Friday, July 03, 2009

"This was a back door way to bring back the TTC...I think we killed some really bad legislation.”

Lawmakers adjourn after two-day session

undead

7/3/09

From Staff and Wire Reports
Brenham Banner-Press
Copyright 2009

State Rep. Lois Kolkhorst said the just-ended special legislative session was as much a success because of what was not passed as it was for what was.

The Texas Legislature adjourned a two-day special session Thursday, finishing two of the issues assigned to them by Gov. Rick Perry while a measure to allow the state to continue contracting for privately built toll roads never made it out of committee.

Lawmakers passed bills to keep five important state agencies operating for the next two years and a measure authorizing the state to spend $2 billion in bonds to build new roads.

The unanimously approved agency bill will save the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), the Department of Insurance and three other agencies from abolition. That’s because state law requires the Legislature to regularly review and reauthorize state agencies, but lawmakers failed to renew them during the regular session that ended June 1 because of partisan bickering.

Both chambers also passed a bill Thursday that authorizes the state to spend $2 billion in bonds to build new roads. The road bonds were already approved by voters statewide in 2007, but the Legislature still needed to authorize the spending.

House lawmakers added a provision that would prohibit the money from being used to turn existing free roadways into tollways.

The failed measure that would allow the state to continue contracting for privately built toll roads was an upset for Gov. Rick Perry, whose office tried unsuccessfully to broker a compromise in the final hours.

Contracts known as Comprehensive Development Agreements (CDAs) have been used to finance, build and operate toll roads and other projects. But opponents of such contracts worry they take control away from local governments.

Kolkhorst (R-Brenham) said the CDA proposal was another attempt to revive the Trans-Texas Corridor, a network of “superhighways” pushed heavily by Perry.

TTC would have gobbled up vast amounts of land and was bitterly opposed by many rural property owners.

Kolkhorst said there continues to be “a great distrust” for the Texas Transportation Commission and TxDOT.

“There’s a great distrust about the transportation commission, what we’ve been through with the TTC in our area. This was a back door way to bring back the TTC,” she said.

“I’m thrilled that we were able to do that. It’s not so much what you pass but what you kill. And I think we killed some really bad legislation.

Kolkhorst also applauded a decision to bring back TxDOT back for “sunset review” in two years and approval of the bonding authority.

A proposal to allow half of the $2 billion to be a “revolving loan fund” was not allowed because of concerns private investors would tap into it, then “bundle and sell” the loans again and again.

Kolkhorst said the speed at which the Legislature moved through the special session was also a plus.

“I’m pleased with the way the special session came out. Two days is incredible,” she said. “We saved the taxpayers a lot of money.”

© 2009 Brenham Banner-Press: www.brenhambanner.com

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To view the Trans-Texas Corridor Blog click HERE

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"Rick Perry's interest in the state's growing transportation problems appears to be limited to protecting the contracts of private firms."

LEGISLATURE '09 SPECIAL SESSION

Legislature spikes Perry's push for CDAs, transportation revolving fund

7/3/09

By TERRENCE STUTZ and EMILY RAMSHAW
The Dallas Morning News
Copyright 2009

AUSTIN – State lawmakers quickly wrapped up a two-day special session Thursday by approving $2 billion in highway bonds and extending the operations of five agencies – but they spiked Gov. Rick Perry's continued push for toll roads.

Although Perry pressed hard for legislation to allow use of public-private toll roads across the state, both the House and Senate were cool to the idea. And efforts to strike a compromise – including repeated phone calls by the governor and his aides to legislative leaders – fell flat.

"It's time to hit the road," said Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, expressing relief that the toll-road bill went nowhere during the special session. Shapiro was among several lawmakers from North Texas who disliked the legislation.

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and Senate transportation committee chairman John Carona, R-Dallas, said they gave up on the toll-road bill after talking to local transportation agencies around the state. None said the measure – authorizing so-called comprehensive development agreements for toll roads – is needed at the present time.

"We wanted to see if we needed to extend the time eligibility for these agreements, and what we heard from different transportation agencies is 'no,' " Dewhurst said. "We didn't see any urgency for it."

Carona emphasized that the decision to take no action will not have any effect on highway improvements over the next two years.

"No major project is gong to be left behind between now and 2011," he said. "We'll have ample opportunity to take up this issue again in the 2011 session."

The governor also suffered setback in the transportation bonding bill passed by the House and Senate, which decided against placing bond revenue in a revolving fund that could have been used for a wide variety of projects – including privately operated toll roads. Instead, the money will go into a much more restrictive account and cannot be used to convert free roads into toll roads under a House amendment accepted by the Senate.

Perry thanked lawmakers for their work on the highway bond and state agencies bills but voiced regret over inaction on the toll-road proposal.

"I had hoped to reduce uncertainty regarding several major transportation projects across the state by extending the comprehensive development agreement authority for local and state transportation agencies," he said, understating how hard he pushed for passage of the measure.

"Although the CDA bill did not pass, we will continue to work with legislators and local officials to find transportation solutions."

Both the $2 billion bond program and the bill extending the operations of five state agencies easily passed the House and Senate. Those agencies – the transportation and insurance departments, the Office of Public Insurance Counsel, the racing commission and affordable housing corporation – were authorized for another two years but will be scrutinized by lawmakers in their 2011 session.

The transportation bonds bill took a little wrangling to pass in the House, where members tacked on a handful of amendments to head off the possibility of the funds being used for toll roads. Lawmakers also agreed to allow road-building entities such as the North Texas Tollway Authority to stretch out their financing, as opposed to raising rates.

Opposition to the toll roads bill was strongest in the House. Many lawmakers said they're simply turned off by toll roads altogether. Others said it wasn't possible to vet such a divisive issue in a three-day legislative session.

The bill would have reauthorized the kinds of deals that are proliferating in North Texas, including the LBJ Freeway reconstruction, the North Tarrant Express and the DFW Connector. Without it, projects already in the works won't be affected.

But it could delay, or even derail, toll road projects still in the pipeline, such as State Highway 161 in Dallas County.

