Private Projects Deserve Your Attention....Here's Why

You can take the girl out of politics, but you can't take the politics out of the girl.  Or something like that.  I have almost always been one to focus on local government like school boards and MUD boards, etc..  It should come as no surprise that I served on the local government committee for the local GOP affiliate.  While in service to the Local Government Committee, we were approached by a group of folks to 'pitch' us on the idea of a high speed rail project to run service from Houston to Dallas out of what used to be the Northwest Mall parking lot.  Hmmmm..

I got involved in politics when the first TARP was passed and when Obama got elected.  I had and still have a heart for voter education and protection of the tax payer dollar.  That hasn't changed.  When the folks that were 'for' the project came and presented to our group, I was more than skeptical.  I asked them about seeking a hand out for the government to finance the project and they promised that wouldn't happen.  They said that our state government, aka Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick were far too conservative to ever award a bail out.  They didn't mention the feds, however.

I am also not a fan of imminent domain.  Again, the pro-rail folks promised they weren't doing that.  They said they were offering the people who lived in the path of the railway fair market value for their homes.  That may not have been a lie, but now as the news has surfaced that they're looking for a hand out from the feds, they managed to find a workaround in the courts. 

According the article that I linked to above, which was published on KTRH,  the rail people finally got one of their wishes, was to be qualified as a railway so that they could do land grabs.  I stood against the project from the beginning.  My only wish is that we had taken a hard line stance against this as a committee.  Moral of the story is, you can't take your eye off of government.  Not even for a second.