North American air traffic control system? Integration plans move forward

Link to article here.

PREMEDITATED MERGER
Now, here come the Mexican airplanes
Controversial SPP moves toward North American air traffic control system
August 9, 2007
  By Jerome R. Corsi
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com The U.S. has built nine navigation systems for Mexico and Canada under the controversial Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America in an apparent first step toward establishing the satellite infrastructure needed to create a North American air traffic control system. The defining vision for North American air traffic control was articulated by then-Secretary of Transportation Norman Y. Mineta in a Sept. 27, 2004, statement announcing, "We must make flying throughout North America as seamless as possible if we are to truly reap the rewards of the expanding global economy."

Wide Area Augmentation System
The "2006 Report to Leaders" posted on the SPP website proclaimed, "In order to increase navigational accuracy across the region, five Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) stations were installed in Canada and Mexico in 2005."

WAAS is a space-based augmentation system that provides precision navigation information to aircraft equipped with Global Positioning Satellite/WAAS receivers through all phases of flight.
Working through the North American Aviation Trilateral, the U.S. has built for Mexico WAAS stations at five locations: Mexico City, San Jose del Cabo, Puerto Vallarta, Merida and Tapachula.

Additionally, the U.S., working through NATT, has built four Canadian WAAS stations, at Iqaluit, Gander, Winnipeg and Goose Bay.

WND also has learned discussions are underway to create a North American Air Traffic Control System, complete with Federal Aviation Administration issuance of WAAS certifications for Canadian and Mexican airspace. According to a government official who specializes in satellite technology applied to air traffic control systems, it would involve Canadian and Mexican foreign nationals not only hosting but operating and maintaining U.S. air navigation equipment as part of a continental Global Navigation Satellite System.

The vision would permit Mexican and Canadian air traffic controllers to operate within North American airspace as if they simply were operating from a U.S. city.

The core of the U.S. air traffic control system is the Global Positioning Satellite system that functions as an integral part of the seamless Global Navigation Satellite System envisioned by the International Civil Aviation Organization.

A new program in development, Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast, or ADSB, will eventually replace existing radar sites to incorporate WAAS navigation signals and report aircraft location to air traffic control.

The plan is to feed ADSB information on all participating aircraft to Mexican and Canadian air traffic control.

WAAS uses a network of ground reference systems – Wide-Area Reference Systems – to establish accurate vertical and horizontal identification of aircraft location to assist air traffic controllers in precisely managing air space, including the ability to space aircraft accurately in take-off and landing, as well as while en route from location to location.

'Remove the barriers'

FAA and SPP-affiliated government officials deny any intent to integrate Mexican or Canadian airlines into the domestic structure of U.S. air travel, emphasizing instead the need to facilitate international travel between the three countries and coordinate air traffic control for U.S. airlines needing to fly into or over Mexican or Canadian airspace.

Their position is reflected in Secretary of Transportation Mary Peter's statement at the first North American Transportation Trilateral meeting with her counterpart transportation ministers in Mexico and Canada in Tucson, Ariz., on April 27.

Peters said, "I look forward to the day when it is as easy for an airline to start new service between Tucson and Montreal or Monterrey as it is between Tucson and Austin."

Knowledgeable government sources tell WND on background that the vision of a North American seamless airspace is also designed to permit Mexican and Canadian airlines in the future to operate from within domestic U.S. air terminals, serving locations within the U.S. on a competitive basis with U.S.-domiciled airlines.

The FAA projects continent-wide full development of an operational GPS-WAAS system by 2013.

Peters announced at the April 27 meeting that, "With globalization intensifying the pressures on all our economies, it has never been more important to connect these networks, coordinate our policies, and remove the barriers that keep large and growing volumes of goods and travelers from moving efficiently across our borders. In the United States, we see the opportunities in aviation as especially promising."

At the NATT meeting, which went virtually unreported in the U.S. mainstream media, Peters said the 2005 air services agreement between the United States and Mexico and the Open Skies accord signed with Canada in March lift restrictions on continental travel to provide for "free and open trans-border air travel."

Globally, the vision is to integrate a North American GPS/WAAS system with the Ground-Based Augmentation System being established by EUROCONTROL, an agency established under the auspices of the European Union to manage EU airspace.

Airservices Australian, an Australian airspace management organization, also intends to leverage the FAA investment in GBAS technology to advance what ultimately will become a world-standard satellite-based airspace navigation system.

The FAA website documents that a CAN/MEX/USA working group held its first meeting in Mérida, Mexico, in June 1995, during the Clinton administration.

The CAN/MEX/USA working group can further be traced to October 1993, when the International Civil Aviation Organization completed its Global Communications, Navigation and Surveillance/Air Traffic Management Implementation and Transition Plan.

In an FAA webpage reserved for discussing international activities, the FAA says the activities organized under the North American Aviation Trilateral reaffirm the FAA goal to establish regional cooperation for seamless air navigation in North America, consistent with the vision articulated by Mineta and SPP.

TxDOT trumps up Homeland Security issues as excuse NOT to release deficient bridge list

In the height of arrogance, TxDOT REFUSES to release a list of structurally deficient bridges to the public and is refusing to release the list even to lawmakers unless they sign a confidentiality agreement. Sound familiar? TxDOT cites a Homeland Security law, but let's get real. A terrorist has little interest in a bridge on a farm to market road or random state highway versus a high profile, heavily traveled, maximum carnage target like the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Who gets top fiddle with the highway department? Terrorists who are highly unlikely to care versus the traveling public who uses these bridges every day! It's pretty clear this is obstructionism and more of the same from TxDOT, who is now notorious for operating in secret and illegally withholding PUBLIC information from those who pay THEIR bills, the Texas taxpaying public!

TxDOT guarding info on bridges
By Polly Ross Hughes
Express-News
08/07/2007

AUSTIN — Amid growing concerns about government secrecy and Texas bridge safety, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst asked state transportation officials Tuesday to give him the locations of spans needing repairs, and an idea of when they'll be fixed. It remains questionable, however, whether the Texas Department of Transportation will produce the information for public consumption.

Dewhurst cited the collapse last week of an Interstate 35 bridge in Minneapolis and gave agency officials until Aug. 17 to provide the number and locations of all structurally deficient bridges, the status of maintenance contracts and anticipated dates for repair.

"I read with relief your statement that 'all of the bridges on Texas' public roads are safe,' but the Minnesota highway department, I assume, thought that was true for their state, too," Dewhurst wrote in his letter to Texas Department of Transportation Chairman Ric Williamson.


Meanwhile, a top-ranking state senator said at a public hearing Tuesday that he initially had been denied similar information from Williamson's department.

On Monday, state Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, requested a list of North Texas bridges in poor condition and which ones would take priority for repairs.

"If the chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee can't get that, who can get it?" Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, asked as he chaired a public meeting of the Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee in Irving.

Amadeo Saenz, TxDOT's assistant executive director for engineering operations, said Carona could obtain the information only if he signed a confidentiality agreement.

Of chief concern to transportation officials, according to records of a Monday e-mail exchange between a Carona aide and TxDOT, is the need for the public to be kept in the dark about specifics of bridge safety.

TxDOT's government relations staffer Caroline Love cited a state law saying government records are confidential if "they identify the technical details of particular vulnerabilities of critical infrastructure to an act of terrorism."

Also, she wrote that a federal law barring bridge inspection reports from use in court litigation strictly limits release of such information by the state to the public.

"TxDOT is not releasing specific bridge information or reports for requests from the general public," she wrote before she cited an "option" for legislators.

"If a legislator requests such information in writing AND indicates the information is for legislative purposes, information may be provided," Love wrote.

She added, "there must be an agreement or understanding that the requested information may not be shared further or with the public."

TxDOT spokesman Chris Lippincott said officials would provide Dewhurst with "the information as best we can as quickly as we can."

Meanwhile, he said the public need not fear.

If a bridge is not safe, we will close it," Lippincott said.

Link to article here. Prepare to pay....and pay BIG! Not for anything the taxpayers have done, but to bail out egotistical and wasteful politicians who would rather get their name on a road than maintain our infrastructure! One Republican is quoted as sa

Link to article here.

Prepare to pay....and pay BIG! Not for anything the taxpayers have done, but to bail out egotistical and wasteful politicians who would rather get their name on a road than maintain our infrastructure! One Republican is quoted as saying "may the sky not fall on me" for advocating a gas tax hike. It will if politicians increase our taxes after they approved 6,000 earmarks in the last federal highway bill, including the $223 million bridge to nowhere in Alaska! Don't come to us to bail out your fiscal waste and mismanagement. Until the earmarked money is returned to the taxpayers....NO GAS TAX HIKE! Politicians are doing what they do best...throwing MORE of OUR money at a problem instead of getting their own fiscal house in order!

Bridge collapse may mean gas-tax hike


Associated Press
August 8, 2007

Wanda Marsh of Papillion, Neb., fills her car with gasoline in Omaha, in this July 2007 file photo. Higher gasoline taxes may help fund infrastructure repairs across the USA.    
Enlarge image Enlarge    By Nati Harnik, AP

    
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Minneapolis bridge disaster that suddenly is the symbol of the nation's crumbling infrastructure could tip the scales in favor of billions of dollars in higher gasoline taxes for repairs coast to coast.
There are 500 bridges around the country similar to the Minneapolis span, and "these are potential deathtraps," says Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, former chairman of the House Transportation Committee.

"We have to, as a Congress, grasp this problem. And yes, I would even suggest, fund this problem with a tax," he says. "May the sky not fall on me."

One-quarter of the nation's bridges, including the one in Minneapolis, have been classified as structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. One-third of major roads are judged by federal transportation officials to be in poor or mediocre condition.

Beyond the human tragedy of the Minnesota bridge collapse lie some daunting numbers: The cost of the backlog of needed repairs to roads and bridges is now $461 billion. Road conditions are a factor in one-third of the 40,000 traffic fatalities every year. Traffic congestion costs drivers $63 billion a year in wasted time and fuel costs.


 There's no evidence to suggest that the Mississippi River disaster was a direct result of federal underspending. But there is wide agreement that the bridge is symptomatic of a national problem that Congress and the White House are going to have to address.
"It's a tragic wakeup call," said Matt Jeanneret, spokesman for the American Road and Transportation Builders Association. "This is gut check time for members of Congress for what they are going to do at the federal level."

Past action by Congress and the White House does not give rise to confidence.

The last six-year highway and transit bill finally passed in 2005, two years late and, at $286 billion, almost $90 billion short of the $375 billion that transportation advocates said was needed to keep U.S. infrastructure from further deterioration.

