These:
CFR Study: Building a North American Union http://www.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/NorthAmerica_TF_final.pdf
Security and Prosperity Partenrship Agreement: http://www.spp.gov/
Have been posted many times before.
Freepers have continuously posted that it is a line of hooey; yet will not explain why they think it is.
on a related note,
David Hendricks: The reinvigorated NADBank can do great things for the border
Web Posted: 06/24/2006 12:00 AM CDT
San Antonio Express-News
Amid all the new flexibility given the North American Development Bank on Wednesday by its newly constituted board of directors, the bank staff gained something more important: better lines of communication with the U.S. and Mexican governments.
Wednesday's meeting not only broke a logjam of loans — a dozen totaling $137 million were approved — but a commitment emerged to keep NADBank financial assistance flowing.
As the board met for the first time since 2003, new Chairman Kenneth Peel, a U.S. Treasury deputy assistant secretary, said the board now plans to meet twice a year. It also set up a way to approve project financing and policy changes between meetings by electronic vote.
Procedures finally are in place to keep the NADBank staff in San Antonio in touch with its directors, who work mostly in Washington and Mexico City. More important, the procedures will keep directors thinking about the border and its desperate needs for water, sewage facilities, landfills, road-paving and other projects.
These utilities and services are the building blocks for economic development, and the fast-growing border zone deserves more attention than it has received.
The sense of NADBank's rebirth filled the City Council chambers, which was packed with local and state officials from both sides of the border, all anticipating a liberated and empowered NADBank.
English and Spanish testimony from mayors, city managers, state water commissioners, utility executives and river authority executive directors educated the directors on the hard-to-imagine scope of projects the border region needs.
The Nueces River Authority will be applying, for example, for a loan to build a landfill transfer station so garbage generated around Garner State Park won't have to be trucked to San Antonio landfills.
The El Paso Water Utility wants to engage NADBank as a partner for its master plan of water development projects along that section of the border.
On and on the testimony went, revealing the pent-up demand from the growing border communities. It all demonstrated what a huge mistake the U.S. and Mexican treasury departments would have made if they had fulfilled their recent ambition to disband the bank.
New policies approved Wednesday include:
A better-funded, permanent landfill grant program to replace the pilot program NADBank had started. Landfill projects will be extended to 163 miles south of the border to include many small communities without landfills, dramatically improving the environment.
Setting aside as much as $50 million in grants for NADBank to insert in loans for water, sewage and other projects, greatly reducing the debt communities must repay for better utilities. The lower debt means utility bills will become more affordable for border residents.
This is a model that worldwide development banks need to follow. Many banks think of loans and grants separately. Those tools often fail by themselves, but combining them can help communities establish credit for future investments.
Loans of up to 85 percent of project costs, 100 percent for projects costing less than $1 million. That is an increase from a 50 percent limit.
Synchronization of project financing between NADBank and the Border Environment Cooperation Commission, which certifies projects for NADBank assistance. Before, NADBank sometimes had to put together financing before the project design was finished and had to start again if the cost ended up different.
"The main thing NADBank needs to do is stick to its knitting," Peel stressed, and to show more results for border residents.
NADBank always had the yarn, in terms of hundreds of millions of dollars in capital from the U.S. and Mexican governments. Now it has the needles, hooks, row counters, combs, stitch holders and other tools it needs to make something happen.
The border will be dressed better than ever in the coming years.
http://www.mysanantonio.com/business/columnists/dhendricks/stories/MYSA062406.1D.hendricks.19bfa9.html