Fixing the Structural Deficit

Now you see? This is what I have been talking about. Here we have a state legislature poised to pass a job-killing budget bill and a governor poised to sign it into law, and not one thing is being done to correct the structural deficit that got us in this fix in the first place. You’d think that would be enough, wouldn’t you? You’d think that the Republican-dominated state government couldn’t come up with more ways to ruin the state’s finances.

And there you would be wrong. A bill to extend business tax cuts to businesses with less than $1 million per year in revenue has just been voted out of committee. At a time of budget shortfalls, school closings and massive teacher layoffs 8 of the 11 members of the House Ways and Means Committee voted to deny the state of $150 million in revenue over the next two years.

Absolutely astounding.

From the Austin American-Statesman:

“The bill by Rep. Harvey Hilderbran, R-Kerrville, would continue a tax break that will cost the state almost $150 million over the next two years. Under the original business franchise tax, only companies with revenue of less than $600,000 a year were exempt from the tax.”

The structural deficit was created several years ago when Republicans decreased property taxes and sought to recover the lost balance by creating the business tax. A tax that didn’t quite make up for the loss in revenue from property taxes. So they are going to solve this problem by increasing the amount of money that the business tax doesn’t collect.

Republicans are in transition from doing a bad job raising revenue to pay for basic government services like health and education to doing a worse job.

The Very Definition of Insanity

A classic one-liner, that doing the same thing over and over again expecting to see a different outcome is the very definition of insanity, can be improved on now.

The news that the recently passed federal budget bill had in it an amendment that repealed the so-called Doggett Amendment inspires a corollary to the definition of insanity. The Doggett Amendment was an amendment putting a special condition on Texas that its leaders must guarantee that the $830 million in federal aid to education that it receives will be used for education and  that educational spending levels will not be less than the previous two years. A guarantee that lawmakers could not keep to, and one that Rick Perry would not make.

Rick Perry very ingenuously said he could not make that guarantee because the constitution prohibited him from doing that. Then lawmakers shorted Texas school districts by $9 billion in the state house, and $6 billion in the state senate. But now its all moot because the Doggett Amendment was repealed. Texas Senator Cornyn was ecstatic.

From the Austin American-Statesman:

“Said Republican U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, ‘It is welcome news for Texas students and teachers that this critical funding has been recovered after an untimely political stunt jeopardized these much-needed resources. Petty politics have no place in what should be an otherwise simple equation that fairly distributes federal education dollars to each state. Texas schools were unfairly penalized and left in the dark during one of their most challenging budgeting years to date.’”

Indeed, this would be good news for Texas teachers. This is enough money to buy needed textbooks that will be adopted in the next two years, and save the jobs of 10,000 teachers to boot. But you see, John Cornyn is delusional if he thinks that this deal means that there will be  $830 million more dollars for public education in Texas. Other Republicans I have talked to today are of similar opinion.

That’s just insane.

An additional definition for insanity is this: seeing someone do the same thing over and over again, but expecting him to do it differently the next time.

Rick Perry is a classic huckster. He puts a pile of cash under one walnut shell, moves three of them about and you can never guess where the cash has gone off to. He does it all the time. Here is what is going to happen: Rick Perry will willingly take all $830 million off the feds’ hands, put it in the Education Budget, and then subtract $830 million from the Education Budget, shifting it off to his favorite causes. If he can do this with the $3 billion federal stimulus dollars marked for education in Texas, he can surely do it with $0.83 billion.

This action is specifically why the Doggett Amendment was crafted.

So Governor Rick Perry and the GOP majority have $830 million in additional federal grants to play with and schoolchildren in Texas get the shaft one more time.

Half Empty Hump Day Black Humor

A friend sent me a very timely joke via email today. It was so bittersweet that I had to laugh out loud when I read it. You might have gotten it in your email inbox, too. In that case, you know that we have a mutual friend.

This is my rendition of the joke:

A teacher, a taxpayer and a CEO were sitting at a table at a Chinese buffet. Upon finishing their repast the waiter brought a plate of those Chinese fortune cookies, twelve in all. Immediately the CEO grabbed eleven of them and stuffed them in his pockets. When his tablemates saw that there was just one fortune cookie on the plate for the three of them the CEO looked at the taxpayer and angrily pointed to the teacher and said: "Hey, that guy just took your fortune cookie!"

The irony is that the joke wouldn't even be funny if it weren't so true.

