Free Republic

Executives of large corporations, their bankers and their allies in Congress and the White House have worked together to export our manufacturing industries and their high paying jobs to China, India and Mexico. Now they need your tax money to get the goods from their foreign factories back to your hometown where income from jobs that now pay lower wages can buy their imported products. You see, there are not enough ports and highways to handle the flood of imports from their foreign factories. In the process, they want to hasten formation of the North American Union (NAU) through construction...

A coalition to stop the Trans-Texas Corridor voiced its concerns Sunday in Austin, citing border security and gun rights as key issues not being addressed. The large crowd in attendance at the meeting represented a cross section of Texans and included a veterans group out of Houston. “We didn’t fight a war so our government could give away our land,” said ret. Col. Sam Horton of Houston. World War II veteran, ret. Col. Arthur Peterson of Houston, said national security is at stake because the Gov. Rick Perry-supported transportation project would help erase borders between the United States and Mexico...

Rebellion is brewing among conservatives on the Republican National Committee over President's Bush's attempt to "impose" Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida as "general chairman" of the party, who favors "amnesty" for illegal aliens. "I will be voting against Senator Martinez if he is nominated for any chairmanship of the RNC," Tina Benkiser, Texas Republican Party chairman, told The Washington Times yesterday. Bill Crocker, the elected national committeeman from Texas, says that when the RNC convenes here tomorrow, "Absolutely, I will vote against Martinez." The conservatives -- one of whom accused the Bush White House of "outsourcing" party leadership -- say...

Four thousand miles of smooth blacktop. Six open lanes of road with never a traffic jam. Four lanes for trucks to keep the 18-wheelers from bothering Joe Motorist. High-speed rail to get you from San Antonio to Dallas in just a couple of comfy hours. Oil, gas, and water lines running from Oklahoma to the Mexican border. Handy motels, shops, and gas stations to keep you from having to get off the road until you hit the state line. That’s the dream of the backers of the Trans-Texas Corridor, the biggest public works project in the history of the state...

Union Pacific is asking the Federal Railroad Administration to allow a train that regularly originates in Mexico to undergo safety inspections south of the border and enter without any checks in the U.S. The FRA has scheduled a waiver hearing on the matter Feb. 7 in Laredo, Texas, The United Transportation Union, a broad-based labor union headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, opposes the move. "Already at war with many of its customers over poor service and escalating prices, Union Pacific now is seeking authority to avoid safety inspections on U.S. soil and run trains from Mexico as far as 1,500 miles...

Mike Medved has become unglued, unhinged and irrational over WND's reporting and my analysis of the PLOT to erase North America's borders and move the U.S., Mexico and Canada into a European Union-style merger. I dealt with his rantings on this subject last week and hoped to be done with it. But, while I was away last week, he stepped up the personal attacks on his blog and his syndicated radio program. "I'm greatly encouraged by the lengthy, indignant responses by prominent scare-mongers Joe Farah and Jerome Corsi to my on-air and on-blog denunciation … of their self-promoting paranoia regarding...

I’m greatly encouraged by the lengthy, indignant responses by prominent scare-mongers Joe Farah and Jerome Corsi to my on-air and on-blog denunciation (“Shame on Demagogues for Exploiting ‘North American Union’!”, 12/28) of their self-promoting paranoia regarding an alleged conspiracy to merge the US, Canada and Mexico. The defensive tone of their commentary suggests that these two have been appropriately embarrassed: Farah, in particular, dramatically deescalated his rhetoric. While previous commentary on WorldNetDaily prominently and regularly featured the noun “plot” in defining this non-issue, his answer to my purposefully harsh attack omits that key word entirely and uses language in a...

Conservative blogger John Hawkins of Right Wing News has now decided to join Michael Medved in a new ad hominem attack by using a disparaging adjective to call me a name (“kooky”) and placing me No. 3 in the list of the 20 “people on the right” he finds most annoying. Hawkins places me between No. 2 Mark Foley, whom Hawkins characterizes as a “page-molesting pervert,” and No. 4 Duke Cunningham, the congressman Hawkins notes is “going to jail for 8 years after taking a bribe.” I am honored to be included on any list John Hawkins wishes to create....

Toll-road skeptics and others who oppose long-term leases on Texas roads to private companies, especially foreign ones, are citing the work of a Texas Transportation Institute scholar to make their case for traditional road financing with fuel taxes. Ironically, the findings by associate research scientist David Ellis appear in a report by the Governor's Business Council. And the council, reflecting Gov. Rick Perry's own strong views, is very much in favor of tolls. Caught in the middle, Ellis says his work is being misinterpreted. "People find in there what they want to find and read what they want to read,"...

Today I spent a few minutes listening to another nationally syndicated talk radio show and felt outraged and embarrassed to hear the guest host (an otherwise bright and well-informed conservative) facilitating the twisted, ignorant mounting public hysteria over the looming menace of a “North American Union.” This paranoid and groundless frenzy has been fomented and promoted by a shameless collection of lunatics and losers; crooks, cranks, demagogues and opportunists, who claim the existence of a top secret master plan to join the U.S., Canada and Mexico in one big super-state and to replace the good old Yankee dollar with a...

