Gary Farmer and John Langmore assist Sen. Kirk Watson in
the tolling freeways scam with Take on Traffic (TOT).
They call themselves a “coalition of concerned citizens”, but the profiteers from
Take On Traffic (TOT) are far from your ordinary citizens, and they've spent gobs of money with a campaign intended with numerous glossy direct mail pieces to trick real citizens.
They are special interest profiteers advocating for a toll plan that allow them to line their own pockets.
Who is the local toll lobby?
And, those who fund the exorbitant TOT campaign are unknown, as they hide behind loopholes in the law, so they don’t have to report where the money comes from. These charlatans are so desperate to profit off our families via the unaccountable tolls on roads we’ve already paid for - they can’t tell the truth about the numbers. Just like
TxDOT, they have to
fluff the numbers to sell tolls.
UPDATED: LYNDA RIFE CONTRACTS FOR TOT CAMPIAGN
TOT FUNNY NUMBERS
TOT throws out absolutely ridiculous numbers that are not anchored in any reality.
TOT’s website, created by Mark Nathan
(campaign manager for many freeway tollers such as Mayor Will Wynn), says
“we need to find at least $12.7 Billion in funding” in the next 20 years. (that’s like $1.7 million a day!)
CAMPO once claimed
$13.8 billion as the "funding gap" and then agreed
$3.7 billion was a "math mistake". Then the auditor’s office chopped down the number further and said
$4.9 billion isn't going to actually improve traffic.
TOT LIES IGNORE THE FACTS!THE TOT LIE SAYS we’d have to raise our gas tax “between $1.20 and $1.77 a gallon” even after the Texas Transportation Institute report says just pennies of an indexed gas tax would be needed. The
TTI report states
tolls are NOT needed at all, that indexing the gas tax and placing the incremental revenue in the mobility fund to pay off bonds allows us to build the roads we need now.Here’s just another example of the cooked up numbers from the profiteers.
Actual State Comptroller’s fuel sales numbers:730 million gallons gasoline annual in 2005
200 million gallons diesel annual in 2005
Compare the actual numbers above to TakeOnTraffic lies found at their website in a calculations link on a page called (get this) “How did we get our numbers”
(I think they pulled these numbers out of their ass):
148 million gallons gasoline annual in 2006
345 million gallons gasoline annual in 2006
TakeOnTraffic significantly underestimates the revenue generation from the gas tax to scare citizens into thinking double tax tolls are needed.
And they call the double tax a “user fee”, even though the tolls go directly into their pockets, and anything left over goes into slush funds. Who’s being used here?How many hundreds of thousands of homes have they polluted with these direct mail toller lies?
WHO IS TAKE ON TRAFFIC (TOT)?The profiteers happen to include the same old snake salesman that tried to force Phase II freeway tolls on Central Texas from the start of 2004 (
Toll Lobby). TOT is the
Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce and it looks like
Capital Area Transportation Coalition (CATC) and RECA are there to support as well. TOT is working in conjunction with
Sen. Kirk Watson and former leader of the Chamber, to usher in his plan B tolls/managed lanes (coming soon).
TAKE ON TRAFFIC (TOT) is made up of Road Engineering firms, Toll Road builders, Banks, Attorneys, Developers and others who profit off the freeway tolling scam:
John Langmore (TOT Spokesman,
TOT Chair and
Rep. Mike Krusee associate)
Gary Farmer
Bury + PartnersCarter & Burgess Heritage Title
HNTBMartin & Salinas Public Affairs, Inc. Home Builders Association
JPMorganChaseLocke Liddell & SappPape-Dawson Engineers, Inc.PBS&JRECA
URSFrost Bank
Jackson Walker LLP
Endeavor Real Estate Group
Temple-Inland, Inc.
Wells Fargo Bank
According to this news report
John Langmore is the Chair of TOT.
Langmore played a principal role in formulating and drafting Krusee’s freeway toll bill, HB 3588. Langmore impersonates a Transportation Planning Expert to continue to rake in fat contracts, even though he has NO education in transportation planning, not even an online college course.John Langmore was the campaign treasurer, campaign manager and PR contact for SafeRail PAC, a political action committee that had success in altering our Texas Constitution in 2005 which allows unlimited tax dollars (blank checks) and debt to be syphon for new corporate rail in the Trans Texas Corridor (TTC). State records show
Zachry Construction (of Cintra Zachry), Herzog Construction, HNTB , PBS&J, Carter Burgess, Pate Engineer and
TateAustin contributed to SafeRail PAC.
Will the Austin American-Statesman expose the funny numbers? You tell me. The Statesman is on the
Chambers executive committee.
When will a reporter ask them where all that campaign money comes from? And, how many hundreds of thousands of dollars they have spent?
