The Next SuperHighway
There are many who agree that the North American Free Trade Act, also known as NAFTA, has been disastrous for our economy. More than just an agreement with neighbor trading states, NAFTA is a treaty which supersedes our Constitution and is the root of tremendous job loss in the rust belt; over 600,000 good paying jobs are gone forever.
Our main trading partner in the North American Free Trade Agreement is Mexico. Yet, the Mexican economy has little to offer the United States in terms of bilatteral trade. But the intention was never really free trade with Mexico was it? With over ten years in play, the truth of NAFTA is now obvious. NAFTA was designed to reduce labor costs and environmental obstacles and to bypass other so-called trade barriers such as labor unions and worker safety.
The ultimate dream of neo-liberalism is unfettered free trade without the safeguards of environmental standards and without the unpleasant demurral complaints of labor unions on such topics as labor rights and living wages. So far, the neo-liberals are realizing their goals while America sleeps, unaware of the latest development in the free trade saga.
I submit an article by a well known conservative about the NAFTA Superhighway. The NAFTA Superhigh is a massive public works project which the Bush Administration is secretly promoting. The plan is to build a huge super highway, four football-fields-wide, through the heart of the U.S. along Interstate 35, from the Mexican border at Laredo, Tex., to the Canadian border north of Duluth, Minn.
The project serves as a testimony to the reality that NAFTA is a losing proposition for Americans of most political and socio-economic persuasions and a win game for the wealthy special interests, CEO's and politicians.
What I find most encouraging though is that many conservatives and liberals agree on a central tennent; NAFTA is bad for America.
Our power is in our solidarity. Yet while our is guard down, our representatives in Washington continue to work behind the scenes, behind our backs, to push for cheaper goods at all costs, to replace good paying jobs for lower paying service sector pursuits and to facilitate our ultimate race to the bottom.
Enjoy the article, but most important… DO SOMETHING!
Bush Administration Quietly Plans NAFTA Super Highway
by Jerome R. CorsiPosted Jun 12, 2006
Quietly but systematically, the Bush Administration is advancing the plan to build a huge NAFTA Super Highway, four football-fields-wide, through the heart of the U.S. along Interstate 35, from the Mexican border at Laredo, Tex., to the Canadian border north of Duluth, Minn.
Once complete, the new road will allow containers from the Far East to enter the United States through the Mexican port of Lazaro Cardenas, bypassing the Longshoreman’s Union in the process. The Mexican trucks, without the involvement of the Teamsters Union, will drive on what will be the nation’s most modern highway straight into the heart of America. The Mexican trucks will cross border in FAST lanes, checked only electronically by the new “SENTRI” system.
The first customs stop will be a Mexican customs office in Kansas City, their new Smart Port complex, a facility being built for Mexico at a cost of $3 million to the U.S. taxpayers in Kansas City. As incredible as this plan may seem to some readers, the first Trans-Texas Corridor segment of the NAFTA Super Highway is ready to begin construction next year. Various U.S. government agencies, dozens of state agencies, and scores of private NGOs (non-governmental organizations) have been working behind the scenes to create the NAFTA Super Highway, despite the lack of comment on the plan by President Bush. The American public is largely asleep to this key piece of the coming “North American Union” that government planners in the new trilateral region of United States, Canada and Mexico are about to drive into reality.
Just examine the following websites to get a feel for the magnitude of NAFTA Super Highway planning that has been going on without any new congressional legislation directly authorizing the construction of the planned international corridor through the center of the country.
NASCO, the North America SuperCorridor Coalition Inc., is a “non-profit organization dedicated to developing the world’s first international, integrated and secure, multi-modal transportation system along the International Mid-Continent Trade and Transportation Corridor to improve both the trade competitiveness and quality of life in North America.” Where does that sentence say anything about the USA? Still, NASCO has received $2.5 million in earmarks from the U.S. Department of Transportation to plan the NAFTA Super Highway as a 10-lane limited-access road (five lanes in each direction) plus passenger and freight rail lines running alongside pipelines laid for oil and natural gas. One glance at the map of the NAFTA Super Highway on the front page of the NASCO website will make clear that the design is to connect Mexico, Canada, and the U.S. into one transportation system.
