NASCO Alters Super-Corridor Message [They Don't Like Sunshine On Their Little Plan Alert]

NASCO has altered the organization’s website homepage, apparently in direct response to the North American Union series we have published here, including discussion of NASCO and NAFTA Super-Highways.

NASCO appears to be reacting from recent publicity deriving from our argument that NASCO actively supports the goals of their members, including the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) and the Kansas City SmartPort. TxDOT plans to start the first segment of the Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC) as early as next year and the Kansas City SmartPort plans to house a Mexican customs operation within their Inland Port design. These are new infrastructure developments along the North American NAFTA Super-Corridor that NASCO as a trade organization was created to support.

A box has been inserted to the left of the NASCO map on the homepage, emphasizing the following:

This map is not a blueprint or plan of any kind. The Infrastructure depicted on this map is not drawn to scale. The highways shown EXIST today, and have been enlarged to highlight the NASCO Corridor focus area. The rail lines have been placed on the map to show NASCO’s multimodal approach.

The subtitle on the home page still reads “Secure Multi-Modal Transportation System,” evidently referring to the automobile, truck, and railroad nature of the “NASCO Super-Corridor” described in the top title on the page. By so adding to the homepage, NASCO appears engaged in a public relations marketing effort to defuse concerns that the organization supports any new NAFTA Super-Highway development that would include TTC features.

This modification to the homepage echoes an email the author received from Tiffany Melvin, NASCO’s Executive Director, on June 23, 2006, in which she wrote:

If the map were drawn to scale, it would be very difficult to see our focus area. The map is designed for marketing purposes, to highlight the highways we are focusing on. It is for our Coalition. That’s it.

An insert box has been placed on the homepage in the Atlantic Ocean area east of Massachusetts, reading “NASCO Myths Debunked.” We understand that our articles are among the “myths” intended to be “debunked.” The first line of text in the 4-page document linked to the “debunked box” reads: “There is no new, proposed ‘NAFTA Superhighway.” The next paragraph seems to say the NAFTA Super-Highway already exists -- it is evidently the current I-35:

As of late, there has been much media attention given to the “new, proposed NAFTA Superhighway.” NASCO and the cities, counties, states and provinces along our existing Interstate Highways 35/29/94 (the NASCO Corridor) have been referring to I-35 as the “NAFTA Superhighway” for many years, as I-35 already carries a substantial amount of international trade with Mexico, the United States and Canada. There are no plans to build a new NAFTA Superhighwary -- it exists today as I-35.

The “debunked text” even wants to de-emphasize the “Super” in the NASCO “Super Corridor” name. As Ms. Melvin expressed in a June 22, 2006 email to the author:

We have been using the name “SuperCorridor” since 1996. It does not mean huge, mega highway. We use “Super” in the sense of “more inclusive than a specialized category” (dictionary definition). Like Superman was not a huge, giant four football field wide man. He was MORE than a man. We are MORE than a highway coalition. We work to promote the use of multiple modes of transportation. We work on economic development along the corridor. We work on environmental issues. We work on networking inland ports. We work on developing business relationships for our members.

Perhaps NASCO would be well advised to review the Trans-Texas Corridor website of its member TxDOT agency. There the 4,000 page Environmental Impact Study (EIS) clearly describes the 1,200 foot new Super-Highway that TxDOT plans to build parallel to I-35. Page 4 of the EIS Executive Summary shows an artist’s rendition of the full build-out of the TTC-35 concept, an automobile-truck-railroad corridor with a utility space for energy pipelines and electronic circuits, along with tower electricity strung out on the perimeter. No artist’s conception of the TTC drawn by the TxDOT bears any resemblance to the current I-35 in Texas or anywhere else.

This TTC-35 description belies NASCO’s contention that the organization does not support the constructing any new Super-Highway infrastructure.

Perhaps NASCO wants to advance the argument that no state north of Texas will continue the TTC-35 project to connect through Oklahoma City with the Kansas City SmartPort, continuing north toward Duluth, or that TTC-35. As we have already shown, the investment bankers and international capitalists who are funding the development of TTC-35 can be expected to develop extend this NAFTA Super-Highway north, whether NASCO or the states north of Texas have the funds or current plans to do so.