Rick Perry Uses and Abuses Educators and Education

On Tuesday a memo penned by Michael Green, the Director of the Teacher Retirement System’s Investment Division, laid bare the way Rick Perry has used the retirement fund of Texas teachers for his own benefit. You can read it here.

It is damming in the detail it goes into, revealing how Rick Perry’s cronies and campaign contributors have directly benefited from gaining investment fees and kickbacks when the TRS invested in risky ventures.

Green writes:

“Over the last two years I’ve had the privilege to be a part of the team whose goal is to build a modern investment management organization within TRS. Over that time, however, my excitement has given way to increasing concern as relativistic ethics have taken root within parts of the senior management team as they’ve worked to gain the support and resources necessary to realize that goal. Rationalizing violations of TRS directives, policies and procedures, devaluing personal and professional ethics and the violation of state laws have become increasingly familiar.”

Senior management?

Senior management like Jim Lee, a Perry appointee who was also a chief Perry fundraiser. Jim Lee was in charge of investing billions of TRS dollars but had to step down when it was revealed that he had run up huge gambling debts in Las Vegas.

Senior management like R. David Kelly, also a current member of Perry’s campaign fundraising team.

Green writes that he was coerced into changing his decisions to decline investing in risky ventures. Ventures that ultimately trace back to Perry’s cronies.

The smoking gun is in full view. Not only is Rick Perry the guy who promotes a political agenda on the State Board of Education – degrading education standards in Texas, he is also the guy who used federal Education stimulus dollars to balance his budget. He is the guy that has presided over the highest rise in post-secondary tuition fees in Texas history.

He is now exposed as the guy who uses the hard-earned retirement money of Texas educators to benefit his campaign, his donors, and the business interests of his cronies.

Rick Perry is lower than a snake’s belly in a wagon rut.

Why a Texas teacher would cast a vote for Rick Perry is beyond me. Why anyone who has a child attending a Texas public school would vote for Rick Perry is similarly a mystery to me.

Teachers are astounded at this news. Here are several retired teachers who should rightfully be more outraged than they appear to be in the video. Sometimes teachers are too nice for their own good.

Perry and Abbott Waste Taxpayer Money with Frivolous Lawsuit

The Corpus Christi Caller-Times called it today: Rick Perry and his chief counsel, Attorney General Greg Abbott have committed an egregious act as any Texas Republican will likely admit – they have filed a frivolous lawsuit.

But more damning is the fact that they are using taxpayer money to do this.

This is about the $820 million that the federal government has allocated to Texas to augment its education budget. An infusion of cash so that Texas teachers aren’t laid off and Texas students aren't made to sit in overcrowded classrooms.

A tidy sum, this $830 million. A sum that can make a real difference. But Rick Perry and Greg Abbott divined a way to look this $830 million gift horse in the mouth. Have divined a way to make themselves look like crusaders tilting at the federal government while it desperately tries to get Texas to accept this money.

The problem is the Doggett Amendment. Crafted by Texas Congressman Lloyd Doggett, this amendment requires the governor of Texas to “guarantee no drop in state education funding for the next three years, as a condition of receiving the $830 million.” This was in reaction to the 2009 shell game that Perry played with the $3.2 billion federal stimulus check that was issued especially for the state’s education fund. Perry simply placed it in the education budget, then reallocated a like amount from Texas revenue to other places.

In short, he used the $3.2 billion, meant to augment Texas education, to balance his budget.

So according to the Doggett Amendment, all they have to do is make a political promise. All they have to do is promise that the state’s education budget will stay at the same level that it is at for three years. But this, they say, they cannot do because the Texas Constitution ties their hands.

From the Caller-Times:

“Their primary assertion, however, is that the Doggett Amendment would require Perry to violate the Texas Constitution because the Legislature, not the governor, allocates funds and can do so only two years at a time. The Doggett Amendment requires a three-year guarantee.”

This reading, while true, begs the question: no one asked them to allocate funds, they simply asked for a guarantee. They make guarantees all the time. They even make them and renege on them. That’s politics.


But no.

Perry and Abbott spend taxpayer money to make a political point, and in so doing, deny Texas much needed education funds as the Education Commissioner proposes $260 million in slashes to the education budget.

But it gets even better. It seems that Greg Abbott’s opponent, Barbara Ann Radnofsky had out-lawyered Greg Abbott again. She read further on down in the Texas Constitution and found that what Perry did with the $3.2 billion last year was illegal.

And I thought is was just bad taste.

