Ah blow my nose at you, so-called "Arthur Keeeng"! You and all your silly English Knnnnnnnn-ighuts!!!
Posted on 06/16/2006 10:20:30 AM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
A MASSIVE road four football fields wide and running from Mexico to Canada through the heartland of the United States is being proposed amid controversy over security and the damage to the environment.
The "nation's most modern roadway", proposed between Laredo in Texas and Duluth, Minnesota, along Interstate 35, would allow the US to bypass the west coast ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to import goods from China and the Far East into the heart of middle America via Mexico, saving both cost and time.
However, critics argue that the ten-lane road would lay a swathe of concrete on top of an already over-developed transport infrastructure and further open the border with Mexico to illegal immigrants or terrorists.
According to a weekly Conservative magazine published in the US, the US administration is "quietly yet systematically" planning the massive highway, citing as a benefit that it would negate the power of two unions, the Longshoremen and Teamsters.
Another source claimed the highway was a "bi-partisan effort" with support from both Republicans and Democrats that would reduce freight transport times across the nation by days.
Under the plan - believed to be an extension of a strategic transportation plan signed in March last year by the US president, George Bush, Paul Martin, the then prime minister of Canada, and Vincente Fox, the Mexican president - imported goods would pass a border "road bump" in the Mexican port of Lazaro Cardenas, before being loaded on to lorries for a straight run to a major hub, or "SmartPort", in Kansas, Oklahoma.
Border guards and customs officers would check the electronic security tags of lorries and their holds at a £1.6 million facility being built in Kansas City, before sending them on to the road network that links the US cities of Chicago, Minneapolis and Detroit with Ottawa, Winnipeg and Vancouver across the Canadian border.
Rail tracks and pipelines for oil and natural gas would run alongside the road.
Following the release of a 4,000-page environmental study, construction of the first leg of the Trans-Texas Corridor is reportedly due to begin next year, backed by US state and governmental agencies and a Spanish private sector company, Concessions de Infraestructuras de Transporte.
Tiffany Melvin, the executive director of Nasco, a non-profit organisation which has received £1.4 million from the US Department of Transport to study the proposal, said: "We're working on developing the existing system; these highways were developed in the 1950s and we have number of different programmes we're working on to provide alternative fuels and improve safety and security issues.
"We get comments that we are working to bring in terrorists and drug dealers, but this is simply not true.
"This is a bi-partisan effort that will ultimately improve our transportation infrastructure.
"Trade with China is increasing greatly, and the costs of our transportation system are ultimately born by the consumer.
"We do offer links to Canada and Mexico, but we are working on the trade competitiveness of America. We are planning for the future."
Eric Olson, the transportation spokesmen for the California-based Sierra Club, a national environmental awareness organisation, said the road would cause significant damage.
"Something on that scale would have a massive environmental impact," he said.
"Building a large-scale new highway does not seem like the best solution.
"There is a great need for fixing our existing roads and bridges. That needs to be a priority before we start building new massive road projects."
Forget it, Washington Republicans and Democrats alike consider us so unsophisticated, uneducated, uninformed that it's not worth their time to ask for our opinion or approval. Just keep paying your taxes and watching American Idol, and they'll take care of running the country for us.
Ah, I forgot about those articles. You're probably correct. Thanks. - OB1
lots of liberals need lawn services.
What are they going to do? Send the Spanish military over here to STOP the Army from using the road? We'll send 'em back home with their Euro-statist tails between their legs!
The weather, perhaps?
I don't think most Mexicans know about snow shovels...
bump.
Indeed. They won't really need the swimwear unless they they head for the Northwest Corner. The beaches there are so nice...at least until the mutant mosquitos carry you off.
I think Tariffs are starting to go the way of the Dinosaur world wide. It is the trend. I don't think starting to fund a Government on Tariffs, like it was 1830 and we have Andrew Jackson as President, is great idea. Now a National sales tax instead of a income tax. That I could get down with.
"I don't think most Mexicans know about snow shovels..."
I dunno. They're fast learners. I'm hoping to hire a nice illegal to do my driveway next year. I'm getting too darned old to walk behind my snowblower. Plus, with my full beard, I always have icicles down to my chest afterwards. [grin]
We were told the reason for the Interrsate Highway System was indeed for increased mobility of troops. But with an ocean on each coast, a Normandy-like invasion would be extremely unlikely and mass troop movements to combat it an even more remote possibility.
No, the system was built to give the federal government control over interstate transportation and movement. We were sold a bill of goods. Just as the Feds give schools money then tell them how to spend it, they built highways and then proceeded to regulate their use.
I know someone will say my tinfoil hat is on too tightly, but I believe we are once again seeing "a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object", only this time the "object" is a one-world-government. This transportation corridor would be a concrete (no pun intended) method of dividing the USA in half and allowing our enemies better opportunities to take over individual states.
Bump! It is pretty clear. This is not tinfoil or Koolaid, it is so brazen it is pathetic...and the apologists for it are worse than that. They are criminal con men.
I hope it's not too late to stop this Utopian crap because it will be the end of the country if it's not stopped.
Just pulling the financing plug at Congress...and preventing any toll road... would likely stop it dead in its tracks. The Walmart, Ace Hardware, Home Depot crowd won't want to pay for this puppy themselves. They want the suckers, oops, I mean the taxpayers to fund it all.
" it would negate the power of two unions, the Longshoremen and Teamsters."
You just convinced me. Do it.
You need to elaborate a little more. Are you suggesting that should the U.S. military use force to open a U.S. Interstate in the name of national security, it is some sort of a treaty violation?
I disagree.
Every major military installation, Army, Navy, and AF has an interstate highway passing its gate.
It can be argued that the military necessity for the highway system has gone away, since deployment now is mostly by heavy lift aircraft, but the equipment still has to be moved from factory to military bases via ground.
"Trade with China is increasing greatly"
We could always reverse this trend. This whole thing smells.
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