UnclaimedWoman.com
Title
KC Smartport
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Excerpted from the website:
- The Superhighway that doesn’t exist Dos Mundos, Issue 11 March 15-March 21, 2007 By Colleen Ballard Hayes The Superhighway that doesn’t exist National journalists have reported on the NAFTA Superhighway, but federal lawmakers, including Reps Roy Blunt from Missouri and Dennis Moore from Kansas continue to deny that such a planned corridor exists.“Recent media reports and web sites have reported on an alleged NAFTA Superhighway connecting the United States, Mexico and Canada. Plans for a new ten-lane, limited-access highway with passenger and freight rail lines running alongside the highway through the United States do not exist,” Roberts wrote in a latter dated Sept 5, 2006.“That’s a myth running around the Internet,” five term Rep. Jim Ryun from Kansas (who was defeated by Nancy Boyda in November) told the Topeka Capital-Journal newspaper on Aug. 12, 2006. But Boyda asserted that Ryun “voted to provide over half a billion dollars of funding for NASCO//NAFTA SuperCorridor projects without letting the people of Kansas know that 32,000 across of Kansas land would be taken as a result.” The proposed $286.5 billion NASCO/NAFTA SuperCorridor would be 4,000 miles long and one-quarter to one-half-mile wide, with up to 20 lanes for trucks and cars. Dividing the north and southbound vehicle lanes would be freight and high-speed commu7ter railways and utility infrastructure (water, oil and gas pipelines, broadband cable and other telecommunications services). The Trans-Texas Corridor, the first phase will run from the port of Lazaro Cardenas in Michoacan across Mexico and north across Texas. The NASCO/NAFTA Superhighway would continue north through Oklahoma and Kansas to a NASCO-planned Mexican customs port in Kansas City, Mo., where Communist Chinese containers will be unloaded. Taxpayer dollars are being poured into NASCO/NAFTA SuperCorridor and a customs port without any congressional oversight. The planned Mexican customs office has received considerable US Commerce Dept funding. And Kansas City SmartPort, a nonprofit coalition of cargo carriers, warehouse operators and others, has received $4 million to create Intelligent Transportation systems and highway corridor projects; a $2.5 million loan from Kansas City in 2005; plus $600,000 in direct aid. The coalition has also applied for a $1.5 million Commerce Dept grant. Why aren’t federal officials more forthcoming about this mammoth project, and why isn't there vigorous public debate? Boyda suggested,’ Developers want the trade route to be under NAFTA rules and regulations, which would permit secret agreements and try to sidestep U.S. environmental laws and labor standards.” The 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, passed by a fast-track process that allowed minimal congressional debate, features a NAFTA Tribunal that trumps U.S. law. According to Boyda, “This so-called nonprofit interest group called NASCO was created to allow its creators to say there’s no such thing as a NAFTA Superhighway. They changed the name to NASACO Corridor.” And they issued four pages of instructions to their members on how to deny that it exists. Why? Because it involves the seizure by eminent domain of staggering amounts of private property – an estimated 150,000 square miles in Texas and 32,000 acres of prime farmland in Kansas. In January, Rep Virgil Goode from Virginia introduced two House Resolutions. The first, H Con Res. 22\, calls for withdrawing from NAFTA. The other, H. Con. Res. 40, urges the US Congress to oppose the construction of a NAFTA Superhighway and entering into a North American Union with Mexico and Canada. A coalition of NASCO/NAFTA SuperCorridor opponents obtained 1,000 documents under the Freedom of Information Act and is calling for a congressional investigation. A coalition member, Jerome Corsi, said, ”…the documents show the White House is engaging in collaborative relations with Mexico and Canada outside the U.S. Constitution.”
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