North American Union

One of the things that people like La Norquista hates the most about America is our highway system. They want roads to be maintained by private interests and paid for with tolls.  Combine that dream with the creation of a union-free North American Union and you've got the background you need to read about the NAFTA Super Highway:

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.

You'd think that something like this would be worth hearing or reading about, wouldn't you?  You'd be wrong. 

Comments

[KathyF]

Do you realize who wrote this? Maybe this is a swift-truck attack on Bush.

[eRobin]

It's an anti-immigration piece, which explains why you'll find it on the wingnut sites. My concern is that we're building a private road at taxpayers' expense. Privatizing the highways and of course busting unions are goals that seem to be being advanced by this project.

The CSM writes about it here, but from the perspective that it's a boondoggle.

These people think it's being built to cut the country in half to make it easier for martial law to be put into effect. After what happened in NOLA, I'm not as ready to brush those concerns off as I used to be.

These guys are opposed to it on environmental grounds:

'Small, independent farmers need help, not road blocks,' testified southern Indiana farmer Gary Seibert. 'That is what the I-69 extension will be, a great dam that splits up our farms and separates our communities. We have a name for it when you take our homes, our farms, our natural resources, and our way of life and promise us pie-in-the-sky in return. It's called rural exploitation. We've heard it all before and we decline your offer.'

Of the various proposed routes, the extension of Interstate 69 would be the most damaging and costly NAFTA Superhighway. The I-69 presently extends from Flint, Mich., to Indianapolis. But as a superhighway it would plow through farmlands, forests, and hundreds of communities in eight states plus Canada and Mexico."

There's a lot going on about it off the radar.

[Mark]

Whoa, well this goes into explaining the long term lease of our toll road in northern Indiana...