by Jerome
R. Corsi
Posted Jun 12, 2006
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
Longshoremans Union in the process. The Mexican trucks, without the involvement
of the Teamsters Union, will drive on what will be the nations 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 worlds 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.
Mr. Corsi is the author of several books, including "Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John
Kerry" (along with John O'Neill), "Black Gold Stranglehold: The Myth of Scarcity and the Politics of
Oil" (along with Craig R. Smith), and "Atomic Iran: How the Terrorist Regime Bought the Bomb and
American Politicians." He is a frequent guest on the G. Gordon Liddy radio show. He
will soon co-author a new book with Jim Gilchrist on the Minuteman Project.