Young and other Transportation Committee leaders wanted to pay for the larger sum by indexing for inflation the fuel tax that keeps the National Highway Trust Fund in money. That would have raised the tax, at 18.3 cents a gallon since 1993, by about a nickel.

President Bush rejected what he said was a tax hike and insisted that Congress accept a far smaller highway budget.

According to a U.S. Chamber of Commerce study last year, indexing fuel taxes retroactively to 1993 would have boosted the tax to about 25 cents a gallon last year, raising an average of $20 billion annually.

The two-year delay in passing the measure caused havoc with state transportation planners, who had to defer new projects because they didn't know how much would be available. Federal money accounts for about 45% of all infrastructure spending.

"This administration failed to support robust investment in surface transportation and the funding to accompany it," Rep. Jim Oberstar, D-Minn., the Transportation Committee's new chairman this year, said at a news conference after the bridge collapse in his home state.

When the next highway bill comes up in 2009, Congress won't settle for a "bargain basement" measure, Oberstar said.

Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., the top Republican on the committee, called for a national strategic transportation plan to fix a system where "we have congestion, where we have bridges falling into our rivers." He cited an American Council of Civil Engineering estimate that this would cost $1.7 trillion.

The administration in turn has demanded that Congress show more discipline, citing thousands of special projects, or earmarks, in highway bills that don't reflect the real priorities. The best known among them was one that Young supported: $223 million for the "Bridge to Nowhere" in Alaska. That provision eventually faltered, but about $24 billion — a little less than 8% of the total — in the last highway bill was still devoted to projects singled out by lawmakers for funding.

State transportation officials also complain about the federal practice of annually denying spending for uncontracted projects, leaving states short of money promised in transportation bills. This helped build up the highway trust fund, said Jack Basso of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, but the reality is that "that money is never going to get used."

Since 2002, Congress has been using these unobligated funds for "rescissions," a budget device used to offset spending and make the budget deficit look smaller. Such highway-related rescissions have grown from $374 million in fiscal 2002 to $4.3 billion this fiscal year.

Within a day of the Minneapolis bridge disaster, the Senate moved to create a national commission to look into what must be done to improve roads, bridges, drinking water systems and other public works. Advocates said it basically boils down to two issues — finding the money and the political will.

Two years from now, when Congress has to write a new six-year plan, the highway trust fund — which had a balance of almost $23 billion in 2000 — is expected to go into the red.

While revenues from the fuel tax are eroding in value, construction costs are soaring. In the past three years the costs of basic materials such as asphalt, steel and diesel fuel have risen 47% because of construction booms in China and other countries, said Jeff Shoaf, senior executive director of Associated General Contractors of America.

"We're in so deep a hole that we've got to look at every option," he said.

Among those options, all with their detractors, are building more toll roads, encouraging more private-public road projects, sanctioning more state and local construction bonds and taxing drivers according to miles driven rather than fuel purchased.

Congress also may finally be ready to consider a boost in the federal gasoline tax. Frank Moretti of TRIP, a national transportation research group, said continuing to oppose higher gasoline taxes could become politically untenable.

The bridge collapse "is going to create a fundamental shift," Moretti said. The public would rather pay more taxes "than have to face the consequences of a crumbling infrastructure."

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Senators talk tough at hearing, but didn't rein in the TxDOT monster when they could have

Senators may talk tough in these hearings, but the bottom line is they didn't rein in the TxDOT oligarchy when they should have...during the last legislative session. For all the huffing and puffing they did, they never blew the house down! They know TxDOT cooked the books on the Trans Texas Corridor TTC-35 project, yet the Attorney General nor any of these "outraged" senators have done a single thing to bring anyone to justice.

Perhaps it's that cozy relationship with those in the hotel yesterday (the highway lobby was swarming at the annual Transportation Summit where private industry and government wed themselves together, sealed with a kiss, of course) that prevents the public from getting a fair shake and prevents criminal uses of our hard earned tax dollars. Et tu, Brute? and Judas come to mind...the kiss of betrayal!

TxDOT rides in hot seat as lawmakers fume
By Patrick Driscoll
Express-News
08/07/2007

IRVING — Just two months after the state's transportation department got its latest marching orders from the Legislature, a leading state senator said Tuesday the agency is as arrogant as ever.At a hearing of the Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee, Chairman John Carona, R-Dallas, accused Texas Department of Transportation officials of circumventing legislative intent and even refusing to explain what they're up to.

"What does it take to get TxDOT to listen to the will of the legislators?" he said. "It is a core attitude of arrogance that I believe still exists."

Carona made the same complaint last spring during a wild legislative session in which more than half a dozen bills gained traction to reign in the department's toll-road policies.

Surviving a gauntlet of political maneuvering was Senate Bill 792, which shifted some tolling powers to local agencies, limited what contracts can do and stopped leasing of toll roads — though there were many exemptions — pending further study.

Then came surprises from TxDOT officials, who said:

The moratorium on toll leases won't affect any contracts for toll roads or rail lines for the Trans-Texas Corridor route that will parallel Interstate 35, though those projects weren't exempted.

They might be able to get around the toll-lease ban by collecting the tolls themselves and then paying private developers returns based on traffic flows, an arrangement called availability payments.

They plan to move forward with a $2.5 million program to test speed cameras on Texas 6 near College Station and on I-10 in Hudspeth County, despite a law passed this year to prohibit cities from using such cameras.

Carona decided it was time for an update, and called a hearing on the first day of the annual Transportation Summit, which TxDOT boycotted two years ago because of disagreements with Dallas area leaders over where the Trans-Texas Corridor should go.

At the hearing, held at a Westin Hotel, Carona protested that his letters and phone calls to TxDOT about its speed-camera project have been ignored.

"All we're asking for is the courtesy of an explanation," he said.

He cast doubt on TxDOT's hope of using availability payments.

"What I heard was you found another way to get around us," he said.

State senators Robert Nichols, R- Jacksonville, and Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, the only other committee members there, also fired shots.

Nichols, who has served on the Texas Transportation Commission, which oversees TxDOT, said using availability payments would be like the state co-signing private loans.

"I'm not so sure you have the ability to do that," he said.

After Carona noted that he couldn't make TxDOT play nice but he sure could turn up the heat, Shapiro flashed a friendly smile and chimed in: "I think he speaks for most of us."

Speaking for TxDOT, Assistant Director Amadeo Saenz and Transportation Commissioner Fred Underwood emphasized there's a severe shortage of funds, which means toll roads are needed.

"Texas is facing enormous and rapidly increasing transportation needs," Underwood said. "Achieving our goals will require a long-term program of investment in our transportation system by state, local governments and, we believe, by private participants."

Carona said he wasn't directing his attacks at Underwood, saying he's too new on the commission to have caused problems, or Saenz, saying he thinks the world of him.

Kansas to raise tolls to pay for college profs' digs

Link to article here. This represents the absolute worst kind of fiscal policy that drew ire when the Chicago Skyway was sold to Cintra-Macquarie to balance the state's budget in 2006. The people of Illinois will now be paying 99 years of interest and toll taxes to Spain and Australia so their government could balance the budget for one year. It goes to show that these toll road slush funds are NOT about infrastructure or congestion relief or anything other than MONEY! Road taxes are now the funds of choice that politicians raid for every pet project on the planet. This is NO user tax! Tolls translate into a whole new tax on driving while they tell you to your face it's not a tax increase. Throw the bums out or they'll tax us into poverty!

Kansas tolls for college profs digs still not dead
Toll Road News
Wed, 2007-04-11

Kansas legislators still see the need for the government to bail out a bunch of state colleges because the professors' digs are in need of rehab, and the state's governor Kathleen Sibelius hasn't abandoned her January proposal to raise tolls on the Turnpike. The higher tolls would support $300m in loans to the colleges for repairs and deferred maintenance.


Legislators haven't acted on the governor's proposal. Most agree with the Turnpike that any profits should be plowed back into the road. Kansas house majority leader Ray Merrick thought the colleges should raise more money themselves by increasing tuition fees. Students hopefully benefit from college education in better jobs and higher incomes so higher 'user fees' made sense.

However Merrick's view isn't flying. Other legislators, and the governor want to keep the profs on the state's gravy train. Trouble is they can't agree what gravy train!

So the possibility remains of the Turnpike tolls being used to fix the college digs.

Tolls up 5% Jul 1

Meanwhile preplanned toll increases on the Turnpike have been confirmed for July 1.

Toll increases will average 5%. The last toll increase was in 2004, also 5%.

Tolls will rise:
- for cars from the present 3.78c/mile (2.3c/km) will rise to 4c/mi (2.4c/km)
- for tractor trailers from 11.1c/mi (6.8c/km) go up to 11.7c/mile (7.1c/km)
- for long triples with 9 axles from 27c/mi (16.6c/m) to 28c/mi (17c/km)

CEO Michael Johnson says the Turnpike plans to make these kind of modest increases in tolls on a regular basis every year or two rather than allow the buying power of toll revenue to deteriorate over long periods requiring "huge" increases.

Perry spends over a quarter million in gas taxes for his own security

Governor Rick Perry and his cronies in the Legislature keep stepping into mine fields....when someone finally shines the light on the public fleecing and lack of fiscal responsibility the outrage gets kicked-up another notch! The fact that DPS is primarily funded from gasoline taxes, which is supposed to be a dedicated fund spent only for transportation needs, instead of by general revenues is what draws ire here. Everyone can see the Governor needs security when he travels, but the fact that he's pushing tolls across Texas claiming there's no money for roads rings hollow when he's guilty of spending that diverted money on his own travel (especially when the public purpose of such is questionable).

Politicians always try to reach for a "public purpose" for their own image building trips, Perry is foremost in saying everything is for "economic development." Think corporate welfare. He says he's creating jobs...well, the benefits of these "new" jobs are most often completely erased by the cost to the taxpayers through corporate tax breaks and new infrastructure needs. Perry's economic development dole outs are some of the most controversial use of taxpayer funds on his watch. Oh, but he's a fiscal "conservative"...yeah right. The hypocrisy continues.

Perry ran up a $259,428 tab for trip security
By Peggy Fikac
Express News
08/07/07

Austin bureau AUSTIN — Foreign trips by Gov. Rick Perry and his wife have cost Texas more than a quarter of a million dollars in security provided through his protective detail, according to figures obtained by the San Antonio Express-News.Perry spokesman Robert Black touted travel Tuesday as particularly important in advancing the GOP governor's economic development agenda.

That was a key aim of many of the 10 trips, although the list also includes a Grand Cayman vacation last year and a 2004 trip to the Bahamas with campaign donors and that the governor's office said was to discuss education.