From the Caller-Times (again):

“His opponent, Democrat Barbara Ann Radnofsky, setting out to prove that this is just needless political theater, read further into the Constitution and found something that appears to trump Abbott’s legal premise:”

“‘The Legislature shall not have power to ... in any manner divert from its purpose, any special fund that may, or ought to, come into the Treasury; and shall make it penal for any person or persons to borrow, withhold, or in any manner divert from its purpose any special fund, or any part thereof.’”

That $3.2 billion was a “special fund” meant to benefit education. It was diverted. And it is “penal” to do that.

In short, Rick Perry did what any Columbian drug lord does as a standard business practice, he laundered money. But at $3.2 billion, Perry certainly did his money laundering in a grand way.

.

TxDOT Will Use 53% of Taxpayer Stimulus Money For Toll Roads

Take a look at County Commissioner Richard Morrison’s website “As the Court Turns” for the latest news on how TxDOT and Rick Perry plan on using taxpayer-supported Economic Recovery money, also known as “The Stim,” to improve Texas’ transportation system.

“The Texas Transportation Commission (TxDoT), appointed by Gov. Perry, has recommended that the East Region; including Beaumont, Bryan, Houston and Lufkin receive $431,516,770 for transportation projects. From this amount over 53%, or $231,000,000, will be spent on the construction of toll roads. These recommendations ignore the federal law that requires these funds to be spent in economically distressed areas and ignore the will of ordinary Texans who are opposed to our tax dollars being spent on Toll Roads and see these schemes as a type of double taxation.”

Rick Perry is living in a fantasy world. In Rick Perry’s World, Texans live to toss handfuls of coins into toll booth receptacles so they can blissfully drive their SUVs down foreign-owned and maintained (and now, apparently, taxpayer-supported) pay-as-you-go toll roads. In Rick Perry’s World, Texans admire foreign corporations that can wheedle taxpayer money out of the hands of the Obama Administration. In Rick Perry’s World, Texans love them some toll road.

Is this guy nuts?

Didn’t Texans of all colors and stripes outright reject any notion of a Trans Texas Corridor to the effect that it is now DOA? Didn’t Fort Bend County voters roundly reject any notion of a toll road (as in Section C of the Grand Parkway) in the last election when they rejected a Republican toll road cheerleader running for the Commissioners Court?

The only thing that galls me more than this gross misuse of Economic Recovery funds is the fact that we stand to lose this money when the Feds see how Texas state government plans on mishandling and totally mismanaging this money.

Causing me to wonder if it all isn’t on purpose. Does Perry want to purposely lose this money just as he wants to reject the federal funds for unemployment benefits?

No, frankly, I think I am giving Governor Perry far too much credit for analysis. Quite frankly, these days when you look into Rick Perry’s eyes, all you see is the back of his head.

An Open Letter to Joe Biden and Earl Devaney

Dear Joe and Earl,

I hear that President Barack Obama has named you, Mr. Biden, to oversee stimulus spending, and you, Mr. Devaney, to be the “Stimulus Czar.” To that end he has entrusted the two of you with ensuring that the billions that were voted to stimulate economic recovery across the nation were not wasted by the cities and states.

So I just wanted to call to your attention something that my state’s Department of Transportation is planning, and planning to use about $700 million of federal stimulus funds to accomplish the plan.

It seems that the Texas Department of Transportation has a love affair with toll roads. Our governor, Rick Perry, has similar amorous feelings. They have repeatedly over the years tried to foist on Texans such projects as the Trans Texas Corridor, as well as God knows how many toll road projects (21 at present count). No one, neither Republican nor Democrat, seems to be on their side on this. Apparently the only ones who seem to be in favor of toll roads in Texas are the foreign-owned corporations who will build and maintain the roads . . . and collect the tolls.

The reason that we are given for going the toll road route is that TxDOT has no funds for construction and maintenance of needed roads. That this is largely due to the fact that state government has failed to let gasoline taxes rise with inflation, and has diverted funds that would normally go toward road building and maintenance toward other projects has not escaped anyone’s attention.

So as a result of their poor management, we are now hearing that the Texas Transportation Commission will vote next week to use more than $700 billion of federal stimulus money to build toll roads.

Mr. Vice President, Mr. Devaney, this is something I think you should be looking into. In times of economic crisis, the last thing someone thinks of doing is taking the toll road. Since the local toll road authorities raised the toll rates last year, my automobile has not seen a single square yard of toll road. The only beneficiaries in this deal, as I see it, are the toll road corporations that TxDOT and our governor seem to be beholden to.