From a public relations point of view, NASCO’s emphasis that the “NASCO Super-Corridor” only involves existing highways, truck routes, and rail lines is a strategy consistent with a desire to stay below the radar of public awareness, so as to avoid criticism that might otherwise stop or impede NASCO’s true mission -- to support the development of a NAFTA Super-Highway, either through enhancements to the existing north-south corridor along Interstate Highways 35/29/94 (the NASCO Corridor), or any Super-Highway enhancements its members initiate, including the TTC and the Mexican customs facility in the Kansas City SmartPort.

Today, there are some 5,000 miles of interstate highway in the U.S. and the TxDOT is proposing a full build-out of the TTC network that will build some 4,000 miles of TTC Super-Highways in Texas over the next 50 years. The TTC project at full development will involve the removal of as much as 584,000 acres of productive Texas farm and ranchland from the tax rolls permanently, while displacing upwards of 1 million people from their current residences. The 11 separate corridors planned will permanently cut across some 1,200 Texas roads, with cross-over unlikely for much of the nearly quarter-mile corridor planned to be built. Our research shows that dozens of small towns in Texas will be virtually obliterated in the bath of the advancing TTC behemoth. Reviewing statistics such as these, we can see why NASCO might prefer a low profile, preferring to stay below the radar of public scrutiny.

We also note that George Blackwood, NASCO President, attended the January 10-11 meeting in Louisville, Kentucky, held by the Council of the Americas and the North American Business Committee to conduct a “Public/Private Sector Dialogue” on the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America. A key finding of this meeting was that associations in the U.S. organized to promote particular corridors needed since the dawning of SPP in Waco, Texas, on March 23, 2005, to coordinate their efforts in a less provincial style, more reflective of the North American regional orientation of SPP itself:

For instance, conversation at the Louisville forum raised the potential for commonalities and/or synergies between disparate transportation efforts in the US Midwest (the “SuperCorridor” initiative), the North American West (“CANAMEX Corridor”), and in the Southeast United States and Mexico (the “Gulf of Mexico Trade Corridor” initiative). Before SPP, there was no obvious mechanism through which to promote coordination of these discrete activities.

The Louisville SPP meeting also advised “the establishment of bilateral or trilateral commissions to facilitate border and cross-border infrastructure.”

While the NASCO “debunking text” is correct in asserting that NASCO is a trade organization, not a government organization, NASCO officers appear deeply involved in working with federal and state departments of transportation, local and state governments, and regulatory agencies in promoting the goal of developing a “Super Corridor” structure for “integrating” the U.S., Canada, and Mexico into a corridor-dimensioned transportation system to promote NAFTA trade. NASCO trade organization professionals evidently are much more comfortable working in professional SPP conferences and dealing with government bureaucrats in the closed confines of their offices than answering the questions that public citizens are openly discussing on the Internet.

The NASCO “debunking text” continually asserts that a primary NASCO concern is transportation security, much as SPP itself asserts that the North American Partnership is put in place to promote security and prosperity, two goals SPP could assume no one would object to pursuing. The idea seems to be that NASCO wants to present itself as only concerned about security and efficiency as the volume of traffic on the existing “NASCO SuperCorriror” of existing interstate highways gets expanded under NAFTA.

NASCO’s “debunking text” asserts that the organization’s mission is “develop (NOT BUILD) the world’s first international, integrated and secure, multi-modal transportation system along the International Mid-Continent Trade and Transportation to improve both the trade competitiveness and quality of life in North America.”

Given this, we have a challenge. Let’s see NASCO come forward and repudiate the TTC-35 plans of their TxDOT member, because clearly the TTC-35 plan to build 4-football-field-lengths wide of NAFTA Super-Highway corridors is inconsistent with NASCO’s goal as expressed in the “debunking text” of only using existing transportation infrastructure. We also challenge NASCO to come forward and repute the Mexican customs facility plans of its Kansas City SmartPort member. Otherwise, we will assert that NASCO is continuing to say one thing for public relations effect, while doing something quite different -- quietly supporting their members as the members build the “new and improved” NAFTA Super-Highway infrastructure along the NASCO Corridor.

His answers were actually quite concise.

Are you kidding me??

Hawkins:

1) Jerome says:
"President Bush intends to abrogate U.S. sovereignty to the North American Union, a new economic and political entity which the President is quietly forming, much as the European Union has formed.

