Texas Farmers Furious Over Superhighway

[align=left]torog's not concerned though...he's too busy wanting to kill a billion muslims to give a shit what's happening to his own country as we lose free speech and property rights, etc on our way to dictatorship...[/align]

a good american i guess as sean hannity would say...

Texas Farmers Furious Over Superhighway
Newsvine | July 21 2006
HILLSBORO, TEXAS â?? Leroy Walters has survived many a threat on the farm that has been in his family for 120 years â?? droughts, hailstorms, tornadoes, grasshopper attacks.
But now he sees a manmade danger on the horizon: a colossal, 600-mile superhighway that will plow clear across the state of Texas, perhaps cutting through Walters' sorghum and corn fields, obliterating the family's houses and robbing his grandchildren of their land.
"I don't think they're going to want to pay a toll to go across this land," he said. "They want to enjoy it free, as Texans should enjoy it."
That kind of fear and anger among farmers and other landowners across the Texas countryside could become a political problem for Republican Gov. Rick Perry as he runs for re-election in November.
It was Perry who proposed the Trans Texas Corridor in 2002, envisioning a combined toll road and rail system that would whisk traffic along a megahighway stretching from the Oklahoma line to Mexico.
The Oklahoma-to-Mexico stretch would be just the first link in a 4,000-mile, $184 billion network. The corridors would be up to a quarter-mile across, consisting of as many as six lanes for cars and four for trucks, plus railroad tracks, oil and gas pipelines, water and other utility lines, and broadband cables.
The exact route for the cross-Texas corridor has not yet been drawn up, though it will probably be somewhere within a 10-mile-wide swath running parallel to Interstate 35. Whatever course it takes, it is clear many farmers and property owners will lose their land, though they will be compensated by the state. Construction could begin by 2010.
The opposition comes in several forms: Some see it as an assault on private property rights; some object to putting the project in foreign hands (it will be built and operated by a U.S.-Spanish consortium); and some see the project as an affront to open government because part of the contract with Cintra-Zachry is secret.
Of Perry's major opponents â?? Democrat Chris Bell and independents Carole Keeton Strayhorn and Kinky Friedman â?? Strayhorn has stirred the most fury.
At campaign stops she calls the plan the "Trans Texas Catastrophe," a "$184 billion boondoggle" and a "land grab" of historic proportions. She refers to Perry's appointees on the transportation commission as "highway henchmen." She lets loose with Texas-twanged jabs at the contract with the "foreign" Cintra-Zachry.
"Texans want the Texas Department of Transportation, not the European Department of Transportation," she says, often to loud applause, whoops and hollers.
Cintra-Zachry is paying $7.2 billion to develop the first segment. For that, it will get to operate the road and collect tolls for years to come. It is part of a growing privatization trend in the United States.
A week ago, Strayhorn picked up a $6,500 campaign donation and endorsement from the Blackland Coalition, a group of anti-corridor farmers who work the rich black soil of central Texas.
Coalition chairman Chris Hammel said Texas needs a new governor who will halt the corridor project, start over and do it right. "One man started it with a pen. One person with a different pen could stop it," he said.
Perry's spokesman, Robert Black, dismissed suggestions that the toll road will hurt the governor's re-election campaign.
"The governor recognizes the concerns that rural Texans have. Remember, he's from rural Texas," Black said. "But he also believes that you have people out there who are spreading bad information."
Supporters say the corridors are needed to handle the expected NAFTA-driven boom in the flow of goods to and from Mexico and handle Texas' growing population.
Despite a state attorney general's ruling that the Cintra-Zachry contract be made public, the Perry administration has gone to court to prevent the disclosure of what is says is proprietary information.
"We don't know for sure whether this is a concept that we can endorse or not because we have not seen it," complained Mayor Will Lowrance of Hillsboro, a town of 8,200 people 55 miles south of Dallas. "I happen to still believe in the open records law in Texas."
Hill County Judge Kenneth Davis, who like Lowrance is a conservative Democrat supporting Strayhorn, agreed with Lowrance and added: "If we're going to build a highway in Texas, let's build it with Texas money, not a foreign company's money."
Both local leaders dislike the rural location under consideration for the corridor route because it bypasses Hillsboro.

