Friday, June 16, 2006

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.

10 Comments:

nunya said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

Excellent rant, move along, ha...

I just quoted and linked to you at my blog:

http://radio.weblogs.com/0123486/2006/06/18.html#a2750

JBlue said...

We talk about that "goodbye middle class" thing almost every day around here. I wonder what the powers-that-be will do when it's gone? Do "they" really think their lives will be the same sans middle class? Or better? I don't think people realize the potential fall-out from the destruction of the middle class. Stupid. Thanks for bringing this to our attention. I will definitely learn more about it.

JBlue said...

As for union busting, the company Mr. Pink works for seems to be doing that very thing. It's getting scary out here, POV.

JBlue said...

Hope you don't mind that I linked/used this post on my own blog.

I'm pretty sure I'm done commenting here for the day.

Anonymous said...

I, too, just heard about this last week on AAR and emailed all my friends with the same "WTF". No one had heard of it, in spite of the fact that 2 of our interstates seem to be a part of this superhighway. I couldn't decide if this was legitimate info or some sort of hoax. Did you notice the author of the article?
"Mr. Corsi is the author of several books, including "Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry" (along with John O'Neill), "Black Gold Stranglehold: The Myth of Scarcity and the Politics of Oil" (along with Craig R. Smith), and "Atomic Iran: How the Terrorist Regime Bought the Bomb and American Politicians." He is a frequent guest on the G. Gordon Liddy radio show. He will soon co-author a new book with Jim Gilchrist on the Minuteman Project."

I noticed comments on a couple of RW blogs and besides the fact that union-busting would be a plus, they're not too happy, being tied up in the whole 'Mexicans are bad' thing. This adds another dimension to selling off the ports.

The TX Dept of Transportation site has a list of upcoming public hearings plus other goodies:
http://www.keeptexasmoving.org/publications/files/NR%20announce%20pub%20hearing%20list.pdf

I see why Bush wants to keep this under a barrel. Why have a web site? They know righties aren't looking for facts. I am baffled.

Once again, I say "WTF"?

Anonymous said...

There's a couple of posts over at Dailykos, if you're interested. Do a diary search for NAFTA superhighway.

OPOV, thanks for posting this because it reminded me I wanted to look into this thing more fully.

Yeah, I stopped by to see how the cats were doin'. If I had a blog, I'd have cat blogging, too.

billie said...

doing research and posting about globalization and the future of america and the conservative conspiracy to take over the world- western world taking over everything. i am currently working on south america and nafta, oas, etc. come on over- all comments are welcomed! spadoman gave me your link.

Anonymous said...

That was a month ago. There are more matches now. But try googling "NAFTA Corridor". It's not just a superhighway. It's an international zone 10 to 12 miles wide. My guess is it will be Majority Mexican from construction phase on up thru completion with their population pressures. And border security will be alot tighter than our southern border ever was, unless of course we "equalize" population demographics inside and outside the zone. Saaay how about a North American Union to do away with our borders to go along with it?? That way we can just equalize everything.

Anonymous said...

The NASCO website FAQ's cleary state multiple times that all this is NOT true and NAFTA superhighway plan does not exist. Is it possible that these are rumors got way out of hand? Does anyone have any hard core evidence from a creditable source? I haven't found any yet?