The blueprint President Bush is following was laid out in a 2005 report entitled 'Building a North American Community...'"

One problem: that report was produced by a Council of Foreign Relations task force, not a governmental entity. Set aside the fact that the report doesn't even call for abrogating, "U.S. sovereignty to the North American Union," and explain the evidence that this is a blueprint George Bush is following. Has he mentioned the report at all? Has he said he'd like to, "dissolve the United States of America into the North American Union?" Where is the hard evidence that George Bush is using this specific report as a "blueprint?"

Corsi answers:

1. Clearly, the Council on Foreign Relations is a non-governmental organization (NGO) that has no binding control on U.S. governmental policy-making. We are equally sure that Mr. Hawkins is fully aware of the influence NGO’s such as the CFR have exerted on U.S. governmental policy-making for decades. Granted, the influence is not always a direct, one-for-one correlation between influential NGO recommendations and U.S. government policy, but the correlation is often sufficiently strong that the direct influence on government policy is demonstrable.

The CFR task force report in question, entitled “Building a North American Community,” was issued in May 2005, two months after President Bush, Mexico’s President Vincente Fox, and Canada’s then-Prime Minister Paul Martin signed the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) in Waco, Texas, on March 23, 2005. On page 3 of the CFR report, the task force referenced the March 2005 SPP declaration and wrote: “The Task Force is pleased to provide specific advice on how the partnership can be pursued and realized.” Given this sentence, there can be no doubt that the CFR task force stated intent to lay out a plan, or “blueprint,” for how the U.S. government should proceed to “pursue and realize” the partnership the Waco, Texas declaration had put into effect as of March 23, 2005. Now, the only question becomes this: is the U.S. government following the CFR task force “blueprint” as the executive branch proceeds to pursue and realize the goals laid out in SPP? The CFR task force report further endorses the creation of extensive trilateral executive branch “working groups” whose purpose is to forms substantive bureaucratic agreements to be implemented across a broad agenda of topics. To quote directly from pages 23-24 of the CFR report:

“While each country must maintain its right to impose and maintain unique regulations consonant with its national priorities and income level, the three countries should make a concerted effort to encourage regulatory convergence. “The three leaders highlighted the importance of addressing this issue at their March 2005 summit in Texas. The Security and Prosperity Partnership for North America they signed recognizes the need for a stronger focus on building the economic strength of the continent in addition to ensuring its security. To this end, it emphasizes regulatory issues. Officials in all three countries have formed a series of working groups under designated lead cabinet ministers. These working groups have been ordered to produce an action plan for approval by the leaders within ninety days, by late June 2005, and to report regularly thereafter.” We next turn to the Department of Commerce’s website devoted to the Security and Prosperity Partnership. Under the first bar to the left, we find the June 2005, “Report to Leaders,” submitted on the exact timetable specified in the CFR report. Reading this document, we find a close correspondence between the cabinet level working groups already set up by the Bush administration under the auspices of this Department of Commerce office and the working agenda specified by the CFR report (note especially pages 24-26). If Mr. Hawkins desires a full analysis, I would be happy to demonstrate out the extensive point-by-point correspondences not only in language, but also in working group methodology and stated purpose, between the working group agenda being pursued in SPP.gov and the “blueprint” specified in the CFR report.

I would also note that the co-chair of the May 2005 CFR report was American University professor Robert A. Pastor. Dr. Pastor’s 2001 book, titled “Toward a North American Community,” alone would qualify him to lead the competition to be designated the “father” of the North American Union, specified as a regional government which would have sovereignty over the U.S.A. We also Dr. Pastor’s testimony in November 2002 to the Trilateral Commission in which he recommended how a North American Community could evolve NAFTA into a regional government. We argue that the specific recommendations that Dr. Pastor makes in writing such as these hold a close correspondence to the action recommendations of the May 2005 CFR report and the reported working group bureaucratic decisions being reached by the Bush administration executive branch in SPP.gov.

If we were to submit these various documents to a scientifically rigorous content analysis statistical test, we are confident the correlations would be more than sufficient to reject the null hypothesis, namely that the documents bear no causal relationship whatsoever in content.

Carolyn, read the bold.
On top of that, Dr. Robert Pastor is a certifiable leftist. Nothing Robert Pastor suggests has any chance of becoming policy.