Perry's direct expenses on state trips generally have been covered by a privately financed economic development program overseen by his office or business contributions or his campaign.

The security tab, however, is paid by the state. The cost of the Governor Protective Detail falls under the Texas Department of Public Safety's highway patrol budget, financed primarily by the state gasoline tax and vehicle registration fees.


"It's not a small amount of money," said Rep. Warren Chisum, R-Pampa, chairman of the budget-writing House Appropriations Committee, of the security cost of $259,428.07 for nine trips starting in 2004. (Security for the 10th trip, to Iraq and Afghanistan in 2006, was provided by the federal government, according to Perry's office).

But Chisum said security is an appropriate cost for government to bear.

"Obviously we wouldn't want our governor going without security. ... If he got kidnapped or something, we'd spend 10 times as much trying to get him out." Chisum said.

Then again, Chisum quipped about the governor who sometimes draws lawmakers' ire for his proposals and his vetoes, "There may be some debate about how much we would pay."

The costliest security tab — at $73,413.85 — was for Perry's trip to the Middle East in March, in the midst of the regular legislative session.

Perry, an Aggie, made the trip to help dedicate a Texas A&M University campus in Qatar and to have meetings with the aim of luring economic development projects to Texas.

"As the leader of the 10th largest economy in the world, the governor has made job creation and economic development a cornerstone of his administration, and that means ... bringing jobs to this state, whether from inside our own country or from around the world," Black said.

The other trips by Perry and/or his wife, Anita, included the Bahamas; Italy; two to Mexico; Japan; Iraq and Afghanistan; Grand Cayman; Qatar and the United Arab Emirates; Turkey; and Israel and Jordan. Anita Perry represented the governor during the 2005 trade mission to Japan.

Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, said, "I think perhaps he should consider private security as an option. ... Allowing the campaign to pay for private security during personal time is a reasonable thing. If you're traveling as an official of the state on an official trip, then I completely understand the DPS should go with you."

DPS spokesman Tom Vinger said the security detail's duty is clear: "Whenever the governor travels, we go with him. That's the way it's been with past governors."

Past governors' travels also have drawn attention, although Perry seems to be the leader in foreign trips.

When then-Gov. George W. Bush campaigned for president the first time, in the 2000 election, Texas saw an increased security cost. In 1998, before Bush announced plans to run for the White House, the DPS spent $285,873 on his security detail. In 1999, when he began his campaign and traveled the country, the total jumped to $2.65 million. Bush also made a much-noted trip to Israel before launching his presidential campaign.

Bush's predecessor, the late Democratic Gov. Ann Richards, traveled to Mexico, said former aide Chuck McDonald, but it was her U.S. travel that drew barbs.

"We got criticized just for going to California, for crying out loud," McDonald said. "We were like, 'We're trying to bring the movie industry to Texas.' Everyone is like, 'Sure you are.'"

Political scientist Bruce Buchanan of the University of Texas said foreign travel potentially could benefit the state.

"It kind of depends on what's going on on the trips. Obviously, there's some element of building Perry's profile ... on the other hand, that doesn't necessarily hurt the state," Buchanan said. "It may in the long run help the state, should he in the long run have a future profile."

"Ten (trips) does sound like a goodly number," Buchanan added. "That's quite a lot. I'm not sure I want to jump on him for that. A certain amount would be easily forgivable. This seems like quite a lot."

Phyllis Schlafly: SPP summit about economic integration of U.S., Canada, Mexico

The Plans for Economic Integration
By Phyllis Schlafly
Monday, August 6, 2007

Canada in the summer and Mexico in the spring offer good weather for planning international policies. Nervousness about the political weather, however, is putting the third Security and Prosperity Partnership summit taking place Aug. 20-21 at a site where the uninvited can be easily excluded: the Fairmont Le Chateau Montebello resort about 50 miles outside of Quebec.

The cheering gallery for SPP is hysterically chanting that its goal is not a North American "union" modeled on the European Union - and that anyone who thinks otherwise must be peddling conspiracy fears. But SPP supporters candidly admit they want North American "integration," which might be a distinction without a difference.

President George W. Bush started down this trail on April 22, 2001, when he signed the Declaration of Quebec City in which he made a "commitment to hemispheric integration." After Communist Hugo Chavez took over Venezuela, "hemispheric" was quietly scaled down to the Security and Prosperity Partnership of just North America.

The lobbyists for integration are bringing heavy-artillery reinforcements to their cause: a pro-integration report written by a prestigious think tank, the Center for Strategic & International Studies. The report is now being translated into Spanish and French so it can be presented to all three governments in September.

The importance of the Center for Strategic & International Studies comes from the political influence of its trustees. They are longtime internationalists and architects of some of the worst foreign and defense policies of the past 50 years.

A 25-page advance peek at the report has been released under the caption "North American Future 2025 Project." The core of the plan for America's future is North American "economic integration" and "labor mobility," key words that are repeated again and again in this report.

The threat to good U.S. jobs is obvious from the redundancy of demands to import cheap labor without limits: "international migration of labor," "international movement not only of goods and capital, but also of people," "mobile labor supply," "North American labor mobility," "flows of labor migration," and "free flow of people across national borders."

The report explains that "border infrastructure" means the "efficient flow of labor across North American borders" so we can "pool the human capital necessary to source a competitive North American work force." It's unlikely that U.S. workers want to "pool" their jobs with Mexico where the median minimum wage is $5 a day.

Slyly revealing the plan to integrate governments as well as economies, the report states: "To remain competitive in the global economy, policymakers must devise forward-looking, collaborative policies that integrate governments." In an attack on the unique American patent system and fountainhead of U.S. innovation superiority, the report calls for "harmonizing legislation" with other countries in the area of intellectual property rights. The report also calls on us to "harmonize" regulations of all kinds by adopting "unified North American regulatory standards."

No wonder the CSIS admits that its report was developed in "seven closed-door roundtable sessions." Let's call the roll of the trustees of this influential think tank: Henry Kissinger, who was the architect of the Nixon-Ford policies repudiated by Ronald Reagan; James R. Schlesinger, the secretary of defense for Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford; Zbigniew Brzezinski, the trilateralist who was President Jimmy Carter's chief foreign policy adviser.

William Cohen, who was President Bill Clinton's secretary of defense; Harold Brown, who was the secretary of the Air Force carrying out Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's disarmament policies in the 1960s; and Brent Scowcroft, former vice chairman of Kissinger Associates and national security adviser to President George H.W. Bush.

The frontman for this galaxy of globalists is former Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga. One more household name is former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, the man who leaked Valerie Plame's name to the press.

Business authority Peter F. Drucker wrote in his 1993 book "Post Capitalist Society" (Collins, $16.95) that the European Union "triggered the attempt to create a North American economic community, built around the United States but integrating both Canada and Mexico into a common market."

He gleefully added, "So far this attempt is purely economic in its goal, but it can hardly remain so in the long run. ... The economic integration of the three countries into one region is proceeding so fast that it will make little difference whether the marriage is sanctified legally or not."

Now that the game plan is laid out, we can connect the dots: the North American Free Trade Agreement; the admission of Mexican trucks onto U.S. highways; the contract to build the TransTexas Corridor and the plans to extend it into a NAFTA Superhighway; making Kansas City an international "port"; the "totalization" of illegal immigrants into the U.S. Social Security system; and the recently defeated Senate amnesty bill. That bill would have integrated 20 million illegal immigrants into the U.S. labor force, locked us (by Section 413) into the SPP, and spent massive foreign aid to "improve the standard of living in Mexico."

WND: NAFTA Superhighway traffic connected to MN bridge collapse

Link to article here.

NAFTA Superhighway traffic tied to bridge collapse
WND uncovers federal study warning of high risk in 1998
August 5, 2007
By Jerome R. Corsi
WorldNetDaily.com

Evidence of increasing international trade truck traffic on Interstate 35 through Minnesota raises concerns that NAFTA Superhighway traffic contributed to last week's collapse of the freeway bridge in Minneapolis.


President George W. Bush, aboard Marine One, takes an aerial survey of the Interstate 35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis, Saturday, Aug. 4, 2007
WND has unearthed a Federal Highway Administration report dating back to 1998 that warned increasing NAFTA truck traffic was expected to create a safety concern with bridges in states along the I-35 NAFTA Superhighway, including Minnesota.


The study concluded that, "The I-35 Corridor's multimodal transportation hubs – where air, rail, river, and truck cargo converge – make I-35 ideally positioned to be a major route for what is expected to be increasing levels of international trade activity."

The study warned that, "Over the next few decades, about 65 percent of I-35 will require major upgrades, however the entire route will have a continued need for rehabilitating pavements, resurfacing sections of the highway, and providing replacements of some bridge decks. Bridge substructures and superstructures will also need to be maintained, requiring repairs to maintain the integrity of the bridges."
The FHWA study was conducted in conjunction with the Departments of Transportation in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa and Minnesota, and assessed I-35 from Laredo, Texas, to Duluth, Minn.A comprehensive study of freight traffic conducted by the Federal Highway Administration, or FHWA, shows conclusively a large percentage of the freight carried through Minnesota is carried by truck.FHWA data show that in 2002, a total of 280.7 million tons of freight moved through Minnesota, 86 percent of which was carried by truck.

The trend line shows dramatic increases projected, with freight traffic through Minnesota expected to double by 2035, to a total of 551.5 million tons, of which 88 percent will be carried by truck.

The bridge collapsed at rush hour, with an estimated 100-150 cars and trucks on the structure in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

Officials in Minnesota had been warned since 1990 that the bridge was "structurally deficient" and severely fatigued from the increasing volume of traffic the bridge, which spans the Mississippi River along Interstate 35, was receiving.

North America's SuperCorridor Coalition, Inc. (NASCO), a Dallas-based trade association, also designates I-35 as a NAFTA Superhighway.

NASCO's website states, "There are no plans to build a new NAFTA Superhighway – it exists today as I-35."

The original 2005 NASCO website opened with a graphic map of I-35 that highlighted in yellow the continental nature of the I-35 NAFTA Superhighway, illustrating clearly the highway's links into Mexico and Canada.


NASCO's original map highlighted the I-35 corridor from Mexico to Canada
WND has previously reported the Minnesota Department of Transportation joined NASCO as a member in 2006, after a heavy lobbying campaign launched by NASCO executive director Tiffany Melvin.

As fully documented on the Texas Department of Transportation website, the department plans to build a new Trans-Texas Corridor parallel to Interstate 35, and NASCO has yet to repudiate these new superhighway construction plans.

