NAFTA SUPERHIGHWAY | An urban myth or reality?

Kansas City Star ^ | May 30, 2007 | Matt Stearns (McClatchy Newspapers)

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

NAFTA SUPERHIGHWAY | An urban myth or reality?

Super suspicious foes

The government denies any such plans, but campaign against it continues.

By MATT STEARNS
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON | If the government really has a secret plan for a 12-lane road-and-rail NAFTA Superhighway that will split the heartland from Mexico to Canada, it is playing with a great poker face.

“There is absolutely no U.S. government plan for a NAFTA Superhighway of any sort,” said David Bohigian, an assistant secretary of commerce.

Sen. Kit Bond, a Missouri Republican and a powerful member of committees that would authorize and pay for a NAFTA Superhighway, if one were being planned, dismissed the notion as “unfounded theories” with “no credence.”

And yet:

• A pending congressional resolution condemns it.

• Rep. Ron Paul, a Texas Republican, speaks darkly of “secret funding” for it.

• Anti-immigrant commentators fulminate against the alleged four-football-field-wide behemoth as a threat to private property, national security, and “a major lifeline of the plan to merge the United States into a North American Community,” as conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly wrote.

Responding to denials, Rep Virgil Goode, a Virginia Republican, the chief sponsor of the House resolution opposing the NAFTA Superhighway, scoffed: “I’ve heard that line before. They’re just calling it something else … It’s a decrease in our security and an erasing of our borders.”

Goode is hardly alone: His resolution has attracted 21 co-sponsors, from both parties.

Authorities say the whole idea, inspired by the free-trade agreement signed by the U.S., Mexico and Canada, is an Internet-based urban myth fueled by fear and suspicion.

Those accused of selling out U.S. sovereignty by shilling for a superhighway say that legitimate efforts to increase trade efficiencies through international cooperation, technological enhancements and infrastructure improvements have been turned into something sinister.

For example, conspiracy theorists see Kansas City as a pivotal point for the superhighway because of Kansas City SmartPort, an effort to turn the region into a transportation and logistics center. Officials are working with Mexico to establish an inland customs facility — for exports of U.S.-made goods only, not, as some fear, as a security-reducing inland port for imports from Mexico and Asia, said Chris Gutierrez, president of SmartPort.

“We get hit with it all the time,” said Danny Rotert, a spokesman for Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Missouri Democrat. “It’s on some weird set of talking points. They say we’ll actually cede sovereign U.S. land to Mexico. People call and complain about it all the time. We try to explain that’s not the case.”

Here is what Paul, a GOP presidential candidate, told a New Hampshire audience: “They already have a plan for a highway running from Mexico up to Canada, a 12-lane highway with trains running in the middle. It’s going to be an international highway. And there’s been some secret funding already into our budgets to start this program moving. There’s going to be eminent domain powers used to confiscate tens of thousands of acres to build this.”

Variations on the theme abound.

Conservative commentator Pat Buchanan says it will be a 10-lane highway, not 12, but adds that it will include oil and gas pipelines.

Running for Congress last year in Kansas, Democrat Nancy Boyda, who campaigned against the superhighway, warned that 30,000 acres of private land in Kansas would be taken to build it. Boyda defeated five-term incumbent Rep. Jim Ryun, who called the superhighway a myth.

Others see it as a first step in an effort to erase national borders and sovereignty and unite all of North America into a single union, with one currency.

“It’s a drift toward a European Union,” Goode said. “I don’t want to have one currency for all North America. I support our country being our country.”

Those convinced that the NAFTA Superhighway is coming point to several disparate efforts that they say prove that the government isn’t telling the whole truth:

• The controversial effort to build the “Trans-Texas Corridor,” which would largely parallel existing highways, primarily moving freight. The suspicious see it as the NAFTA Superhighway’s first leg.

• A Bush administration proposal to allow some Mexican trucks to drive deeper into the U.S. heartland than previously allowed. Boyda’s bill to limit the program passed the House, 411-3.

• North America’s SuperCorridor Coalition, or NASCO. The Texas-based nonprofit coalition advocates for improvements along major trade corridors, such as Interstates 35, 29 and 94.

• The Security and Prosperity Partnership, or SPP. It’s a collaborative effort on several fronts, including trade and security, by the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Bohigian, the trade official whose portfolio includes the SPP, said the effort is intended only to “reduce the cost of trade and improve the quality of life” through efforts such as decreasing the wait time for trucks idling at international borders. Reducing the average wait time from 35 minutes to six minutes has saved more than $1 billion, Bohigian said.

But Boyda said: “These are legitimate questions. This is an issue about trade, jobs and security.”

[philman_36]

Why the secrecy?
I have no idea. Would you care to speculate or offer an opinion as to why there was so much secrecy?

[hedgetrimmer]

Actually, in this case, business is controlling the state.

Corporatist fascism is correct, enabled by the public/private partnerships that created the SuperCorridor Coalition, or NASCO.

[listenhillary]

Maybe we should have a law for separation of corporation and state?

States can’t mess with, tax, regulate corporations and corporations can’t work with states or federal government. No privatization of government functions as that might lead to cross contamination.

They must never be allowed to communicate ever, that will lead to fascism.

[hedgetrimmer]

Maybe we should have a law for separation of corporation and state?