Really, in general, you have to watch out when you give any money at all to a Texas government agency. Since 2003 or so Texas has been ruled by a new order that I like to call a "Kleptocracy," government by kleptomaniacs. You need to keep a close watch whenever money goes out to Texas. You really do.

President Obama has promised that he would “use the full power of my office and our administration to stop” the waste of billions of federal funds, and I was wondering what he meant by that. I recently hit upon the fact that he is the Commander-in-Chief of all branches of the military. So I was wondering whether you could ask the President to send in the cavalry, or maybe a tank battalion, to surround the commission as they meet next week, and persuade them in the error of their ways.

White phosphorous rounds, I hear, are especially persuasive.

With warm regards,

Hal at Half Empty

The Keating 5 and John McCain

With the Dow down 800 points at one point today, what do McCain and Palin talk about? Well one thing they didn’t talk about today was the financial crisis in the credit market. Instead of making a strong case for more government regulation of the financial markets and banking, Governor Palin concentrated on former Weather Underground member and Obama acquaintance, Bill Ayers, and on Obama’s former preacher. John McCain also took that tack, but also tried to associate Barack Obama with Chicago-style politics.

It’s just that they can’t talk about the financial crisis. They can’t talk about it because this crisis bears such a huge resemblance to the Savings and Loan Meltdown of the late 80’s that it just won’t do to talk about it.

Because John McCain was neck deep in the politics and the economics that lead up to the federal government’s bailout of 747 savings and loan institutions, including the one owned by Charles Keating - Lincoln Savings and Loan.

What is true is that John McCain supported deregulation of the S$L industry, just as he has supported deregulation of banks. S&Ls were allowed to invest in more risky ventures, and while things were looking up, everyone made money. Just as we had people making money while banks were making bad investments in sub-prime mortgages and everything was copasetic as long as the housing market went up and up.

McCain was caught up in the scandal, and was one of the Keating 5 along with John Glenn, Alan Cranston, Dennis DiConcini, and Don Riegle. At first, McCain, who had received campaign contributions from Keating, exerted pressure on federal S&L investigators at the behest of Keating. When the investigators disclosed that Lincoln was under criminal investigation for a number of charges, McCain flipped and cut off all contact with Keating.

McCain was later admonished by an investigating Senate panel and was told that he exercised “poor judgment.”

These things are coming out again. Partly in response to the verbal attacks on Obama’s character – attacks that one has to complete several leaps of logic to understand where they are coming from. And partly because they are germane to today’s issues.

Issues like how McCain was for deregulation before he was against it.

Issues like how McCain simply cannot learn from his past mistakes.

Issues like how McCain has, in his own colleagues’ opinion, “poor judgment.”

So the last thing McCain will do is talk about what is on the minds of Americans from coast to coast. Instead he and Palin attempted to change the subject once again. A move right out of page 17 of Karl Rove’s playbook.

I don’t think it’s going to work this time, though. This isn’t a trivial issue they are trying to lay diversions around. This is rapidly becoming THE issue.

Ignoring THE issue will only make McCain seem more and more irrelevant.

Because the relevance of John McCain in the financial crisis is not necessarily something McCain wants to talk about. Like the relevance shown in Barack Obama’s latest mini documentary on how relevant John McCain is on the issue.

Burma: Stricken With a Cyclone and Paranoid Kleptomaniacs

Six days after Cyclone Nargis made landfall in Burma’s Irrawaddy delta, wiping out towns and villages and destroying houses as far north as Rangoon, only a very limited amount of foreign aid has made it to any of the 1.5 million people who are now homeless in this dirt poor country.

Burma, now called Myanmar by its rulers, a junta of generals who have kept an iron grip on the country since 1962, should be by all rights a rich country. Its Irrawaddy delta is exceedingly rich farmland. Its highlands are rich in minerals. Oil has been produced from British-run oil fields since the 1920’s. Burma should be a country basking in its riches, but its people are among the poorest in the world. Its rulers, the generals and their coterie are, by sharp contrast, wealthy beyond all imagination.

I have called our present Bush Regime a “kleptocracy”, a government of people who reserve vast quantities America’s wealth for their cronies, but these people are pikers compared to the generals of Burma. And when you spend your life stealing from the very people governments are supposed to serve, you darned well have to know that they will get extremely paranoid when outsiders want to come in to help these very people.

That’s what you read, right now, about outside groups that want to bring in aid. The generals will only deal with people already in-country, not anyone else. And certainly not America. The news indicates that the generals are suspicious of outsiders, and there may be something to that, because these kleptomaniacs are ever-guarding their source of booty.

