Posted on 06/12/2006 6:23:16 AM PDT by conservativecorner
Quietly but systematically, the Bush Administration is advancing the plan to build a huge NAFTA Super Highway, four football-fields-wide, through the heart of the U.S. along Interstate 35, from the Mexican border at Laredo, Tex., to the Canadian border north of Duluth, Minn.
Once complete, the new road will allow containers from the Far East to enter the United States through the Mexican port of Lazaro Cardenas, bypassing the Longshoreman’s Union in the process. The Mexican trucks, without the involvement of the Teamsters Union, will drive on what will be the nation’s most modern highway straight into the heart of America. The Mexican trucks will cross border in FAST lanes, checked only electronically by the new “SENTRI” system. The first customs stop will be a Mexican customs office in Kansas City, their new Smart Port complex, a facility being built for Mexico at a cost of $3 million to the U.S. taxpayers in Kansas City.
As incredible as this plan may seem to some readers, the first Trans-Texas Corridor segment of the NAFTA Super Highway is ready to begin construction next year. Various U.S. government agencies, dozens of state agencies, and scores of private NGOs (non-governmental organizations) have been working behind the scenes to create the NAFTA Super Highway, despite the lack of comment on the plan by President Bush. The American public is largely asleep to this key piece of the coming “North American Union” that government planners in the new trilateral region of United States, Canada and Mexico are about to drive into reality.
Just examine the following websites to get a feel for the magnitude of NAFTA Super Highway planning that has been going on without any new congressional legislation directly authorizing the construction of the planned international corridor through the center of the country.
NASCO, the North America SuperCorridor Coalition Inc., is a “non-profit organization dedicated to developing the world’s first international, integrated and secure, multi-modal transportation system along the International Mid-Continent Trade and Transportation Corridor to improve both the trade competitiveness and quality of life in North America.” Where does that sentence say anything about the USA? Still, NASCO has received $2.5 million in earmarks from the U.S. Department of Transportation to plan the NAFTA Super Highway as a 10-lane limited-access road (five lanes in each direction) plus passenger and freight rail lines running alongside pipelines laid for oil and natural gas. One glance at the map of the NAFTA Super Highway on the front page of the NASCO website will make clear that the design is to connect Mexico, Canada, and the U.S. into one transportation system.
Kansas City SmartPort Inc. is an “investor based organization supported by the public and private sector” to create the key hub on the NAFTA Super Highway. At the Kansas City SmartPort, the containers from the Far East can be transferred to trucks going east and west, dramatically reducing the ground transportation time dropping the containers off in Los Angeles or Long Beach involves for most of the country. A brochure on the SmartPort website describes the plan in glowing terms: “For those who live in Kansas City, the idea of receiving containers nonstop from the Far East by way of Mexico may sound unlikely, but later this month that seemingly far-fetched notion will become a reality.”
The U.S. government has housed within the Department of Commerce (DOC) an “SPP office” that is dedicated to organizing the many working groups laboring within the executive branches of the U.S., Mexico and Canada to create the regulatory reality for the Security and Prosperity Partnership. The SPP agreement was signed by Bush, President Vicente Fox, and then-Prime Minister Paul Martin in Waco, Tex., on March 23, 2005. According to the DOC website, a U.S.-Mexico Joint Working Committee on Transportation Planning has finalized a plan such that “(m)ethods for detecting bottlenecks on the U.S.-Mexico border will be developed and low cost/high impact projects identified in bottleneck studies will be constructed or implemented.” The report notes that new SENTRI travel lanes on the Mexican border will be constructed this year. The border at Laredo should be reduced to an electronic speed bump for the Mexican trucks containing goods from the Far East to enter the U.S. on their way to the Kansas City SmartPort.
The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) is overseeing the Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC) as the first leg of the NAFTA Super Highway. A 4,000-page environmental impact statement has already been completed and public hearings are scheduled for five weeks, beginning next month, in July 2006. The billions involved will be provided by a foreign company, Cintra Concessions de Infraestructuras de Transporte, S.A. of Spain. As a consequence, the TTC will be privately operated, leased to the Cintra consortium to be operated as a toll-road. The details of the NAFTA Super Highway are hidden in plan view. Still, Bush has not given speeches to bring the NAFTA Super Highway plans to the full attention of the American public. Missing in the move toward creating a North American Union is the robust public debate that preceded the decision to form the European Union. All this may be for calculated political reasons on the part of the Bush Administration.
