Corrupt Bargain in Houston Light Rail Contracts (FR Original Find)

4/23/04 | me

[GOPcapitalist]

FROM TODAY'S HOUSTON CHRONICLE

April 22, 2004, 11:55PM

Metro agrees to contract for next 4 light rail lines

By LUCAS WALL

Metro has taken a significant step toward the construction of Houston's next four light rail lines.

Directors on Thursday authorized signing a five-year contract estimated at $60 million with STV Inc. of New York, the same consortium that shepherded development of the Main Street line, which opened Jan. 1.

...

Six firms competed for the project, which includes options for two two-year extensions. Dennis Hough, the Metropolitan Transit Authority's director of contracts, said STV and its 16 subcontractors stood out as the most qualified companies to continue oversight of light rail construction in Houston.

NOW TAKE A LOOK AT WHAT REALLY HAPPENED:

TEXAS ETHICS COMMISSION
CONTRIBUTOR SEARCH
Please Click On the Report Number to View Reports

STV Incorporated, to Citizens For Public Transportation, $3,000.00 03-JAN-03 http://204.65.203.2/public/216570.pdf

Stv Incorporated, to Citizens For Public Transportation, $25,000.00 26-JUL-03 http://204.65.203.2/public/230485.pdf

NOTE: Citizens for Public Transportation was the pro-Metro Political Action Committee that ran the referendum campaign for the light rail expansion that STV just got.

[mac_truck]

if you had the cognitive capacity to comprehend the few lines of text in the original post, you would understand that the "find" was not the contributions reported in the Houston Review and previously commented on by GOPcap, but the fact that the contributor was rewarded with a contract, as predicted by the article in question and by GOPcap on numerous occasions (on FR and in correspondence).

Lol! Someone finds an article that confirms a prediction they've made and it gets called an original find ? Is that it?

If the STV contributions were previously reported in the Houston Review as you've stated, and on the anti-Metro PAC website prior to the election, why does GOPcapitalist post them as the results of a search from the Texas Ethics Commission below the headline; "Corrupt Bargain in Houston Light Rail Contracts (FR Original Find)"?

Inquiring minds want to know...

[Redbob]

More to the point, the choo-choo fanatics are takinig HIGHWAY money to build their empty little toys!

[GOPcapitalist]

Call me a cynic, but I suspect that, like a rat shunning the sunlight, you will shy away from any rudimentary self-improvement, preferring instead to remain a professional troll, which creature dwells in the sewers alongside welfare queens, transit-crats, repo-men and other parasitic scum.

Don't forget insurance salesmen ;-)

[Redbob]

"The trains we ride around Philadelphia and New York and DC are typcially full. Must be a Texas thing to build them and not use them."

Sorta like it's an Easterner thing to live so close to your neighbors you can hear 'em breathe and watch their TV's.

Houston needs light rail like it needs snowplows; it's a solution to a problem they do not have - masses of people in one place all wanting to go to the same other place.

And at heart it's a bunch of big-city wannabe's and transplanted Yankees who think they'll be big if they have all the trappings of bigness.

[GOPcapitalist]

STV was one of six contractors bidding on the project, thus the outcome was not guaranteed as you falsely suggest.

So it's all okay to give the contract to the crony as long as they hold a "bid" process that takes and rejects without second thought the offers of 5 other non-politically connected firms. Sure mac. And Clinton's visitors to the Lincoln Bedroom just happened to be DNC donors by coincidence.

Their contribution was legal and ethical as it was publiclly disclosed months ahead of the Metro Bond referendum.

Let's test that syllogism:

P1. The contribution was publicly disclosed before the election

P2. That disclosure makes it legal

C. Therefore the contribution was ethical On the other hand the public still doesn't know who funded the multi-million dollar campaign against the Metro expansion, do they?

Your tu quoquery aside, the campaign against Metro that you refer to fell under issue expenditures rather than election expenditures. This type of spending is known as "soft money" and in the form employed by TTM is perfectly legal under Texas law (the law itself says so and the Harris County District Attorney ruled so when your beloved Houston Chronicle filed a frivolous legal complaint against them). Nor can one truly blame TTM much for going this route - it was the only way they could ever have a chance of matching a taxpayer funded multi-million dollar ad campaign by Metro, a government agency, to promote the thing.

[GOPcapitalist]

If the STV contributions were previously reported in the Houston Review as you've stated, and on the anti-Metro PAC website prior to the election, why does GOPcapitalist post them as the results of a search from the Texas Ethics Commission below the headline; "Corrupt Bargain in Houston Light Rail Contracts (FR Original Find)"?

Because if you go to the Ethics Commission website, www.ethics.state.tx.us, and type STV into their search engine it shows up. That's the original source, and as YCT so kindly pointed out, I was posting information about STV's contribution on FR from that same Ethics Commission site last fall long before TTM ever took notice of it.

[GOPcapitalist]

STV was one of six contractors bidding on the project, thus the outcome was not guaranteed as you falsely suggest.