PHOENIX - A veteran Republican lawmaker is accusing President Bush of pushing a behind-the-scenes agenda that will result in the United States being merged with Mexico and Canada. State Sen. Karen Johnson, R-Mesa, said she believes the Security and Prosperity Partnership, being run out of the White House and the U.S. Department of Commerce, is little more than a secret plan to end U.S. sovereignty by 2010. And she said Congress is being kept in the dark until the point that it becomes a done deal. Johnson, who will head the Senate Education Committee this coming session, said the signs...

Could the Dollar's Collapse Prompt a New Currency? by Jerome R. CorsiPosted Dec 20, 2006A large and growing trade deficit with China under NAFTA threatens a dollar decline that could well set the stage for the emergence of the Amero as a unified North American currency. In 2005, the U.S. balance of trade deficit with China was $201 billion, a 25% increase over 2004. In 2006, China’s foreign exchange reserves topped $1 trillion, a staggering amount considering that before 1979 China’s foreign exchange reserves had never surpassed $1 billion. Approximately 70% of China’s foreign exchange reserves, some $700 billion, are...

Anger. Confusion. Concern. These were just some feelings that the majority of people in the packed Collin County Central Jury Room expressed in the three-hour-long public hearing held Tuesday night about the technically preferred alignment of the Outer Loop. About 16 people officially spoke during the public comment period of the meeting, where the court voted 4-1 to approve the technically preferred alignment. Commissioner Joe Jaynes made the motion to approve the alignment, Commissioner Phyllis Cole seconded the motion, and Commissioners Jack Hatchell and Jerry Hoagland voted to approve the alignment. County Judge Ron Harris voted against the motion. He...

Ric Williamson, a former state legislator and longtime pal of Gov. Rick Perry, runs the monthly meetings of the Texas Transportation Commission like a traffic cop. Staff members give brisk status reports before Williamson dismisses them so the next bureaucrat can take the podium. If members of the public embark on a diatribe, Williamson will let them prattle on with an air of friendly indulgence. Then, rounding his shoulders and leaning forward—using body language no doubt perfected when he and Perry were freshmen state representatives harrying their elders—he’ll pleasantly announce that their time is up. As commission chairman, Williamson sits...

Robert Pastor, a leading intellectual force in the move to create an EU-style North American Community, told WND he believes a new 9/11 crisis could be the catalyst to merge the U.S., Mexico and Canada. Pastor, a professor at American University, says that in such a case the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, or SPP – launched in 2005 by the heads of the three countries at a summit in Waco, Texas – could be developed into a continental union, complete with a new currency, the amero, that would replace the U.S. dollar just as the euro has...

Slowly but surely, retired United Airline Capt. Ray Lahr and attorney John Clarke are prying open the can of worms known as the TWA Flight 800 investigation, and sooner or later the major media will have to take notice. WABC in New York already has. Two weeks ago, the station's Jim Hoffer did a short feature headlined "Major court ruling in TWA Flight 800 case." What proved to be most newsworthy about the feature, however, was not the ruling in question but a surprising admission by former NTSB managing director Peter Goelz. As Hoffer noted, and has been reported here...

A new study throws cold water on a long-cherished claim of toll road advocates, surprising some of them, and could redefine a debate over if and how Texas should toll its highways. For more than a year now, state officials have scared the dickens out of motorists by saying the gas tax would have to go up $1.20 a gallon to build all the roads needed statewide over the next quarter-century. That would almost triple the 38.4 cents drivers now pay in federal and state fuel taxes. Since that's politically impossible to do, the argument goes, toll roads should be...

Texas' gasoline tax has been stuck at 20 cents per gallon since 1991. Unfortunately, the cost of building new roads and expanding existing ones is no longer anywhere near the levels of 1991. Fifteen years of inflation have sharply increased the cost of building new highways, as well as expanding and maintaining existing ones. In terms of purchasing power, the 20-cent gas tax is now worth only about 14 cents when adjusted for inflation. Meanwhile, Texas' need for more roads is greatly expanding because of the population explosion that has occurred over the past 15 years and is expected to...

I found the comments by Robert Pastor in the Dec. 1 guest commentary, “Making a competitive continent,” to be most interesting. He sells his ideas with positive-sounding phrases like “opportunity to reinvigorate a deteriorating relationship” and “markets for U.S. goods.” Dr. Pastor hints at some of his ideas for achieving these and other goals, but apparently he thinks we’re not ready to hear about his ultimate goal, a North American Union. As in … no more independent United States of America. I think a little background on Mr. Pastor is in order. One of the principal authors of the Security...

Lockheed Martin is working with North America's SuperCorridor Coalition – the Dallas-based trade association – on a $40 million deal to build high-tech sensors to track cargo remotely along a superhighway stretching from Texas to Canada. John Mohler, a senior vice president at Lockheed told the "North America Works II" transportation conference last week in Kansas City that 14 sensor locations would be established in the next three months to track specific cargo shipments along the NASCO corridor The superhighway incorporates Interstates 35, 29 and 94. The sensor locations would include the Mexican port of Lázaro Cárdenas; Laredo, Texas; Kansas...