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for the neoliberal agenda. Though this effort failed - too much resistance from too many diverse allies against the program - it fits the template of massive public funding to build infrastructure that will ultimately be privatized . . .
Governor Perry working his mojo for his constituency
Governor Perry working his mojo for his constituency
AUSTIN, Tex. — In the bachelor-style apartment of his legislative years, where Rick Perry liked “to kick back and watch football with a cold one,” the future Texas governor forged a lasting bond with a hard-charging roommate who preferred smoking a pipe, studying flip charts and strategizing.
Over time, that friend, Ric Williamson, an oilman known as Nitro, would become “the intellectual guru of Team Perry,” as one colleague put it, and steward of the governor’s boldest initiative and biggest failure, the $175 billion Trans-Texas Corridor.
Unveiled by Mr. Perry in early 2002, the public-private transit project was intended as a centerpiece of his governorship, “a plan as big as Texas and as ambitious as our people,” he said, to create 4,000 miles of road, rail and utility corridors each as wide as four football fields.
Gov. Rick Perry intended his plan for a public-private $175 billion toll road and railway system to be a major part of his political legacy. Instead, the Trans-Texas Corridor was unpopular and finally abandoned.
The original 2002 plan included 4,000 miles of new transportation corridors as wide as four football fields.
But neither Mr. Perry nor Mr. Williamson anticipated just how politically toxic the mammoth toll road plan would become or envisioned tractors advancing on the Capitol with signs like “Rick & Ric, Our Land is Not Your Land.”
By the end, opposition to the project had united environmentalists and ranchers, big cities and small towns, Democrats and even Mr. Perry’s own Republican Party.
“We were bamboozled,” said State Representative Garnet F. Coleman, a Democrat. “Members always support transportation. What they didn’t realize was that this was a total redo of the system and mostly about privatization. It was a money-making operation for Perry’s friends in perpetuity.”
In mid-2002, in their farmhouse in Fayette County, Linda and David Stall, small-town Republicans, were probably among the first Texans to read the original corridor plan, “Crossroads of the Americas.”
Among other things, what truly horrified them was the realization that the corridors were going to rip through the heart of rural Texas and require 146 acres of right of way for every mile of road — or 584,000 acres total.
“I flipped,” Mrs. Stall said. “I looked out my window and saw people going about their lives who had no idea what Rick Perry had in store for them.”
When Mr. Williamson died suddenly in late 2007, their venture all but died with him. Shortly before announcing his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination this summer, Mr. Perry quietly signed a bill erasing all mention of the Trans-Texas Corridor from Texas statute.
“He had to bury his own baby,” said Paul Burka, senior executive editor of The Texas Monthly.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/10/us...ted=1&_r=1&hpw
Over time, that friend, Ric Williamson, an oilman known as Nitro, would become “the intellectual guru of Team Perry,” as one colleague put it, and steward of the governor’s boldest initiative and biggest failure, the $175 billion Trans-Texas Corridor.
Unveiled by Mr. Perry in early 2002, the public-private transit project was intended as a centerpiece of his governorship, “a plan as big as Texas and as ambitious as our people,” he said, to create 4,000 miles of road, rail and utility corridors each as wide as four football fields.
Gov. Rick Perry intended his plan for a public-private $175 billion toll road and railway system to be a major part of his political legacy. Instead, the Trans-Texas Corridor was unpopular and finally abandoned.
The original 2002 plan included 4,000 miles of new transportation corridors as wide as four football fields.
But neither Mr. Perry nor Mr. Williamson anticipated just how politically toxic the mammoth toll road plan would become or envisioned tractors advancing on the Capitol with signs like “Rick & Ric, Our Land is Not Your Land.”
By the end, opposition to the project had united environmentalists and ranchers, big cities and small towns, Democrats and even Mr. Perry’s own Republican Party.
“We were bamboozled,” said State Representative Garnet F. Coleman, a Democrat. “Members always support transportation. What they didn’t realize was that this was a total redo of the system and mostly about privatization. It was a money-making operation for Perry’s friends in perpetuity.”
In mid-2002, in their farmhouse in Fayette County, Linda and David Stall, small-town Republicans, were probably among the first Texans to read the original corridor plan, “Crossroads of the Americas.”
Among other things, what truly horrified them was the realization that the corridors were going to rip through the heart of rural Texas and require 146 acres of right of way for every mile of road — or 584,000 acres total.
“I flipped,” Mrs. Stall said. “I looked out my window and saw people going about their lives who had no idea what Rick Perry had in store for them.”
When Mr. Williamson died suddenly in late 2007, their venture all but died with him. Shortly before announcing his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination this summer, Mr. Perry quietly signed a bill erasing all mention of the Trans-Texas Corridor from Texas statute.
“He had to bury his own baby,” said Paul Burka, senior executive editor of The Texas Monthly.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/10/us...ted=1&_r=1&hpw