The Environmentalist Color Scheme

It appears that as a political issue, the Trans Texas Corridor (TTC) does not cut nearly the swath its opponents allege the asphalt itself will.

For we find CorridorWatch.org (CW.org) founder David Stall falling pronouncedly flat in his bid to become District 18's state Senator. In a jurisdiction he has spent the last two years dousing with disinformation regarding just what the TTC will be, his attempts at grassroots movement failed to translate into grassroots support.

Short of Dan Patrick's decade long aural immersion via the radio airwaves (on a station that he in part owns), no candidate spent more time intimating himself with his potential constituents than did Stall.

Unlike Patrick, Stall was and is a one-trick pony. It was no-TTC all of the time.

Running alongside (for it would be difficult to describe what he was doing, given the results, as running against) eventual winner and current state Representative Glenn Hegar (53%) and multi-small businessman Gary Gates (38%), Stall clocked in with a whopping 8% of the total tally. It is apparently difficult to teach an old Shetland new feints.

According to their website, Stall's wife Linda founded CorridorWatch.org in February of 2004. Of course her beau had a hand therein, but because he was the City Manager of Columbus, Texas, at the time, the website leans heavily on her influence at the organization's inception.

David Stall's involvement in so political an institution as this quickly led to his dismissal from his city post. Columbus officials were also less than thrilled that Stall had registered CorridorWatch.org using the city's account. Oops.

The Stalls immediately began driving hours in any direction from their Fayetteville home to attend Texas Department of Transportation (TxDoT) meetings to disingenuously participate in the open forum process. As their disinformation spread, they began culling fellow travelers on the no-Road to Anywhere; we here know from first-hand accounts that either the Stalls or members of their growing circle of lubricious surrogates have fanned out across the state to pitch false information on the potential throughway.

The CorridorWatch.org Mascot

If everything with which these CW.org miseducators, and their brethren in groups such as Texas Toll Party, have been frightening or angering these poor residents into intellectual submission were true, the TTC would be a slab of concrete spanning from Beaumont east to El Paso west, and pave the state in totality between San Antonio and Dallas.

Every town to which these people pay a visit is told that they are in dire danger of being diametrically bifurcated by the coming highway, no matter how far east or west they might be. To cite but one fraudulent example, residents of every single city, town and village along the Taylor-Manor corridor have been regaled with egregiously fabricated tales of municipalitive destruction and vociferous eminent domain pillaging.

The problem is, Corridor Watch et. al. are by no means allowing the facts to get in the way of a good beating. Every proposed path (and there are still at the very least three) currently under consideration places the TTC on the northern and southern ends of planned SH-130, which is a good fifteen miles west of the villes in question and in crisis over their alleged impending devastation.

That these Corridor clowns are asserting anything with certitude belies their veracity on all things, because right now NO ONE outside of the TxDoT TTC circle knows anything about any aspect of the plans.

As per Federal Highway Administration (FHA) law, these chosen few are required to remain tight-lipped thereon; to violate this legal oath of secrecy would be to inviolate the ridiculously exhaustive two Tier, six year FHA approval process, forcing them to then begin again anew.

So too would it open them up to lawsuits from any and every environmental group in the state wishing to return us all to the horse and buggy (or simply to caves awaiting Prometheus to grace us with his fiery presence), further impeding any progress on any progress.

Information Blockade, or Blanket "No"

No Press queries, no citizen demands, no Freedom of Information Act requests can breach this federally mandated confidence. These officials must sit silently by whilst the CW.org vanguards storm the ramparts with their dishonest assaults on a plan the details of which they are absolutely bereft.

Has no one else yet noticed the blatant inconstancy of the Stalls et. al. decrying the super secrecy of the process, yet promulgating with absolute certitude that towns criss-crossing the state are all doomed to TTC ruin?

There are attending political ramifications to all of this, which is rarely the case when one is discussing a candidate who garnered a mere 8% of the interest of the citizenry. For there is a distinct waft of Strayhorn in the air surrounding the empty Stall and his Corridor Watch.

Comptroller Carole Keeton McClellan Rylander Strayhorn, currently adrift on signature collection waters in her bid for Independent Gubernatorial validity, has been a fixture at CW.org events, railing prodigiously (yet without substance) against the TTC, and the very concept of toll roads.

But herein arises a consistent theme when discussing Madame Comptroller; her inconsistency. Because prior to her decision to run against the TTC-proposing Governor Rick Perry, she too saw the meritoriousness of the concept of consumption road funding.

Madame Comptroller's Footwear Of Choice, and Her Ultimate Campaign Destination

To be found, STILL, on her state website are pages and pages of pro-toll pontifications by the now concertedly and disconcertedly opposed Madame Comptroller.

To choose but a few of the more interesting excerpts (with a Note that the referenced Texas Turnpike Authority [TTA] merged with TxDoT in 2001 to become the Turnpike Division, which is currently handling the TTC process):

State law should be amended to allow TxDoT to financially participate in the development of toll roads without a requirement for repayment.

TxDoT and TTA should, in conjunction with the regional toll authorities, develop interoperability standards for statewide electronic toll collection.

TxDoT should fully integrate and take maximum advantage of TTA's ability to deliver projects more quickly and use innovative practices such as the exclusive development agreement with the private sector.

State law should be amended to add a new title that provides that a person commits an offense if a vehicle is on a state highway facility without paying the proper toll.

CW.org's Ultimate Hoped For Destination

Sounds like the Then and Now candidate had given toll roads some serious and very thorough thought, right down to the necessity of making illegal the effort of exaction avoidance.

But that was Then, and this is Now. Strayhorn's flip on this flop is but the latest example of her two pronged approach to her effort to oust the 84% incumbent; contradict herself on everything on which she ever took a stand, and run to the hard Left as fast as is Comptrollerly possible.

Just another horrible day at the office for CorridorWatch.org and the Strayhorn for Strayhorn Campaign.