The NAFTA Superhighway -- WTF?

Chances are you've never heard of the NAFTA Superhighway. Neither had I until yesterday, and the American media is steadfastly ignoring it. Do a Google News search for "NAFTA Superhighway" and you get only FOUR hits. If you think the spelling is wrong, do another one for "NAFTA Super Highway and you get... another four hits.

So what the fuck is it? Well, it's a Bushco plan to build a highway four footballs fields wide from deep in Mexico to Middle America, and eventually into Canada. Mexico will offload shipments from the far east at several of their Pacific ports, load them onto Mexican trucks, and then highball it on this new superhighway to a Midwest "inland port" distribution point in ... Kansas City. All without using either longshoremen or teamsters to do it.

This superhighway will also continue on all the way to Duluth on the Great Lakes, presumably to handle cargo coming in up the St Lawrence, and eventually it will also continue on into Canada.

It's not like they are trying to even hide it. Something called NASCO, the North America’s SuperCorridor Coalition, even has its own website where they are flogging a huge and professionally-illustrated artist's map of the project.

They are even scheduled to break ground early next year on the first phase, down in Texas.

So why haven't we even heard about this? This has to be the biggest news story of the year -- of the decade, really -- that's flown completely under the radar. The American media seems intent on ignoring it. But even Left Blogistan has been caught flat-footed on this one.

Jeez, Mister Whiner. No big deal -- it only spells the beginning of the end for the middle class in this country, with Bushco apparently without opposition continuing the march to oligarchy, using corporate greed to elevate the wealthy even more into a feudal superclass while at the same time pushing the rest of us down into economic serfdom.

This is why Der Monkey Fuehrer has been hemming and hawing and dragging his feet so much on the Mexican border question. When this gets implemented, there will essentially be no Mexican border. Mexican truckers will get a free pass to haul ass across that imaginary line marking the border, without even a perfunctory stop for customs and immigration, and stream northward on a twelve-lane superhighway nonstop to KC. No messy laws, rules and regulations to contend with. No minimum wage laws, no health and welfare benefits, no highway regulations and probably no speed limits.

The wingnuts, however, never ones to be caught out of the loop, have been singing the praises of this fucked up idea. See for example Human Events for some obnoxiously blatant praise of the union-busting aspects of the plan.

And I'm sure that it's just a coincidence that the plan will completely bypass the Pacific Coast ports of the United States, which just happen to be worked by America's strongest and most militant union, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). Plus all of those West Coast ports just happen to be in blue states...

Nope, nothing more to see here. Move along.