A spokesman for gubernatorial hopeful Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison accused Perry of using the special session to line the pockets of corporate toll-road operators, and to pursue the Trans Texas Corridor under a different name.

"Rick Perry's interest in the state's growing transportation problems appears to be limited to protecting the contracts of private firms," Hans Klingler said. "The Trans Texas Corridor and the tolling of roads has been an expensive and expansive assault on the rights of property owners."

A spokesman for Perry fired back at the Hutchison camp.

"Governor Perry will continue to utilize all available resources to address the transportation needs of Texas," Mark Miner said. "Senator Hutchison has been in Washington for 16 years, and Texas continues to be short-changed, receiving only 74 cents back for every tax dollar sent to Washington for roads."

Both Dewhurst and House Speaker Joe Straus said they were delighted to finish up in such a short time.

"Members of the House wanted to pass the bare necessities. They weren't looking to delve very far into substantive policy issues," Straus said, explaining the lack of support for the toll-road bill.

The speaker also said Perry didn't put any pressure on him to steamroll the measure through.

"There were no uneasy conversations about it at all," Straus said. "I don't think there was an urgency."

Several lawmakers questioned Perry's decision to include the toll-road bill on the agenda for the special session, but they also said he deserved credit for not introducing volatile issues that could have forced the session into a partisan standoff, such as the GOP-backed voter ID legislation that was responsible for killing hundreds of non-related bills during the regular session.

© 2009 Dallas Morning News: www.dallasnews.com

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To view the Trans-Texas Corridor Blog click HERE

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"We defeated a sold out Senate and the BIG MONEY, the lobbyists, who sank millions into pushing for the sale of Texas highways."

Stunning grassroots victory:

CDAs die, pensions protected


DAVID  VS GOLIATH

7/2/09

Terri Hall
Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom
Copyright 2009

(Austin, TX) Today, ordinary Texans brought Governor Rick Perry’s road privatization, toll road, and Trans Texas Corridor agenda to a screeching halt.

The Legislature adjourned without re-authorizing private toll road contracts called Comprehensive Development Agreements (or CDAs).

The grassroots scored another victory by KILLING the revolving fund in HB 1, preventing the $2 billion in bonds from being spent to build toll roads, convert freeways to toll roads, or subsidize private toll deals, as well as protecting public employee pension funds from risky toll roads schemes that are failing all over the world.

“It is a hard-fought victory for the grassroots. We killed Goliath, not just Perry’s controversial toll road policies, but we defeated a sold out Senate and the BIG MONEY, the lobbyists, who sank millions into pushing for the sale of Texas highways,” Hank Gilbert, Texas TURF Board member and President of Piney Woods Subregional Planning Commission.

“We applaud Rep. David Leibowitz, once again, for standing up for Texas taxpayers and leading the charge to fix the bill that created a revolving fund that would have raided teacher retirement and public employee pension funds for risky toll road schemes. He authored the bill to KILL the Trans Texas Corridor and another to prevent the conversion of freeways to tollways during the regular session. He’s a proven taxpayer hero and Texans owe him a tremendous debt of gratitude,” said TURF Founder, Terri Hall.

“However, no session is without a few villains. CDA proponents and senate leaders like John Carona and Steve Ogden need to be taken to the woodshed for promising to promote the MOST expensive method of road funding, CDAs, next session, and for wanting to continue to raid public pension funds over the LOUD objections of Texans. None of this is dead in their minds, just postponed until they can resurrect this controversial public fleecing for another day,” Hall emphasized.

Taxpayers wanted Perry’s controversial and virtually universally detested road privatization schemes to die a natural death August 31 as scheduled, which will also KILL the mechanism to build the Trans Texas Corridor (or TTC). Today, they achieved just that.

However, TTC-69/I-69 was excepted out of the moratorium, SB 792, in 2007, so TxDOT has the authority to enter into CDAs for that project through 2011. TURF, in cooperation with two private property rights foundations (Stewards of the Range and American Land Foundation) and local governments, have been instrumental in forming subregional planning commissions in the path of TTC-69, and plan to use these commissions to challenge the TTC and keep it from ever being built.

© 2009 Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom: www.texasturf.org

To search TTC News Archives click HERE

To view the Trans-Texas Corridor Blog click HERE

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Thursday, July 02, 2009

Carona: "We will take this (issue) up in 2011.”

Senate leaders: Private toll-road bill DOA

SB3 DOA

7/2/09

By Mike Ward
Austin American-Statesman
Copyright 2009

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and Senate leaders just announced publicly what senators had confirmed an hour ago: A bill to continue to allow more privately built toll roads to be constructed is dead in the special legislative session.

And lawmakers plan to finish their other business — approving the issuance of $2 billion in road-building bonds and continuing the operations of five state agencies — and then go home later today.

Dewhurst said attempts for a compromise on the toll-road bills — Senate Bill 3 and House Bill 3 — failed amid growing questions about whether any action on the matter was needed before the Legislature convenes in regular session again in January 2011.

State Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, chairman of the Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee, said the urgency of the matter waned after local and state transportation assured legislative leaders that no projects would be killed or delayed by the lack of a vote.

“If it was a critical issue, we’re here to deal with it,” Corona said. “But we have been assured … that no major project is going to be left behind … We will take this (issue) up in 2011.”

Gov. Rick Perry had called lawmakers back into special session to address three issues: The bonds, to continue the operations of the five agencies that otherwise would have shut down, and to give the authority of the Texas Department of Transportation continued authority to contract for the privately built toll roads — through deals called “comprehensive development agreements.”

Dewhurst said Perry’s reaction to let the third issue on the agenda die without action was: “roads need to get built.”

“They will,” Corona said. “It would be a mistake to do away with CDAs. But we need to take some time to look at this issue, and we can do that in 2011 without any impact on projects.”

So with the controversial issue off the table, here’s what the schedule for the rest of the special session looks like:

At 3:30 p.m., the Senate Finance Committee is expected to approve House Bill 1 (bonds). It will then go to the full Senate for a vote, probably about 5 p.m.

The House earlier today approved Senate Bill 2 (continuation of the agencies, also called the safety-net bill).

