Friday, October 03, 2008

Hastert's Prairie Parkway Deal

Yes. The Dennis Hastert Prairie Parkway Deal. Old News. Yes I know. It's been out there for a couple years. It's just that I am going through my notebook and throwing away old papers. Being the packrat that I am I just couldn't throw this story away so I decided to save it on google's servers instead of in my overburdened notebook.

To make a long story short. Dennis Hastert bought land 5.5 miles out from a proposed highway using the Little Rock Trust #225 to aquire the property. The proposed highway is one he secured $207 million dollars in earmarks for. He made millions of dollars off of selling the land he aquired and it has been argued that he unethically used his legislative power to get that money. It has also been argued that the land is too far away from the proposed highway for it to actually have any relationship with the property.

I personally believe that the land, which happens to have road being built to create easy access to the proposed highway, with its 1600 future homes being built will increase in value with a new highway nearby.