Hawkins:

2) Jerome, you claimed in another column that George Bush wants to, "supplant the dollar with the Amero." Your evidence for that nonsensical assertion was merely that Robert Pastor, vice chairman of the CFR task force called for the creation of an, "Amero; a currency that is proposed to replace the U.S. dollar, the Canadian dollar, and the Mexican peso."

That is evidence that Robert Pastor supports an Amero, but certainly not evidence that George Bush does. So, do you have any evidence that George Bush wants to create an Amero? Has he mentioned wanting to combine the US dollar with Canadian and Mexican currency? Has the word "Amero" ever come out of his mouth?

Corsi:

(2.) Mr. Hawkins concedes that Robert Pastor has ambitiously pursued the agenda to advocate the establishment of a new unified North American currency, called the “Amero,” designed to replace the U.S. dollar, the Canadian dollar, and the Mexican peso, much as the Euro has replaced the national currency of most EU member countries. He asks if President Bush has ever specifically advocated the creation of the Amero?

I have argued that the plan to establish the North American Union as a regional government is being advanced by the U.S. government through internal executive branch administrative action in order to keep the plan below the radar of U.S. public scrutiny. In accordance with this plan, I would argue that President Bush has intentionally avoided revealing his true plans to the American people.

If the executive branch has nothing to hide, I would encourage the office of SPP.gov in the Department of Commerce to fulfill promptly my FOIA request and release the names, working agendas, and various memoranda of understanding or other trilateral agreements already achieved, but largely unannounced to the American media, the American public, or the U.S. Congress. I cannot find a single speech where President Bush details a discussion covering the extensive new memoranda of understanding agreement being reached with Mexico and Canada or the other trilateral agreements already decided by the SPP.gov working groups, let alone the Amero. Why doesn’t President Bush or a credible spokesperson for the President come forth and charge that the multiple articles I have written on the subject are without foundation? I have gone so far as to suggest that the creation of a new regional government within the bureaucracy amounts to an executive branch coup d’etat. Certainly a charge this serious merits repudiation by a Bush administration under siege in many different areas for extra-constitutional exercise of executive branch authority.

We would also note that the updated 2006 SPP.gov listing of working groups describes a “Financial Services Working Group” that appears to be new since the June 2005 report to the leaders. The description of the Financial Services Working Group is typically top-level, without sufficient detail to determine if trilateral integration of currencies is on the agenda. We would hope that the documentation forthcoming from our FOIA request would answer these questions.

Finally, a rich and abundant economic literature (beyond Dr. Pastor) exists on creating a unified North American currency. For documentation of this point, I will just refer to one such paper, that authored by Benjamin J. Cohen of the University of California, entitled, “North American Monetary Union: A United States Perspective.” Given the broad range of issues now subject to “trilateral homogenization” by the working groups organized in SPP.gov, we believe reaching the question of the Amero with executive branch committees is at best only a matter of time.(end)

Do you think Corsi answered the question? I bolded the question and what came the closest to Corsi's answer,btw. With all his extensive research (ahem), all he can do is link to “economic literature” (a paper from a prof?)

Here's the answer, Carolyn: There is no evidence.

Hawkins:

3) Over at NASCO (.PDF file), they've pointed out that the "Nafta Superhighway" isn't "new" or "four football fields wide" as you've asserted in a previous column. Will you admit that you got your facts wrong? Also, can you explain what exactly is supposed to be so scary about expanding a highway?

Corsi:

3. Mr. Hawkins asserts that the revised NASCO homepage disputes that NASCO is supporting a “new” NAFTA Super-Highway that is four football-field-lengths in width (as much as 1,200 feet wide as proposed in to be built in the current Trans-Texas Corridor project). Evidently, this query was written before Mr. Hawkins had the opportunity to read my column today, in which I charge that NASCO is currently engaged in a public relations make-over designed to defuse public criticism. As I discuss in today’s article, the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) plans to hold final hearings on TTC-35 this month and next month. TxDOT is a member of NASCO. I again invite NASCO to repudiate the plans of the TxDOT to build TTC-35, otherwise I will charge again that NASCO is hiding behind its trade organization charter, while endorsing the plans of its members to build just such a proposed super-wide NAFTA Super-Highway.(end)

The anwer to the first part would be '"No", Corsi won't admit that he got his facts wrong, and the answer to the second part is that NASCO-TTC-TxDOT is scary because he says so. Maybe he'll be more forthcoming in his soon-to-be-relesed book.

