned these meetings and agreements detract from each of the country's ability to achieve national independence and self-determination, he said yesterday. Mr. Phillips, who runs a public policy action group called Conservative Caucus and once worked for government agencies during the Nixon administration, said his other complaint is the "secrecy" of the talks.

He said protesters with opposite political views to his own share his concerns about the loss of independence for countries -- and have for years -- and he welcomes them all to the battle against next week's discussions.

"We share many of the concerns that people on the liberal side have on NAFTA, WTO, etc.," he said in a telephone interview.

In a press release to be released on Monday, he states: "Our message is, 'President Bush, President Calderon, Prime Minister Harper, tear down the wall of silence and let the people see what you are scheming to do.' Behind closed doors, step by step, the leaders of Mexico, Canada, and the United States are setting the stage for, first, a North American Community and, ultimately, a North American Union [NAU], in which new transnational bodies would gain authority over our economy, our judiciary, and our lawmaking institutions ... Our message is similar to the one which Ronald Reagan delivered to Mikhail Gorbachev when he said, 'Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall.' "

On Monday and Tuesday, the three leaders will be discussing issues around security and the economy, as well as timely matters such as the mass import of products from China following the recent toy recalls. This is an annual summit that began two years ago in Texas. The impetus was to expand NAFTA but that has become less of a focus following public opposition and protests.

Mr. Phillips' coalition is made up of about 100 U.S. politicians and conservative public policy advocates. Tom DeWeese, president of the American Policy Center and John McManus, president of the John Birch Society, will be at the Ottawa press conference and Congressman Virgil Goode, Jr., the chief sponsor of House Concurrent Resolution 40, which opposes the North American union and "NAFTA Superhighway," will participate through video conference.

Crooner Pat Boone, as well as U.S. Congressmen Ron Paul and Walter Jones will be issuing statements of protest.

Florida Congressman worries about transportation funding, wants tolls & to hike gas taxes

Florida congressman pushes transportation infrastructure plan
By PAUL J. WEBER
Associated Press
Wednesday, August 8, 2007

IRVING, TEXAS — The top Republican on the House Transportation Committee continued pushing a national infrastructure plan Wednesday that would seek to address more than just aging bridges like the one that collapsed in Minnesota last week.

Rep. John Mica said his plan attacked a larger problem than the bridge-specific proposal made Wednesday by Rep. Jim Oberstar, who wants to create a trust fund for structurally deficient spans on the National Highway System.

Oberstar, D-Minn., is chairman of the House committee that includes Mica and is expected to hold a hearing on structurally deficient bridges when Congress returns from recess next month.

“That’s sort of like me coming to you and saying I have an 80-year-old house, the roof is leaking, the plumbing is decrepit and the floors are caving in,” Mica said. “But what I’m going to do is make some repairs on the driveway and everything will be OK.”

Speaking at the Texas Transportation Summit, Mica said last week’s Minnesota bridge collapse that killed at least five people and injured about 100 should result in more than the typical “knee-jerk” reactions from lawmakers.

Mica is pushing for what the Florida lawmaker calls a national strategic transportation infrastructure plan, in which Congress would definitively answer questions like the federal government’s role in infrastructure maintenance and create a solution to transportation financing.

Mica characterized the federal gasoline tax that pays for building and repairing roads and bridges as “becoming obsolete” in an outline of his plan. He said that while Congress may need to look at the indexing, the rising number of cars using alternative fuels means that an increasing number of drivers won’t be paying the tax.

“The solution is not just raising gas taxes,” Mica said. “There’s a much more fundamental need for correcting the whole way in which we finance the system.”

Mica said he would like to have his plan in place by September 2009.

Under Oberstar’s proposal, the trust fund would be modeled on the federal Highway Trust Fund, which pays for building and repairing roads and bridges through a gasoline tax. Money in the new trust fund could not be used for any other purpose.

The proposal would require that the U.S. Department of Transportation come up with a formula for distributing funds based on public safety and need, banning congressional and executive branch earmarks.

Across the country, more than 70,000 bridges are rated structurally deficient, including the bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis. Repairing them all would cost more than $188 billion, engineers estimate.

© 2007 Naples Daily News and NDN Productions. Published in Naples, Florida, USA by the E.W. Scripps Co.

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