But there’s more to it than that.

The generals want to deal only with those already in-country because they already have an understanding with them. These groups originating from Bangladesh, China, India, Singapore, Italy and Thailand, already have the wheels greased. The generals are already getting their cut, you see.

That’s right. The generals need to be bribed in order for them to let these humanitarian groups bail out these stricken people.

Some humanitarian groups are disinclined to help out specifically because they want to distribute the aid directly to the people, and not just hand it over to the Burmese government for them to distribute. That’s not the way it works in Burma, however. If you want to donate aid packages to Burma, you give them to the junta, they take their cut and then, their friends take theirs, and what’s left goes to whoever can reach the farthest or jump the highest.

That’s why, when I learned this afternoon that the United States was sending a small convoy of warships to Burma to help out, I burst out laughing.

“The Navy has three ships participating in an exercise in the Gulf of Thailand that could help in any relief effort - the USS Essex, the USS Juneau and the USS Harper's Ferry. The Essex is an amphibious assault ship with 23 helicopters aboard, including 19 capable of lifting cargo from ship to shore, as well as more than 1,500 Marines.”

The last thing the generals want to see steaming up the Irrawaddy are American warships.

No, my guess, if things play out as they have in the past, it will go very much as outlined in the article I quoted. The generals will say that they appreciate all the help but really if these countries, and America, want to help, they should just give them the money and then they will use it to go and buy the supplies for these poor, poor prople who will sicken, starve and die otherwise.

I guess this should be a lesson to us all. What the Bush Regime did, or actually didn’t do, on the heels of Hurricane Katrina, to help the hundreds of thousands of evacuees and thousands of people still trapped in the disaster areas, pales in comparison to what the Burmese generals are capable of doing.

Or not doing.

Fort Bend To Get a “Rail Bypass”?

It sounds almost surgical, but what a “rail bypass” really is, is maybe something to alleviate the 40 to 60 (and on the increase) freight trains per day that tie up traffic and delay the morning drives of thousands of Fort Bend County commuters every week.

I remember when this first came to my (and others’) attention. It was at a Nick Lampson “Neighborhood Office Hours” meeting in Richmond, last July.

From that posting:

“There was lots and lots of discussion on transportation issues. One question had to do with light rail to Houston. It opened up a can of worms. First, that the existing railroad line that runs right through Richmond was going to have increased traffic due to the purchase and construction of two container offloading sites in western Rosenberg. Railroad traffic, already around 60 trains per day, is expected to double and the truck traffic between Rosenberg and US 59 is expected to be heavy. Lots of infrastructure issues.”

“Nick also mentioned a proposal to reroute the rail line so that it bypassed populated areas, but that the railroad companies would probably need federal ‘inducement’.”

And now it seems we are a little further along. While in July I had the distinct impression that people were thinking about a northerly bypass (I don’t know, maybe the way everyone was waving their hands), it now seems to be that if a bypass is built to avoid the heavily populated areas of Fort Bend County, it will be through the southern part of the county, with the bypass beginning in the Rosenberg area, then southward, bending to the east, and then north to link up again in Houston.

I am wondering now, what this means for the container onload/offload sites that are in the planning stages for the Triple Forks Area west of Rosenberg. It is my speculation now that maybe since TxDOT’s plans for expansion of State Highway 36 to accommodate container truck traffic to that area are moot, maybe instead of bringing trucks to the rails, they plan to bring rails to the trucks.

Congressman Nick Lampson (D - Stafford) seems to have gone further along on this, because there is now a mile figure being batted around – an additional 36 miles of total distance traveled to cover the same change in longitude, and a cash figure: $880 million. A cost that Lampson says will be prohibitive unless the Feds kick in some dough.

Upside. Rail traffic through heavily populated areas of southwestern suburban Houston will be cut to almost nothing. Also consider another thing that was batted around at that meeting last July: maybe the Highway 90 corridor could be adapted to a light rail Houston to suburbs commuter system.

Downside: Apparently County Judge Bob Hebert is all in favor of this, and the County Commissioners have allocated 250 large to “study the project.” This must mean that someone smells a buck. If not the group that will study the project for the cool quarter mil, then maybe something else.

“It ain’t gonna happen”, says Precinct 1 Commissioner Tom Stavinoha. Unless . . .

Unless somehow, by some Machiavellian sleight of hand we can somehow work in Stavinoha’s pet project, the much-discussed expansion of the Grand Parkway. Yes, somehow Commissioner Stavinoha envisions how having a toll road through cotton fields is congruent with plans to have a freight train route through same. The former, by the way, is the road project that will probably end up costing Stavinoha dearly, in one election or another this year.

