Posted on 07/05/2006 11:00:40 PM PDT by Trupolitik
I am telling you guys, Dr. Jerome Corsi (co-author of "Unfit for Command" and "Minutemen") is NOT going to let this issue die. We owe it to OURSELVES to start paying attention.
Mexican Trucks with cheap Mexican truck drivers will mean THE END of the American Patriot Trucker as we know it. (incidentally I come from a family of truck drivers so it also personal for me). Our own transport companies will set up mexican companies and run operations out of Mexico in order to "cut costs". Those "cuts" are OUR jobs! Sound familiar???
Please Read this. Please keep this issue on your radar! Retaining our Sovereignty is our most important War.
[quote]Despite claims to the contrary, a planned Midwest "inland port" with a Mexican customs office will not be restricted to railroad traffic, according to internal documents obtained by WorldNetDaily.
As WND has reported, Kansas City SmartPort plans to utilize deep-sea Mexican ports such as Lazaro Cardenas to unload containers from China and the Far East as part of the North American Free Trade Agreement super-highway plan.
The plan would include the hotly contested allowance of Mexican trucks on U.S. roads, WND has reported, but Tasha Hammes of the Kansas City Area Development Council has insisted the port will be restricted to railroad traffic.
Hammes has argued the railroad link is "nothing new, other than the fact that Kansas City Southern acquired the Mexican railroad serving this port and that major work has been done on the port of Lazaro Cardenas so that it has higher capacity and can handle larger containers."
But internal e-mails make it clear that officials, hoping to stay below the radar of public opinion, plan to expand from rail to trucks after the Mexican customs facility is operational.
The Mexican customs facility project was championed by David W. Eaton, president of Monterrey Business Consultants in Monterrey, Mexico, and the former executive director of North American International Trade Corridor Partnership, a non-profit group with the aim of internationalizing U.S. highways to facilitate trade with Mexico and Canada.
In a Jan. 7 e-mail, Eaton writes:
They are still going back and forth on the rail and truck focus. However, according to Manuel [Manuel Ruiz, a Mexican customs official], the first stage will most likely be "rail only" with trucking added later. Kenneth Hoffman of the law firm Blackwell Sanders Peper Martin, outside council to KC SmartPort, was copied on Eaton's e-mail.
A few minutes later, Hoffman answered, supporting the phase-in strategy:
"My feeling is that we need to get this done in such a way that [the Mexican customs facility] is successful when it opens. If it starts small that is fine as long as there is productive work that we can point to as evidence that the effort was worthwhile. We can expand to trucks after getting the process up and running.
The e-mails are consistent with a position paper Eaton authored for the Montreal-based Institute for Research on Public Policy, entitled "Roads, Trains, and Ports: Integrating North American Transport."
In the paper, Eaton argued railroad transport should be developed as the first mode to bring containers from China through Mexican ports into the U.S., because "one unit train can carry the equivalent of approximately 250 trucks."
Moreover, Eaton had argued that use of Mexican trucks was impaired by the poor condition of Mexico's roadways and the wear and tear on Mexican trucks resulting from overuse. Eaton had concluded "North America would be well served by linking its rail infrastructure and systems," which has been advanced by Kansas City Southern's acquisition of Mexican railroads.
An examination of the internal e-mails from Kansas City SmartPort over the last two years shows the development of the city's international "inland port" concept including the Mexican customs facility involved an ambitious multi-year process with the aim of tying into the emerging corridor-oriented NAFTA Super-Highway network.
Development of the KCSmartPort vision included active involvement of the North Americas SuperCorridor Coalition, or NASCO, a non-profit group "dedicated to developing the worlds 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."
Chris Gutierrez, president of KCSmartPort, frequently copied NASCO President George Blackwood on details of the negotiations with Mexican and U.S. officials regarding the Mexican customs office.
An April 26 e-mail from Gutierrez included Blackwood among the list of recipients. In his message, Gutierrez reported he worked directly with the office of Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., and with Mexican government officials to apply political pressure to influence the State Department and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, to move faster in approving the Mexican customs facility application:
CBP told me that the State Department is reviewing the C-175 [form needed to approve Mexican customs facility]. Bond's office has calls into the State Dept; letter to Gil Diaz [Mexican Secretary of Finance] went out last week asking him to encourage CBP and State Dept to move it along. Here is the draft letter to Minister [Luis Ernesto] Derbez [Mexican Foreign Ministry Secretary]. I was still tweaking it but here it is for your review.