Kansas City SmartPort Inc. is an “investor based organization supported by the public and private sector” to create the key hub on the NAFTA Super Highway. At the Kansas City SmartPort, the containers from the Far East can be transferred to trucks going east and west, dramatically reducing the ground transportation time dropping the containers off in Los Angeles or Long Beach involves for most of the country. A brochure on the SmartPort website describes the plan in glowing terms: “For those who live in Kansas City, the idea of receiving containers nonstop from the Far East by way of Mexico may sound unlikely, but later this month that seemingly far-fetched notion will become a reality.”
The U.S. government has housed within the Department of Commerce (DOC) an “SPP office” that is dedicated to organizing the many working groups laboring within the executive branches of the U.S., Mexico and Canada to create the regulatory reality for the Security and Prosperity Partnership. The SPP agreement was signed by Bush, President Vicente Fox, and then-Prime Minister Paul Martin in Waco, Tex., on March 23, 2005. According to the DOC website, a U.S.-Mexico Joint Working Committee on Transportation Planning has finalized a plan such that “(m)ethods for detecting bottlenecks on the U.S.-Mexico border will be developed and low cost/high impact projects identified in bottleneck studies will be constructed or implemented.” The report notes that new SENTRI travel lanes on the Mexican border will be constructed this year. The border at Laredo should be reduced to an electronic speed bump for the Mexican trucks containing goods from the Far East to enter the U.S. on their way to the Kansas City SmartPort.
The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) is overseeing the Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC) as the first leg of the NAFTA Super Highway. A 4,000-page environmental impact statement has already been completed and public hearings are scheduled for five weeks, beginning next month, in July 2006. The billions involved will be provided by a foreign company, Cintra Concessions de Infraestructuras de Transporte, S.A. of Spain. As a consequence, the TTC will be privately operated, leased to the Cintra consortium to be operated as a toll-road.
The details of the NAFTA Super Highway are hidden in plan view. Still, Bush has not given speeches to bring the NAFTA Super Highway plans to the full attention of the American public. Missing in the move toward creating a North American Union is the robust public debate that preceded the decision to form the European Union. All this may be for calculated political reasons on the part of the Bush Administration. A good reason Bush does not want to secure the border with Mexico may be that the administration is trying to create express lanes for Mexican trucks to bring containers with cheap Far East goods into the heart of the U.S., all without the involvement of any U.S. union workers on the docks or in the trucks.
Mr. Corsi is the author of several books, including "Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry" (along with John O'Neill), "Black Gold Stranglehold: The Myth of Scarcity and the Politics of Oil" (along with Craig R. Smith), and "Atomic Iran: How the Terrorist Regime Bought the Bomb and American Politicians." He is a frequent guest on the G. Gordon Liddy radio show. He will soon co-author a new book with Jim Gilchrist on the Minuteman Project.
(Source)
There are many who agree that the North American Free Trade Act, also known as NAFTA, has been disastrous for our economy. More than just an agreement with neighbor trading states, NAFTA is a treaty which supersedes our Constitution and is the root of tremendous job loss in the rust belt; over 600,000 good paying jobs are gone forever.
Our main trading partner in the North American Free Trade Agreement is Mexico. Yet, the Mexican economy has little to offer the United States in terms of bilatteral trade. But the intention was never really free trade with Mexico was it? With over ten years in play, the truth of NAFTA is now obvious. NAFTA was designed to reduce labor costs and environmental obstacles and to bypass other so-called trade barriers such as labor unions and worker safety.
The ultimate dream of neo-liberalism is unfettered free trade without the safeguards of environmental standards and without the unpleasant demurral complaints of labor unions on such topics as labor rights and living wages. So far, the neo-liberals are realizing their goals while America sleeps, unaware of the latest development in the free trade saga.