The debate whether or not to build a new TTC-like NAFTA Superhighway parallel to I-35 or to repair and rebuild I-35 to accommodate NAFTA and other global trade traffic required by 2025 and beyond, including projections of international truck and train freight travel, is now being debated by the states north of I-35.

As WND has reported, Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett has repudiated his signing in 2004 of a document described as "The Declaration of North American Integration."

Cornett told WND he was opposed to the creation of a North American Union or the extension of TTC-35 into Oklahoma, "if the whole point is to make it cheaper to transport containers from China coming through Mexican ports."

WND has also reported Oklahoma House Speaker Lance Cargill has invited to Oklahoma Robert Poole, a prominent expert advising states to build toll roads as "public-private partnerships," complete with financing from private investment consortia seeking long-term operating leases on the new highways once completed, according to the Trans-Texas Corridor model.

Private investors' hunger pangs due in part to TX moratorium

Link to story here.

Hunger pangs
By Pat Driscoll
Express-News
August 01, 2007

Saliva drips from the teeth of global investors eyeing toll roads, airports and seaports in the U.S., but more often lately they've had to sit, knife and fork in hands, and wait, a recent analysis says.

281.hearing.jpg
(William Luther/Express-News)
In February, more than 650 people showed up for a hearing on proposed toll lanes along U.S. 281 in San Antonio. Almost one in 10 signed up to speak, and most were opposed to the plan.

The analysis, by JOSEPH A. GIANNONE, describes the worldwide privatization wave:

The global volume of deals involving public and private infrastructure assets — from power utilities and seaports to airports and toll bridges — last year tripled to $150 billion from the year before.By some estimates, specialist funds have earmarked more than $75 billion for infrastructure investments, which with additional borrowing represents up to $400 billion in dry powder. Some bankers say buying power exceeds $750 billion.



To give you an idea of how much that is, Cintra of Spain and Zachry Construction Co. of San Antonio say they can build a four-lane toll road from San Antonio to Dallas for $6.8 billion, which is more than two thirds of Texas' highway budget last year.

The Cintra-Zachry toll road is part of the Tran-Texas Corridor, Gov. Rick Perry's idea to carve 4,000 miles of toll lanes, rail lines and utility lines through rural areas over the century. That's been estimated at $184 billion.

But drooling investors trying to sink their funds where they can get stable, long-term returns are starving for action.

Giannone said:

All across Wall Street, firms have assembled teams and raised new specialized funds to handle the expected surge of public asset deals.Yet U.S. deal activity has come to a halt amid unexpectedly strong public resistance to parting with taxpayer-funded assets, many of which are monopolies.

Privatization plans have run afoul of legislatures ... in recent months, including Indiana, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. In Texas, lawmakers declared a two-year moratorium on privatized highways.



Ah yes, Texas' moratorium bill, also know as SB 792, the bill that's so holey it'd be going to church regularly if it could grow legs.

Nearly every toll project in the pipeline, worth some $15 billion in all, was exempted from the moratorium bill. A notable exception to the exemption was U.S. 281 in San Antonio, which means a planned eight-mile tollway there can't be leased over the next two years.

In June, the Texas Transportation Commission decided to move forward on another 87 toll projects worth $56 billion (list and map), but that was mainly to establish local or state dibs on ownership. Most of them are likely years away, well beyond the moratorium.

But there's still some fear over leasing toll roads in Texas, and there's a ripe opportunity to run afoul of the Legislature. In the oven is a sunset review of the Texas Department of Transportation, which lawmakers intend to wrap up in the 2009 session.

Will the heat get turned up?

Many hunger for political change, fed-up with pork barrel spending and politics as usual

The first article speaks of just some of the Texas pork barrel spending in the budget just passed (not to mention the $1.6 billion in gas taxes diverted away from transportation in this year's budget). The second speaks to widespread discontent with politics as usual and the hunger for change, even among a Republican party faithful, Craig Shirley, who slams both parties and the political machine backed by special interests that produces the same ol' same ol' year after year. It's time for a revolution. Ron Paul, who has NEVER accepted money from special interests and who has bucked the system and party politics may be the only chance to restore representative government.

Author Craig Shirley pretty well sums it up: "The candidates come and go. The congressmen come and go. The senators come and go. But the media and K Street, and the campaign consultants are here forever. They take over. They're like cockroaches that come out in the middle of the night, and they take over."

 

State budget loaded with pork-barrel spending
By: Associated Press
Aug. 4, 2007

In this year's legislative session, it paid to support embattled House Speaker Tom Craddick.

That support translated into state dollars for an antebellum plantation home near Dallas, an Edinburg museum of South Texas history, and upgrades to a Houston park named for an influential Craddick legislative ally.

Recent budget prosperity and a presiding officer in desperate need of allies ushered in a return of pork-barrel spending during the recent session. In the new budget for 2008 and 2009, those who helped Craddick survive a bipartisan coup try were big winners of an estimated $176 million in so-called "special items."

But Craddick spokeswoman Alexis DeLee says the "budget process that took place this last session is the same as it's always been."

Rep. Sylvester Turner, D-Houston, supported Craddick. He got a $600,000 matching grant for renovations at the Sylvester Turner Park in Houston. Turner says renovations to the 27-year-old park are needed, including new bathrooms to replace portable toilets.

Rep. Helen Giddings is another Democrat who supported Craddick. She helped the South Dallas suburb of DeSoto get $500,000 to buy the historic Nance Farm, a plantation home built in the 1850s.

Border area Democrats, a key bloc of support for Craddick's re-election, did particularly well in the $153 billion budget.

Democratic Ryan Guillen of Rio Grande City got an $800,000 matching grant for a new park in his small border town and a new rural technology center for vocational skills training. A zoo in Brownsville and a soccer complex in Kingsville will get almost $700,000 combined for renovations. Another $10 million was set aside for Harlingen's South Texas Hospital and $1 million for a border security technology and training center in McAllen.

Democratic Representative Aaron Pena of Edinburg helped bring the city $3 million for a new drug treatment center and $750,000 for the Will Looney Legacy Park and a museum of South Texas history.


Copyright 2007 Associated Press, All rights reserved.
 

___________________________________


Gingrich: US on Verge of 'Golden Age of Freedom'
By Evan Moore
CNSNews.com Correspondent
August 03, 2007

(CNSNews.com) - America is on the cusp of a "golden age of freedom and prosperity," said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich in a speech Thursday before a group of young conservatives.

No doubt, America faces "enormous challenges," Gingrich told the crowd. But he predicted that the young conservatives in attendance, along with conservatives nationwide, would lead America to a brighter future.

Gingrich was speaking at the Young America's Foundation's 29th National Conservative Students Conference, held at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Other speakers at the week-long conference included former Virginia Sen. George Allen, talk-radio host Michael Reagan and syndicated columnist Robert Novak.

Gingrich told the assembled students they were the potential leaders of the next great wave of American reformers, in the tradition of the Jeffersonians, the Lincoln Republicans and the New Deal Democrats.

But for that wave to sweep across the country and help build a better America, young conservatives need to reject the current modus operandi in the political and social culture, he said.

Disdain for the system

America today, according to Gingrich, is divided. There is "the world that works," exemplified by the success and accomplishment of private enterprise, and there is "the world that fails," typified by the "old decaying bureaucracies" of Washington, D.C. -- the remnants of President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs.

The old bureaucratic, one-size-fits-all model is slow, inefficient and wasteful, said Gingrich. On the contrary, companies such as FedEx and UPS, for instance, can track millions of packages they are shipping in real time, while the federal government has failed to locate the millions of illegal immigrants living in American society, he said.

Gingrich then quipped that his solution to ending illegal immigration would be to mail packages to those illegal immigrants, store their addresses and then round the immigrants up.

The former House Speaker said he was "troubled by the failure of both major parties" in correctly addressing the issues and problems Americans face. Democrats, said Gingrich, are "trapped in a fantasy world" and the "party of unionized bureaucracy" while Republicans refuse to admit the nature of the systematic failure of big government.

Gingrich cited the example of Detroit -- which he had previously discussed on Fox News Sunday -- as an indicator of this failure. Detroit epitomizes the failure of the bureaucracy-based approach, he said. The Motor City has lost nearly half its population over the last 60 years. Its residents now have a per-capita income that is ranked 62nd in the nation. In 1950, Detroit ranked first.

Today, only 25 percent of Detroit's high school freshmen eventually graduate on schedule. And a majority of those who drop out of high school, said Gingrich, are likely to end up in jail. "How can we tolerate systems more likely to send people to prison than to college?" he said.

As for President Bush's global war on terror, "none of you should believe we are winning this war," said Gingrich. "There is no evidence that we're winning. ... This is a phony war."

Further, the failure to swiftly detect and deal with the terrorist cell members involved in the planned attack on Fort Dix, and the lawsuit of the "flying imams" against US Airways revealed that "our system is broken," said Gingrich, and that "something is fundamentally wrong."

To defeat the threat of radical Islamists, America must devote more resources to its intelligence, defense and foreign relations services, he said, adding that Web sites and religious services that incite Muslims to commit jihad should be shut down.

"For us to be serious about winning this campaign is going to require a dramatically more serious strategy and a dramatic overhaul of our bureaucracies, and a significant increase in resources," said Gingrich.

Presidential ambitions muted

There has been speculation that Gingrich may run for president in 2008. He has fueled that speculation by dropping hints to the media and expressing disdain for the current conventional means of running for president.

While Gingrich did not discuss his views on running for president at the conference, conservative and author Craig Shirley told Cybercast News Service that he shares Gingrich's disdain for the enormous fundraising and bureaucratic operations prevalent in contemporary presidential campaigns.

"The permanent power structure in Washington is the national media, the K Street lobbyists and the campaign consultants," said Shirley. "Politicians are merely vehicles in which to have fun and profit.

"The candidates come and go. The congressmen come and go. The senators come and go. But the media and K Street, and the campaign consultants are here forever. They take over. They're like cockroaches that come out in the middle of the night, and they take over."

Shirley emphasized that the means to break the hold of Washington's "consultant-ocracy" rests with the American public. "The consultants are not the gate-keepers to the nomination," he said. "The voters are."

Goldman Sachs guru warns of America becoming a global credit risk!

Goldman Sachs Guru Warns of War-Debt Failure

Monday, July 30

Is America becoming a global credit risk? How to get back on track

By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch
Published: 07-30-07

Will Moody's downgrade America's debt next? Actually, that's already happening; our credit rating is collapsing with the dollar.