Adjournment of both the Senate and the House is expected by early this evening.

© 2009 Austin American-Statesman: www.statesman.com

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Lawmakers were "flooded with constituent e-mail opposed to the CDAs."

Legislature hoping to wrap up special session

7/2/09

By APRIL CASTRO
Associated Press Writer
Copyright 2009

AUSTIN, Texas — Two of the issues assigned to the Legislature by Gov. Rick Perry were on the fast track to becoming law Thursday while the third, a measure that would allow the state to continue contracting for privately built toll roads, appeared dead.

"Two out of three ain't bad," said Sen. Craig Estes, R-Wichita Falls, as lawmakers speculated that the special session that convened Wednesday would be adjourned by the end of the day Thursday.

The House and Senate have finished their work on a bill to keep five important state agencies operating for the next two years. After tying up some technical loose ends, the bill next heads to Perry for his signature.

The unanimously approved bill will save the Texas Department of Transportation, the Department of Insurance and three other agencies from abolition. That's because state law requires the Legislature to regularly review and reauthorize state agencies, but lawmakers failed to renew them during the regular session that ended June 1 because of partisan bickering.

Perry called the special session to deal with that and two other transportation bills. State leaders have remained committed to finishing before the holiday weekend, even though special sessions can last up to 30 days.

The House also passed a bill Thursday that authorizes the state to spend $2 billion in bonds to build new roads. The road bonds were already approved by voters statewide in 2007, but the Legislature still needed to authorize the spending.

House lawmakers added a provision that would prohibit the money from being used to turn existing free roadways into tollways. That bill was expected to get approval in the Senate later Thursday.

The measure that would allow the state to continue contracting for privately built toll roads was on the chopping block.

Contracts known as Comprehensive Development Agreements have been used to finance, build and operate toll roads and other projects. But opponents of such contracts worry they take control away from local governments.

Perry and his staff met with lawmakers in an attempt to revive the bill, but with no luck, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said.

Rep. Phil King, a Weatherford Republican, said he and others have been flooded with constituent e-mail opposed to the CDAs.

Sen. John Carona, chairman of Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee, says CDAs can be looked at again in 2011.

"No major project is going to be left behind between now and 2011," he said.

Associated Press Writer Jim Vertuno contributed to this report.

The bills are HB 1, SB 2 and SB 3.

© 2009 Th Associated Press: www.ap.org

To search TTC News Archives click HERE

To view the Trans-Texas Corridor Blog click HERE

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"In a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy."

Inside The Great American Bubble Machine

How Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression

bubble machine

7/2/09

by Matt Taibb
Rolling Stone Magazine
Issue 1082-83.
Copyright 2009

The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.

Any attempt to construct a narrative around all the former Goldmanites in influential positions quickly becomes an absurd and pointless exercise, like trying to make a list of everything. What you need to know is the big picture: If America is circling the drain, Goldman Sachs has found a way to be that drain — an extremely unfortunate loophole in the system of Western democratic capitalism, which never foresaw that in a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.

They achieve this using the same playbook over and over again. The formula is relatively simple: Goldman positions itself in the middle of a speculative bubble, selling investments they know are crap.

Then they hoover up vast sums from the middle and lower floors of society with the aid of a crippled and corrupt state that allows it to rewrite the rules in exchange for the relative pennies the bank throws at political patronage.

Finally, when it all goes bust, leaving millions of ordinary citizens broke and starving, they begin the entire process over again, riding in to rescue us all by lending us back our own money at interest, selling themselves as men above greed, just a bunch of really smart guys keeping the wheels greased.

They've been pulling this same stunt over and over since the 1920s — and now they're preparing to do it again, creating what may be the biggest and most audacious bubble yet.

The basic scam in the Internet Age is pretty easy even for the financially illiterate to grasp. Companies that weren't much more than pot-fueled ideas scrawled on napkins by up-too-late bong-smokers were taken public via IPOs, hyped in the media and sold to the public for megamillions. It was as if banks like Goldman were wrapping ribbons around watermelons, tossing them out 50-story windows and opening the phones for bids. In this game you were a winner only if you took your money out before the melon hit the pavement.

It sounds obvious now, but what the average investor didn't know at the time was that the banks had changed the rules of the game, making the deals look better than they actually were. They did this by setting up what was, in reality, a two-tiered investment system — one for the insiders who knew the real numbers, and another for the lay investor who was invited to chase soaring prices the banks themselves knew were irrational. While Goldman's later pattern would be to capitalize on changes in the regulatory environment, its key innovation in the Internet years was to abandon its own industry's standards of quality control.

Goldman's role in the sweeping global disaster that was the housing bubble is not hard to trace. Here again, the basic trick was a decline in underwriting standards, although in this case the standards weren't in IPOs but in mortgages. By now almost everyone knows that for decades mortgage dealers insisted that home buyers be able to produce a down payment of 10 percent or more, show a steady income and good credit rating, and possess a real first and last name. Then, at the dawn of the new millennium, they suddenly threw all that shit out the window and started writing mortgages on the backs of napkins to cocktail waitresses and ex-cons carrying five bucks and a Snickers bar.

And what caused the huge spike in oil prices? Take a wild guess. Obviously Goldman had help — there were other players in the physical-commodities market — but the root cause had almost everything to do with the behavior of a few powerful actors determined to turn the once-solid market into a speculative casino. Goldman did it by persuading pension funds and other large institutional investors to invest in oil futures — agreeing to buy oil at a certain price on a fixed date. The push transformed oil from a physical commodity, rigidly subject to supply and demand, into something to bet on, like a stock. Between 2003 and 2008, the amount of speculative money in commodities grew from $13 billion to $317 billion, an increase of 2,300 percent. By 2008, a barrel of oil was traded 27 times, on average, before it was actually delivered and consumed.