I submit an article by a well known conservative about the NAFTA Superhighway. The NAFTA Superhigh is a massive public works project which the Bush Administration is secretly promoting. The plan is to build a huge super highway, four football-fields-wide, through the heart of the U.S. along Interstate 35, from the Mexican border at Laredo, Tex., to the Canadian border north of Duluth, Minn.
The project serves as a testimony to the reality that NAFTA is a losing proposition for Americans of most political and socio-economic persuasions and a win game for the wealthy special interests, CEO's and politicians.
What I find most encouraging though is that many conservatives and liberals agree on a central tennent; NAFTA is bad for America.
Our power is in our solidarity. Yet while our is guard down, our representatives in Washington continue to work behind the scenes, behind our backs, to push for cheaper goods at all costs, to replace good paying jobs for lower paying service sector pursuits and to facilitate our ultimate race to the bottom.
Enjoy the article, but most important… DO SOMETHING!
Bush Administration Quietly Plans NAFTA Super Highway
by Jerome R. CorsiPosted Jun 12, 2006
Quietly but systematically, the Bush Administration is advancing the plan to build a huge NAFTA Super Highway, four football-fields-wide, through the heart of the U.S. along Interstate 35, from the Mexican border at Laredo, Tex., to the Canadian border north of Duluth, Minn.
Once complete, the new road will allow containers from the Far East to enter the United States through the Mexican port of Lazaro Cardenas, bypassing the Longshoreman’s Union in the process. The Mexican trucks, without the involvement of the Teamsters Union, will drive on what will be the nation’s most modern highway straight into the heart of America. The Mexican trucks will cross border in FAST lanes, checked only electronically by the new “SENTRI” system.
The first customs stop will be a Mexican customs office in Kansas City, their new Smart Port complex, a facility being built for Mexico at a cost of $3 million to the U.S. taxpayers in Kansas City. As incredible as this plan may seem to some readers, the first Trans-Texas Corridor segment of the NAFTA Super Highway is ready to begin construction next year. Various U.S. government agencies, dozens of state agencies, and scores of private NGOs (non-governmental organizations) have been working behind the scenes to create the NAFTA Super Highway, despite the lack of comment on the plan by President Bush. The American public is largely asleep to this key piece of the coming “North American Union” that government planners in the new trilateral region of United States, Canada and Mexico are about to drive into reality.
Just examine the following websites to get a feel for the magnitude of NAFTA Super Highway planning that has been going on without any new congressional legislation directly authorizing the construction of the planned international corridor through the center of the country.
NASCO, the North America SuperCorridor Coalition Inc., is a “non-profit organization dedicated to developing the world’s first international, integrated and secure, multi-modal transportation system along the International Mid-Continent Trade and Transportation Corridor to improve both the trade competitiveness and quality of life in North America.” Where does that sentence say anything about the USA? Still, NASCO has received $2.5 million in earmarks from the U.S. Department of Transportation to plan the NAFTA Super Highway as a 10-lane limited-access road (five lanes in each direction) plus passenger and freight rail lines running alongside pipelines laid for oil and natural gas. One glance at the map of the NAFTA Super Highway on the front page of the NASCO website will make clear that the design is to connect Mexico, Canada, and the U.S. into one transportation system.
Kansas City SmartPort Inc. is an “investor based organization supported by the public and private sector” to create the key hub on the NAFTA Super Highway. At the Kansas City SmartPort, the containers from the Far East can be transferred to trucks going east and west, dramatically reducing the ground transportation time dropping the containers off in Los Angeles or Long Beach involves for most of the country. A brochure on the SmartPort website describes the plan in glowing terms: “For those who live in Kansas City, the idea of receiving containers nonstop from the Far East by way of Mexico may sound unlikely, but later this month that seemingly far-fetched notion will become a reality.”
