Replies

There is very little substance to what Corsi is trying to imply. He is looking at the sun rising in the east and setting in the west and deducing that the sun revolves around the earth. What he is looking at are a bunch of projects pretty much independent but with some attempts at coordination to better handle increased trade and attract more of the jobs related to trade. It isn't a sinister Buildaburger plot, but various trade groups, shippers, developers, warehousers, retailers, construction companies, truckers, railroads, local gov't's, states, etc. all trying to get more pieces of the pie. Many of the proposals are in competetion with each other, KC is fighting Houston, San Antonio, DFW, LA, Phoenix, St. Louis, Memphis, on and on and on.

The shift to more imports from China isn't perfect and for some is painful, but it is hard to stop the market from seeking its own course. I can understand arguments for more protectionism, even if I disagree and think that in the long run that would hurt our economy more than help. And there are some risks associated with streamlining the border crossings, though nowhere near what has been portrayed. My main point is that all these efforts are not part of a grand sinister secret plot, but simply a bunch of different efforts at econ. development and capturing some of that business, with some coordination but no single group driving it.

Actually it is more groups trying to jump onto and profit from changes and trends. For the states, instead of having traffic overwhelm already clogged highways why not go ahead and build capacity, and let private companies build these toll roads instead of taxpayers, and funnel trucks onto these toll roads and off of the free interstates. So Texas started planning for this, and other states such as OK, IN, and FL saw it and studied it to see if it might work there, too. Meanwhile the feds are saying that they aren't going to have money to build all the proposals like I-69 (remember that many earlier projects were built with as much as 80-90% fed funding), so there is a natural desire on both the state and fed level to turn to tolling, and private firms are more efficient at building, operating, and maintaining than gov't. Plus a lot of these road proposals were cooked up to direct traffic (and the resulting jobs) to their area, whether it be KC, OKC, Memphis, or Indiana. So when a group with a marketable concept like NAFTA corridor (or NASCA, or whatever) comes along and it looks like they can use it to push for their area, they jump on it.

Then you have a railroad (KCS) that bought a Mexican railroad and spent a lot of money fixing it up. But they need help building their own tracks between their Mexican franchise and their existing lines in Beaumont (they use other railroad's tracks in between, which slows them down and costs them rent.) The more traffic they can gin up, the more profit they can make, so they are pushing KC, just like they're pushing Ohio, Houston, and the Southeast. They went to the state, and proposed the state give them a low-interest loan to build the line and in turn they'd build an intermodal terminal (just like KC's) in Houston, which would add more jobs and lower freight rates by adding competition. So the state and the railroad cooperate. Nothing sinister, not really coordinated with all the other groups, but there is overlap so someone just quickly looking superficially could jump to the conclusion that it is a grand conspiracy. It isn't, it is bottom up ideas, with some gathering enough support to tie together various supporters.