Have You Heard About the Globalists' New NAFTA Superhighway?

On Sunday, June 3, 2007, I came across a piece on the internet (at TruthOut URL: www.truthout.org) that was actually produced on Saturday, June 17th, 2006 - nearly a year ago! It detailed, then far-advanced plans, to actually build a new 10-lane NAFTA Superhighway through the heart of the United States from Laredo, Texas to the Canadian border just north of Duluth, Minnesota!

Did any of you know about these plans - either last summer, or now? I was ignorant of this issue as well. Does anyone wonder if it is by design that something as potentially momentous as this has been kept out of the mainstream media?

The TruthOut article went on to declare: "Based on the facts as I see them, the American people are about to get arguably the rudest awakening in the last one hundred years. The middle class will vanish, our social programs will fall into insolvency, and a select few people will make a hell of a lot of money at the expense of the rest of us."

I think the author of that article was correct in their prediction. Our so-called "political leaders" - on both the political Left and the Right - have practically ceased working to represent the average middle and lower class citizens of this country. Most politicians' campaign funding sources and their access to citizens is increasingly limited to senior executives from various corporations - those who make the large cash donations and provide free access to personal services such as private jet travel, funded "political research" travel, etc. These Corporate representatives, in "advising" Congressional representatives, seek only to serve their own selfish (corporate) interests - increased earnings, at any expense - interests best served by currying and buying political influence.

Causes - Corporate and Political Greed

There are a number of factors coalescing to create this "Congress of Corporate America" situation. It involves both elected leaders and private-sector executives in the nations of Mexico, Canada and the United States. However, fundamentally, it's rampant, uncontrolled Corporate Greed. Motivating the Corporate executives is an underlying belief that they are serving the Nation if they can find ways to increase the earnings, and hence the wealth of stockholders - if they expand their business, increase sales and reduce costs. People costs are the principal cost in most businesses - if these can be reduced or eliminated, earnings go up, and that provides additional money for additional executive compensation and expansion of the business. The long-term effect or impact to non-stockholders is never considered.

Consider the difference between compensation given by Board Members to CEOs and the compensation given to "non-management" corporate employees: According to a report produced by the Institute for Policy Studies "the average pay for a corporate executive officer jumped 571 percent between 1990 and 2000 - CEO pay rose even in 2000, a year in which the S&P 500 suffered a 10 percent loss. The explosion in CEO pay [571%] over the decade dwarfed the 37 percent growth in worker pay. If the average annual pay for production workers had grown at the same rate since 1990 as it has for CEOs, their 2000 annual earnings would have been $120,491 instead of $24,668. Likewise, if the minimum wage, which stood at $3.80 an hour in 1990, had grown at the same rate as CEO pay over the decade, it would now be $25.50 an hour, rather than the current $5.15 an hour". ^[1]

CEOs have great influence on corporate board members, and therefore exercise a tremendous amount of control over their own compensation. They also have great influence over politicians with the clout deriving from "Corporate (and personal) donations" of funds to individual politicians and political causes.

Let me put CEO pay into a context that can be comprehended (comprehended?) by the average American: If a CEO earns $100 million per year, he is receiving $273,972.60 per day! At $50 million per year, he is paid $136,986.30 per day! If a company reduced its CEO pay from $100 Million to $50 Million it would provide the potential for increasing annual pay for their production staff by thousands of dollars per year ($10,000.00 per employee if there are 5000 "non-management" employees, as example). One would think that it's plain that increasing the pay of the corporation's "producers" would lead to increased output, however "management see that as simply adding to people costs, and avoid such actions - after all, the corporate "plan" is to reduce or eliminate people costs - in a global market the production facility can be moved off-shore where labor costs are much lower, and the resulting increased earnings will then justify higher pay for the "effective" management staff who were smart enough to execute this efficiency.

Causes - Corporate and Government Drive Towards Globalism

A 10-lane NAFTA Superhighway (**built by-the-way, at great cost by American Taxpayer's money)^[i] would drastically move America in the direction of "Globalism". A 10-lane NAFTA Superhighway would enable all North American Corporations to now direct their seaborne imports of cheaper, foreign-made, goods to arrive at their point-of-use or point-of-sale destination by arriving at Mexican seaports and then traveling in Mexican trucks across primarily American roads, to their destinations in the United States or onto the Canadian portion of the NAFTA Superhighway. These imports would bypass American ports by making landfall in Mexico - they would bypass union ports and truck lines in the United States. This would greatly diminish any political or social clout that the Teamsters' and Longshoremen's unions may have, in the past, been able to exert on behalf of its membership.