The U.S. government has housed within the Department of Commerce (DOC) an “SPP office” that is dedicated to organizing the many working groups laboring within the executive branches of the U.S., Mexico and Canada to create the regulatory reality for the Security and Prosperity Partnership. The SPP agreement was signed by Bush, President Vicente Fox, and then-Prime Minister Paul Martin in Waco, Tex., on March 23, 2005. According to the DOC website, a U.S.-Mexico Joint Working Committee on Transportation Planning has finalized a plan such that “(m)ethods for detecting bottlenecks on the U.S.-Mexico border will be developed and low cost/high impact projects identified in bottleneck studies will be constructed or implemented.” The report notes that new SENTRI travel lanes on the Mexican border will be constructed this year. The border at Laredo should be reduced to an electronic speed bump for the Mexican trucks containing goods from the Far East to enter the U.S. on their way to the Kansas City SmartPort.
The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) is overseeing the Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC) as the first leg of the NAFTA Super Highway. A 4,000-page environmental impact statement has already been completed and public hearings are scheduled for five weeks, beginning next month, in July 2006. The billions involved will be provided by a foreign company, Cintra Concessions de Infraestructuras de Transporte, S.A. of Spain. As a consequence, the TTC will be privately operated, leased to the Cintra consortium to be operated as a toll-road.
The details of the NAFTA Super Highway are hidden in plan view. Still, Bush has not given speeches to bring the NAFTA Super Highway plans to the full attention of the American public. Missing in the move toward creating a North American Union is the robust public debate that preceded the decision to form the European Union. All this may be for calculated political reasons on the part of the Bush Administration. A good reason Bush does not want to secure the border with Mexico may be that the administration is trying to create express lanes for Mexican trucks to bring containers with cheap Far East goods into the heart of the U.S., all without the involvement of any U.S. union workers on the docks or in the trucks.
Mr. Corsi is the author of several books, including "Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry" (along with John O'Neill), "Black Gold Stranglehold: The Myth of Scarcity and the Politics of Oil" (along with Craig R. Smith), and "Atomic Iran: How the Terrorist Regime Bought the Bomb and American Politicians." He is a frequent guest on the G. Gordon Liddy radio show. He will soon co-author a new book with Jim Gilchrist on the Minuteman Project.
(Source)
posted by Van at 6:10 AM
8 Comments:
Thank you TL - I completely agree, Clinton and the Democrats are complicit in destroying the middle-class too. Even more so than the Rebublicans in Congress now.
In fact, it was George Bush Sr who was against it, at least initially.
Basically, our elected representatives have sold us out, and the sad thing is that most people are completely unaware.
I think that most people actually trust our represented officials to do the right thing, sadly this is not the case -- they are serving their own interests at this moment in our history.
This will change once Washington adopts Clean Elections.
It may take 50 years, but the need for Clean Elections will eventually be realized by the average working stiffs.
I find it interesting that so many high ranking conservatives are speaking out against these policies.
In my personal life I've come across many former conservatives and disillusioned citizens.
I just hope that the Democrats will fill the gap soon.
They seem to be in a state of flux.
"Basically, our elected representatives have sold us out, and the sad thing is that most people are completely unaware." (Van)
You're 100% right about this.
In any democracy MONEY TALKS!
McCain-Feingold isn't going to stop that, monied interests are going to be able to buy more access, either by going directly to elected politicians through paid Lobbyists, or through the media, either by paying ad fees to a corporate media, or by setting up their own programming, as some have done now.
That is NOT a "flaw within democracy."
It's the very nature of democracy.
The flaw is human nature, which cannot be overcome. Many politicians saw in Free Trade, a way to gain tremendous wealth without much risk, either in the form of financial exposure or political risk and took it.
They didn't need to be coaxed or convinced. They're human and have human natures.
HI JMK - as usual I appreciate your comments.
Especially this one, "In any democracy MONEY TALKS!"
This is why I am working to educate the public about Clean Elections, take the money out of politics then back room deals are less attractive.
Now there will always be covert meetings, secret deals, and guided self interests that do not reflect the whole, but if monied interests are out of politics and PAC influence is limited, we may have something of a represenative democracy in the United States.