As you can see, nothing changes here in kleptocratic Fort Bend County.

Maybe someday, and this is just a distant dream of mine, maybe someday some decisions will be made in this county based on what is good for the people.

Naaaahh.

TxDOT Suddenly Has Money To Spend: Part 2

I needed to split this story into two parts to clearly indicate, first, that the Texas Department of Transportation cares not a whit about the commuting needs of the average Texas resident, but will kowtow to the interests of foreign port developers who promise lucre. That was the gist of the first piece.

Part 2: TxDOT itself will spend no money on this project, but will agree to what amounts to privatization of SH 36 to a San Antonio-based construction firm, Zachry American Infrastructure.

This was all laid out in January of this year in FortBendNow. In essence, what TxDOT proposes is to let Zachary take charge of the widening project outlined in the first piece, using its own money and resources, and maintain the road afterwards for 35 years. Their revenue from this comes from a shady deal that is given the likely name “shadow toll”.

What is a shadow toll? It is a toll based on the number of vehicles that use the state highway over and above those that used it before the widening project. That is, a per-vehicle charge, amount unspecified, that is paid by TxDOT over the 35 year time interval directly to Zachry. That TxDOT money comes from the taxpayer.

It’s another aspect of the infrastructure sell-off being conducted by the Texas state government. The diabolical thing about this is that we ultimately do not know how much this cost of widening and 35 years of maintenance will be. Because it depends on how much traffic uses the road. But you can bet that Zachry has crunched the numbers and realized that even the added truck traffic alone from Freeport’s Velasco Terminal will just about make them rich as Croesus. The only thing we really know is that TxDOT thinks it will cost $275.2 million. I guess what that means is that every dollar above that and the cost of maintenance is pure profit for Zachry.

That profit is money paid by taxpayers to Zachry. A tax that amounts to a service fee that would not actually be charged if this project were funded by traditional state transportation department budgeting.

In other words, Texans will be charged for private premium services, without being able to vote on whether they actually want that.

And even though State Highway 36 comes under the Texas state highway system, the state actually washes its hands of all maintenance, leaving motorists to deal with a private company if there are road problems that go unrepaired.

I don’t know. I guess I long for the day that Texas’ state government was a government that worked for the people and not a government that sold off bits of the state to the special interests. Whatever happened to “Pay as you go?” Isn’t that a fine conservative value? If Texas dosen’t have enough money to build and maintain its own infrastructure, in the face of a budget surplus, what does that say about priorities in Austin?

What does that say about the Texans that elected this Kleptocracy?

TxDOT Suddenly Has Money to Spend

But follow the money.

Not TxDOT’s. That’s your money that TxDOT gets from taxes from wherever.

But suddenly, after crying poverty for so long, justifying that major new commuter highway projects be funded through tolls, TxDOT says that it can come up with $275 million to widen a rural highway in Fort Bend and Brazoria Counties. That’s right. TxDOT wants to widen a presently mostly two-lane State Highway 36 and Spur 10 into four lanes along a corridor stretching from Pleak Village (just south of Rosenberg) at SH 36 and FM 2218 to FM 1495 (aka Pine Street) in Freeport, Texas.

In two recent townhall meetings that TxDOT conducted, one at West Columbia High School in Brazoria County and the one most recently in the gymnasium of Needville High School, in Fort Bend County, TxDOT spokesman Roger Gonzalez, a TxDOT project manager, told the attendees (quoting The Chron):

“that the roads need to be widened to improve existing traffic flow in the area, to compensate for population growth in the region, to help in the event of a hurricane evacuation and to improve access to the Port of Freeport”.

“’The current capacity is not sufficient during an evacuation event,’ Gonzalez said.”

“He said the portion of Spur 10 that may be expanded saw 1,191 vehicles per day in 2005, and projections indicate that same part of the road will see 2,923 vehicles per day in 2025.”

“The part of Texas 36 set to be widened saw 10,283 cars per day in 2005, a number that is projected to increase to 16,453 in 2025.”

Now I am a little confused. I have been up and down SH 36 and I cannot for the life of me get a feel for the projections of increased traffic. There are times, I swear, you can see a Texas Tortoise make it’s way across the entire width of Hwy 36 unscathed.

But then, I guess we’re not just talking about natural growth along a two-lane highway are we? We’re talking cause and effect.

If you build it they will come.