The history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled-dry American empire, reads like a Who's Who of Goldman Sachs graduates. By now, most of us know the major players. As George Bush's last Treasury secretary, former Goldman CEO Henry Paulson was the architect of the bailout, a suspiciously self-serving plan to funnel trillions of Your Dollars to a handful of his old friends on Wall Street. Robert Rubin, Bill Clinton's former Treasury secretary, spent 26 years at Goldman before becoming chairman of Citigroup — which in turn got a $300 billion taxpayer bailout from Paulson. There's John Thain, the asshole chief of Merrill Lynch who bought an $87,000 area rug for his office as his company was imploding; a former Goldman banker, Thain enjoyed a multibillion-dollar handout from Paulson, who used billions in taxpayer funds to help Bank of America rescue Thain's sorry company. And Robert Steel, the former Goldmanite head of Wachovia, scored himself and his fellow executives $225 million in golden-parachute payments as his bank was self-destructing. There's Joshua Bolten, Bush's chief of staff during the bailout, and Mark Patterson, the current Treasury chief of staff, who was a Goldman lobbyist just a year ago, and Ed Liddy, the former Goldman director whom Paulson put in charge of bailed-out insurance giant AIG, which forked over $13 billion to Goldman after Liddy came on board. The heads of the Canadian and Italian national banks are Goldman alums, as is the head of the World Bank, the head of the New York Stock Exchange, the last two heads of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York — which, incidentally, is now in charge of overseeing Goldman.

But then, something happened. It's hard to say what it was exactly; it might have been the fact that Goldman's co-chairman in the early Nineties, Robert Rubin, followed Bill Clinton to the White House, where he directed the National Economic Council and eventually became Treasury secretary. While the American media fell in love with the story line of a pair of baby-boomer, Sixties-child, Fleetwood Mac yuppies nesting in the White House, it also nursed an undisguised crush on Rubin, who was hyped as without a doubt the smartest person ever to walk the face of the Earth, with Newton, Einstein, Mozart and Kant running far behind. Rubin was the prototypical Goldman banker. He was probably born in a $4,000 suit, he had a face that seemed permanently frozen just short of an apology for being so much smarter than you, and he exuded a Spock-like, emotion-neutral exterior; the only human feeling you could imagine him experiencing was a nightmare about being forced to fly coach. It became almost a national cliché that whatever Rubin thought was best for the economy — a phenomenon that reached its apex in 1999, when Rubin appeared on the cover of Time with his Treasury deputy, Larry Summers, and Fed chief Alan Greenspan under the headline the committee to save the world. And "what Rubin thought," mostly, was that the American economy, and in particular the financial markets, were over-regulated and needed to be set free. During his tenure at Treasury, the Clinton White House made a series of moves that would have drastic consequences for the global economy — beginning with Rubin's complete and total failure to regulate his old firm during its first mad dash for obscene short-term profits.

After the oil bubble collapsed last fall, there was no new bubble to keep things humming — this time, the money seems to be really gone, like worldwide-depression gone. So the financial safari has moved elsewhere, and the big game in the hunt has become the only remaining pool of dumb, unguarded capital left to feed upon: taxpayer money. Here, in the biggest bailout in history, is where Goldman Sachs really started to flex its muscle.

It began in September of last year, when then-Treasury secretary Paulson made a momentous series of decisions. Although he had already engineered a rescue of Bear Stearns a few months before and helped bail out quasi-private lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Paulson elected to let Lehman Brothers — one of Goldman's last real competitors — collapse without intervention. ("Goldman's superhero status was left intact," says market analyst Eric Salzman, "and an investment-banking competitor, Lehman, goes away.") The very next day, Paulson greenlighted a massive, $85 billion bailout of AIG, which promptly turned around and repaid $13 billion it owed to Goldman. Thanks to the rescue effort, the bank ended up getting paid in full for its bad bets: By contrast, retired auto workers awaiting the Chrysler bailout will be lucky to receive 50 cents for every dollar they are owed.
Immediately after the AIG bailout, Paulson announced his federal bailout for the financial industry, a $700 billion plan called the Troubled Asset Relief Program, and put a heretofore unknown 35-year-old Goldman banker named Neel Kashkari in charge of administering the funds. In order to qualify for bailout monies, Goldman announced that it would convert from an investment bank to a bank-holding company, a move that allows it access not only to $10 billion in TARP funds, but to a whole galaxy of less conspicuous, publicly backed funding — most notably, lending from the discount window of the Federal Reserve. By the end of March, the Fed will have lent or guaranteed at least $8.7 trillion under a series of new bailout programs — and thanks to an obscure law allowing the Fed to block most congressional audits, both the amounts and the recipients of the monies remain almost entirely secret.

Converting to a bank-holding company has other benefits as well: Goldman's primary supervisor is now the New York Fed, whose chairman at the time of its announcement was Stephen Friedman, a former co-chairman of Goldman Sachs. Friedman was technically in violation of Federal Reserve policy by remaining on the board of Goldman even as he was supposedly regulating the bank; in order to rectify the problem, he applied for, and got, a conflict-of-interest waiver from the government. Friedman was also supposed to divest himself of his Goldman stock after Goldman became a bank-holding company, but thanks to the waiver, he was allowed to go out and buy 52,000 additional shares in his old bank, leaving him $3 million richer. Friedman stepped down in May, but the man now in charge of supervising Goldman — New York Fed president William Dudley — is yet another former Goldmanite.

The collective message of all of this — the AIG bailout, the swift approval for its bank-holding conversion, the TARP funds — is that when it comes to Goldman Sachs, there isn't a free market at all. The government might let other players on the market die, but it simply will not allow Goldman to fail under any circumstances. Its edge in the market has suddenly become an open declaration of supreme privilege. "In the past it was an implicit advantage," says Simon Johnson, an economics professor at MIT and former official at the International Monetary Fund, who compares the bailout to the crony capitalism he has seen in Third World countries. "Now it's more of an explicit advantage."

Fast-forward to today. It's early June in Washington, D.C. Barack Obama, a popular young politician whose leading private campaign donor was an investment bank called Goldman Sachs — its employees paid some $981,000 to his campaign — sits in the White House. Having seamlessly navigated the political minefield of the bailout era, Goldman is once again back to its old business, scouting out loopholes in a new government-created market with the aid of a new set of alumni occupying key government jobs.