A good reason Bush does not want to secure the border with Mexico may be that the administration is trying to create express lanes for Mexican trucks to bring containers with cheap Far East goods into the heart of the U.S., all without the involvement of any U.S. union workers on the docks or in the trucks.
The world is going to continue to modernize with or without any US assistance.
I realize that you don't want to be a part of that. You want to tax the hell out of imports and you hate American corporations.
You prefer complete isolationism with a complete end to any international cooperation.
Fortress America, hedgetrimmer style.
That train left the station in the late 1800s and you missed it. You were born too late.
Hedge: Roads are the lifeblood of the countryside, towns, cities and the nation.
He knows this, everyone knows this. Establishment of roads was of such critical importance to our nation that it was placed by the Founding Fathers within our Constitution as one of the duties of American government.
I have a better suggestion. Why don't YOU go back to my post #263 and actually read what's there. It's chock full of links to credible sources and websites from which you can actually read articles.
Oh, I forgot, you'd rather rant, etc.
If hedgetrimmer is like me, he is more concerned about the implications of the road (creation of the North American Union and the end of a sovereign US as we know it plus further export of US jobs) rather than the road itself. That said, if this is the only way to get around the stranglehold that the Longshoreman's union has on this nation and its consumers, I'm for it. I hope you'll agree that the other implications I mentioned are quite disturbing.
LOL! Yeah, right.
The point which apparently was not adequately conveyed by me is that a road does not signal some major event in globalization.
It's just a road, but to some on this thread it appears to be the end of American sovereignty and some deep evil conspiracy.
It's not the first nor the last road we're going to build in this country. Roads are good things, not a reason to get one's panties in a knot.
bypassing the Longshoreman’s Union in the process.
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How can this be bad?
...............................................
It's all good. 100% good.
It's an obvious concern, except for some folks who'd rather a) refuse to see; or b) do see, but are in favor of the end result.
I have NEVER said any of these things. Why don't you talk about the facts? Begin with "trade capacity building" in a "free trade" agreement. Lets get a working definition, shall we?
If the road was the ONLY thing that was going on, imo, there wouldn't be an issue. But, it's not.
At least you now agree with me. :-)
Yeah, right!
GOODY...you are still agreeing with me; how nice. :-)
And this is bad beacauuuuussse....?
The North American Union is a paranoid delusion. It's no threat to sovereignty. If we wish to form some common strategies to address various issues with our neighbors, there's nothing wrong with that. There is absolutely nothing wrong with cooperating with other countries. We have been doing it since the country was formed.
A surrender of sovereignty involves giving permanent authority to non-Americans to dictate to us. We've never done that yet. As long as we reserve the right to say hell no, or back out of any agreement we have entered into, sovereignty is not an issue.
The dire predictions of increasing trade with developing countries throwing Americans out of work have not materialized. After NAFTA, CAFTA, WTO, etc., our unemployment rate is now tiny.
The implications you mentioned would be disturbing if they were real, but they're not.
You're spending a lot of time discussing an issue that is supposedly non-existent:-)
It's not non-existent to some people on this thread and certainly not to the moonbat author of the article at the top of the thread.
Besides, I've got nothing else to do at the moment... ;-)
They are, indeed. But I'd like to know from what you base your opinions? What credible sources do you have which refute those implications, as well as the numerous documents concerning the North American Community found at the CFR, the implications of the March 2005 Joint Statement of Presidents Bush and Fox and Prime Minister Marten, the various documents authored by Dr. Robert A. Pastor, the document entitled "the Guanajuato Proposal," endorsed by Presidents Bush and Fox, legislation enacted in the House and the Senate, one of which authorizes border defense of Mexico's southern border (not the U.S. southern border), as well as the perimeter of the entity of the North American Community (i.e., what was once considered the separate and sovereign countries of Canada, the United States, and Mexico), which legislation ensures that sovereign borders merely become migratory passing for "North Americans," and a host of other issues addressed within the aforementioned documents?
If you would please provide something other than opinion which refutes what the aforementioned documents authorize, encourage, and enact, I'd like to read it/them.
You could probably get an extra job doing what you're doing here: -) Imagine getting paid to debate!
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