In 1998, before becoming NASCO president, Blackwood established the North American International Trade Corridor Partnership while he served as mayor pro tem of Kansas City. The NAITCP has been absorbed into NASCO.
A NAIPC summit meeting in 2004 was attended by Mexican officials, including Secretary of Finance Gil Diaz, Ministry of Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Geronimo Guiterrez, Deputy Counsel of Mexico Noemi Hernandez, Counsel of Mexico in Kansas City Everardo Suarez. Also in attendance was Kansas City, Mo., Mayor Kay Barnes and the president and CEO of Kansas City Southern railroad, Mike Haverty.
Photographed on the first page of the summit executive summary is Robert Pastor, an American University professor who has written "Toward a North American Community," a book promoting the development of a North American unionas a regional government and the adoption of the amero as a common monetary currency to replace the dollar and the peso.
Pastor also was vice chairman of the May 2005 Council on Foreign Relations task force entitled "Building a North American Community" that presents itself as a blueprint for using bureaucratic action within the executive branches of Mexico, the U.S. and Canada to transform the current trilateral Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America into a North American union regional government.
We should ask ourselves two questions:
1. Is this good for American Citizens, American Workers?
2. Why are they keeping their goals a secret? Why did they lie about their goal of integrating mexican trucking?
Most would agree that you have perceived correctly, and that my dear, is the bottom line.
PING
Thanks for posting. There are many of us who are following this issue.
That being said, you certainly have brought the name callers out from under their rocks, haven't you! They must be very threatened by this information.
Well, that settles it. The mods and Jim are the ultimate authority on everything in the universe, of course. I don't need to form another individual opinion, read anything other than Free Republic, or watch any more news reports. Thank goodness I have Jim and the mods to think for me.
Sadly, I'm not sure now. He's blowing a lot of credibility with his nonsense and jumping to ridiculous conclusions, so now I wonder if he's done this in the past on other subjects. Luckily for him, there has been years and oodles of evidence that John Kerry is a liar and a fraud through and through, as opposed to perhaps just someone with poor analytical skills and a penchant for drawing wrong conclusions.
Gee, good point. Obviously there was nothing personal in the post I was responding to:
Those kind of assinine comments may work on liberal know-nothings, but to anyone who has a reading level over 5th grade can see the internal emails for themselves. They can read the documents for themselves. Anyone who has lost or had a friend or family member who has lost a job due to NAFTA or other "outsourcing" knows this is not a "conspiracy" Incidentally... if you cannot read at a 5th grade level, atleast it explains your addiction to kool-aid.
Hear, hear!
Thanks for da pingie!
From NAFTA to NASCO to Customs in Kansas City
By Linda Bentley
WASHINGTON, D.C. A plan is underway by the Bush Administration to globalize North America through the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (www.spp.gov).
Although this particular agenda has been moving forward since 2005, its beginnings date back to 1995 with NAFTA.
While the three countries have formed commissions to forge ahead with what they have stated is a permanent process, a pilot project is also underway in the background to set up business processes, systems architecture and data flow to comply with the World Customs Organizations (WCO) Framework of Standards to further facilitate North American trade and transport.
Also establishing a foothold is North Americas SuperCorridor Coalition, Inc. (NASCO), which entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with The North American International Trade Corridor Partnership (NAITCP) last year to amalgamate the two nonprofit organizations into one called NASCO.
While NASCO has been successful in achieving Canadian and U.S. membership, NAITCP has been successful in solidifying U.S. and Mexican participation.
The MOU sets up timetables and ground rules as to how the merger will proceed.
NASCO represents the corporate entities and local governments that promote the North American Union ideology, and is dedicated to furthering economic development along the evolving transportation and trade corridor between Lazaro Cardenas in the state of Michoacan, Mexico, through the heart of America to an inland port in Kansas City, Mo., where a 1,300-mile railroad seamlessly connects Mexican seaports to the central United States, and where American taxpayers are funding a $3 million Mexican customs building.
Robert C. Bonner, Commissioner, United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Department of Homeland Security, called the pilot proposal bold and imaginative and said it could transform Kansas City into a major new trade link, which he said worked well with new border security initiatives to pre-approve cargo.
As of last November, the United States and Mexico had worked out an agreement, although certain aspects of that agreement were still being ironed out by customs officials, including security issues and whether Mexican customs officials have legal standing to work in the United States.