So it's all okay to give the contract to the crony as long as they hold a "bid" process that takes and rejects without second thought the offers of 5 other non-politically connected firms. Sure mac. And Clinton's visitors to the Lincoln Bedroom just happened to be DNC donors by coincidence.

Their contribution was legal and ethical as it was publiclly disclosed months ahead of the Metro Bond referendum.

Let's test that syllogism:

P1. The contribution was publicly disclosed before the election

P2. That disclosure makes it legal

C. Therefore the contribution was ethical

Aside from being a classic non-sequitur (meaning your conclusion does not even remotely follow from your premises), your second premise is faulty. Simple disclosure does NOT necessarily make a contribution legal in any sense. Johnny Chung's name was publicly disclosed on several DNC forms yet we all know what happened to him. As previously noted, your argument is faulty in that it permits one to accept absurd conclusions. In the example I gave previously, a candidate could spend $20,000 from his campaign chest on prostitutes yet by your illogic this would be both legal AND ethical so long as he simply listed it on his campaign disclosure form. And why is your argument so terribly flawed as to permit an absurd result like this? First, because it assumes that what is disclosed is automatically legal by act of disclosure, which is false. Second, because it assumes next that what is legal by act of being legal is automatically ethical, which is also false.

On the other hand the public still doesn't know who funded the multi-million dollar campaign against the Metro expansion, do they?

Your tu quoquery aside, the campaign against Metro that you refer to fell under issue expenditures rather than election expenditures. This type of spending is known as "soft money" and in the form employed by TTM is perfectly legal under Texas law (the law itself says so and the Harris County District Attorney ruled so when your beloved Houston Chronicle filed a frivolous legal complaint against them). Nor can one truly blame TTM much for going this route - it was the only way they could ever have a chance of matching a taxpayer funded multi-million dollar ad campaign by Metro, a government agency, to promote the thing.

[hedgetrimmer]

I rarely drive on highways

But I'll bet the food you eat was trucked in over a highway, the medical supplies going to your hospital was trucked in over a highwy, the clothes you wear made some part of their trip to your closet over a highway, the military that protects you moved equipment over some highway, the presidential candidate you will vote for will use some highway to get to cities to campaign.

[Redbob]

"There are many places where sales taxes and other general revenue sources are routed directly to the State DOT."

Name one.
Well, name one outside the New York/Conn./NJ hellhole.

Besides, if you don't like subsidizing highways, try getting your furniture moved or your groceries delivered on the subway!
LOL!

OTOH, the plus side to mass transit is you get to meet such a nice class of people there...

[Hermann the Cherusker]

But I'll bet the food you eat was trucked in over a highway, the medical supplies going to your hospital was trucked in over a highwy, the clothes you wear made some part of their trip to your closet over a highway, the military that protects you moved equipment over some highway, the presidential candidate you will vote for will use some highway to get to cities to campaign.

None of which is relevant to whether the gas tax I pay for driving on local streets should be used to subsidize highway use by commuters and the like. I pay for my local streets by property tax and the PA Turnpike via tolls. As to trucks carrying goods I buy over highways, I pay for their use at the time I purchase the product.

[Redbob]

"Public transportation in heavily populated urban centers is the intelligent alternative. I don't care what city it is."

On the off chance that you might be correct, let me point out that Houston scarcely fits that bill: it has a downtown, alright, but people commute there from all over the countryside, not from one central point you could put a train station.

[GOPcapitalist]

You might think GOPcapitalist is an honest broker on this issue, but he's lied about every aspect of the STV involvement in the process and I called him on it.

I must've missed something in your posts then, mac, because all I've seen to date is angry ranting coupled to your illogical, uninformed, and factually inaccurate renderings. After all, did you not describe the bond vote as "decisive" despite every single media report of it including the front page headline on the notoriously pro-rail Houston Chronicle saying the exact opposite? Did you not make (and do you not continue to make) the logically absurd claim that simply appearing on a disclosure form automatically makes a contribution both legal and ethical?

The simple fact, mac, is you're full of it. You stalked me onto an obscure Texas thread on an obscure subject you know nothing about thinking that if you defecate all over it with illogic and false allegations tied with an occasional use of the word "lie" you could somehow show me up in a way you have thus far been unable to achieve on civil war threads. As with your bizarre attempt to pick an argument with me on another equally obscure thread over a simple conversation about personal insurance preferences, you care nothing about the subject matter here or elsewhere as you only desire, out of whatever obsession it may be, to score some unobtainable victory against me that has thus far alluded you. You tried, you failed, you got called out on it, and you got your @$$ kicked yet again on the facts, yet you're too much of a chickensh*t to take your losses and go home so you linger and throw bombs and allegations that you cannot support.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

Sorta like it's an Easterner thing to live so close to your neighbors you can hear 'em breathe and watch their TV's.

Yes, we like living in communities out here near to our fellow humans. Sprawl living is one the planks of Communism created by Karl Marx, and promoted by the French Socialist Le Corbusier.

