That’s $207 million is only partial funding for a project that will cost more than 1 billion. There is no commitment to build the project until a preliminary engineering study is done. That won’t be done until 2008 at least. Besides, the IDOT can use the federal funding for whatever project will best improve traffic between I80 and 88.

“We know that we have to make an improvement out there because of the quick-growing nature of these counties,” IDOT spokesman Matt Vanover said. “It is too early to tell exactly what type of transportation infrastructure upgrade would be there.”

When will TPJUDD be honest and correct the errors he has made in his posts about this project? Like misrepresenting Hastert’s parcels in his maps for one?

Comment by Judd — June 17, 2006

The fact that this area is third fastest growing area in the US has more do with increasing land values than a proposed transportation corridor that won’t get built for 10-15 years. TPJUDD is completely ingnorant of the planning process. The corridor study analyzed at least 110 different routes. Hastert didn’t choose the final route.

Where are my kintting needles?

Just one of the many entries in the “What Does ‘GOP’ Stand For?” Contest.

Hmm it sounds familiar too. What about George Washington Plunkitt? If he were Hastert, maybe this is how he’d explain it….

Yes, many of our men have grown rich in politics. I’ve made a big fortune out of the game, and I’m gettin’ richer every day, but I’ve not gone in for dishonest graft–blackmailin’ gamblers, saloonkeepers, disorderly people, etc.–and neither has any of the men who have made big fortunes in politics.

There’s an honest graft, and I’m an example of how it works. I might sum up the whole thing by sayin’: “I seen my opportunities and I took ‘em.”

Just let me explain by examples. My party’s in power in the country, and it’s going to undertake a lot of public improvements. Well, I’m tipped off, say that they’re going to lay out a new ‘Prairie Parkway’ at a certain place.

I see my opportunity and I take it. I go to that place and I buy up all the land I can in the neighborhood. Then the Congress makes it’s plan public, and there is a rush to get my land, which nobody cared particular for before.

Ain’t it perfectly honest to charge a good price and make a $2 million profit on my investment and foresight? Of course, it is. Well, that’s honest graft.

(It was wrong when Democratic state Sen. Plunkitt made the original comments 101 years ago, and now that I’ve adapted them to Mr. Hastert, it’s still wrong. Read all of Plunkitt’s remarks on honest graft here http://www.uhb.fr/faulkner/ny/plunkitt.htm)

Timing, and not distance, is the key question (although it’s odd that Hastert didn’t raise the timing question himself).

From what I’ve learned, though, even though the road is still years away from being built, there’s already been a premium for land with easy access to the Parkway. While most real estate is increasing in value in Kendall County, in other words, it has done so at a higher rate near the Parkway’s corridor.

While you are right that there is nothing wrong with using a trust, Hastert is obligated to note on his Personal Fiinancial Disclosure forms that he is a beneficiary of one. He didn’t, two years running. That seems to me to be a pretty serious problem right there.

Finally, as I’ve said before, even if Hastert’s contention is correct, and the Prairie Parkway had no effect on the value of his land holdings, Hastert still has a conflict he’s not declaring–here he’s proposing spending a billion dollars of federal, state and local taxpayer money on a road project to deal the impact of growth, while profiting from growth by selling land to real estate developers. That in itself would be a conflict, even if the Prairie Parkway were all the way across town.

All we ask of members of Congress is that they disclose their financial interests. Bottom line, Hastert tried to hide his.

He’s the oleaginous DeLay stooge who came to power promising to look the other way if cash changed hands and to always encourage odoriferous earmarks; he became known as the third easiest man in congress to bribe; he was the Vietnam-era military shirk to whom a war without his fighting it was suddenly not such a bad idea;
he was the guarantor for the drug lobby’s $350 million self-serving legislation; he was the head-of-the-line freeloader at Abramoff’s Friday fish fries; and now this—a model for sweetheart real estate shenanigans, financed by the congress and promising him more than $10 million in profits.
And Republican piety is his main defense.

Will someone call the law and tell them that this son of a bitch belongs behind bars.