Foreign banks are dumping dollar reserves, while we gorge on , cheap toys and bad pet food. Actually, our biggest "terrorist" threat is internal: Distorted values are downgrading our nation's "creditworthiness." We're like out-of-control kids with stolen credit cards, spending our future with no plans to repay.

Recently Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs (International), appeared before the U.S. House Budget Committee to "discuss an issue of great economic, financial and national security importance to our country -- the growing dependence of the United States on foreign capital." Currently we import $1 trillion new debt annually, with no repayment plans. That's a historic break from over two centuries of American policy.

Hormats was in Washington with warnings from his brilliant new book, "The Price of Liberty: Paying for America's Wars." He traces the history of American wartime financing from the Revolution through the War of 1812, the Civil War, the two World Wars and the Cold War to the present.

Conclusion: "One central, constant theme emerges: sound national finances have proved to be indispensable to the country's military strength" and long-term national security.

1776 to Iraq, national security demands fiscal responsibility
America's long tradition of war financing began with Alexander Hamilton: "In January 1790, Hamilton, by then the country's Treasury secretary, confronted the American people with a stark fact: the nation had run up a huge debt fighting the Revolutionary War. This debt, he wrote, was the 'price of liberty,' and the new government had to repay it.
 

The future creditworthiness of the United States, and ultimately the security and ability to finance future wars, would depend on how successfully and faithfully this was done."

Hamilton's principles have kept America's credit strong through every war since the Revolution ... until the Iraq War. Since then, "although U.S. leaders have warned that the war against terrorism could last for decades, the country lacks a multidecade financial strategy to address the challenge."

Iraq tossed the lessons of history out the window. Hormats says that despite the oft-repeated remark that 9/11 "changed everything, in the area of fiscal policy, however, it changed nothing. The country is pursuing a pre-9/11 fiscal policy in a post-9/11 world." That assessment comes from someone who worked inside Washington for over a decade before joining Goldman Sachs in the 1980s.

Unsustainable debt is weakening national security
America's new faith-based guns-and-butter policy is hurting both guns and butter. The war is costing us $12 billion a month. Hormats examined the Congressional Budget Office's projections for domestic costs: "In 2006, spending on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and interest on the federal debt amounted to just under 60% of government revenues" and "if they continue on their current path, they will account for two-thirds by 2015."

• Social security from $550 billion to $960 billion
• Medicare from $372 billion to over $900 billion
• Medicaid from $181 billion to $390 billion

Worse yet, these commitments will continue skyrocketing in later decades. The CBO projects the federal debt rising from 40% of GDP to 100% in the next 25 years: "Continuing on this unsustainable path will gradually erode, if not suddenly damage, our economy, our standard of living, and ultimately our national security."
Hormats warns of the risks of this gross departure from Hamilton's principles: "Of late, the precedents and experiences of past generations have been cast aside. The 9/11 attacks were seen by many legislators as a license to spend more money on non-security programs, and Americans have not been called to make sacrifices. Tax cuts and spending increased on politically popular security-irrelevant domestic programs have been enacted as if there were no expensive defense programs to be funded."

Turning point in Iraq, where 'deficits don't matter'
In my opinion, the turning point occurred in late 2002. Remember, the Afghan War was hot. America was in recession and a bear market. The surpluses of the 1990s rapidly disappeared. Corporate scandals were damaging our global standing. Washington was pushing a second round of tax cuts. And the Iraq invasion was imminent.

Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, true to Hamiltonian principles, warned the White House of a coming fiscal crisis. The vice president retorted: "Reagan proved deficits don't matter." (Hormats tells me Reagan never said that.) Soon after, Cheney "fired" O'Neill ... and Hamilton's principles of sound war financing were dead.
Unfortunately, Washington's radical new faith-based financing is sabotaging national security. America's unsustainable deficits are making us extremely vulnerable to terrorists whose goal is to "attack the United States, perhaps with chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons capable of killing enormous numbers of people and seriously disrupting the American economy," targeting a "major port or transportation center."
Hormats says America is now "relying on faith over experience, hoping that sustained growth will erase deficits and that the ballooning costs of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will be manageable in the coming decades without difficult reforms."

Yet economists now estimate these entitlements can only be "reformed" by either a cut in benefits or an increase in taxes greater that 40%. In short, today's faith-based economics is failing us.
The current Treasury secretary also appears to be supporting this new approach: Henry Paulson, former Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, recently told Fortune that "this is far and away the strongest global economy I've seen in my business lifetime."

Well, that sure sounds to me like yet another rejection of Hamiltonian principles in favor of the new faith-based policy, which assumes that global economies will always be strong and, therefore, foreign capital will indefinitely bankroll America's war machine at a low cost.

The danger is, it also assumes that American taxpayers will be able to indefinitely pay the interest costs of our burgeoning foreign debt ... on top of exploding unfunded domestic entitlements in Social Security and Medicare.

Time to rediscover 'Hamilton's gift' of war financing
Hormats was being much too diplomatic in summing up his warning to the House Budget Committee: "If government debt continues to pile up, deficits rise to stratospheric levels and heavy dependence on foreign capital grows, borrowing the money will be very costly. If America remains on its dangerous financial course Hamilton's gift to the nation -- the blessing of sound financing -- will be squandered."

The truth is, America's leaders have already squandered "Hamilton's gift," and along with it, more than two centuries of experience, replacing it with a new "faith-based" policy: "Deficits don't matter."

No wonder Main Street Americans have a "gut instinct" that we're a disaster waiting to happen. Not only are we "transferring an inordinate burden to future generations," says Hormats, Washington's undisciplined spending and total lack of a financial repayment plan is undercutting our national security and exposing America to the worst-case scenario: Another domestic terrorist attack that would trigger a "massive disruption of our economy" and a meltdown of America's credit rating throughout the world.

The truth is, America desperately needs a new "Hamilton" who understands that in calculating "the price of liberty," not only do deficits matter, Americans must have a plan to repay our debts ... if we want a strong credit rating that insures our national security for future generations.

Hunter-Kaptur amendment to STOP funding of NAFTA Superhighways overwhelmingly passes House

Late Thursday evening, on July 26, 2007, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Hunter-Kaptur amendment to the Transportation Appropriations Bill (HR 3074) by an overwhelming margin, 362-63. The amendment was introduced by Congressman Duncan Hunter (R-CA) and Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (D-OH). In a total repudiation of NAFTA, our failed trade policies, and the Bush Administration's unilateral and aggressive fast tracking of the NAFTA Superhighways, the House successfully moved to de-fund them. Now it heads to the Senate.

Read more about the amendment within this story where Vice President Dick Cheney denies the NAFTA Superhighways.

Cheney chimes in to deny NAFTA superhighways despite preponderance of evidence

Link to article here.

In one way, I agree with Cheney: there is no SECRET plan to construct NAFTA Superhighways (the first being the Trans Texas Corridor TTC-35). It's being done in the WIDE OPEN for those who know where to look. However, it's being done WITHOUT the approval of Congress and the American people and under the radar of the majority of the national press. The more they try to deny it, the more they heap coals of fire on their heads.

Now Cheney chimes in: Ain't no superhighways
VP latest to make official denial, some call it 'gaming semantics'
By Jerome R. Corsi
July 29, 2007
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com


Vice President Cheney
Despite evidence to the contrary, Vice President Dick Cheney says there is no "secret plan" to create a continent-crossing superhighway to help facilitate a merger of the United States, Mexico and Canada.

"The Administration is not engaged in a secret plan to create a 'NAFTA super highway,'" asserts Cheney in a recent letter to a constituent, according to a copy of the message obtained by WND.

The vice president's letter quotes an Aug. 21 statement from the U.S. Department of Transportation that, "The concept of a super highway has been around since the early 1990s, usually in the form of a claim that the U.S. Department of Transportation is going to designate such a highway."

DOT then refutes the claim, stating, "The Department of Transportation has never had the statutory authority to designate a NAFTA super highway and has never sought such authority."

The DOT statement then retracts the absolute nature of that statement, qualifying that, "The Department of Transportation will continue to cooperate with the State transportation departments in the I-35 corridor as they upgrade this vital interstate highway to meet 21st century needs. However, these efforts are the routine activities of a Department that cooperates with all the state transportation departments to improve the Nation's intermodal transportation network.
 
The DOT statement cited by the vice president seems to model the denial recently fashioned by the North America's SuperCorridor Coalition, Inc., or NASCO, on its website.
There NASCO states, "There a no plans to build a new NAFTA Superhighway – it exists today as I-35."

The coalition continues to distinguish its support for a North American "SuperCorridor" from a "NAFTA Superhighway," asserting that a "SuperCorridor is not 'Super-sized." The website then claims NASCO uses the term "SuperCorridor" to demonstrate "we are more than just a highway coalition."

In a July 21, 2006, internal e-mail obtained by WND under a Missouri Sunshine Law request, Tiffany Melvin, executive director of NASCO, cautions "NASCO friends and members" that, "We have to stay away from 'SuperCorridor' because it is a very bad, hot button right now."

As WND previously reported, Jeffrey Shane, undersecretary of transportation for policy at the U.S. Department of Transportation got into a spirited exchange in January with congressmen after he asserted to a House subcommittee that NAFTA Superhighways were an "urban legend."

In response to questioning by Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, before the Subcommittee on Highways and Transit of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Shane asserted he was "not familiar with any plan at all, related to NAFTA or cross-border traffic."

Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., then questioned aloud whether Shane was just "gaming semantics" when responding to Poe's question.

In June 2006, when first writing about NASCO, WND displayed the original homepage of NASCO, which used to open with a map highlighting the I-35 corridor from Mexico to Canada, arguing the trade group and its members were actively promoting a NAFTA superhighway.


NASCO's original map highlighted the I-35 corridor from Mexico to Canada
In what appears to be the third major revamping of the NASCO website since WND first began writing articles about NASCO, the Dallas-based trade group carefully removes identifying NASCO with the words behind the acronym, "North America's SuperCorridor Coalition, Inc.," which the original NASCO website once proudly proclaimed.

The current NASCO homepage displays a photo montage of intermodal highway scenes, presumably taken along I-35, but without any map displaying a continental I-35 super corridor linking Mexico and Canada.

NASCO currently relegates the continental I-35 map to an internal webpage that describes the North American Inland Ports Network as a "working group" within NASCO that supports inland member cities who have designated themselves as "inland ports," seeking to warehouse container traffic originating in Mexican ports on the Pacific such as Manzanillo and Lázaro Cárdenas.

WND has also previously reported that in a speech to NASCO on April 30, 2004, Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta referred to Interstate Highways 35, 29 and 94 – the core highways supported by NASCO as a prime "North American Super Corridor" – Mineta commented to NASCO that the trade group "recognized that the success of the NAFTA relationship depends on mobility – on the movement of people, of products, and of capital across borders."

