Posted on 06/01/2006 7:17:33 AM PDT by hedgetrimmer
The Texas segment of the NAFTA Super Corridor is moving rapidly toward approval. When built, the Trans-Texas Corridor, or TTC, will be a major super-highway with six lanes moving in each direction, twelve lanes across in total, described in the 4,000 page draft environmental study as including separate lanes "for passenger vehicles and large trucks, freight railways, high-speed commuter railways, and a corridor for utilities including water lines, oil and natural gas pipelines, and transmission lines for electricity, broadband and other telecommunications services."
The TTC is expected to follow the current lines of Interstate 35, stretching from Laredo, Texas, on the Mexican border, heading toward Oklahoma City on the Texas border with Oklahoma.
An artist's rendition shows what the projected super-corridor highway is expected to look like.
The idea is to extend the rebuilt I-35 NAFTA super-corridor highway all the way from Laredo, Texas, to Canada, with extensions in Canada to be built out to Montreal in the east and Vancouver in the west. In Mexico, the super-corridor will connect via Mexican railroads with the port at Lazaro Cardenas.
A core design feature is to create a hub in Kansas City. Here the "Lazaro Cardenas – Kansas City Transportation Corridor" will open up a north-south route through the United States to bring in containers from the Far East. As described by Kansas City's Smart Port website:
The Lazaro Cardenas – Kansas City Corridor refers to a trade route linking Kansas City to key Asia-Pacific Markets via a ships-to-rail terminal at the port of Lazaro Cardenas in the State of Michoacan, Mexico. Thanks to an innovative series of international agreements, infrastructure improvements and new technologies, this corridor is a reality.
As the American economy expands and the economies of the Far East ramp up production to meet our demand for goods, the pace of international trade will exceed the ability of major West Coast ports such as Long Beach and Los Angeles to accommodate the flow of goods into the United States.
The NAFTA Super Corridor will be constructed largely by private companies that intend to operate the new I-35 as a toll road. North America's SuperCorridor Coalition Inc., or NASCO, is a "nonprofit 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" Already, NASCO has received $2.5 million in earmarks from the U.S. Department of Transportation.
The NAFTA Super Corridor plan is ultimately to reduce the transportation costs of using cheap labor in China, South Korea and Indonesia to produce goods for American markets. Bypassing West Coast ports in the U.S. means bypassing U.S. union wages. Mexican port and rail transport are expected to keep the shipping costs low. Also, allowing free access to the U.S. to Mexican trucks means that the containers can be moved through the U.S. by Mexican nationals, again bypassing Teamster union wages and benefits typically paid U.S. truck drivers.
To get a feel for how transportation planners are influenced by globalist economic thinking, consider this 2005 analysis written by Leonard Krouner in the Voice of San Diego:
The Los Angeles/Long Beach and Seattle/Tacoma harbors are the only two West Coast ports between Alaska and Chile that can be used by super-cargo "post-Panamax" ships with a 4,000 standardized cargo container capacity. The ability to off-load, move, unload, store and distribute cargo from these ships requires expansion of California's transportation infrastructure. Delays increasing costs for cargo movement at the Los Angeles/Long Beach port such as those extant during the 2003 longshoreman labor unrest, and the 2004 arrival of too many ships in a single time period with cargo for distribution prior to the Christmas holidays are motivating mega importers Wal-Mart and Home Depot to invest in warehouse facilities in less expensive states such as Georgia.
None of this would be possible without the extensive work being done by the U.S. Department of Commerce working groups charged with implementing by new regulations the Strategic and Prosperity Partnership of North America, or SPP. The SPP agreement was reached between President Bush, President Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin during their March 2005 summit meeting in Waco, Texas. The Bush administration plan is to create a North American Union along the model of the European Union, put in place by administrative regulations and departmental working groups under the SPP umbrella.
