[mobglob-discuss] Bush Administration Quietly Plans NAFTA Super Highway

[Graeme Bacque]

http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?print=yes&id=15497
Bush Administration Quietly Plans NAFTA Super Highway
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.

[you have to see the map on site]

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.