YES THIS IS BIG NEWS HERE BUT YOU WOULD NOT KNOW IT PAYING ATTENTION THE THE CORPORATE NEWS NETWORKS...I HAVE SUM FRIENDS UP IN OKLAHOMA THAT ARE TRYIN TO FIGHT THIS AS WELL.....BUT ITS OUR LOVING GOVERNMENT THEY KNOW BEST

WE need to stop that HIghway........... doest I 25 go far enough

It's I-35 that runs through here. And I've been wondering why it isn't sufficient, too.

I have a cousin who owns land and a business in Hill County where Hillsboro is, and he's probably going to lose it. It's really sad. And EG's right. The story's hardly been covered in the news, but it's going to hurt a lot of folks.

My mom lives not very far off I-35, they are talking a 10 mile swath, I guess I'll have to call her and see what she knows.

She might actually be happy about it tho, she is looking to sell it anyway.

Bet you'll vote next time hippy! :)

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Originally Posted by Hamlet

Bet you'll vote next time hippy! :)

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Who is this guy??????????

i voted last time.................(im holding back guys)

I have no idea. And the strange thing is, it's in no way clear who in the world he was even talking to with that line.

The other strange thing is that this is the politics board. Where folks who care about politics go. Folks who always vote and always have.

Strange. . . .

You do vote?! gooood!.....wait a minute, then how come the conservative religious right is in power, we're falling into protofascism, and marijuana still brings stiffer prison sentences than manslaughter?
Did all the 60's hippies get religion or just get greedy? Because someone is putting these corporate sponsored cronies into office and no one whats to fess up to voting for them--or even not voting against them.

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Originally Posted by birdgirl73

I have no idea. And the strange thing is, it's in no way clear who in the world he was even talking to with that line.

The other strange thing is that this is the politics board. Where folks who care about politics go. Folks who always vote and always have.

Strange. . . .

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here is my diagnosis...........

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delusion


A delusion is commonly defined as a fixed false belief and is used in everyday language to describe a belief that is either false, fanciful or derived from deception. In psychiatry, the definition is necessarily more precise and implies that the belief is pathological (the result of an illness or illness process).

Delusions typically occur in the context of neurological or mental illness, although they are not tied to any particular disease and have been found to occur in the context of many pathological states (both physical and mental). However, they are of particular diagnostic importance in psychotic disorders and particularly in schizophrenia.

My 2......................lol

wow, you sure told me what for and put me in my place...lol

i was just trying to have fun. Damn Ok your not delusional.


How about?.............Get a hiar cut hippy!!!.............who am I? Hamlet..lol

I thought you Texans were tough? We're about to dodge concrete ceiling tiles here in Boston and pay for the privilege to do so...

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Originally Posted by Hamlet

wow, you sure told me what for and put me in my place...lol

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Hey, Hamlet, I like your posts in the religious threads. Your irreverance is similar to mine. The folks you are firing salvos at here are pretty cool and I consider them friends... even though I don't agree with all their opinions or even political affiliation. Welcome aboard and give us a chance.
Peace, baby!

I had to look up salvos....but don't mind me. I'm just a smartass. And unfortunately I have a farm on the above mentioned freeway. (isn't that a jethro tull song?..hhmm)

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Originally Posted by Hamlet

I had to look up salvos....but don't mind me. I'm just a smartass. And unfortunately I have a farm on the above mentioned freeway. (isn't that a jethro tull song?..hhmm)

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LOL... Fair enough!

but not sure about Tull... rock and roll and flute never worked for me.

Were it not for the ever burgeoning influence of corporate money on local and federally endorsed projects...

I'd almost say 'good!'

But that would be me showing my bias toward the Republic of Texas and the persistent attitude of being Texan 1st...American 2nd. Frig'n cow pokers!

Fight this one folks...Texas doesn't have 184 billion smackeroos to fork out...and damned if I'm in the mood to pay federal taxes toward another project that I'll never ever EVER find any personal benefit for.

Rock and roll flute.................now that is funny.

Howdy pisshead,

You claim: "torog's not concerned though...he's too busy wanting to kill a billion muslims to give a shit what's happening to his own country as we lose free speech and property rights, etc on our way to dictatorship..."

Yer wrong about that,pisshead..I do oppose this crap and I plan on voting for Kinky Friedman,in the up-coming election..I hope that he's against it,as well..screw Perry,it's time to kick em to the curb..he vetoed the medical-need defense bill for mmj and decrim too.

Have a good one ...