Tag: Rants

One of my friends asked me what my thoughts were on this and I was surprised as hell about it…I had no clue this was happening. This is a HUGE deal but it’s getting ZERO publicity and I am honestly surprised considering the scope of this highway development.

Here’s a link http://ttc.keeptexasmoving.com/projects/i69/deis.aspx

The goal of this monstrosity of a highway is to provide a venue for commercial travel that reduces the bulk of transient commercial transports (ie – a very significant portion of traffic during business hours) in a good number of cities from south central Texas all the way to Texarkana.

Now if you’re not looking at the development plans for the land they plan on acquiring for this venture, you’d probably think “Oh GREAT idea! Get all the unnecessary traffic out of the cities that is killing their environment and making driving a huge ordeal in most of the coastal cities. But look at the plans…HERE

Now, in development plans like this, private property is bought from owners are a fair market value…sometimes more than fair. But in large scale operations that involve a lot of property owners, for various reasons…people refuse to sell. Now you’ve all seen the movies where some hero comes along and finds out the developer is doing something evil and nasty to those refusing to sell. This isn’t the movies, and the developers don’t have to do much to make people move…the government will declare the property “Eminent Domain” (remember that phrase boys and girls) and will quite literally force the owner off any land necessary to the progression of the development (if said development is necessary to the growth of the community in question.) “Eminent Domain” is a subject that makes my ass twitch. You can feel the wrongness ebbing from the word when you say it. In most other countries, actions of this nature are the foundations of war and violence….in our country…it’s the law.

Now why on earth would I bring up Eminent Domain on such a great idea? Hell I asked the same question…until I saw the proposal. I would get good odds in betting this thing is going to be visible from the moon…its that huge. Now, in any development that big…we’re not talking about relocating any small amount of land owners. This is an insane amount of land. Even if it were only to take up half the proposed space…it seems like it would still take up more square acreage than the cities it’s supposed to be helping.

Now I haven’t done all my normal homework on this yet. But I am going to now. That development plan is damn near right on top of my parents’ house. If you have opinions or good information for me I would love to hear it.

Thanks!

Tony