WND has also reported Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., a GOP presidential candidate, introduced an amendment to H.R. 3074, the Transportation Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2008, prohibiting the use of federal funds for participating in working groups under the Security and Prosperity Partnership, including the creation of NAFTA Superhighways.

On July 24, Hunter's amendment passed 362 to 63, with strong bipartisan support. Later, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 3074 by a margin of 268-153. The bill has been sent to the Senate with Hunter's amendment included.

According to Freedom of Information Request documents obtained by WND, Jeffrey Shane has been appointed by the Bush administration to be the U.S. lead bureaucrat on the North American Transportation Working Group under the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America.

On July 23, 1997, the NAFTA Superhighway Coalition was formed to promote continental highway development in association with the Ambassador Bridge.

Anti-corridor Ron Paul wows crowd at Alamo!

Presidential Candidate Texas Congressman Ron Paul greeted an energized crowd yesterday at the Alamo. At least 500 people turned out to support his agenda of limited government, low taxes, and personal liberty, including the freedom of mobility about to be stripped by toll road proliferation. Paul got raucous applause when he called for an end to the NAFTA Superhighways, (aka- Trans Texas Corridor), the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), and the North American Union (NAU). Dr. Jerry Corsi's new book, The Late Great USA, documents the coming merger with Canada and Mexico, the SPP, and NAU.

Dr. Paul himself has been pleasantly surprised by the massive groundswell of support for what he's dubbed "the freedom movement." Post-debate polling showed he nearly won the second debate where Rudy Giuliani tried to rebuke Paul for his opposition to the Iraq war. His campaign clearly has had momentum ever since. He noted his position on Iraq hasn't hurt him with those fighting the war in Iraq. He says his support from active duty soldiers outnumbers all the other candidates 3 to 1.

Massive grassroots support for Ron Paul
The bulk of his support isn't gauged by traditional campaign markers like BIG MONEY supporters, BIG endorsements and press coverage, but even Paul surprised the jaded political pundits when he turned up with more campaign cash on hand than top tier candidate John McCain (and that was before McCain steady decline). Paul's massive group of un-paid, committed grassroots volunteers also indicate the strength of the "freedom movement."
Many call Paul the "last hope" to preserve America, restore the Constitutional Republic (of, by, and for the PEOPLE), reclaim America's financial independence, and protect her sovereignty.

Internet Sensation
No candidate has more support or buzz on the internet than Ron Paul. The only candidate to come close is Democratic Presidential Candidate Senator Barrack Obama who has 10,000 "meet-up" groups. Paul has a stunning 27,000! Dr. Paul noted he has seen a steady increase of young people coming into his office in Washington with their parents lauding Paul's love for and vehement protection of the Constitution telling him they share his love for the Constitution and have contributed to their parents becoming Ron Paul supporters.

Republicans... wake up!There's also a campaign afoot to wake-up the Republican Party to Ron Paul's message at next month's Texas Straw Poll. We'll continue to watch the "Ron Paul Revolution."

Citizens blocked from holding a conference on SPP ahead of Quebec summit

Public forums denied on upcoming SPP Summit
By: Patrick Wood, The August Review

At least two highly visible citizen's organizations that intend to expose the activities of the Security and Prosperity Partnership may have been effectively shut down for the upcoming SPP Leaders Meeting in Montebello, Quebec on August 20-21.
The Council of Canadians, after renting a public facility in the Municipality of Papineauville (about 4 miles from Montebello), were bluntly informed by the hall’s management that the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police), SQ (Security Quebec) and the U.S. Army will not allow their meeting even though it is scheduled on the day before the SPP meeting! (See Police nix meeting near world leaders)

In fact, these security officials allegedly declared that they intend to enforce a 25 kilometer (about 15 miles) blackout around the Chateau Montebello where Bush, Harper and Calderon will be meeting to advance their agenda of "deep integration" of Mexico, Canada and the United States.

“It is deplorable that we are being prevented from bringing together a panel of writers, academics and parliamentarians to share their concerns about the Security and Prosperity Partnership with Canadians,” said Brent Patterson, director of organizing with the Council of Canadians. “Meanwhile, six kilometers away, corporate leaders from the United States, Mexico and Canada will have unimpeded access to our political leaders.”

From the U.S., The Coalition to Block the North American Union is planning a similar meeting, but now it won't be within 15 miles of Montebello.

The latter organization is a coalition of dozens of influential U.S. organizations such as the American Policy Center, Eagle Forum, Conservative Caucus, Freedom 21, the John Birch Society, World Research Library and many others.

As has been previously pointed out, the SPP is a stealth vehicle to facilitate harmonization of regulations that are necessary for the introduction of the North American Union (NAU), the merger of Mexico, Canada and the United States. There is no legislative authority for SPP to even exist, and hence, there is no congressional oversight.

The Council of Canadians and the Coalition to Stop the NAU are hardly a physical threat to anyone, so security is not the issue here: This should be taken as a blatant attempt to stifle legitimate public inquiry and debate that would threaten to bring to light the nefarious agenda of the SPP and its perpetrators.

Conversely, corporate or media representatives who are favorable to the Security and Prosperity Partnership will not be subject to the 25 kilometer limit.

Toll revolt in New Hampshire

Merrimack calls for toll revolt
By JIM KOZUBEK
New Hampshire Union Leader Correspondent
Friday, Jul. 27, 2007

MERRIMACK – An initiative by Executive Councilor Debora Pignatelli to give residents in the 03054 ZIP code two free passes daily through the E-ZPass toll system is going nowhere, and the town is calling for a day of revolt.
The town council last night voted unanimously to declare Monday, Aug. 27, Merrimack Toll Revolt Day; all residents are asked to throw only pennies in the tolls on that day.

Anti-toll campaigners backed the Pignatelli strategy this spring after years of trying to win support for toll reform in the 400-member House. The House can add or remove tollbooths, or call for systemic changes such as uniformity of pricing among tollbooths, while the Executive Council has traditionally governed toll rates and discounts.


►E-ZPass use proposed for Merrimack toll relief

Pignatelli learned from Gov. John Lynch's legal counsel last week, however, that the House had passed legislation to strip the Executive Council of its power to regulate toll rates and discounts in 2005.

"New laws have been passed by legislators that stop our ability to give discounts, and this power grab by the Legislature is disheartening," she said.

Council Chairman David McCray promptly called for a day of revolt.

"You people in Concord," he said. "You son of a gun. I am going to Sovereign Bank to get myself a roll of pennies."

Schlafly, Hunter address Freedom 21 National Conference in Texas

Link to article here. (no longer active)

SELLING AMERICA TO COMMUNIST CHINA

By Cliff Kincaid & (name requested to be removed)
July 24, 2007
NewsWithViews.com
In remarks on July 20 to a Freedom 21 conference in Dallas, Texas, conservative leader Phyllis Schlafly declared that the Chinese communists intend to exploit development of a North American Union in order to bring more cheap goods into the U.S. and destroy more American jobs.

 

The Freedom 21 conference, organized by Tom DeWeese of the American Policy Center and Cathie Adams of Eagle Forum of Texas, was devoted to highlighting the erosion of American sovereignty through an ongoing process that aims to economically and politically integrate the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

Schlafly, president of Eagle Forum, highlighted the role of Democratic Party foreign policy specialist Robert Pastor in the unfolding plan. Pastor helped lead the campaign to surrender U.S. control of the Panama Canal through the Panama Canal Treaty, a development that has taken on added significance in view of the fact that a Chinese firm, Hutchison Whampoa, now controls not only the ports at both ends of the Panama Canal but ports and terminals in Mexico. The company has close ties to the Chinese regime.

Speaking at the same conference, Rep. Duncan Hunter, a Republican presidential candidate, said unfair Chinese trade was decimating America’s industrial base and that the communist regime was using “crisp new American trade dollars” to build up its war machine.

Schlafly came close to endorsing Hunter for president, declaring, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have him in the White House?” She said he was “right on every issue” and “he’s the only one of all the candidates who talks about the jobs issue, and I think that is the coming big issue in the next election.” Her remarks followed Hunter’s speech.

New Book Highlights Threat

She strongly recommended Jerome Corsi’s new book, The Late Great USA, which argues that a North American Union would provide China another “economic advantage” over the U.S., with ominous national security implications.

Indeed, Corsi comes close to arguing that China is the ultimate power broker behind the scheme, saying that “In order to solidify its economic superiority over North America, Red China is working to restructure the North American transportation infrastructure.”

It also turns out, according to information presented at the conference by Oklahoma activist Amanda Teegarden, as well as Corsi’s book, that a Hutchison Whampoa subsidiary is a major investor in a firm, Savi Networks, that has developed a radio technology to track and manage cargo shipments. Hutchison Whampoa owns 49 percent of the firm, with 51 percent owned by U.S. defense contractor Lockheed Martin. In 2006, Lockheed Martin was the top contributor among military contractors to candidates for federal office and national political parties. Fifty-eight percent of its money went to Republicans.

Schlafly also attacked so-called “patent reform,” now moving through Congress, which she said would benefit China by forcing Americans to put information about their inventions on the Internet where it could be stolen. And she warned against President Bush’s plan to “to put all the illegal aliens in Social Security,” a scheme called “totalization,” which would “break the bank.”

Several speakers at the Freedom 21 conference were activists from Texas and Oklahoma opposed to the building of corridors or “NAFTA highways” through their states to bring goods from Mexico to the U.S. Organizations represented at the conference included Oklahomans for Sovereignty and Free Enterprise, Corridor Watch, and Texans Uniting for Reform & Freedom.

“The purpose is to bring in cheap goods from China,” Schlafly declared. “The plan is to bring the cheap Chinese goods and the containers across the Pacific and then dock at the Mexican Pacific port Lazaro Cardenas and then bring them up on the railroad that’s already in place, put them in the Mexican trucks and bring them up the NAFTA highway. And they will never be inspected until they get to Kansas City.”

Schlafly said that we are witnessing the unfolding of a plan that is based on a series of steps, including passage of “free trade” agreements, creation of a common market and a monetary and economic union, the establishment of international trade tribunals to govern trade and other disputes between the U.S., Canada and Mexico, and the use of a single currency for North America.

“Their model is the European Union,” she said.

North American Institutions

Accuracy in Media has confirmed this, having reported on a Washington conference on development of a North American legal system where participants were told of proposals to create North American institutions, including a “North American Court of Justice” with the power to overrule the U.S. Supreme Court. Robert Pastor, who claims to be in favor of a North American “community,” not a union, presided over the conference.

