[groanup]

It is the Libertarian clowns at places like Cato (and Reason) that somehow convinced our "Republican" governor here that it is better for Texans to pay tens of billions of dollars to private companies to help finance condos on the French Riviera (via privately built and operated toll roads - with monopoly-type protections), instead of several billions of dollars to have the state build and expand freeways.

I don't know what you're talking about. Maybe you could elaborate so the rest of us are up to speed on this.

[BobL]

"I don't know what you're talking about. Maybe you could elaborate so the rest of us are up to speed on this."

Sorry - it's called the Trans-Texas Corridor Plan. It's basically a bunch of toll roads that will be built across the state of Texas (4,000 miles total). The difference is that these roads will be built using private money (using the government power of eminent domain), but those investors will get special protections to make sure that the existing freeways can never compete against them. Then, they will be able to charge whatever they can get away with.

Right now, Governor Perry is secretly completing the negotiations on first of those highways. For some who-knows-why reason, the governor announced that Cintra (a Spanish firm) had been selected, but that the contract had still not been finalized. Needless to say, Perry now has to bend over for Cintra, and agree to whatever they want, or else he looks like a total idiot. Perry has already said that the contract will be for 50 years.

Cintra is in Canada, and the robbed the people of Ontario blind. They bought an existing government-owned toll road, and then jacked the prices sky high (20 US cents per mile, for cars). The Canadians found themselves locked into this deal with Cintra for 99 years, and there is nothing that they can do about it now.

The dingbat Libertarians think it's the second coming of Reagan, the people who are being robbed blind think differently.