Giuliani Cashing in BIG on Privatized Texas Highway [View All]

Bracewell & Giuliani, the ‘guiding’ law firm on the privatization of Texas State Highway 121

By Jerry Mazza
Online Journal Associate Editor
Jun 8, 2007, 00:32

What, you didn’t know a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination is a partner in the Dallas law firm, Bracewell & Giuliani? It’s among the nation’s largest, with 400 attorneys and nine offices worldwide. And now B&G is exclusively representing the Spanish company Cintra through the privatization of Texas State Highway 121. Anybody want to call Congress and let them know? It’s right here in the linked March 26 Dallas Business Journal.

Yup, Rudy’s at it again, milking the old cash cow, the 9/11 sheriff routine to those sympathetic (rich and wannabe richer) Texans. The client, Cintra, has signed an agreement with the Texas Department of Transportation to finish the State Highway 121 toll road by 2011, a quarter century faster than possible through traditional sources (i.e. American workers), according to the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT). What you should also know is that the toll road is part of the NAFTA Superhighway and construction of the Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC).

Independent Journalist Cliff Kincaid nails it in his article Giuliani Linked To “NAFTA Superhighway”: “Evidence shows that NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement involving the U.S., Canada and Mexico, is being expanded without congressional approval or oversight as part of a plan to create an economic and political entity known as the North American Union.” This is “the project that has people in Texas and around the nation up in arms.”

Kincaid quotes freelance writer Dianne M. Grassi, who originally broke the story of Rudy’s law firm on the TTC toll-road project. She comments, “Most interesting to the whole story is not only has Giuliani’s involvement in the NAFTA Superhighway not ever having been publicly addressed, but how a foreign company is awarded the building of a mass highway system, versus maintaining it, for the first time in U.S. history, and negotiated by the law firm of the top Republican candidate running for President of the United States.”

Grassi also points out that “Cintra joined with San Antonio, TX-based Zachry Construction Corp. to help land the contracts, in which Zachry owns a 20% interest. The Cintra-Zachry proposal for TTC-35 includes a private investment of up to $6 billion in upfront payments for the complete construction, design and operation of a 316-mile toll road between Dallas and San Antonio, giving Cintra the right to set tolls and keep toll road profits for a period of 50 years, as it will for each road it has contracted..”

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