The U.S. Department of Transportation is actively working on a Free and Secure Trade program that would create special lanes to allow trucks from Mexico to cross the U.S. border with minimal electronic inspection, reducing the U.S. border with Mexico to no more than a speed-bump for authorized Mexican trucks entering the country.
On June 7, 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court in the case Department of Transportation v. Public Citizen ruled in favor of the Bush administration's argument that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration lacked the authority to exercise environmental controls to prevent Mexican trucks from openly operating in the U.S. under NAFTA. This ruling was key in the Bush administration's determination to open U.S. borders to Mexican trucks under the trade agreement. Had the Supreme Court decided otherwise, the NAFTA Super Corridor project would have suffered a setback.
I continue to argue that a "follow the money" strategy must be utilized to understand why President Bush has refused to close our border with Mexico, pushing instead for "comprehensive immigration reform" legislation that would allow the vast majority of illegal immigrants now in the U.S. to remain under a "guest worker" or "pathway to citizenship" provision. The underlying agenda of the Bush administration seems to be to create a NAFTA-plus environment in which workers, trade and capital will be allowed to flow unimpeded within the trilateral North American community consisting of the United States, Canada and Mexico.
The taxpayer?
Is that what the ruckus in the Capitol Bldg was all about?! LOL!
I guess I am not surprised. Yes. I bet they are getting jumpy.
They do remember Thomas Jefferson's rather blood curdling populist pronouncment,
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
The full quote gives some context to his point, which he makes in very blunt terms, speaking of Shay's Rebellion, and noting that its recurrence in our republic would likely be relatively infrequent "in a century or two" and modest in scope " a few lives ". But necessary as a kind of natural component for the maintenance of liberty.
"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion [Shays's Rebellion]. The people cannot be all, and always, well-informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had thirteen States independent for eleven years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each State. What country ever before existed a century and a half without a rebellion. And what country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that the people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms! The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."Letter from T. Jefferson to Col. William S. Smith, Paris, November 13, 1787
FReepmail to ya!
Hence the discomfort with which he is still held by some...
Yes, he does. And I certainly haven't seen much in the way of factual counter arguments that hold water.
The NAFTA Super Corridor plan is ultimately to reduce the transportation costs of using cheap labor in China, South Korea and Indonesia to produce goods for American markets. Bypassing West Coast ports in the U.S. means bypassing U.S. union wages. Mexican port and rail transport are expected to keep the shipping costs low. Also, allowing free access to the U.S. to Mexican trucks means that the containers can be moved through the U.S. by Mexican nationals, again bypassing Teamster union wages and benefits typically paid U.S. truck drivers.
* * * I continue to argue that a "follow the money" strategy must be utilized to understand why President Bush has refused to close our border with Mexico, pushing instead for "comprehensive immigration reform" legislation that would allow the vast majority of illegal immigrants now in the U.S. to remain under a "guest worker" or "pathway to citizenship" provision. The underlying agenda of the Bush administration seems to be to create a NAFTA-plus environment in which workers, trade and capital will be allowed to flow unimpeded within the trilateral orth American community consisting of the United States, Canada and Mexico.
What's a valid and reasonable explanation as to why "NASCO has received $2.5 million in earmarks from the U.S. Department of Transportation" if this isn't planned? I'd like someone to provide a reasonable argument to me that can even attempt to suggest that Americans will have ANY decent jobs left after all these PLANS comes to fruition?
Where are all the men (and women) (entry level on up) who are working at the ports going to be working if the port jobs are going to be shut down and outsourced to Mexico? What's going to happen to the communities which have been historically dependent upon those workers and their income? Those same cities/towns, BTW (i.e., Los Angeles/Long Beach and Seattle/Tacoma harbor areas), have been invaded by illegals, illegally taking lower-paying, non-union jobs. Where are the entry level young men (and women), and middle-aged men and women going to find new work in those towns/cities? And since manufacturing companies have already outsourced thousands of jobs to China, on top of there being less jobs created at home, the number of GOOD jobs left standing is not only dwindling, they're becoming non-existent.
