October 9, 2007
NAFTA road could still become reality
Last month I happily reported in these pages that the Texas Legislature had voted to postpone the building of the infamous NAFTA road for two years. Judging from the response I received, many of your more-informed readers were glad to learn that this monster, planned to slash across our country from Mexico to Canada eight lanes wide, might be stopped.
I was wrong? The governor vetoed that bill. Then the Feds also intervened, threatening a loss of future federal funds. So the legislature wimped out, bowed to economic and political tyranny. The building has begun!
Strangely, both Congressman Denny Rehberg and Virgil Goode, R-Va., profess to believe that they have stopped NAFTA road forever by simply denying it federal funds. Can it be that they do not know of the new system of financing which defies the will of the people and their representatives by selling our infrastructure to foreigners via public-private partnerships?
The Texas section of the NAFTA road will be financed by a Spanish-Australian consortium, Cintra-Zachary, which is willing to pay $7.2 billion for the toll road. The city of Chicago sold Cintra-Zachary a 99-year lease for $1.3 billion to operate their Skyway. Similar deals are pending elsewhere. (Henry Lamb, The DeWeese Report, July 2007, http://www.americanpolicy.org)
Will Montana sell out, too, when the monster marches from Fargo to Billings and Butte and thence to Canada, with all the loss of property by eminent domain, the forever-scarred landscape and skyrocketing taxes?
Lola Perrins,
Big Timber
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