Robert Pastor, who also runs the Center for North American Studies at American University, helps facilitate model “North American Parliament” meetings where students play the role of delegates to a trilateral legislature. One of his students, Marlon Brown, has written about Pastor’s personal vision and plans for a “North American Parliament.”

The White House, which claims the North American Union is a myth, has announced that Bush will travel to Montebello, Quebec, Canada to meet with Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada and President Felipe Calderon of Mexico at the “North American Leaders’ Summit” on August 20-21. “The leaders will review progress and continued cooperation under the Security and Prosperity Partnership, as well as discuss hemispheric and global issues,” the White House says.

The Security and Prosperity Partnership is seen by critics as a key part of the North American Union (NAU) plan. The SPP, an executive branch initiative, has never been approved by Congress but has nevertheless resulted in the creation of dozens of working groups involving officials from the U.S., Canada and Mexico meeting to “harmonize” the laws and regulations of the three countries. The public interest law firm Judicial Watch has been forced to go through the Freedom of Information Act to get information about the activities of these groups.

Opposition Developing

In the House, Rep. Virgil Goode (R-Va.) has introduced House Concurrent Resolution 40 opposing the NAU. No formal opposition has yet surfaced in the U.S. Senate. Conservative Caucus chairman Howard Phillips has announced that opponents of the NAU will hold a press conference on August 20 in Ottawa, Canada, on the occasion of the upcoming SPP meeting. The press conference will be held at the Marriott Ottawa from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.

Schlafly was the first national commentator to write about the prospect of a North American Union, noting in a July 13, 2005 column that the influential Council on Foreign Relations had just issued a report urging an “integrated North American Community.”

Schlafly, who almost single-handedly stopped passage of the so-called Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, urged participants in the Freedom 21 conference to vigorously oppose the North American Union, which she noted has received little media coverage, save for Lou Dobbs of CNN. She also noted that some members of Congress claim not to know anything about it or dismiss it as a conspiracy theory.

However, Schlafly said, there are certain facts that “cannot be disputed,” and that when you “connect the dots,” people will get the big picture.

She said some of the key dates in this process were:

April 2001. President Bush endorses the “Declaration of Quebec City,” featuring a commitment to “hemispheric integration.”
March, 2005. Bush and the leaders of Canada and Mexico announce the Security and Prosperity Partnership.
May 2005. The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) issues its report endorsing creation by 2010 of a North American economic and security “community” with a common security “perimeter,” open borders to facilitate the movement of trade, capital and people, and a North American “tribunal” to resolve trade disputes.
June 2005. Former Carter Administration official Robert Pastor presents the plan to a sympathetic session of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, then-headed by Senator Richard Lugar.
March 2006. Bush and the leaders of Mexico and Canada hold another meeting, calling it the “first anniversary” of the SPP.
May 2006. Bush gives speech calling for “comprehensive immigration reform.”
2007. The Senate immigration bill is introduced, with a provision calling for the acceleration of the SPP.
Schlafly said the only explanation for the determination by the White House and congressional liberals to pass immigration “reform” is that the “powers that be” want the economic integration of North America. She identified them as belonging to powerful organizations such as the Council on Foreign Relations, whose membership once included top State Department official and communist spy Alger Hiss.

Speaking to the assembled activists and concerned citizens, Schlafly said, “Something terrible is happening to our country and it’s up to people like you to stop it before it’s too late.”
© 2007 Cliff Kincaid - All Rights Reserved

WND: Citizen unearths document on North American Integration signed by 90 leaders

Link to article here. While many politicians are still claiming there's no plot to form a North American Union, the evidence just keeps pouring in throwing yet more egg all over their faces. The Founder of the Oklahoma sister to Corridor Watch, which notes below that he was inspired by Corridor Watch and the Texas Toll Party, has unearthed a document about the coming merger signed by 90 leaders. Read on, and encourage your friends and family to wake-up and connect the dots. The grassroots uprising is spreading, and just in time!

'Declaration of North American Integration' unearthed
Activist points to mayor's endorsement on document signed by 90 leaders
July 25, 2007
  By Jerome R. Corsi
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com



Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett
The endorsement by a major city mayor of a document described as "The Declaration of North American Integration" represents a long-term effort by local governments to bypass state and federal governments and work directly with Mexico and Canada to create agreements that integrate the continent below the radar screen, charges an activist. Adam Rott, founder of watchdog blog Oklahoma Corridor Watch, brought to light the document signed by Mayor Mick Cornett.

The document was presented at the May 2004 summit meeting of the North American International Trade Corridor Partnership, or NAITCP. According to an Internet-archived summary report of the meeting, held in Kansas City, Mo., the document was signed by 90 people.

Rott told WND he created Oklahoma Corridor Watch because, "I saw the efforts in Texas by Internet blogs such as Texas Corridor Watch and Texas Toll Party to get the word out in Texas about the Trans-Texas Corridor. I wanted to warn Oklahoma about plans to extend the Trans-Texas Corridor along Interstate 35 north into our state."



Rott said it should be clear to everyone "that the international business interests and government officials working with them do not intend to stop the four-football-fields wide TTC-35 at the Texas border with Oklahoma."

"Oklahoma has been at work for almost 15 years to get I-35 designated as a NAFTA superhighway," Rott said. "I want to wake Oklahomans up to the reality that Oklahoma is on the front lines of the battle being waged by investment bankers, foreign investment consortia and politicians who stand to benefit to expand the TTC-35 north into Oklahoma."

WND contacted Cornett's office for comment, but the mayor did not respond.

"What is so diabolical about Cornett's signature is that it has largely remained hidden from view since 2004," Rott charged. "It is disturbing to think that councilmen and councilwomen who live in our communities are working for North American integration in the mistaken notion that globalism will result in local economic development."

Roth is skeptical of the promise North American integration holds for economic development in Oklahoma.

"What we see is the sovereignty of the U.S. being compromised at a local level, and we have yet to see where globalism has benefited Oklahoma City," he said. "Our manufacturing base is deteriorating in Oklahoma City as plants close and multinational corporations outsource from Oklahoma to get cheaper workers in international markets."

Oklahoma Republican state Sen. Randy Brogdon agrees.

Brogdon told WND he believes "the ramifications of what Oklahoma City Mayor Cornett is doing is to destroy U.S. national sovereignty and to grab property like we have never seen before."

Brogdon was outspoken in his opposition to North American integration.

"Economic development at the expense of our sovereignty is not a fair trade as far as I am concerned," he said.

On June 24, 2005, NAITCP signed a memorandum of understanding with the North America SuperCorridor Coalition, or NASCO, effectively absorbing NAITCP into NASCO. An archived NASCO webpage no longer displayed on the current NASCO website documents that NAITCP had its origin as a "non-profit organization in Mexico dedicated to economic development and improving trade relations through the heartland of America to Canada and Mexico."

NASCO also did not respond to a request for comment.

WND previously reported Brogdon entered an amendment to an Oklahoma bill that would have required that the state's Department of Transportation "shall be prohibited from participating or entering any negotiations or agreement with NASCO."

Brogdon's amendment further specified, "No state funds or federal funds dedicated for state use shall be used for any international, integrated or multi-modal transportation system."

In a series of complicated maneuvers, the bill died.

Still, Brogdon is determined to press forward against NASCO.

"In this next legislature," he said, "I am going to add amendments to legislation that will continue to require the Oklahoma Department of Transportation to get out of NASCO. We have spent $481,000 in Oklahoma since 1995 to be a member of NASCO, and we have yet to receive any benefit."

In the last legislature, Brogdon also sponsored Senate Concurrent Resolution 10 urging the U.S. to withdraw from the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America and any other activity that seeks to create a North American Union, and to oppose any NAFTA superhighways.

The resolution passed unanimously in voice votes in both houses of the Oklahoma legislature, Brogdon noted.

"Hopefully, he said, "the legislature is waking up to all the subversive legislation that is trying to be sneaked past us by the George Bush Security and Prosperity Partnership agenda and interests such as (Texas) Governor Perry, who has pushed TTC-35 through despite the objections of the Texas legislature."

NASCO's website adamantly rejects the idea that a North American Super Corridor could ever be a "NAFTA superhighway."

Yet, the NASCO website documents that in addition to the state of Oklahoma, the Texas Department of Transportation, or TxDOT, is a member. As fully documented on the TxDOT website, the department does plan to build a new Trans-Texas Corridor parallel to Interstate 35, and NASCO has yet to repudiate these new superhighway construction plans.

'Shared vision'

The NAITCP 2004 summit brochure initially presents the signed document, on Page 2, as the "Kansas City Declaration." Yet later, in a conference summary on the last page, the document is identified as "The Declaration of North American Integration."

The summary page notes "more than 90 North American leaders signed an important document entitled 'The Kansas City Declaration' to officially record their shared vision of future cooperation for communities along the NAFTA Trade Corridor in Canada, the United States and Mexico."

The summit brochure lists Mayor Cornett as a signatory.

Oklahoma Corridor Watch expressed concern that, "It is becoming increasingly more apparent that our government officials have been working overtime behind the scenes to bring in the "North American Union" and often in relative secrecy away from their constituents and from scrutiny."

Last month, Oklahoma House Speaker Lance Cargill brought superhighway proponent Robert Poole to Oklahoma to give presentations on the virtues of "public-private partnerships" designed to advance the interests of private investment consortia seeking to build or lease state toll roads.

Poole, a mechanical engineer who has advised the administrations of George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to privatize U.S. highways, estimates more than $25 billion in public-private partnership highway projects are planned or approved in the U.S.

Among the other named signatories were two professors prominent in the push to create a "North American Community," Stephen Blank of Pace University and Robert Pastor of American University.

Blank is known for organizing the "North America Works" conferences held annually since 2005 in Kansas City. Pastor, a prolific author on the subject of North American integration, holds annually holds a student North American model parliament, an activity organized by the American Forum on Integration, of which Blank and Pastor are both directors.

Rott also documented that Cornett called for the economic integration of North America in a video interview given at the Conference of Mayors in Boston in 2004.

"This signifies how local governments across the nation are either moving forward with, or directly supporting, the economic integration of North America, also called the North American Union," Rott wrote on his blog. "While such a pursuit may seem like the stuff of conspiracy theories, it is increasingly becoming more apparent that our government, with the direct support of private sector participants, is building a union in North America comparable to the European Union."

The 2004 NAITCP "Kansas City Declaration" was also signed by Kay Barnes, then Mayor of Kansas City, Mo.; Michael Haverty, chairman and CEO of Kansas City Southern; Chris Guiterrez, president of Kansas City SmartPort; and Francisco Gil Diaz, secretary of finance and public credit in Mexico.