I have been pretty much anti-union for most of my life, primarily because of the corruption within their leadership, and the seeming arrogance of that leadership when it came to making outlandish demands during contract negotiations. Having said that, I do believe that the labor unions in this country do serve to keep pressure on unscrupulous employers and the government; and they help to assure that workers receive fair treatment by both the government and employers. The NAFTA Superhighway would totally emasculate the unions' ability to exercise any control over U.S. trucking and shipping, and open the door to lower wages for all workers, both union and non-union. Moving imports to Mexican Ports and inter-modal transportation of imported goods to the Mexican trucking industry. This will result in an equalization of wages for Americans, Mexicans and Canadians.

While wage equalization might greatly benefit the lot of Mexican workers, it bodes ill for the future of both Canadian and American workers. The construction and use of a NAFTA Superhighway will invariably, I'm afraid, lead us closer to the formation of a hemispheric trading bloc like the European Economic Union - a North American Union, if you will. From where I sit, the EEU is not yet ready to be declared a resounding success for any but its poorest member nations. So it would be with a North American Union - Mexico's corporate executives and lower class members would love it, but it would do little more than lower the wages and associated quality of life, for the other North American Member State's middle and lower class populations, and really gladden the hearts of each member state's Greedy Corporate executives.

If the NAFTA Superhighway becomes a reality, and as the transformation of our North American economy resulting from the NAFTA Superhighway unfolds, this process will effectively eliminate America's and Canada's middle class - the largest single tax-paying complement of each country's citizens. Taxes currently derived from import duties will accrue to the Mexican Government. State revenues derived from licensing and regulation of the U.S. trucking industry will diminish as more and more non-tax paying Mexican trucking assumes inter-modal import goods distribution. Canada and the United States will begin to look more and more like modern-day Mexico - there will only be two classes of citizens: The very rich and the very poor.

While this may not be the intended, or stated, goal of the Globalists (Corporate America and government) control of the money supply and power in this nation will increasingly move into the control of the wealthy few, leaving the rest of us to be little more than the peasants, or peons, like those who comprise Mexico's vast economic lower-class of today.

Many of our manufacturing jobs have already been moved to Mexico to exploit the lower wage environment that exists there, and to exploit the current implementation of NAFTA. This allows American companies to produce goods at greatly reduced people costs - potentially increasing earnings at home, since no savings in production costs are passed along to consumers here. Additionally, these very same U.S. corporations are stepping up the pace at which they attempt to lower the wages of those who work in the service-oriented jobs remaining in this country. They focus on reducing the cost for labor of the warehouse workers, truck drivers, carpenters, plumbers, and others; by seeking and supporting government policies promoting illegal immigration, refusing to enforce existing illegal immigration laws, and the employment of illegal immigrant workers wherever possible - workers who are willing to work for substantially lower wages than legitimately employed Americans.

The expanded use of an illegal immigrant workforce and outsourcing of service jobs to overseas companies are the tools being employed - either purposefully or inadvertently, the real reason being of no consequence, by the partnership of the federal government and Corporate America to lower the wages of the middle and lower class workers. This leads to increased corporate earning; increased political donations; and an increased ability to further increase the compensation packages of senior corporate executives. The vast influence of corporate America (directly or through PACs or Lobbyists) upon the legislative and executive branches of the federal government is the reason that almost nothing has been done to secure our borders and to crack-down on illegal immigration.

As time passes, more and more American corporations will find it unnecessary to move their manufacturing out of the country to Mexico and other overseas locations. America's middle-class and lower-class worker's already stagnant wages will approach parity those of Mexico (Mexican wages will increase, some, and American and Canadian wages will decrease).

Causes - Government Support

Isn't it interesting that the representatives of major political parties, and the federal government, are all (for the most part) reluctant to secure our southern border? The answer to why this is so, is plain and very upsetting - the government is operating the Justice Department in the manner that it is being pressured to do, by elected government officials fearful of jeopardizing corporate political donations (both Legislative and Executive branches of government be guilty) and by businesses both large and small. Sadly, both major parties have long been for sale, and remain beholden to their biggest purchasers - big business.