From County Judge Hebert when the Fort Bend County Commissioners approved this project this past August. Quoting from FortBendNow:

“’If the project comes about’, Hebert said earlier this year, ‘it could help spur growth and development in the southern portion of Fort Bend County, and certainly it helps the Port of Freeport.’”

Straight from the horse’s mouth. TxDOT again will spend millions of dollars to improve a state highway in order to enable developers to expand into the rural areas along Highway 36. You know, like Needville.

Needville, Texas, for those of you who have never been there, sports a sign at its city limits that proclaims the city as the place “where thousands live the way millions wish they could”.

If you like rural living, there’s no finer place to live than Needville.

Unless, as Judge Hebert predicts, that ruralness is about to go away forever.

But there was one odd thing that Hebert mentioned toward the end that got me curious, as well as the comment by TxDOT spokesmen Gonzales:

Hebert: “…and certainly it helps the Port of Freeport.”
Gonzales: “…and to improve access to the Port of Freeport”

Freeport? Everyone wants to go to Freeport, as Gonzales suggests?

No, I think it’s pretty much the other way around. The Port of Freeport has just last year broken ground on the largest expansion of their deepwater terminal in 40 years. It’s called the Velasco Terminal, and at its full completion, it is expected to be able to handle between 800,000 and 1,000,000 20-ft-equivalent container units annually.

Where do all those containers go? Why on truck beds, of course. And those trucks will be sent north on a newly widened SH 36 roaring and screaming up and down the highway belching diesel exhaust day and night non-stop.

Turning Needville into a place where millions live where only thousands wish they could.

Why SH 36? What’s so special? Well for one thing it intersects at Rosenberg with the proposed Trans Texas Corridor, Interstate 69. That’s one destination, but not the only one, bringing us to why the H-E double-hockey sticks TxDOT wants to spend $42 million to widen Spur 10.

What is Spur 10?

Spur 10 is a little known road west of Rosenberg (but maybe soon to be included in Rosenberg), that marks the western end of what has become termed the triple forks area, an area of hundreds of undeveloped acres near the junction of Spur 10, FM 529 and the future TTC I 69 highway, where it has been recently proposed to build a major container on/off load site. The site is conveniently situated at the crossroads of I 69 and a major East-West rail line that locally runs along US 90A. More convenient if it were at the end of newly widened Spur 10/SH 36.

Last July 3rd I was present at a Nick Lampson town hall meeting at which Rosenberg officials pointed out the proposed project to Lampson. Lampson, a newly appointed member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, seemed startled at the news, but became acutely interested in the project, and I suppose, its ramifications.

So what is the point of this posting that seemingly jumps from one lily pad to another showing the connections but to what end?

It’s all about the money. Not your money. Their money. The money of Madrid-based Dragados SPL which is funding the construction of Freeport’s Velasco Terminal and will ultimately operate the terminal. Texas appears to be in full partnership with the Bush agenda as they outsource our infrastructure (and in this case our ports) to foreign interests.

And TxDOT is willing to pony up American taxpayer dollars to make this all happen, but not one taxpayer dollar to help Texas citizens get from point A to point B. Instead, TxDOT says, Texans that need to commute to work need to do so by paying exorbitant tolls. Nope, can't afford to pay for commuter transportation needs. Yep, when you see TxDOT loosen it’s purse strings to plunk down some taxpayer dollars, don’t expect it to be in the interests of Texan commuters. But that doesn’t prevent them from telling residents about how the expansion will help them by warning them about crowded hurricane escape routes and the expected increase in traffic. Of course there will be a traffic increase what with an additional 2,200 trucks roaring up and down the highway every day (that’s 1 truck every 40 seconds).

What to conclude? With apologies to JFK:

...and so my fellow Texans ask not what the Texas Department of Transportation can do for you, ask what they can do for foreign moneyed interests.

Rick Perry Gets Sued By Chris Bell

When I first saw that Chris Bell had filed suit against Governor Rick Perry, his one-time political opponent in the Texas Gubernatorial race, I said to myself “Well it’s about time. That jerk needs suing.”

But for what?

Doesn’t matter, he needs suing. Sue him for having that hair. Sue him for anything.

Or. . .

Find out that he and his cronies did some shifty things late in the campaign to hide the source of campaign contributions.

Essentially money laundering, akin to what TRMPAC did to funnel $190,000 in PAC money to individual Republican legislators’ campaign funds.

What the heck. Don’t just sue him, arrest him.

