Bush Administration Quietly Plans NAFTA Super Highway

Human Events ^ | June 12, 2006 | Jerome Corsi

[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.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

ping for future.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

ping for future.

[streetpreacher]

Jim, what is your opinion of this? Are you on board for this "North American Union" thing or do you just not believe it? Do you think Corsi and other informed conservatives are lying and/or paranoid?

[Jim Robinson]

You gotta be kidding me. Have no idea of the state of Corsi's mind, but this NWO, North American Union thing is nothing but one huge conspiracy theory. Sure, the CFR, Trilateral Commission, Build er burgers, Free Masons, Illuminatti, et al, will one day rule the whole world. They've been working on it secretly for centuries. Even before America was discovered. These are some pretty smart people. Effective too.

[nicmarlo]

I hope we are wrong; but I fear we are not. I agree -- as you quipped -- "There is a problem, Houston"

My assessment completely. By the time people take their blinders off, it'll be too late for them.

[Indy Pendance]

It's all connected with the masons.

[calcowgirl]

The LA Times had an article today. The port traffic statistics were interesting.

Mexican Port Gets American Connection
A U.S. railway is linking with a Pacific coast harbor to move freight faster to the Midwest.
Los Angeles Times, June 20, 2006

(snip)

Moving cargo

The harbor of Lazaro Cardenas on Mexico's Pacific coast ranks 34th among North American cargo container ports (2005 ranking*):

1. Los Angeles, 7.5 million
2. Long Beach, 6.7 million
3. New York/New Jersey, 4.8 million
4. Oakland, 2.3 million
5. Seattle, 2.1 million
6. Tacoma, Wash., 2.1 million
7. Charleston, S.C., 2.0 million
8. Hampton Roads, Va., 2.0 million
9. Savannah, Ga., 1.9 million
10. Vancouver, Canada, 1.8 million

34. Lazaro Cardenas, 0.1 million

*in 20-foot-equivalent containers
Source: American Assn.of Port Authorities

It has also been reported that the new port at Punta Colonet (150 miles south of Tijuana) "would initially attract one million containers a year, with capacity to handle as many as five million after just five years of operation".

[hedgetrimmer]

Here's some more information for you. Its interesting in the fact that says executive agreements are being used to set up the SPP and working groups with NGOs to make it happen.

The U.S. Constitution imposes various formal requirements on treaties47 that ensure Senate participation in the formation of international obligations. Furthermore, the Constitution explicitly recognizes treaties as the "supreme Law of the Land."48

Executive agreements lack this explicit constitutional formality and authority. Executive agreements are compacts that obligate the United States to foreign states but that, unlike treaties, are not presented to the Senate as directed in Article II of the Constitution.49 These agreements may be congressional-executive agreements,50 treaty-executive agreements,51 or presidential-executive agreements.52 Whereas treaty-making was debated vigorously in the Constitutional Congress53 and is authorized explicitly in the Constitution,54 the origins,55 authority,56 and legal status57 of executive agreements are less clear. Nonetheless, the number of executive agreements continues to increase, especially as compared to the number of treaties.58 Some warn that this trend evidences a growing concentration of power in the executive branch;59 others flatly declare certain aspects of executive agreements unconstitutional;60 still others applaud the practicality and ingenuity of these instruments.61 For purposes of this Comment, these debates are less important than the fact that courts have granted executive agreements authority equal to treaties under federal law.62

http://www.wcl.american.edu/journal/lawrev/46/faire.html

[nicmarlo]

Five million containers. Just grand.

[calcowgirl]

Another article I just read said 7 million. :-)

Regardless, those statistics kind of put it in perspective for me: BIG!

[nicmarlo]

Well, that's what the other articles projected it would be, a very large deal with huge capacity, equalling current LA/Long Beach load.

[hedgetrimmer]

I dunno if you all have seen this yet,



Following the implementation of NAFTA, coalitions of interest have been formed in order to promote specific transport channels, to develop the infrastructures of these channels and to propose jurisdictional amendments to facilitate the crossing of borders. These coalitions include businesses, government agencies, civil organizations, metropolitan areas, rural communities and also individuals, wishing to strengthen the commercial hubs of their regions.

The North American trade corridors are bi- or tri-national channels for which various cross-border interests have grouped together in order to develop or consolidate the infrastructures. The North American corridors are considered multimodal in the sense that they bring into play different modes of transport in succession.

The infrastructures may include roads, highways, transit routes, airports, pipelines, railways and train stations, river canal systems and port facilities, telecommunications networks and teleports.

[hedgetrimmer]

And then this:

The First parliamentary simulation of North America

The North American Forum on Integration (NAFI) organized the first North-American Model Parliament, in the Canadian Senate, Ottawa, from the 23rd to the 27th of May, 2005. Seventy university students participated in this innovative and challenging initiative.

PRINCIPAL OBJECTIVES

• To bring together future leaders from Canada, the United States and Mexico in order to sensitize them to the challenges of North American integration and to develop their sense of North American identity.
• To inform the current decision makers of the priorities and the concerns of North American youth.
• To encourage intercultural exchanges and to create networks of interests between North American academics.

[nicmarlo]

No, I hadn't. I'll read it more thoroughly later. Thanks for your post.

[hedgetrimmer]

New Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper, Mexican president Vicente Fox, and U.S. president George W. Bush met on March 31 in Cancún, Quintana Roo. This summit followed the leaders’ March 2005 meeting in Waco, Texas, where the North American Security and Prosperity Partnership (NASPP) was launched. The NASPP involves officials in all three federal governments in working groups with their counterparts to facilitate integration by reconciling standards and procedures wherever prudent. The result is a process of bureaucratically led integration, currently underway.

CSIS Integration Monitor

Note: CSIS is one of the groups that created and now help to run the Department of Homeland Security.

[hedgetrimmer]

Remember the NADBank?

NAID

The North American Integration and Development (NAID) Center was created to conduct ongoing research concerning North American integration and to assist communities and governments with policies and investment projects for sustainable and equitable development across borders. Towards this goal, the NAID Center seeks to build linkages among a wide variety of institutions and organizations in North America, including the North American Development Bank (NADBank).

The NAID Center is a founding member of the NADBank Community Adjustment and Investment Technical Assistance Consortium, which includes two important national Latino organizations: the Southwest Voter Research Institute and the National Council of La Raza. NAID Center staff and other Consortium members worked with Congressman Esteban Torres to create the NADBank in 1993 as a part of the NAFTA implementing legislation. The NAID Center and the NADBank Consortium are working to create partnerships and computer-aided linkages with other universities, non-governmental organizations, labor unions, private sector firms, local governments, and other agents of community economic empowerment. Our goal is to assist localities which suffer NAFTA-related job displacement to identify alternative strategies for sustainable economic development and to apply for financing from NADBank and other sources.

NAID Partners

The NAID Center is a founding member of the NADBank Community Adjustment and Investment Technical Assistance Consortium, which includes two important national Latino organizations: the Southwest Voter Research Institute and the National Council of La Raza. NAID Center staff and other Consortium members worked with Congressman Esteben Torres to create the NADBank in 1993 as a part of the NAFTA implementing legislation. The NAID Center and the NADBank Consortium are working to create partnerships and computer-aided linkages with other universities, non-governmental organizations, labor unions, private sector firms, local governments, and other agents of community economic empowerment. Our goal is to assist localities which suffer NAFTA-related job displacement to identify alternative strategies for sustainable economic development and to apply for financing from NADBank and other sources.

[Fawn]

Is that a real sign?