Our government is working hand-in-hand with greedy corporations to drive American wages into the gutter. Global Businesses exports our manufacturing base to Mexico, and our service-oriented industry to foreign companies (outsourcing they like to call it). And now, our government is quietly, behind the scenes, pushing for and supporting the NAFTA Super-Highway. ^[2]

How Do We - the Citizens of America - Defeat this Craziness?

The simple answer is: we get actively involved - all of us - and throw ourselves into an active and demanding role in the upcoming 2008 elections. Demand that everyone running for office, at every level, focus on three issues:

§ Break away from NAFTA

§ Secure and enforce our national Borders, and tighten and enforce our immigration laws. We must forget political correctness and focus on the desired outcomes

§ Demand that candidates for public office endorse and pursue these objectives - if they don't, do not support or vote for them! Find out which corporations are supporting which candidates and let the candidates know that you cannot support a candidate who is, or appears to be, bought by big business.

Our secondary objective: work for term limits of 4 years for representatives, 6 years for Senators, and 6 years for the Presidency - America does not need, nor did the founding fathers ever foresee, a need for a "professional class of politicians" in this republic.

Withdrawal from NAFTA, securing our southern border, and tightening and enforcing immigration our laws are actions that will likely create a diplomatic uproar around the world, and Mexico will likely be especially "offended", but why should we care? The United States doesn't need to be the principal source of Mexico's welfare cash flow.

Additionally, we need find allies in Canada - utilize an extensive internet campaign to motivate sane citizens there to pursue similar goals in their country. Canadians and Americans, working together, would be able to make a difference.

We must act now to stop the NAFTA Superhighway and this rapid drift towards Globalization of our economy! America as we know it will cease if this NAFTA Super-Highway is built.

[1]Executive Excess 2001: Layoffs, Tax Rebates and the Gender Gap." From the annual study on the CEO-worker pay gap by the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy - view report at (www.ips-dc.org/projects/execexcess2001.htm)

[2] The U.S. government has housed within the Department of Commerce (DOC) a "Security and Prosperity Partnership office" (SPP) that is dedicated to organizing the many working groups laboring within the executive branches of the U.S., Mexico and Canada to create the regulatory reality for the Security and Prosperity Partnership. The SPP agreement was signed by Bush, President Vicente Fox, and then-Prime Minister Paul Martin in Waco, Tex., on March 23, 2005. According to the DOC website, a U.S.-Mexico Joint Working Committee on Transportation Planning has finalized a plan such that "methods for detecting bottlenecks on the U.S.-Mexico border will be developed and low cost/high impact projects identified in bottleneck studies will be constructed or implemented." The report notes that new SENTRI travel lanes on the Mexican border will be constructed this year. The border at Laredo should be reduced to an electronic speed bump for the Mexican trucks containing goods from the Far East to enter the U.S. on their way to the Kansas City SmartPort.

[i] The North America's SuperCorridor Coalition, Inc. (NASCO) was officially amalgamated by the North American International Trade Corridor Partnership to promote the development of a trade corridor designed to expedite the flow of trade through the North American Continent. NASCO is a not-for-profit lobbying organization that has received $2.5 million in Congressional earmarks from the Department of Transportation to promote the corridor concept. Their 24-member board of directors includes county commissioners from four Texas Counties; an Oklahoma state senator, and a member of OK-DOT; two officials from the Texas DOT; attorneys, a couple of construction company officials, and an official of the U.S.-Mexico Chamber of Commerce. Membership fees range from $500 for an individual, up to $25,000 for government entities. Membership includes several U.S. government entities.

NASCO claims that "There are no plans to build a new NAFTA Superhighway - it exists today as I-35." This, however, is at odds with reality, as the goal is to build and operate a privately funded toll-corridor that includes up to 10 lanes of car and truck traffic, rail lines, pipelines and utilities, including communications systems. While the current agreement is limited to Texas, it none-the-less fits nicely into the master plan being advanced by NASCO. It also fits nicely into the vision of the Council on Foreign Relations which advocates "unlimited access to each other's territory" including allowing Mexican or Canadian companies to freely enter the U.S. to compete with U.S. trucking companies, hauling freight between U.S. cities.