Gone are Hank Paulson and Neel Kashkari; in their place are Treasury chief of staff Mark Patterson and CFTC chief Gary Gensler, both former Goldmanites. (Gensler was the firm's co-head of finance.) And instead of credit derivatives or oil futures or mortgage-backed CDOs, the new game in town, the next bubble, is in carbon credits — a booming trillion- dollar market that barely even exists yet, but will if the Democratic Party that it gave $4,452,585 to in the last election manages to push into existence a groundbreaking new commodities bubble, disguised as an "environmental plan," called cap-and-trade. The new carbon-credit market is a virtual repeat of the commodities-market casino that's been kind to Goldman, except it has one delicious new wrinkle: If the plan goes forward as expected, the rise in prices will be government-mandated. Goldman won't even have to rig the game. It will be rigged in advance.

© 2009 Rolling tone: www.rollingstone.com

To search TTC News Archives click HERE

To view the Trans-Texas Corridor Blog click HERE

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"Sometimes the writing is on the wall, and I'm just not confident we have the support."

SPECIAL SESSION

Road bond, sunset bills nearing quick passage

But private toll road bill appears to lack support.

7/2/09

By Ben Wear , Mike Ward
Austin American-Statesman
Copyright 2009

Legislators, many of them tanned and exhibiting a relaxed, schools-out air Wednesday, ripped quickly through two of the three issues that Gov. Rick Perry put on their special session plate.

Leaders were predicting final passage by this afternoon of a bill that would keep alive for two more years several state agencies, including the Texas Department of Transportation, and of a second piece of legislation allowing the state to issue $2 billion in transportation bonds.

However, prospects appear dim for a third bill that would extend authority for private companies to finance, build and profit from tollways on government land. The bill, which would put legislators in the uncomfortable position of making a clear, stand-alone vote in favor of private toll roads, was left pending in committees in the House and the Senate.

Although some legislative leaders strove to paint the bill as still breathing late in the day, the chairmen of both committees said flatly that a majority of lawmakers are not on board.

"This issue is controversial, and right now we don't have the votes," said Sen. Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, Senate Finance Committee chairman. "I think we pass the bills that are essential — (Senate Bill) 1 and (Senate Bill) 2. (Senate Bill) 3 is optional."

"Sometimes the writing is on the wall, and I'm just not confident we have the support," said House Transportation Committee chairman Rep. Joseph Pickett, D-El Paso. "Do members understand it? What is a safe vote for the members? For a lot of them, a safe vote is 'no.' "

Pickett said the legislation might have a chance if lawmakers were to hang around for most of the 30 days allowed for a special session. But most legislators appear eager to return to their regularly scheduled summer as soon as possible.

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, who presides over the Senate, put out mixed signals late in the day about the private toll road bill. He told reporters minutes after the Senate adjourned for the day at midafternoon that a deal is in the works to continue approval for a limited number of private toll road projects.

Three or four such projects in the Dallas-Fort Worth area are at an advanced stage of development, officials said, and could proceed during the next year or so if the Legislature were to extend authority for such contracts beyond the Sept. 1 expiration date in current law.

Dewhurst said he was about to meet with House Speaker Joe Straus to discuss all three issues Perry put on the special session agenda, known as the "call." Under the Texas Constitution, only the governor can call a special session, and only he can set its agenda.

But Dewhurst, asked after his meeting with Straus about the private toll road issue, said that he and the House speaker had discussed only the scheduling of how to complete action on the transportation bond and agency sunset issues.

All three items on Perry's call for the special session are unfinished business KO'd late in the regular, 140-day session when House Democrats, trying to kill a Republican-backed voter identification bill, stalled action for five days.

Senate Bill 2, passed by the Senate and, as House Bill 2, also approved by a House committee Wednesday, would keep TxDOT, the Texas Department of Insurance, the Texas Racing Commission and several smaller agencies from ceasing to exist under the Texas sunset law.It requires state agencies to undergo an intense review every dozen years; they can continue operating only if the Legislature votes to do so.

Several sunset bills, in the case of TxDOT running to several hundreds of pages after other bills were attached to it, died late in the regular session. A "safety net" sunset bill similar to one now before the Legislature also died in the regular session's final minutes.

Without some sort of action now, those agencies would disappear in September 2010.

The transportation bond legislation, which had widespread support in the regular session, had taken a ride on the TxDOT sunset bill and thus died along with it.

Voters in 2007 had authorized TxDOT to issue up to $5 billion in bonds that would be paid back with general state revenue, rather than gasoline taxes. This legislation would allow the state to borrow the first $2 billion and use half of it to set up a "revolving" fund to loan money to local governments for transportation projects.

TxDOT would spend the other $1 billion, an infusion of cash that has become more critical as available money from both the state and federal gas tax ebbs.

As for private toll roads, a bill extending that authority for four more years passed the full Senate and a House committee during the session, as did a companion bill setting contractual limits designed to protect the state's financial interest. The bill now under consideration, and under siege, is a combination of those two bills.

For supporters of such contracts, which were touted earlier this decade as a way to bring in large upfront payments to TxDOT from private companies, the issue is not so much the next two years. Rather, if the existing authority in state law expires, reviving it may be politically impossible.

"It means the potential loss of billions of dollars for road construction," said former state Rep. Mike Krusee, a Williamson County Republican who carried the original 2003 legislation making such contracts possible. "If the economy were strong, and there's plenty of jobs around, and no congestion, that might be OK. But that's not the case."

bwear@statesman.com, 445-3698

© 2009 Austin American-Statesman: www.statesman.com

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"Every landowner and taxpayer in Texas will be responsible for the ‘bailout’ of Perry's AIG (arrogance, ignorance and greed)."

Legislature blinks....

as it contemplates the largest tax increase in Texas history, the sale of Texas to foreign corporations


Rick Perry's AIG: Arrogance, Ignorance and Greed
"Bailouts for Perry's AIG (Arrogance Ignorance and Greed)"

Terri Hall
Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom
Copyright 2009

(Austin, TX – July 1, 2009) Today, concerned citizens of Texas challenged the Legislature to stand-up to Governor Perry’s road privatization, toll road, and Trans Texas Corridor agenda in a press conference on the South Capitol steps in Austin. Texans demanded the Legislature not just roll over and play dead for Perry's agenda while the leadership of both chambers ram through three bills that will affect Texans for generations.

