Free Republic

Austin, Tex. – The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) announced it will form a working group to develop a financial master plan a Ports-to-Plains Corridor, which would create new jobs and economic opportunity for West Texas. Ports-to-Plains is a proposed divided highway corridor stretching from Laredo on the Mexican border, through Midland/Odessa, Lubbock, and Amarillo in West Texas north to Denver, Colorado. Designated as a High Priority Corridor by Congress in 1998, the Ports-to-Plains corridor is intended to expand economic opportunity and serve international trade from Mexico to Canada. Despite the congressional designation, adequate federal funding has not been provided...

"The NAFTA Superhighway stops here, at the border with Oklahoma," Randy Brogdon, a Republican state senator who has championed the fight to keep the Trans-Texas Corridor out of Oklahoma, told a packed 300-person audience at the first public meeting of OK-SAFE in Tulsa on Saturday. Oklahomans for Sovereignty and Free Enterprise, Inc. is a non-profit, Oklahoma corporation set up to oppose the NAFTA Superhighway and the North American Union, as threats to the sovereignty of the United States. Brogdon objected to the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America www.spp.gov, arguing that President Bush had entered the agreement after secret...

A House resolution urging President Bush "not to go forward with the North American Union or the NAFTA Superhighway system" is – according to its sponsor Rep. Virgil Goode, R-Va., in an exclusive WND interview – "also a message to both the executive branch and the legislative branch." As WND previously reported, on Jan. 22 Goode introduced H.C.R. 40, titled "Expressing the sense of Congress that the United States should not engage in the construction of a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Superhighway System or enter into a North American Union with Mexico and Canada." The bill has been...

...[The building of the Trans-Texas Corridor] is all too sinister for Jerome Corsi, the Vietnam War veteran who helped lead the Swift Boat charge against John Kerry. Corsi has knitted disparate strands of each of these separate road projects to help convince fellow xenophobes such as Pat Buchanan, Phyllis Schlafly, Lou Dobbs and the John Birch Society that the corridor is the first leg of a secret federal project called the NAFTA Superhighway, a four-football-field wide monstrosity that would run from Mexico's Yucatan to Canada's Yukon... Yet even Texas Rep. Ron Paul, a libertarian Republican candidate for president, has fallen...

Amid the din over parity in the Canada-US dollar exchange rate came some quieter good news. Yesterday's signing of a fresh protocol to the Canada-US tax treaty promises a different sort of parity for lenders and borrowers either side of the border. The agreement touches several important issues. The primary one affecting investment is the coming elimination of withholding taxes on cross-border interest payments. If the protocol is ratified in Canada and the U.S. before the end of 2007, interest paid to unrelated parties across the border, beginning in 2008, will be spared the present 10% withholding tax. For interest...

"According to some US experts, some US$ 20 trillion in worthless securities exist, putting US and European banks are at risk. Asia should avoid the worse. A new North American currency, the Amero, is making news."> According to US financial analyst Mike Whitney[1], a mountain of unfunded, unregulated paper worth more than US$ 20 trillion might be out there [2]. Apparently, no one, neither the general public nor professionals on Wall Street, has yet to realise the extent of the hole, a hole of 20 trillion dollars with no market, nor value. Even if the Federal Reserve were to ease...

The U.S. is known for its "paranoid style" of politics, so brace yourself for the next Big Scare coming down the pike (literally) -- the Trans-Texas Corridor. Isolationist conservatives, emboldened by their jihad last year against the Dubai Ports World deal, have identified this road project as the spearhead of a conspiracy to dissolve the United States of America. The corridor is a proposed two-phase project meant to ensure that the Lone Star State has the transportation infrastructure necessary to handle the growing international commerce coming across the border. The 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement has doubled U.S.-Mexico trade,...

In the lives of men and nations, either you are growing or you're dying. In our time, the Soviet Union imploded, China is adding back lost colonies, and Europe is now the European Union. So why did the United States stop growing? And what will our next five states be? If America doesn't add a new star before I die, I'll be the first Barnett -- in a long line of Barnetts -- to be born and die under the same flag. That just ain't right. Men and nations change. Travel back with me and track the growth of these...

The Interstate 69 corridor is one of six highways selected for a new federal program to develop multi-state corridors to help reduce congestion, according to Texas transportation officials. Interstate 69 from Texas to Michigan, and Interstate 10 from California through Texas to Florida, were among the highways selected by the U.S. Department of Transportation as part of its "Corridors of the Future" program.It is aimed at developing innovative national and regional approaches to reduce congestion and improve efficiency of freight delivery, according to Marcus Sandifer, spokesman for the Texas Department of Transportation's Atlanta District. Eight states, including Texas, will divide...

The Interstate 69 corridor, a Mexico-to-Canada concept discussed since 1991, has received government recognition as a "corridor of the future," a designation that immediately means $800,000 in federal money for studies. Local officials say it could mean more trade in South Texas. The corridor -- a 2,680-mile international trade route from Mexico to Canada also known as the Trans-Texas Corridor-69 -- was one of two designated Tuesday as corridors of the future. Interstate 10 from California to Florida also received recognition. Hailed as a route that would facilitate trade resulting from the North American Free Trade Agreement, I-69's Texas portion...