According to the NAITCP brochure, the Kansas City Declaration reads in part, "We have come to realize that our communities in Mexico, Canada and the United States are closely linked to each other, and that we share profoundly in this emerging North American economic system.

"The answer is to move forward together," the declaration continued. "We will deepen the ties among our communities. The economic vitality and social integration of our communities demand open, dynamic and secure borders. We encourage our respective governments to dedicate sufficient resources to create 'smart' and efficient borders. Likewise, we urge our governments to assist us in forming a 'North American Transportation and Infrastructure Committee' that will formulate a strategic vision for an integrated regional logistics system."

WND: Controversy erupts over Macquarie, toll operator compared to Enron!

Link to article here.

Controversy erupts over leaser of U.S. toll roads
Foreign firm part of public-private partnerships funding highway network


By Dr. Jerome Corsi
World Net Daily
July 20, 2007

Investment analysts in New York and Australia charge that Macquarie, the Australian conglomerate leasing U.S. toll roads, is a "house of cards" that has made billions by spinning off the highway assets into over-valuated investment trusts controlled by the bank.

Macquarie has been an active participant in the "public-private partnerships" sponsored by Mary Peters when she was head of the Federal Highway Administration.

As documented on the FHWA website, Macquarie recently concluded long-term leasing deals on the Chicago Skyway and the Indiana Toll Road.

In both projects, Macquarie has partnered with Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte, S.A., the Spanish investment consortium also involved in financing and leasing the Trans-Texas Corridor.

The criticism of Macquarie can be traced to a paper published last year by John L. Goldberg, an honorary associate at the School of Architecture, Design Science, and Planning at the University of Sydney in Australia.

Titled "The Fatal Flaw in the Financing of Private Road Infrastructure in Australia," the paper argued equity investors in Macquarie investment trusts are likely to suffer heavy losses by excessive valuations Macquarie makes of financed toll roads that are packaged together to be sold to pension funds and other institutional investors.

Goldberg also argued that government guarantees on Macquarie projects are often buried in the confidential part of toll road "comprehensive development agreements," such that the public taxpayer liability only comes to light when a toll road project fails.

Jim Chanos, a founding principal in the New York investment firm Kynikos Associates, has been equally critical of Macquarie.

Kynikos, founded in 1985, specializes in short-selling the stock of companies the firm believes are overvalued by the financial markets and likely to fall in price. Chanos distinguished himself as one of the most active critics of Enron prior to the company's fall.

In a May 30 radio interview with Australian talk-show host Mark Colvin, Chanos charged that the "Macquarie model" was seriously flawed.

"The bank scours the world buying assets," Chanos told the radio audience, "buying assets, everything from toll roads to bowling alleys and selling them into separate trusts that the bank controls. This generates triple fees for Macquarie Bank: one for the up-front purchase; a second for selling the assets into the trust; then ongoing management and performance fees from the funds."

Chanos charged that the loser in the scheme was the investor.

"If you look at the financial accounts of the trusts," Chanos explained to the Australian talk show, "you'll see that in almost all the cases the companies are using Australian re-valuation accounting which is legal under [Generally Accepted Accounting Practices] in your country to write up the value of the asset annually and put that through operating income and into equity."

Chanos argued that the practice only works in a financial environment in which cheap credit is readily available and valuations for infrastructure projects are generally rising.

"You need a credit environment that looks the other way, or you need a credit environment where the people lending are just lending on reputation or not numbers," Chanos said.

Eventually, he contended, the self-dealing between Macquarie and the Macquarie-controlled funds into which the infrastructure assets are sold is likely to crash.

"All I would tell your listeners," Chanos said in the radio interview, "is simply just go to the trusts, the financial statements, and simply extract out the asset re-valuation number, which is basically management's guess as to how much, what the asset's worth and just see what the cash flow looks like. In many cases, the cash flows are diminished or actually go negative. That's the simple litmus test to the Macquarie model."

Still, Chanos argued that despite the problem in the underlying cash flows, Macquarie makes hefty profits.

"Capital gains alone in the fiscal year 2007, just for flipping these types of assets into the trusts, accounted for half of the pre-tax income of Macquarie Bank," Chanos asserted.

Macquarie Bank has hit back strongly against both critics.

According to newspaper reports in Australia, Macquarie Bank executive Warwick Smith complained to University of Sidney Vice Chancellor Gavin Brown, demanding that the university dissociate itself from Goldberg over his critical research.

In response, Brown issued a statement clarifying that Goldberg is not an employee of the University of Sydney, though he has been given the title of honorary associate by the Faculty of Architecture. In his statement, Brown claimed Goldberg "speaks as an individual and the university accepts no responsibility for his comments which it does not endorse."

In the subsequent controversy that erupted in Australia, Goldberg was featured as a case study in "Silencing Dissent," a book critical of the administration of Prime Minister John Howard, published in Australia by Clive Hamilton, the executive director of a prominent Australian think-tank, and his co-editor Sarah Maddison.

In the book, Hamilton and Maddison charged that the Howard government used strong-arm tactics to challenge the tax status of non-government organizations and ruin the reputations of academics who were critical of governmental policies, including the sale of highway infrastructure leasing rights to private investment concerns in Australia.

Macquarie used a similar personal attack to discredit Chanos following the interview on Australian radio.

In a May 31 statement posted on the Macquarie website, the investment group charged that Chanos, "a hedge fund short-seller of equities," had an economic self-interest in advancing "incorrect claims" that could cause the stock price of Macquarie to fall.

When contacted for comment, Macquarie's New York representative referred WND to the company's online statement, in which Macquarie asserts that all assets acquired by funds controlled by Macquarie are valued directly from the market and subject to the approval of independent directors of the funds.

The published Macquarie response to Chanos also cited a May 25 Bloomberg report which quoted Chanos as saying Kynikos maintains a short position on Macquarie.

Short-selling is a Wall Street practice in which an investor borrows and sells stock the investor does not own, anticipating the stock will go down in value. The short-seller profits by buying shares at a lower price to replace the shares that originally were borrowed and sold at the higher price.

Short-sellers lose money if the price of the stock increases and the cost to purchase shares to replace those borrowed is greater than the price for which the borrowed shares were sold.

Macquarie Infrastructure Group is a separate subsidiary from Macquarie Bank.

The website of Macquarie Infrastructure Group bills the company as "one of the largest private developers of toll roads in the world."

Toll road proponents say motorists can and should pay more

WARNING: Reading this article may cause you to throw things and kick the dog...or worse! Solution: VOTE THE BUMS OUT!

We warned the Texas Legislature this would happen if they passed that "compromise" bill, SB 792, that Rick Perry rammed through in the last weeks of the 80th session. TxDOT would use these new market-based tolls to rob us blind and them come back for more...without accountability, without representation. Toll taxes, especially market-based tolls, are runaway taxation without representation, and it's the POLITICIANS WHO ALLOWED THIS TO HAPPEN that will pay dearly!

When people can scarcely fill their tank with gas at $3/gallon, it boggles the mind to think there's a stitch of validity to this argument that motorists can and should pay the highest possible tolls. The bond buyers in an investment grade toll viability study for 183A in Austin said toll roads are no longer viable at $3 a gallon for gas. So from whence shall the toll money come? Short of taking food off the table and shoes off our children's feet, there's only so much the family budget can pay toward transportation before other necessities suffer. These are the same politicians who fail to fix runaway annual appraisals that lead to out of control property tax rates that, in turn, have caused every major Texas city to be in the top 10 for foreclosures in the country! Mad yet? Read on and then VOTE THE BUMS OUT!

Jaime Castillo: Toll road proponents: Motorists can — and should — pay more
San Antonio Express-News
07/22/2007

They say you don't kill the messenger, but can you at least throttle him?

The "him" in this instance is Dye Management Group Inc., which recently completed a draft audit on toll roads for the Texas Transportation Commission.

After taking a look at existing toll rates of 10 to 15 cents a mile in Dallas, Houston and Austin, the firm determined that local toll authorities aren't charging drivers enough.

The logic — a term that should be used loosely — is that motorists can and will pay more, which would bring in more cash for the state's yawning road needs.

"Tolls charged by local authorities are lower than studies indicate that their customers would be willing to pay," the audit reads. "As a result, congestion goals will not be met."

Translation: "If you want to raise funds for other projects, keep jacking up the toll price until drivers cry 'uncle,' and then back it off a penny or two."

As reported by Express-News transportation writer Patrick Driscoll, the audit "mirrors much of what officials have been saying for years."

Hope Andrade, a transportation commission member from San Antonio, told Driscoll:

"It just confirms the emergency situation that we're in. We can no longer support toll rates that are not market value."

If this were part of a political handbook on winning support for toll roads from a skeptical public, charging "market value" — or as much as you can get — on tollways would be relegated to the section titled: "How to lose even more support in 30 seconds or less."

And this isn't the fault of people like Andrade, either. State and federal lawmakers continually saddle transportation officials with a losing poker hand.

In the last 16 years, the state's population — and construction costs — have grown exponentially. Yet, the gas tax — the primary source of highway funding — has been frozen since 1991.

And not only has it remained static in an ever-changing world, state lawmakers can't keep their hands off of it either.

Continuing its long-running budgetary shell game, the Legislature's latest two-year budget will see one-tenth, or $1.6 billion, of the highway fund diverted from building and maintaining roads.

With fiscal constraint apparently off the table, raising the gas tax must be looked at seriously. While difficult with gasoline prices hovering around $3 a gallon, it could be done if the entire state leadership — the governor, lieutenant governor and House speaker — supported the change.

That way, lawmakers, who already quietly concede that the gas tax is too low, could stick their necks out and not fear being singled out as the pigeons that supported higher taxes.

The alternative is to unnecessarily gouge those who will use toll roads. If the recommendations by Dye Management Group are the guide, toll riders will soon have the privilege of paying the highest tolls possible and paying the 20-cent-a-gallon gas tax.

A recent trip to the car dealer landed me in a shuttle van with several other car-less souls.

The shuttle van driver, exasperated by a 15-minute wait to go a couple of miles on U.S. 281 North, said to no one in particular:

"This almost makes you want to see toll roads."

To which, a homeowner who lives near the intersection of 281 and Bulverde Road blurted out:

"I don't care what they do as long as they do something soon."

With that kind of captive — and infuriated — audience, state and local transportation officials are banking that they will get their way eventually.

But it still doesn't make it right.

Subcategories

Eminent Domain

Video

Page 98 of 103

Latest News

Latest Press Releases