Posted on 06/12/2006 6:23:16 AM PDT by conservativecorner
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.
I'm law and order which is Conservative while you seem to want to get all touchy feely on why they come. I don't care.
Since NAFTA I failed, is this going to be name the new and improved, NAFTA II?
There ya go posting facts. The Bushbots are going to be on you like white on snow.
excellent point.
and this thing with Nafta and the super highway coming along just extends the pinko baloney that has been and still is our government.
it is just the political gain that they want. They will lose it if they keep this up.
I may be naive but does this not have to come to a vote? I know that it would have to be approved by congress for the money but with spain privately owning it, it still has to come to a vote, right?
Isn't that called deflation? What effect would that have on our foreign debt? As dollars become harder to come by, wouldn't that increase the number of defaults on mortgages?
Sure, it's all great. Never mind that little business about our Supreme Court and Constitution. Who needs them as long as we are all growing ever more prosperous? Prosperity trumps all those little bugaboos about sovereignty and constitution!
/s
So you're saying conservatives can only be cold-hearted?
I guess this is us agreeing to disagree.
- Why would China abandon the terminals it owns on the West Coast of the US and go to Mexico?
The west coast ports in Mexico would have to have overland routes and that would take some time to complete. However there are plans which do look at routes from the west coast of Mexico coming into west Texas. One route is shown here La Entrada-al-Pacifico
China may not abandon the west coast ports in CA but Walmart basically has and developed a large facility in Houston to off load up to 28% of their container imports using the Panama Canal with smaller ships and longer routes. Walmart's Bayport facility
"Cold hearted"? Now you are really scaring me. We have laws in this country my friend, and we don't get to pick and choose which ones we like, and which ones we don't. Call me "cold hearted" if ya like, but I will stick with the Constitution and law and order over your thought provoking Dr. Phil analysis.
"I suspect that this story is a pile of horseshit.."
Then you better wake up.
http://www.cfr.org/publication/7912/creating_a_north_american_community_chairmens_statement.html?breadcrumb=default
http://www.oas.org/main/main.asp?sLang=E&sLink=http://www.oas.org/OASpage/press_releases/home_eng/press.asp
bump
I don't mean to insult you, but, your ignorance on this astounds me. Cold-hearted for wanting our laws obeyed? Cold-hearted for wanting to keep the United States of America...the United States of America? You want to hand over this country wrapped in a pretty blue bow for the sake of the almighty dollar. and here's a flash, it just may become the AMERO instead of the dollar. You want the North American Union to become a reality?
You're hopeless.
But one project is being worked on and will come from the Laredo, Tx area to the Port Huron area which encompasses some 9 states and about 1700 miles. Parts of this system is being constructed and the different stages are at varying states of progress. I-69 Corridor
To be quite honest, I am getting confused with all the new names for the destruction of the U.S. and integration of the 3 countries. Actually, there is NAFTA, NAFTA II or NAFTA plus, the North American Community, the one world order, the new world order or globalism.
If I am not mistaken the trans-Texas corridor plans were started prior to the March 2005 meeting of Fox, Bush and the Canadian PM. Gov. Rick Perry already had a deal with a Spanish commpany.
I have met the acquaintance of quite a few in the last few months.
My head is spinning with all our leaders throwing away this country with both hands. Unbelievable.
Gov. Rick Perry already had a deal with a Spanish commpany.
Interesting about Perry. My sister won't like that at all. She is like me when it comes to protecting our borders and she loves Perry. She's not going to like that at all.
Quote from CFR
"We think that there should be a North American border pass: a card that we can use to enter any of the three countries without going through the normal procedures for questioning either at airports or at the border with biometric identification. We think that we should be on the fast track to complete labor mobility in North America, first between Canada and the United States.."
AND:
put our house in order in this in reform. But second, the Task Force has been putting forward these three ideas, which I think they are very good. First, the extension of NAFTA to the sector that was not included at the time— which, by the way, at least from the Mexican point of view, the sectors that were not included are the ones whose relative productivity have fallen the most. No wonder. It is not a surprise for many of us. Second, we have to increase infrastructure linked to trade. Since the expansion of trade has been so successful, our infrastructure linked to trade has fallen short in part in highways, et cetera.
"Third, we have to bring equity— capital— private capital to the south— to the center and to the south of the country. And there we propose that the three countries get together and create an investment fund for bringing infrastructure— physical infrastructure and human capital formation to the southern parts of Mexico, and this would only be done if we in Mexico do our homework and get together with all political parties for this big, big road to the south.."
"One last thing: We need to advance in a common external time. We need to have a customs union which is a bit— that North America should have. And start with application of the lowest types, because you can converge to the one external [inaudible] it will be a disaster. We should converge to the lowest of the three and move on that front for a customs union."
And:
"As Minister Aspe mentioned, the northern states of Mexico have been growing much faster than the central and south, and the principal reason appears to be better connectedness to the northern markets, which means physical infrastructure and probably an edge up on primary and secondary education as well. And many members of the Task Force, myself included, are pleased that our final report states that the progress of the poorest among us will be a major measure of our success. We felt that there was a moral element here in a continent as rich as North America in making sure that those benefits are spread geographically."
And:
"Second, we recommended that the North American Development Bank, NAD Bank, which has been operating on environmental projects just within first 100 miles and now 300 miles of the border, have its mission expanded, particularly to the transportation sector and that they be further authorized to provide technical assistance to governmental entities and utilities to help them out, as I mentioned a moment ago. Third, and I think this happens under the same heading, we recommended educational exchanges, scholarships, teacher exchanges, sister-school programs, which I think would be a helpful means of ventilating these issues.
And on the immigration point specifically, we recommended the development of a North America preference, which would make it easier for employees to move and employers to recruit across borders within the continent. We recommended the expansion of temporary migrant-worker programs that are already existing, and for me at least, legislation along the lines recently filed by Senator [John] McCain [R-Ariz.]."
Go forth and educate yourselves. One and all.
Then kiss your patriotism and the USA of old good bye. For you will soon be patriots of the Union of North American States.
I was one. Stupid me for allowing myself to believe in an individual more than I should of ever allowed myself. On a daily basis, I see more H than W in domestic as well as foreign policy.
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