This country founded with a deep suspicion of corporations and the power they can wield over individuals if allowed.

and corporations can’t work with states or federal government.

Right now, under public/private partnerships, they are. And as 'partners' with goverment they are calling the shots-- to the detriment of our Constutiton, our invidual rights and our freedom.

[listenhillary]

What we should really do to show those globalists, is to go back to single lane highways and turn our airports back into farmland.

That will show them who the boss is.

[DManA]

There already is a super highway from Mexico. It’s called the desert.

[hedgetrimmer]

What we should really do to show those globalists

That would be you, apparently.

[RoadTest]

“What this group is doing makes sense.”

No, it doesn’t. Say that the whole rumor is true; why move the Mexican border to Kansas city?

Why not just improve the existing border checkpoints to handle the “tsunami” they claim is coming?

[Ben Ficklin]

In addition to the Hi Priority Corridors, there will soon be a Corridor(s) of the Future. The one, or more, corridor(s) that get this designation will be announced this summer.

Earlier in the year, many of the corridors in contention for the designation were eliminated from the process, leaving 10-12 corridors still in contention.

Those that keep harping about I 35 need to recognize that the I 35 Corridor was eliminated at that time.

[TLI]

The controversial effort to build the “Trans-Texas Corridor,” which would largely parallel existing highways, primarily moving freight. The suspicious see it as the NAFTA Superhighway’s first leg.

Oh golly, no way. We "suspicious" types fully expect the 12 lane highway complete with railroad lines to simply dead end at the Red River.

Right.

[ears_to_hear]

This plan is not coming from the US Commerce dept, it will never see a vote in the congress. This plan is being developed by the one world leaders of Canada, the US and Mexico.

The leaders of all 3 nations are on board.

This is a part of the North America Union program

[ckilmer]

The Real Reason Canadians Are Worried About Climate Change

by John Laumer, Philadelphia on 04.13.07

Business & Politics

Even though ours is a joke headline, we're not making this story up. It looks like a new political species, the "neo-climatons" are making a political evolutionary jump, now that Al Gore has everyone, including the Washington DC Beltway Pols, believing Climate Change is real. Via: Ottawa Citizen Online:- "Canadian water is on the table at trilateral talks between politicians, businessmen and academics from Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. A series of private conferences for the North American Future 2025 Project will include the discussion of "water transfers" and diversions, according to the outline for the project, a trilateral effort to draft a "blueprint" on economic integration for the governments of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico." Go read the whole story; but we put some choice tidbits for you below the fold. Meanwhile, does this kind of talk done in private encourage free LeBatts for the southern neighbors? If so, nice. Finally, and as we've pointed out before, this water transfer scenario is highly implausible. Should a mega-drought hit the US, there won't be the time or the resources to pipe blue Canadian water to enough places in the US to sustain existing culture. What might plausibly happen is that dust-bowl style, plenty of thirsty dry jobless US citizens will be making their way north. We're just saying...

""It's no secret that the U.S. is going to need water. ... It's no secret that Canada is going to have an overabundance of water.

"At the end of the day, there may have to be arrangements," says Armand Peschard-Sverdrup, director of the project, which is spearheaded by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a powerful Washington think-tank, in partnership with the Conference Board of Canada and CIDE, a Mexican policy institute."

..."News of the talks emerged the same day as the UN's blue-chip panel on climate change released a report predicting that the U.S. would clash with water-rich Canada as the drought-stricken MidWest looks north to the Great Lakes."

..."Gordon Hodgson of the Ottawa-based Conference Board says that, even though it includes the board's logo, the project outline does not necessarily reflect his institute's views.

"The reality the Americans perhaps don't fully appreciate is that we don't have a whole lot of water to export. ... There are near-scarcity conditions in Western Canada, and a lot of water is being used to extract bitumen from the oil sands.""

[listenhillary]

Mexico and Canada are our the largest trading partners we have. Do we want to hobble and restrict this trade or do we want to encourage it?

We stupidly have ripped up thousands of miles of railroads. We are importing truck drivers from India, because we can’t hire enough over the road drivers.

Won’t it just be horrible to circumvent the stranglehold that unions have on our West coast ports? How could we be so inhumane? Freight corridors are such a bad idea, we all know that sharing the road with 80,000 lb trucks with 3,500 lb cars makes more sense.

As much as some would like to deny it, we are a part of a global economy. We could try to extricate ourselves, but you’re going to have to do it on one fourth of the energy we are using. We can kiss about 10 million domestic jobs good-by if we remove ourselves from the global economy. Pulling our heads back in our shell doesn’t solve anything.

I’ve seen nothing yet that makes more efficient transport of goods a bad thing. We already don’t have control of our border, so what has changed?

[muawiyah]

There were hearings on what became known as the Interstate Highway System in the 1930s and 1940s.

It was in the bag by the time Eisenhower came along as President.

[muawiyah]

What are you guys talking about. Corporations are created because state laws provide for their creation. They are, as it were, creatures of the state.

[Fawn]

Nobody takes WND seriously....(well almost nobody)

[listenhillary]

Sarcasm - just a bit

[listenhillary]

Sarcasm - well maybe more than just a bit.

[hershey]

Bingo.

[listenhillary]

Is Halliburton a corporate fascist? Boeing?