WASHINGTON - The Senate voted Tuesday to ban Mexican trucks from U.S. roadways, rekindling a more than decade-old trade dispute with Mexico. By a 74-24 vote, the Senate approved a proposal by Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., prohibiting the Transportation Department from spending money on a North American Free Trade Agreement pilot program giving Mexican trucks access to U.S. highways. The proposal is part of a $106 billion transportation and housing spending bill that the Senate hopes to vote on later this week. The House approved a similar provision to Dorgan's in July as part of its version of the transportation...

It's now leaking out that there was more going on than met the eye at the Security and Prosperity Partnership Summit in Montebello, Canada, in August. The three amigos - President George W. Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexican President Felipe Calderon - finalized and released the "North American Plan for Avian & Pandemic Influenza." The "Plan" - that's what they call it, with a capital P - is to use the excuse of a major flu epidemic to shift powers from U.S. legislatures to unelected, unaccountable "North American" bureaucrats. This idea was launched on Sept. 14, 2005,...

The three-nation summit at Montebello, Quebec, was held behind closed doors, well guarded behind an intimidating fence and plenty of police, but the news conference that followed on August 21 revealed more than the three heads of state had planned. President George W. Bush, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and Mexican President Felipe Calderon all refused to deny that the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) is a stepping stone toward a North American Union. The $64,000 question was posed by a Fox News reporter, Bret Baier. He asked all three heads of state, "Can you say today that this is not...

An agreement announced by Transport Canada last month advances toward reality the massive planning that has been done to develop the NAFTA Superhighway in Canada. A July 30 press release on the website of Transport Canada, the Canadian government's counterpart to the U.S. Department of Transportation, announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding, or MOU, between the governments of Canada and the provinces of Ontario and Quebec to develop the "Continental Gateway and Trade Corridor." The memorandum noted Ontario and Quebec are "vital contributors to the Canadian economy representing approximately 60 percent of Canada's exports and gross domestic product."...

MEXICO CITY — President Felipe Calderon blasted U.S. immigration policies on Sunday and promised to fight harder to protect the rights of Mexicans in the U.S., saying "Mexico does not end at its borders." The criticism earned Calderon a standing ovation during his first state-of-the nation address. "We strongly protest the unilateral measures taken by the U.S. Congress and government that have only persecuted and exacerbated the mistreatment of Mexican undocumented workers," he said. "The insensitivity toward those who support the U.S. economy and society has only served as an impetus to reinforce the battle ... for their rights." He...

SAN FRANCISCO - The Bush administration can go ahead with a pilot program to allow as many as 100 Mexican trucking companies to freely haul their cargo anywhere within the U.S. for the next year, a federal appeals court ruled Friday. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied a request made by the Teamsters union, the Sierra Club and the nonprofit Public Citizen to halt the program. The appeals court ruled the groups have not satisfied the legal requirements to immediately stop what the government is calling a "demonstration project," but can continue to argue their case. The trucking...

The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America summit in Canada released a plan that established U.N. law along with regulations by the World Trade Organization and World Health Organization as supreme over U.S. law and set the stage for militarizing the management of continental health emergencies. The "North American Plan for Avian & Pandemic Influenza" was finalized at the SPP summit last week in Montebello, Quebec. At the same time, the U.S. Northern Command, or NORTHCOM, has created a webpage dedicated to avian flu and has been running exercises in preparation for the possible use of U.S. military forces...

The August 21, 2007 Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) summit in Montebello, Quebec with U.S. President Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Harper and Mexican President Calderon was held behind closed doors. Nothing of substance has been reported by the press, even though several major media outlets attended the event. To understand what might have happened, we can turn to an August 13 policy conference that was held in Washington, DC. Titled "The Montebello Summit and the Future of North America," the conference presented three panels of global thinkers, including Dr. Robert A. Pastor, to prognosticate on the past, present and future...

The requirements for the U.S. Department of Transportation's Mexican Truck Demonstration Project have been met, and some 37 Mexican trucking companies have been approved to run their long-haul rigs through the U.S. starting as early as Sept. 1, according to a Mexican government report. In the United States, the inspector general of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration on Aug. 6 issued to the House and Senate Appropriations Committee an audit about implementing NAFTA's cross-border trucking provisions, the last hurdle DOT faced before allowing the Mexican truck demonstration project to begin. As required by Congress, the report was withheld from...

Bush denies superstate rumours August 22, 2007 By Jon Ward - MONTEBELLO, Quebec — President Bush and the leaders of Canada and Mexico yesterday ridiculed the notion that their countries are conspiring to create a regional supergovernment similar to the European Union. "I'm amused by the difference between what actually takes place in the meetings and by what some are trying to say takes place," said Mr. Bush, responding to concerns raised by conservative and liberal groups and some U.S. lawmakers. "It's quite comical actually, to realize the difference between reality and what some people on TV are talking about."...