| Grassroots Group Fights NAFTA
Superhighway New documentary highlights
grassroots movement to kill the NAFTA superhighway. 
By Mark Anderson
SAN
ANTONIO, Texas—The focus of the new edition of the film
documentary “Truth Be
Tolled” is the Texas Department of Transportation’s
(TxDOT) blatant bias and
extralegal actions in its highly publicized Keep Texas Moving
campaign—designed
to sell the public on expensive tolls roads as the wave of the future
of state
transportation, while relentlessly pushing the Trans Texas Corridor
(TTC).
WATCH AFP'S
INTERVIEW BELOW
Videotaped
depositions of TxDOT officials included in the film show them admitting
a
number of things, while hedging on other points, all indicating that
the
neutrality expected and required from an executive agency is, by and
large, not
evident. Furthermore, TxDOT documents obtained by toll road opponents
show that
TxDOT officials view the citizenry with an uncomfortable degree of
hostility. “Keep
calm,” states a Keep Texas Moving training document shown in
the film,
referring to toll road-TTC opponents. “Leave the wrestling to
the pigs. They
always end up looking like pigs.”
American
Free Press attended
the film’s debut screening Oct. 30 at the Palladium Theater,
where this writer
interviewed producer-director Bill Molina, as well as Texans Uniting
for Reform
and Freedom (TURF) leader Terri Hall, both of whom spoke on camera for
AFP news
videos.
Molina
cast Ms. Hall as the main spokesperson in the film to shine a light on
TxDOT’s
apparent corruption and clarify the troubling issues involved. She is
perhaps
the most visible TTC-toll road opponent in Texas;
he is an award-winning filmmaker whose earlier editions of Truth Be
Tolled laid
out the truth about the much-despised TTC, which is Texas’s
portion of the NAFTA Superhighway.
The
TTC could gobble up at least 584,000 acres of land and 4,000 new miles
of
right-of-way for an expressway designed for legions of trucks to pass
through Texas
with minimal
on-off ramps and interchanges. Railroad and utility lines would follow
the
right-of-way, which could be 1,200 feet (a quarter-mile) wide in some
areas—three
times the width of a typical interstate. The median likely would have
hotels,
eateries and fueling stations, which would deny such business to
providers off
the TTC.
The
TTC is mainly for delivering Asian-made products shipped across the
Pacific on
a route that would bypass secure U.S.
ports at Long Beach
and Los
Angeles, Calif.
Instead, the shoddy products would be shipped to Pacific Ocean ports in
Mexico,
especially the Lazaro Cardenas port that’s controlled by
shady Chinese shipping
companies. From there, everything is hauled north by truck and rail. Kansas City, smack dab in the
middle of the U.S.,
is seen
as a major customs “port,” as AFP learned in
earlier travels.
Molina’s
new film centers on TxDOT’s hiring of registered lobbyists
against state law
and its improper use of taxpayer money for marketing the TTC and toll
roads,
instead of giving impartial information on all transportation options,
including mass transit and the normal use of gas taxes for freeway
upkeep and
new construction. But, as the film shows, TxDOT’s Keep Texas
Moving “campaign” (TxDOT
itself uses the word campaign) is a full-court press to promote tolls
roads in
general—which could squeeze out freeways
altogether—and the TTC in particular.
Numerous
points in the film chronicle TxDOT’s conduct and related
matters. The following
are among the most signficant:
*
On U.S. 281, a north-south route that connects southernmost Texas
with the San
Antonio
area, there is a seemingly relentless TxDOT effort to
“toll” this freeway. Ms.
Hall noted that the money from gas taxes is definitely there to
maintain,
repair and, if necessary, expand the freeway.
“They’ve hijacked that road for
five years—they’ve had the money for five
years,” she stressed. She noted in
past AFP interviews that the apparent tactic is to toll as many
freeways as
possible so there is no free competition if and when the planned
mega-tollway,
the TTC, is built.
*
The tolls under consideration, said Ms. Hall, could be 25 cents a mile,
based
on “what the market will bear.” This stems from the
idea that American roads
are now seen as a profitable asset for the Wall Street crowd, rather
than being
a public investment/service where tolls only need to be high enough to
reflect
construction and maintenance costs and to retire related debts. Even 25
cents
per mile is like adding another $5 to a gallon of gasoline, she
explained.
Comparatively, the combined federal-state gas tax comes out to only a
few cents
per mile in Texas.
*
As TxDOT gathered public input across Texas
in latter 2007 and into 2008, it held two types of meetings:
“Town halls” and
official public hearings. Hall, taking into account 12 town halls
versus 46
public hearings, said that perhaps 200-300 people attended each hearing
where
their comments were actually recorded for the public record. But up to
1,000
people were apparently baited to attend each of the town halls so TxDOT
could “take
public input” on TTC 69, a part of the TTC charted to run
north-northeast,
first shadowing highways 281 and 77 (that run parallel from the Rio
Grande
Valley up to the greater Corpus Christi area). From there, TTC 69 would
head
toward Houston
and way beyond along the highway 59 route. Ms. Hall estimated that
TxDOT
diverted 10,000 people, overall, into attending these phony town halls
just so
they could vent steam. “None of these [Town Hall] comments
were actually part
of the legal record,” she said.
*
The SB 792 bill passed by the Texas Legislature that seemed to stop the
TTC and
other toll roads (as AFP initially assumed last year) did no such
thing. This “counterfeit
moratorium” imposed the “market
valuation” method that paves the way for
levying high tolls that far exceed actual road costs and debt
retirement,
according to Ms. Hall.
*
TxDOT’s documents released for ongoing lawsuits filed by
TURF—to argue that tax
dollars are being illegally used to actually market and lobby for toll
roads
and the TTC—show evidence of manipulative
“push-poll” methods being used to
survey the populace about transportation issues. Push-poll questions
are slyly
worded to bring the reader to favored conclusions.
The
film also stresses that the infamous 2005 Kelo vs. New London
(Connecticut) U.S. Supreme Court decision that set the stage for
“eminent
domain” government land takings on behalf of private
interests (instead of genuine
public works) also set a major legal precedent for the Texas state
government
to engage in such takings, especially for the TTC. A special state
panel would
offer Texans money for their land, but takings are the next logical
step toward
those who refuse to sell, as officials hint on the film. On a more
positive
note, Waller
County, Texas
went on record against the TTC, not
wanting to be in the path of this monster tollway that would gobble up
huge
tracts of prime ranch land that has been in the same families for
generations.
Perhaps
most damning of all, though, is the Texas Ethics Commission’s
listing of Gary
Bushell as a registered lobbyist. It turns out TxDOT hired him in an
advisory/consultative function, although the Texas Government Code
(556.005)
fordids state agencies from hiring registered lobbyists regardless of
the
reason or function. Texas
highway commissioner Jim Houghton, a master of doublespeak, did admit
to the
hiring of Bushell but, strangely, answered “no”
when asked if he was concerned
when he found out Bushell was a registered lobbyist.
Notably,
state legislative committees have investigated TxDOT’s
conduct. The legislature
reconvenes early next year. AFP plans to attend key hearings whenever
possible.
So
much more could be said of the film’s latest edition, which
gets into more
TxDOT details than the previous edition which covered the
“big picture” of the
TTC. Check it out at the website www.truthbetolled.com.
Other sites include www.Texasturf.org
Mark Anderson is the corresponding editor for American Free Press.
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