Concerned citizens are hopping mad about lawmakers’ suspending the rules that are in place to protect the public from a railroad job, and rushing to get home for the 4th of July holiday rather than give due consideration to what some have dubbed the largest tax increase in Texas history, selling Texas highways to PRIVATE foreign corporations. Such a deal inked in North Texas will charge 75 cents PER MILE, or $13 a DAY (like the deal just signed for the North Tarrant Express to privatize I-820) in new toll taxes, for Texans to access PUBLIC roads.

Taxpayers want Perry’s controversial and virtually universally detested road privatization schemes to die a natural death August 31 as scheduled, which will also KILL the mechanism to build the Trans Texas Corridor. Today, it appeared the citizen outcry over the bill, HB 3, to re-authorize such private toll road contracts called Comprehensive Development Agreements (or CDAs) was dead on arrival in the House.

“Texans cannot stomach any more of Gov. Perry's version of AIG (arrogance, ignorance and greed)! His continued insistence to force privatized toll roads down the throats of working Texans is fiscally irresponsible and morally wrong,” insisted Hank Gilbert, Texas TURF Board member and President of Piney Woods Subregional Planning Commission.

“With these types of projects failing all over the United States, as well as Texas (SH 121), every landowner and taxpayer in Texas will be responsible for the ‘bailout’ of Perry's AIG. Add to that, the possibility of investing state employee and teachers retirement funds into these road projects, with his proposed ‘Texas Revolving Fund,’ and you have a Governor that has lost all respect for the people of Texas!

“The elected members of the Texas House and Senate need to do what the public elected them to do…Just Say No! If they don't, then it may very well be the last bad decision that they are allowed to make for the citizens of the great state of Texas!” said Gilbert.

Public subsidies for private profits

CDAS are half-century long sweetheart deals that also suck-up virtually ALL available gas taxes and other highway funds to prop-up toll projects that aren't even toll viable (can't work without subsidizing them). Read about the deals in North Texas that use $1 billion dollars of Texans' gas taxes and public funds, yet motorists won't be able to use the roads without paying $13 a DAY in homage to Spain here.

TURF argues that proponents tell us the private operators are bringing all the money to the table so it's okay to sell-out the taxpayers in sweetheart deals (like non-compete agreements that prohibit ANY new lanes or NEW roads from being built that would "compete" with the private operators toll cash cow as a way to GUARANTEE congestion on free roads). But the FACT is our GAS TAXES and other PUBLIC money are going into these deals, in some cases more public cash than private, then the foreign toll operator charges motorists a DOUBLE TAX to access PUBLIC roads. CDAs also mean massive multi-generational DEBT!

"These public subsidies for private profits are the centerpiece of Rick Perry's special session, yet he claims to be a 'conservative' whose ranks opposed the federal bailout bill that socialized the losses (of private industries) and privatized the profits. There's a name for Perry's actions - hypocrisy," notes TURF Founder, Terri Hall.

Toll authority to raise toll rates 32% because BURIED in debt it can't repay
Read about it here.

Concerned citizens see this as an ALL-OUT ASSAULT on our freedom to travel!
For more info on how just how bad these private toll contracts are for the taxpayers, read more here.

SB 1 to raid public employee pension funds & teacher retirement fund
In another bill for the special session, SB 1, lawmakers resurrect Sen. John Carona's SB 1350 that will set-up a Transportation Bank as a private corporation (controlled by the Governor's political appointees, the Texas Transportation Commission) in order to raid teacher retirement funds and public employee pension funds to invest in these risky toll road schemes that are failing all over the country.

"The revolving fund could provide a vehicle for the Texas Retirement System and Employee Retirement System to invest in state infrastructure, a policy (Sen. Steve) Ogden supports." - Texas Monthly, April 28, 2009

This idea is designed to set-up a "Revolving Fund" to finance toll projects they can't find private investors to bankroll. TURF said it’s the duty of our lawmakers to protect the integrity of public employee retirement funds.

In addition, the Revolving Fund only contributes to the gas tax diversion problem since it will divert MORE gas taxes to toll roads (gas tax can be deposited into the Revolving Fund and recycled to fund toll roads that aren't viable/100% self-sustaining).

Connecting the dots...
Perry, Dewhurst backroom deal to raid funds.
Texas Monthly calls raiding pension funds "irresponsible" and "immoral" here.

© 2009 Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom: www.texasturf.org

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"We are being asked to pass legislation based more on faith than fact."

Toll-road bill faces tough fight in Legislature's special session

shifty-dude-trust-me


7/2/09

By EMILY RAMSHAW and TERRENCE STUTZ
The Dallas Morning News
Copyright 2009

AUSTIN – Gov. Rick Perry's special session effort to win new approval for public-private toll roads in Texas may be hitting the skids.

Lawmakers on the House Transportation and Senate Finance committees left the bill pending, saying either they couldn't support it or that it was too complex to vet by the end of the week. That's when top state officials have asked them to wrap up their work.

"I don't know that the support is there," said Democratic Rep. Joe Pickett, who chairs the House Transportation Committee and filed the public-private toll road bill in that chamber.

Added Republican Sen. Steve Ogden, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, "We are being asked to pass legislation based more on faith than fact."

Meanwhile, other members expressed reservations about whether the toll-road bill was necessary and suggested that, despite Perry's call, they might finish the special session without it.

"Why this was put on the call of the special session, I don't know," Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, said. "Without major revisions, there is no way I am going to vote for" the measure.

The bill is one of three Perry put on the agenda for the special session.

The other two are a bill to lengthen the lifeline of five state agencies, and another to approve $2 billion in bonds for highway construction projects.

"The governor wants to ensure that all the options are on the table to help address our state's transportation needs," Perry spokeswoman Allison Castle said.

"We hope lawmakers will agree."