BTTT
>Obviously you're not a citizen who's going to get his land condemned to build this system by our government(remember, the government that is supposed to protect individual rights?)
I agree with you on that point, which is why I said 'mostly'.
I hate to be the one to break this to ya, but no one. We don't write big enough checks or throw lavish parties.
I wonder how much real estate our elected officials have bought down there?
I think unless your a Mexican citizen, you can't own property in Mexico, only lease it. Of course, that would be up to the Mex Gov.
Couldn't agree more.
Outstanding post.
The following information is just from three states: North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Texas. There are many points along this "trinational highway" going through states, towns, cities, which will negatively impact American citizens, and their homes, neighborhoods, and businesses.
Interstates 29 and 35 (Corridor 23)
ND Department of Transportation
I-29 (Fargo) Construction website
Project Timeline Revised December 2005 2006 * Reconstruction and widening of I-29 from Main Avenue to Cass County 20. This will include continuing three lanes northbound from Main Avenue to 19th Ave. North, and the reconstruction of the overpass at 19th Ave. N. * Reconstruction of University Drive from 1st Ave. N. to 1st Ave. S. Detour to 10th St., which will be one lane in each direction. Reconstruction will provide three southbound lanes in addition to left and right turn lanes. * BNSF Railroad Shoofly (temporary bridge) bypass over N. University Dr. * Utility relocation and embankment construction in preparation of new 9th St. E./57th St. & I-94 interchange in West Fargo (tentative). 2007 * Continued reconstruction and widening of I-29 from Main Avenue to Cass County 20. This will include continuing three lanes southbound from 19th Ave. N. to Main Avenue. * Reconstruction of 52nd Ave. S. between I-29 and University Dr., including the 52nd Ave. S. interchange. * Construction of new 9th St. E./57th St. & I-94 interchange in West Fargo.
Planned Improvements (Oklahoma)
A reconstruction of Interstate 35 through the Ardmore, Oklahoma area in Carter County is underway. This project encompasses seven miles of Interstate 35 from seven miles north of U.S. 70 to the Murray County line (Exits 40 to 47). This portion of an overall 12-mile reconstruction is slated for completion fall of 2003. The second phase of the project will begin early 2004 and complete later in the same year.
Further north, an Interstate 35 long-term widening and reconstruction project is in its final phase. A 14-month project is underway on the 1.5-mile segment between S.E. 82nd Street and S.E. 66th Street in Oklahoma City. The new travel lanes will be created within the median of existing Interstate 35. This stretch of freeway currently accommodates 74,000 vehicles per day (vpd). The $23 million project culminates the overall Interstate 35 widening from the city of Norman northward to Interstate 40 in Oklahoma City.
Interstate 35 ties Texas from Laredo to the Oklahoma border, serving as a critical connection between the Mexican maquiladora/border region and the United States. As a result of its connections to these booming economies, Interstate 35 is overloaded on many sections. According to Brian Purcell's page, some average daily traffic counts have increased over 100% since 1985. In addition to local growth, NAFTA has put an additional strain on the corridor. As a result, officials have lobbied to have it designated as the NAFTA Superhighway to secure funding for various conventional and ITS improvements. Much of the freeway has been upgraded to a six lane facility in recent years, but bottlenecks still exist in New Braunfels and San Marcos, especially during holiday periods. Also, segments in San Antonio and Austin are suffer daily congestion as well.
For complete information and maps of all planned Texas improvements to Corridor 23, also visit Erik Slotboom's superb Texas Freeways.
There needs to be a public education campaign on this pronto.
People just think their freeways are being widened for the transportation of U.S. citizenry. Little do they realize what's in store for their towns, straight through the heart of America.
Think about the influx of criminals, in every neighborhood along these "trinational superhighways."
Crimes committed in U.S.? No problemo. There's a fast and easy way out of town, straight down to Mexico. Your one stop fast lanes to safety from law enforcement.
Exactly.
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