It seems in the late days of the campaign, Houston’s millionaire homebuilder, Bob "Swiftboat Bob" Perry, made contributions of over a million dollars to the Republican Governors’ Association. They then transferred the gift into Rick Perry’s campaign my slyly dividing it into two $500,000 contributions.

Buck Wood, Bell’s attorney in the lawsuit pointed out that this was a deliberate act to hide where the campaign contributions actually came from. From the Dallas Morning News:

“Because of the way Perry's campaign reported the contribution, the public
had no way to see the sources of the contributions to the governors association
that made it to Perry's campaign.”

Perry spokesman unleashed all sorts of bile and venom, saying it’s all because Perry wouldn’t give Chris Bell a contract. They also implied that he is launching the lawsuit because Bell needs the money.

That’s it? Sour grapes and he needs the money?

I think this is brilliant. It’s obvious that the ethics standards and safeguards we have in place in this state aren’t working or this stuff would have stopped a long time ago. Yes, the Texas Ethics Commission has fined all sorts of state politicians for ethics violations, but has the tide been turned? Hardly. TEC fines are mere slaps on the wrist. If we are going to clean up this kleptocracy known as Texas state government, we have to hit them, hit them hard, and hit them where it hurts.

Kleptocracy In Action: Texas Toll Roads

The other day, when I attended Hank Gilbert’s meeting on the Trans Texas Corridor, he presented an interesting scenario. I don’t recall the specifics of his scenario so I will reconstruct one with similar numbers

Say you have a typical married couple, a dual income family, and each earner has to drive 20 miles per day to work and 20 miles back. Say they both drive on toll roads that charge the Texas minimum, 15 cents per mile, for a toll fee.

Daily travel to and from work for each would net the toll road authority 6 dollars for each car, That’s 12 dollars a day every day they work. Say they work 50 weeks a year, 5 days per week. 12 dollars spent every day on the toll roads, times 250 days per year means the couple pays in toll fees 3 thousand dollars per year.

And all of this because TxDot says it doesn’t get enough money from the state gasoline taxes to maintain the state’s highway system, let alone finance new construction. That, Gilbert said, is because the state gas tax has not risen since 1992.

And there’s the rub. Republican-dominated legislatures every year have treated the word “taxes” like the worst word in creation.

Republicans are all for spending revenue, particularly when it is yours, but freak out when they are asked to consider raising revenue for the public good. In particular, gas taxes. But here’s the truth: you don’t have to raise gasoline taxes, all you have to do is index the gas tax to the consumer price index. Index the gas tax to inflation. That alone will cause an 8 cent per gallon rise in gasoline taxes. That alone will finance new construction of needed highways in Texas.

I think I can afford that.

It's true. According to a report from Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) called “Shaping the Competitive Advantage of Texas Metropolitan Regions: The role of Transportation, Housing & Aesthetics”, this adjustment in the gas tax is 8 cents per gallon, and that's all they need.

Well that’s odd, because in his letter to two congressmen who sit on the US Congress’ Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Gov. Perry wrote that Texas would have to raise its gasoline taxes by $1.40 per gallon “to pay for all transportation improvements our highway system needs over the next 25 years.”

That’s odd.

His own committee says it would cost 8 cents per gallon, he says a dollar forty.

Obviously, taxpayers wouldn’t accept that, as he states later on in the same letter “…I will tell you that earlier this month [the Texas House] voted 122-19 to defeat an attempt to simply index our gas tax to inflation”.

So it’s odd that he knows about the indexing, but makes the wild claim that the state would need to raise gas taxes by $1.40.

My, my. The governor lied to Congress.

What a shock.

So let’s revisit the scenario. It would cost our typical Texas dual income family 3 thousand dollars a year in toll fees to drive to and from work. If gas taxes were indexed to inflation, and they paid an additional 8 cents per gallon to the state, how much is that per year?

Well, let’s say they drive a Honda Accord, and an Acura. Sensible low mileage cars, but not more sensible hybrids. They each get about 20 miles per gallon when the cars are tuned. That’s an additional 16 cents per car per day. 32 cents per family per day. For a year, that means 80 additional dollars paid to the state for highway improvement and new construction projects.

80 dollars in taxes versus 3000 dollars in toll fees.

Sounds to me like someone stands to gain a lot of lucre in this. Sounds to me like we have a state government whose hands are in everyones’ pockets but their own. Sounds to me like we are being governed by unrestrained kleptomanics. Kleptomanics who beat the drum of “No New Taxes!!” all the while reaching around behind and pulling cash out of our wallets.

All of this just has to end.