The measure would extend the state's authority to contract with private companies to build toll roads and would permit the kinds of deals that are proliferating in North Texas, including the LBJ Freeway reconstruction, the North Tarrant Express and the DFW Connector. Projects already in the pipeline would not be affected if the bill didn't pass.

In North Texas, the failure to pass the bill could delay, or even derail entirely, toll road projects such as State Highway 161 in Dallas County. The North Texas Tollway Authority won the right to build it last year, but has not committed to it because of financial challenges. If the bill doesn't pass, and the NTTA chooses not to build it, Texas would be unable to shop it around to a private toll road developer.

Supporters of the public-private toll road bill say that in the absence of additional tax revenue, private investment in infrastructure is the only way to keep traffic moving on Texas highways.

Opponents say for-profit toll roads are always a bad deal for Texas taxpayers, because more people have to pay to drive, and the revenue goes to large, overseas companies.

A growing number of state officials say they simply don't see the urgency of this legislation.

"If that's what we're here for, to facilitate the private toll roads, you all can put me down as a no right now," said Rep. Jim Dunnam, D-Waco. "If that's the only reason we're here, it's offensive."

Pickett, D-El Paso, said he supports the measure and its new restrictions on such public-private agreements.

He said he's just not sure a quick-hit special session is the appropriate place to consider it, and that the so-called CDAs, or "comprehensive development agreements," at issue in the bill are too complicated to get resolved by the end of the week.

Pickett, who is carrying the 33-page bill, has also filed a three-page, bare-bones private toll road extension bill, one he says may draw more support. That bill hasn't yet been considered in committee.

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said he remains hopeful the measure will pass, though he acknowledged it will probably have to be scaled back to gain Senate approval.

"If we don't address some areas of the state that are not going to receive funding otherwise, voters will ask why we didn't pass legislation that will enable us to get additional roads built," he said.

On Wednesday, the Senate passed a bill that would extend for two years the operations of the transportation and insurance departments, along with the Office of Public Insurance Counsel, the racing commission and the affordable housing corporation. The measure now goes to the House.

The $2 billion transportation bond bill is expected to come up for a vote in the Senate on Thursday, but the measure isn't a done deal.

House lawmakers expressed concern on Wednesday that once the bonds are sold, some of the money might fund toll roads or other projects they have little oversight over.

Staff writers Michael Lindenberger and Christy Hoppe contributed to this report.

eramshaw@dallasnews.com; tstutz@dallasnews.com

© 2009 The Dallas Morning News: www.dallasnews.com

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"This is a financial scheme to fund roads without the appearance of raising taxes.”

Toll road bills ignite political controversy at special session

Interest groups protest spending bills they claim lack sufficient oversight


Bailouts total $3 trillion with no oversight

7/2/09

Toree Roy
Daily Texan
Copyright 2009

Leaders of various political activist groups in Texas lobbied against two bills Wednesday that they say could increase taxes and allow taxpayer money to be used to fund private transportation projects.

The state Legislature began a special session Wednesday to address three bills concerning the reauthorization of five state agencies before the next regular session. The legislation being considered would allow the state to issue $2 billion in bonds for highway improvements and extend the authority for the Texas Department of Transportation to enter into agreements with private companies to build roads.

Controversial House Bill 1 will allow $1 billion of the $2 billion voter-approved bond money to go to general revenue for TxDOT. The $2 billion is part of $5 billion approved by voters in 2007. The other half will go toward creating the Texas Transportation Revolving Fund, which will provide financial assistance for transportation projects.

“This is an outside agency, which will not be under control of the state,” said Hank Gilbert, a board member of Texas Uniting Reform and Freedom and HB 1 opponent. “We need to make sure that taxpayer money cannot be accessed by private entities and that [TxDOT] cannot use money from the Teacher and Retirement and Employee Retirement Systems.”

Gilbert said the group would support the bill under consideration if it would state directly that taxpayer money and money from other systems would not be used to fund private entities.

“This is not a privatized or free market plan issue,” said Robert Butler, executive director of the Texas Libertarian Party. “It is creating a financial scheme to fund roads without the appearance of raising taxes.”

Another point of controversy is House Bill 2, which deals with comprehensive development agreements, or CDAs. The agreements are toll contracts privatizing and selling the construction of Texas highways to the highest bidder. These agreements are set to end Aug. 31 but if this bill passes, the date will be extended for four years.

The agreements allow for the state to enter into contracts with private entities to build toll roads and allow a portion of money collected from these roads to go to these private companies, said John Butler, executive director of Texans for Accountable Government.

“CDAs do not work — they’re failing all over the country,” Gilbert said.

The groups also addressed issues on the Trans-Texas Corridor. The corridor was a project created by TxDOT to create a superhighway that would ease with traffic congestion along Interstate Highway 35 and also help to create massive trade corridors for Mexico, Canada and the U.S.

Although the project was set aside in January, the agency is still trying to create Interstate Highway 69 and another highway that would run parallel to IH-35. The roads would provide better transportation, said TxDOT spokesman Chris Lippincott.

“There is definitely a possibility that projects along I-69 and I-35 could be advanced, but that will only happen if the legislature is comfortable,” Lippincott said. “We’re confident they will come up with a good strategy so that we can move forward.”

© 2009 The Daily Texan: www.dailytexanonline.com

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Lite Gov. Dewhurst's 'thin' CDA scheme for privatized Spanish toll roads may be flattened by heavy opposition.

Dewhurst: Deal in works on private toll roads

Related Link: Dewhurst is one of the largest recipients of TTC contractor contributions














7/1/09

By Mike Ward
Austin American-Statesman
Copyright 2009

Faced with growing legislative opposition to privately built toll roads, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst told reporters just a few minutes ago that a deal is in the works to continue approval for a limited number of projects.

Earlier this afternoon, both a Senate committee and a House committee left pending bills that would extend the authority of the Texas Department of Transportation to approve privately built toll roads after Sept. 1.

Only three such projects are currently in the process of getting final approval, officials said.