"Plank #9 - Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries, gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equitable distribution of population over the country." (Karl Marx, Communist Manifesto)

"The cities will be part of the country; I shall live 30 miles from my office in one direction, under a pine tree; my secretary will live another 30 miles away from it too, in the other direction, under another pine tree. We shall both have our own car. We shall use up tires, wear out road surfaces and gears, consume oil and gasoline. All of which will necessitate a great deal of work...enough for all." (Le Corbusier, "The Radiant City", 1967)

So ya'll live in a Socialist dream world. How do ya' like them apples?

[Hermann the Cherusker]

Well, name one outside the New York/Conn./NJ hellhole.

Virginia.

Besides, if you don't like subsidizing highways, try getting your furniture moved or your groceries delivered on the subway!

Its been done in NYC.

OTOH, the plus side to mass transit is you get to meet such a nice class of people there...

Yes you do, from my neighborhood. As opposed to the maniacs cutting me off and screaming at me and others and flipping the bird to us when I drive. Or the law Enforcement officials who don't care for my like for speeding.

[Redbob]

"Pennsylvanians aren't yankees."

HA!
In your dreams, Yankeeboy!

[Redbob]

"Pennsylvanians aren't yankees."

HA!
In your dreams, Yankeeboy!

[GOPcapitalist]

Yes, we like living in communities out here near to our fellow humans.

I can talk to a fellow human being in the house a couple hundred feet down the road without any difficulty. One doesn't need to be able to bang on the wall of the next apartment over in order to have a conversation or a neighbor.

Sprawl living is one the planks of Communism created by Karl Marx, and promoted by the French Socialist Le Corbusier.

A simple desire to have living space actually predates Marx substantially and takes its roots in Jefferson's agrarianism. Meanwhile, a common feature of virtually every 1984-esque "communist nightmare world of tommorrow" book is the densely populated city with people crowded into identical little cube dwellings stacked on top of one another in the middle of an urban wasteland.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

One doesn't need to be able to bang on the wall of the next apartment over in order to have a conversation or a neighbor.

I live in a single family home. But my nearest neighbor is just across the shared driveway.

A simple desire to have living space actually predates Marx substantially and takes its roots in Jefferson's agrarianism. Meanwhile, a common feature of virtually every 1984-esque "communist nightmare world of tommorrow" book is the densely populated city with people crowded into identical little cube dwellings stacked on top of one another in the middle of an urban wasteland.

If sprawl were a reflection of a desire for living space, it would be people moving into the countryside to live on farm-sized plots. On the contrary, it is a consciously dictated outcome of a number of building and engineering codes intended for a specific social purpose - soceital atomization, and thus the neutralization of the public square.

It took government diktat to create sprawl. At no time before the widespread adoption of zoning, fire, and highway codes was this a method used for constructing the human habitat in our free enterprise system. Before then, it produced cities and towns, and it produced countryside. Early suburbs were mixed use lower density urban communities. Its easy to tell them apart visiaully and on maps from modern sprawl construction. My neighborhood is one of them - single family homes and twins spread out a bit but clustered near to our local business strip, churches, and train station.

"densely populated city with people crowded into identical little cube dwellings stacked on top of one another in the middle of an urban wasteland"

The chief stroke of genius in getting America to adopt the Communist urbanform has been the addition of prosperity to this commuist nightmare world. Instead of identical little cube dwellings, Americans were given identical large houses fitting to their wealthy status in the world. Instead of an urban wasteland, a suburban wasteland, where it is impossible to go anywhere without a car. Implements of freedom, like the personal home and personal automobile, are turned into necessities, which means they are not freedoms at all. The personal freedom offered by a car is the ability to choose to use it or not. If everything you do requires its use, you are tied down to it, and you serve it and work for it, rather than it being your tool. Same thing with a house. If your choices of living are a number of essentially identical suburban houses situtated in identical situations, you've got no real choice at all. The property tax ensures that any attempted escape to the real countryside beyond the suburbs soon comes to an end by making the ownership of sufficient land too onerous to bear.

There is nothing so regimented as the new suburbs with their homeowners associations and three car garages and their absence of places of worship and business.

Karl Marx's vision was of a prosperous society, not a poor one. There is no reason Communism cannot be imposed through prosperity. It is in fact its original ideal. This is exactly what the Communists want you to miss as they more and more tightly bind down our society from having any freedom of choice at all in matters of economics, living, and business.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

Coming from a family on my mom's side as southern as yours (the Floyd's and McClellan's of Georgia and Florida, long resident along the Atlantic Coast), I especially resent that remark about my state of birth and my observation of the people here as not being Yankees. Why don't you try coming up and meeting some of us before linking us up in identity with New Englanders and their kin?

[YCTHouston]

You are sadly naive if you really believe that all bid requests are truly open. Government entities often "tailor" bid requests in order to suit favored contractors. Six companies may have placed bids, but anyone who has fallowed this story from start to finish knew that STV would be the winner.

You falsely equate "ethical" with "legal." Please pay more attention to your own arguments if nothing else. Disclosure does not equal "ethical," and doesn't even necessarily equal "legal."

You've made only made assertions, proving nothing in contradiction to the original post.