4um: Bush Administration Quietly Plans NAFTA Super Highway

Title: Bush Administration Quietly Plans NAFTA Super Highway
Source: Rense.com
URL Source: http://www.rense.com/general72/mex.htm
Published: Jun 14, 2006
Author: Jerome H. Corsi
Post Date: 2006-06-14 06:26:04 by Zoroaster
Ping List: *The Border*
Keywords: None
Views: 407
Comments: 23

Bush Administration Quietly Plans NAFTA Super Highway By Jerome R. Corsi Human Events 6-14-6

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.

The Undersecretary for Foreign Relations Enrique Berruga, announced his support for a driver's license that would be valid across the three nations comprising the Nafta marketplace.

"Mexico has put forward the proposal and it's being studied by Ottawa and Washington," he told local press.

Berruga added that driving academies could be established in which drivers could become familiarized with the driving regulations of each member nation, in English, Spanish and French.

As the Nafta member countries become more commercially integrated, they should work on developing the social side of Nafta, said Berruga. Nafta members "should provide themselves with privileges for being part of the same club," he added.

For example, as well as making a common license plate available, Nafta countries could create express customs service at border crossings for citizens of Nafta countries.

Berruga also pointed to the proposed "Canamex" project, which envisions the construction of a four-lane superhighway from Edmonton in Canada, through the United States, to Mexico City. The initiative's supporters, which include the Arizona and Sonora state governments, say the highway would lead to heightened trade and tourism between the three countries.

Kemp eyes currency for all of Americas: Envisions hemispheric parallel to euro.(Nation)
- The Washington Times -

Jack Kemp wants a single currency for the United States and the 33 other nations of the Western Hemisphere.

The former congressman, housing secretary under President Bush, and 1996 GOP vice presidential nominee is touting his idea as the foundation for a low-tariff trade zone from the Arctic Circle to the tip of Tierra del Fuego.

"There would be a common currency linked to the U.S. dollar, and you'd have stable exchange rates as a result," says Mr. Kemp, who first sought the Republican presidential nomination in 1988 and is considering a 2000 bid.

The currency idea sets Mr. Kemp apart in the large field of Republicans itching to make a White House run in three years.

But to some observers, the very words "common currency" smack of world government and the European Community's "euro," the new single currency that by 1999 is supposed to replace the French franc, Italian lira, German mark and other continental currencies.

For many in the political world, the Kemp idea is either lovable or laughable. For some, it's both.

"It may be a splendid idea that could usher in a new millennium of hemispheric or even global prosperity, but I don't see how you campaign on it," says Roland Gunn, a computer-industry lobbyist and former GOP congressional aide. "How do you keep people awake while you explain it?"

Rep. Mark Sanford, a South Carolina Republican and member of the Joint Economic Committee, says, "It doesn't strike me as something that would be politically viable in Congress. Both ends of the political spectrum like national sovereignty, and this would be seen as a threat to sovereignty."

Mr. Kemp does not appear to be wedded to the creation of a new single currency for the hemisphere.

Ask him if a pack of gum bought in Fairfax would require payment in U.S. dollars or a new common currency and he says, "If someone had a peso in Argentina and it were linked to the dollar, then you wouldn't care if it's a peso or a dollar."

Does that mean he really wants to see the dollar no longer printed and a new hemispheric money in its place? "No, I am very much for the sovereignty of the American dollar," he says.

Mr. Kemp, long a student of monetary policy, believes the United States and the entire hemisphere would see profound benefits from his proposal.

"A hemispheric free-trade zone would allow goods and services to cross borders [more freely] from the tip of Chile to the top of Canada," he says. "It would expand the growth of our economy and theirs."

He also says "part of our hemispheric immigration problem is related to the economies of some parts of Latin America."

If the dollar were linked to a modern version of the gold standard, every North, Central and South American country would peg its currency to the dollar, he argues. The resulting economic growth would mean fewer of their nationals would seek jobs in the United States through legal or illegal immigration.

"It's not the only answer, but part of the answer," he says.

But Mr. Sanford, a former investment banker, counters, "The South American currencies already are pegged to our dollar."

Economist Lawrence Kudlow, whom Mr. Kemp often cites, agrees and says that Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan already has linked the dollar unofficially to an updated form of the gold standard.

Whether Mr. Kemp's single- currency idea makes a suitable centerpiece for a presidential campaign platform is another matter in the view of some GOP leaders.

"It might appeal to the sophisticated businessmen who has an interest in foreign trade," says David Opitz, Wisconsin's Republican Party chairman. "But for the mainstream voter we have to appeal to, perhaps we have to have a more mainstream message, like a flat tax or eliminating the IRS."

Still, for Mr. Kemp, his common- currency idea constitutes a big-picture approach.

He says, "It is going to take leadership from the U.S., because only we can provide the leadership to re-establish a hemispheric and global monetary regime in which there is stability, credibility and integrity for our currency."

This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.Â Â All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.

Oh...mucho lanes. But who cares? We'll all be using the same curency and the same international drivers license. Open those flood gates baby, here comes Poncho, and Jose, and Maria, and Taco, and and various members of MS-13....