“We have draft language (for a bill) that is being prepared … and there are a growing number of senators who are willing to look this … to consider this,” he told reporters after the Senate adjourned for the day.

“It would be a very thin CDA bill, (including) only those projects that would happen over the next two years … what’s in the pipeline now that needs to be built.”

The term CDA stands for comprehensive development agreement, a contract between private companies and TxDOT to build toll roads and then 'recoup their investment' through motorist-paid tolls.

Only three CDAs are in the pipeline, all in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. And senators from that area were among the most vocal opponents of continuing the practice when the bill came up for a hearing early this afternoon.

If enough senators agree on the wording by tomorrow, Dewhurst predicted the Senate could take up an amended version of Senate Bill 3 by late tomorrow or Friday.

He said he was meeting later this afternoon with House Speaker Joe Straus and Transportation Committee Chairman Joe Pickett, D-El Paso, to discuss the pared-down version of the bill.

Senators, though, remained unconvinced. Most said they do not see the issue coming to a vote due to continued heavy opposition.

© 2009 Austin American-Statesman: www.statesman.com

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“I think the Republic would survive without it."

Toll road plan falters as special session opens

The sky is falling
7/1/09

By PEGGY FIKAC and JOSH BAUGH
Houston Chronicle
Copyright 2009

AUSTIN — A push to allow for new privately run toll roads hit a pothole Wednesday as the special legislative session opened, with the measure likely to be drastically scaled back or ditched.

The idea was “struggling to find support,” said Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee Chairman John Carona, R-Dallas.

Backers of using the public-private partnerships known as comprehensive development agreements say the funding method is needed to help build roads at a time when tax and bond revenue is proving inadequate. Foes worry that the state — and drivers — get the short end of the stick when private companies get decades-long deals to collect tolls.

Carona said it’s one of many road-building tools but a complex one that’s politically problematic.

The issue is one of three that Gov. Rick Perry put before lawmakers when he called them into special session to finish work left undone in the recent regular session. The others — continuing five state agencies that otherwise would expire and providing for $2 billion in road bonds to be issued — appeared on track.

The Senate approved the measure to extend state agencies Wednesday, sending it to the House for consideration. The House could act Thursday on the bond measure, which would put $1 billion of the proceeds into a revolving loan fund.

The proposal to extend comprehensive development agreement authority, however, has a tougher road.

Need questioned

Activists who oppose allowing the Texas Department of Transportation and regional mobility authorities to enter into the partnerships raised a ruckus. Some lawmakers questioned the need to reauthorize the agreements now.

Lawmakers allowed the comprehensive development agreements in 2003 but later put a moratorium on new ones in the face of critics who contended the state was selling public assets. The general ability for TxDOT and regional authorities to enter into agreements expires this year.

Sen. Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville, has proposed extending existing comprehensive development agreements until 2013 and allowing new ones under strict restrictions. He said his bill would afford protection while allowing an important financing tool.

“We can do nothing; we can kick the can down the road a couple more years; or we can fix this thing,” Nichols said. “I’d like to fix it.”

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, said the measure was optional this session: “I think the Republic would survive” without it.

Reporter Gary Scharrer contributed to this story.

pfikac@express-news.net

© 2009 The Daily Texan: www.chron.com

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"A vote for HB 3 would amount to a vote for the Trans-Texas Corridor. "

CDA renewals in jeopardy after House transportation hearing

7/1/09

Mark Lavergne
The Lone Star Report
Copyright 2009

At the end of the House Transportation Committee hearing today, Chairman Joe Pickett (D-El Paso) left the CDA renewal bill HB 3 pending -- a routine matter under normal circumstances, but when the governor wants the lawmakers in and out in three days, it means the bill is on life support.

Following the hearing -- during which lawmakers bombarded Texas Department of Transportation assistant executive director Bill Russell with questions about HB 3 -- Pickett said that he liked the bill but did not perceive much support for it among his colleagues in the House.

He said he would continue to work with the committee members in the House and the Senate, as well as the leadership, on the bill, but did not appear to be in any hurry to move the legislation to the floor by Friday as long as his colleagues had serious problems with it.

“We have up to 30 days,” he said.

Things first started looking gloomy for the bill when Rep. Jim Dunnam (D-Waco) launched a tirade against Russell, who had told the committee that “design-build” projects (public toll roads) could be renewed in 2011, whereas “concession-based” projects (i.e. private comprehensive development agreements for toll roads, from whose revenues private companies would benefit) would expire in 2009. Therefore the real reason the legislature was called back was to benefit private companies that look to benefit from concession-based projects, Dunnam said.

“If that’s what we’re here for, is simply to facilitate the private toll roads, y’all can put me down as a no,” Dunnam said to applause in the room.

Russell said that if the bill is not passed, the three projects specifically listed in the bill will be left on the shelf. Rep. Larry Phillips (R-Sherman), the most vocal proponent of the bill during the hearing, argued that if the bill was not passed, there would continue to be hyper-congestion, nonattainment, safety issues and other discontents. Regional Mobility Authorities would be limited in their opportunities to build additional roads if the bill didn’t pass, Phillips and Russell agreed.

Rep. Yvonne Davis (D-Dallas) pressed Russell on what the real transportation needs of the state are and how much they cost. Phillips suggested giving TxDOT 20 to 30 days to research and then the committee could reconvene to discuss the findings.

“TxDOT ought to give us a real assessment because it varies based on who you talk to,” Davis said.

“We all know that we have a deficit, the question is how much of a deficit and what funding solutions we have,” Phillips said.

Several witnesses testified against not only the bill but comprehensive development agreements in general. Hank Gilbert with Texans United for Reform and Freedom told the committee members that a vote for HB 3 would amount to a vote for the Trans-Texas Corridor. Gilbert held a press conference earlier today to call on all legislators to vote no on HB 3 and its companion SB 3.

The safe vote for his colleagues right now is “no,” Pickett said. He chalked up the difficulty surrounding this bill to a continued distrust of TxDOT. He suggested including other projects into the bill besides the three currently there, rather than extending the deadline for CDAs.

© 2009 The Lone Star Report: www.lonestarreport.org

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