October 04, 2007
Tolls : Reason steps into the TTC debate
No, not that reason, THIS Reason. The same people who think free trade agreements are a hoot without ever realizing one inescapable fact... that they always drag down the stronger partner IF there isn't parity between them prior to the agreement going into effect. The same folks who years ago told us utility deregulation would save consumers tons of money (it's cost them more than their old regulated service). The same people who've been pimping tolls for a while as the transportation panacea.
Yeah. These are a bunch of Randroids and Friedmanite Libertarians shouting crap to anyone who'll listen. Now, they've decided to advocate for the massive toll road project that is the TTC.
This is all too sinister for Jerome Corsi, the Vietnam War veteran who helped lead the Swift Boat charge against John Kerry. Corsi has knitted disparate strands of each of these separate road projects to help convince fellow xenophobes such as Pat Buchanan, Phyllis Schlafly, Lou Dobbs and the John Birch Society that the corridor is the first leg of a secret federal project called the NAFTA Superhighway, a four-football-field wide monstrosity that would run from Mexico's Yucatan to Canada's Yukon.
Oh, it's something Swift Boat Corsi is involved with? Shit, I better run right out and support the TTC. Problem is, public opposition to TTC isn't based on conspiracies and no amount of lying by the uninformed spinners at Reason will change that.
Uhm...yeah. For the folks at Reason who aren't even, you know, IN TEXAS, public opposition to the TTC isn't based on paranoia. It's based on the financing structure, the privatization of infrastructure and of course the fact that the TTC will pave over (in it's current configuration) more than a 100,000 arces of the best farmland in this country. Let's also consider the tens of thousands of people on family farms that will be displaced.
However, in terms of paranoia, maybe someone should tell the reasonable people at Reason that the TTC that will run parallel to the 35 will be bringing in goods from the Mexican Pacific coast, NOT from Houston. Goods that didn't go through American customs. Considering how little of the shipping into the US we inspect today, do they really think it's a good idea to start allowing in more uninspected shipping? To have a shipping container loaded with a
nuke able to get into the US and come with in 25 miles of three of the largest cities in the state?
Corsi, despite his lies about Kerry in 2004, is right about one thing in this piece... foreign ownership. To Reason, it's just another asset sale and more buyers means higher prices for the remaining assets we don't privatize. However, what Reason doesn't tell you is that the toll money is leaving our shores at a time when we are already laboring under a weak dollar created in large part by our massive trade deficit. Any economist worth a damn, one interested in long term gain, would tell you that the best thing to do is to use our own money to finance our own infrastructure.
Finally, where the crack team from Reason really fails is on cost. Compared to just expanding the 35 corridor, the TTC is actually more expensive. Why? Because most expansion plans would be through already owned rural ROW with city bypasses to the west and in some cases the east of the cities along 35. A hell of lot less expensive than a massive eminent domain purchase followed up by a massive construction project.
The TTC isn't a reasonable project at all. Even the people at Reason should have figured that out instead of railing on about what Jerome Corsi is doing.
Posted by mcblogger at October 4, 2007 01:53 PM
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