Hawkins:

4) Obviously, Bush couldn't, "dissolve the United States of America into the North American Union," by executive order. It would require a complete rewrite of the Constitution...or do you think that's not the case? Do you believe Bush can just give a press conference one day and announce, "By the way, the United States has merged with Canada and Mexico," and that's it? How would that aspect of the plan work?

Corsi:

4. Mr. Hawkins argues that President Bush would have to completely re-write the Constitution of the U.S. to put in place a North American Union. If that is the case, then I call for a Constitutional Convention to be convened immediately. What I have argued is that the North American Union is being constructed by the executive branch in a de facto manner, through bureaucratic action being conducted within SPP.gov. We already have Chapter 11 tribunals under NAFTA, what would be needed to block the expansion of Chapter 11 tribunals from evolving into a structure where they became a de facto North American Union court that would trump the U.S. Supreme Court. Cases are already underway within the exiting Chapter 11 tribunals that could easily evolve into this result. I have begun to write articles detailing how the SPP.gov working groups are already opening our borders, opening our skies, and opening our highways in a manner that should have been openly acknowledged by the Bush administration when the Kennedy-McCain immigration bill was before the Senate. Much of that legislation was moot, given what SPP.gov has already accomplished out of public view.(end)

The JBS people eat the bolded part up.

I'm speechless that you otherwise intelligent people believe this.

Hawkins:

5) You've said that the North American Union is scheduled to, "become a reality in 2010." However, Bush isn't going to be in office in 2010. So, how can Bush implement his "secret" plan when he's not going to be in office when it's supposed to be happen?

Corsi:

5. Mr. Hawkins has argued that President Bush cannot possibly have planned to have a North American Union become a reality in 2010 because he may not be in office in 2010. Our argument is that the development of the North American Union has been a progressive movement begun not by President George W. Bush, but by President George H.W. Bush and advanced by President William Jefferson Clinton. Whether President Bush will complete his current term is by no means certain, especially if the Democrats gain control of the House of Representatives in the 2006 elections.

Examining SPP.gov, we find that a wide range of memoranda of understanding and trilateral agreements have already been signed. Geri Word within the NAFTA office of the Department of Commerce reports that these trilateral agreements have been described on the SPP.gov website, but have not been published, not even on the Internet. With this much already agreed to, via a behing-the-scenes fiat manner of administrative agency trilateral inter-action, how would a next president reverse these agreements already established? What is astonishing is that the SPP.gov working groups have proceeded entirely by executive branch fiat, without specific discussion before the American people, or presented to Congress as new legislation to be passed or treaties to be ratified? What is the specific Congressional authorization for the SPP.gov memoranda of understanding and trilateral agreements already reached?

My point is that President Bush is proceeding to take the SPP declaration of Waco, Texas –- nothing more than a trilateral joint press statement -– and utilize that statement as if it were legislation or a treaty authorizing the extensive SPP.gov agreements that are being formed. The point was recently made by Christopher Sands of the Center for Strategic and International Studies who wrote in May 2006 that:

“For now, however, President Bush, President Fox, and the newcomer, Prime Minister Harper, remain committed to the bureaucratically led negotiations of the NASPP (North American Security and Prosperity Partnership). Politically led integration is proceeding in tandem, as leaders at the state and provincial level build ties and solve problems arising from growing linkages between the three countries.”

Our charge is that the integration going on with SPP.gov exceeds Constitutionally-defined limits of the executive branch. We believe the plan is to “lock-in” whomever succeeds George W. Bush to continue the process of creating the North American Union behind the scenes, hoping all the while that economic and public attitude trilateral integration will be so strong that nobody will dare object.

We invite Mr. Hawkins to open his eyes to what is hidden in plain view, including ample documentation for our arguments on government websites, acknowledged by other experts to be happening, regardless whether Mr. Hawkins cares to hear the debate or not.(end)

Ample documentation?? Like these ridiculous answers to Hawkins' questions? LOL
Acknowledged by other experts?? LOL

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