At a luncheon last year, hosted by the Kansas City Chamber of Commerce and Kansas City SmartPort, Bonner said the Mexican governments cooperation in security initiatives have been instrumental in making the Mexican-U.S. border more secure.
The border at Laredo, Texas and Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, where drug lords and violent gangs reign free, suggests otherwise.
Since 1995, the Mexican government has been aggressively moving toward decentralization and privatization of infrastructure and its seaport operations to promote business-friendly partnerships and expand international trade.
In 2002, Mexico hosted the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit, after which it started the Trans-Pacific Multimodal Security System (TPMSS) to create greater transportation infrastructure capacity, more cooperative customs processes and greater security, which in the end will facilitate economic growth along the Lazaro Cardenas Kansas City Corridor.
Last April, Kansas City Southern Railroad purchased a controlling interest in Transportacion Ferroviaria Mexicana, which will operate under common leadership, paving the way for a ships-to-rail inland transportation system for shippers who wish to bypass the West Coasts ports.
Kansas City also signed a cooperative agreement with representatives from both the state of Michoacan and the city of Lazaro Cardenas last year to increase cargo volume between the two cities.
Instead of paying Mexican customs up to $100,000 per container passing through Mexico, new rules allow shippers to move as many containers as they like for a single $55,000 bond, which will make shipping through Mexican ports up to 15 percent less costly than through Long Beach or Los Angeles.
According to its Web site (www.KCSmartPort.com), Kansas City SmartPort, Inc. is a nonprofit organization dedicated to transforming the Kansas City region from an historic trade hub to a cutting-edge, high tech inland port, with a goal to make it cheaper, faster and safer for importers and exporters to move their goods.
Kansas City SmartPort is tag-lined Americas Inland Port Solution and is supported by dozens of area companies, communities and trade-related organizations in the Kansas City area.
Its Web site claims the Lazaro Cardenas Kansas City Transportation Corridor offers opportunities for international shippers and greater prosperity for North America. The promo goes on to say: 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, and states, Thanks to an innovative series of international agreements, infrastructure improvements and new technologies, this corridor is a reality. NASCOs planned 10-lane highway and connecting railways will facilitate the movement of air, rail and ground cargo, principally from Asia and South America, through Mexico and into the United States via KellyUSA, an inland port located in San Antonio, Texas on through to Kansas City and Winnipeg, Canada.
So, as public relations firms attempt to put a positive spin on this New World Order and the Bush Administrations globalization agenda, which is moving forward at a breakneck pace, there hasnt been a peep out of the mainstream media.
And those in D.C. who are aware of these plans also remain mum, with the exception of Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., who recently demanded the Bush administration fully disclose all activities and provide the names of all those involved in the implementation of this trilateral agreement with Mexico and Canada, which appears to be on the path of creating a North American Union, with neither authorization nor oversight by Congress, or the American people for that matter.
But it explains why all efforts to control Americas borders have been nothing more than smoke and mirrors and political posturing, while American taxpayers are unknowingly funding this globalization drive with federal transportation dollars.
http://66.218.69.11/search/cache?p=naitcp++&ei=UTF-8&fr=FP-pull-web-t&u=www.sonorannews.com/headline3.html&w=naitcp&d=WX78UTmtNB-b&icp=1&.intl=us
Actually, you're missing another important consideration. Port of Long Beach longshoremen are pulling down $150K a year and there have been near zero improvements in efficiency thanks to union stonewalling. The longshoremen are basically holding the US consumer hostage. A little competition may be good, but I'd personally like to see just enough Mexican and Canadian competition to get back to wage parity. I've got multiple graduate engineering degrees and >20 years of experience and I'm not making that kind of coin.
PING!
See especially Reply 50 by hedgetrimmer.
Are you part of the war on wage earners?
Carlos Slim[Speaking at the Hemispheria 2005], Mexico's telecom magnet and Latin America's richest man, said one of the flaws of the trade agreement was not creating a regional immigration agreement.
NAFTA "was an incomplete accord because it globalized trade but labor integration remains incomplete," Slim said.
***
Labor integration meaning the 'harmonization' of US wages down to Mexico's level?
Fight the good fight, Mr. Squat. I've lost patience with these loons.
Good for Rep. Steve King.
Which explains the frantic attempts to hide information, cancel conferences, and delete information from websites.
Who you gonna believe--the globalists or your lyin' eyes?
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