Human nature is flawed - that's why we have ethics committies. But democracy is worth fighting for, right?
Here's the problem with that, Van.
The people within the process (the political process) are motivated by money and have long been. Way back to the Tammany Hall days in NYC, politicians called "advance knowledge of what government was about to do (ie. a pol knowing that certain land was about to become a lot more valuable due to an upcoming development deal and buying it on the cheap to cash in at the high) "Honest Graft."
A great read about that is a book called "Plunkett of Tammany Hall."
We wrongly blame lobbyists, which is like blaming drug users for the drug problem - it's the suppliers drug lords and politicians who create the source and the problem.
I once thought that only the eradication of the Political Party would bring us closer to fair/clean elections.
It may well be so, but it's a mammoth uphill battle - the political party is not only a time honored tradition, but one supported by all our monied interests as well.
It's a real David vs Goliath battle.
That's a a huge order Van.
The problem is that as corrupt as our political system is, it is backed primarily by virtually ALL our monied interests.
Moreover, political corruption is the rule NOT the exception, going back, in this country, to the Tammany Hall days in NYC, where pols back then called gaining by "advance knowledge" (ie. knowing that a certain property will become a lot more valuable due to an upcoming development and buying it low to sell it on speculation later) was called "Honest Graft."
A great read on this is a book called "Plunkett of Tammany Hall."
I once thought that the only way to get fair/clean elections would be through the eradication of the Political Party, but that is tilting at windmills.
The Political Party is not merely a time-honored tradition, but one supported by America's main monied interests as "the only game in toen."
Yours is trule a "David vs Goliath" battle.
I agree that Clean Elections will be an uphill battle, especially considering the recent Supreme Court ruling for Vermont election reform.
But there have been many uphill battles fought by our people against our government, ie. mimimum wage, child labor laws, slavery, Jim Crow laws, the right to unionize.
Most of the struggles mentioned were resisted by government untill the people pushed back.
I see this happening with Clean Elections. In fact, in my circle, when I first began to discuss the issue with colleagues and friends there wasn't much interest. Lately the idea of Clean Elections seems to be penetrating its barriers everywhere.
People are catching on, and that's how something like this must begin, traction for Clean Elections must come from the people. It's a slow process, but it is happening.
I'm afraid it'll take more than mere popular support, Van.
There's been HUGE popular support for shutting off our southern border - all polls going back to the 1970s showed upwards of 70% of Americans wanting to shut that border down and clamp down on illegal immigration. The "open borders" crowd in America is in the low single digits...around three or four percent.
Many monied interests, as well as political interests have chosen to ignore the public sentiment and have done so with relative impunity.
It's sort of the same thing here.
Elections require money NOT mere votes.
Its money that buys effective ads and thus "buys votes."
Why do you think the State Party leaders of BOTH major Parties eagerly split up their respective States into gerrymandered districts?
The answer is that creating "carved out" Democrat & Republican districts is good for politicians because it ensures that once a member gets the nod of the favored Party for that district, they're virtually assured of election and re-election.
NY State is completely gerrymandered that way, with NYC filled with "safe Democratic seats," while Upstate and Long Island have a preponderance of "safe Republican seats."
You rarely get a mess like TX, where Democrats, who'd gerrymandered that State for decades, lose power and then contest the other Party gerrymandering to their own advantage.
The SC did exactly the right thing, leaving every DeLay gerrymandered district in tact, except for one Hispnaic district in the south of Texas that will have to be redrawn...it was drawn up as a "Democratic district" to begin with, so redrawing that district will have little if any impact on the rest of the State.
But all that's merely proof of how pervasive this is and the attitude of the entrenched politicos involved.
Not to mention the fact that monied interests love the set-up because it makes for "easy access" to influence.
The immigration issue took a national security crisis to bring it to the fore, we'll ned a similar crisis in government, and not one "engineered by activists," nor made up by the media, to bring real election reform to the fore.
It's a real tough row to hoe.
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