Link to article here.

Corsi: Bush could elect Hillary
Says GOP risks loss by ridiculing questions about ‘North American Union’

Speaking yesterday in St. Louis at Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Council meeting, WND staff reporter Jerome Corsi predicted the Republican Party risks losing the 2008 presidential election and two-thirds of the House and the Senate if President Bush continues to ridicule questions about a possible North American Union as “conspiracy theories” while continuing to press an active integration with Mexico and Canada in the remaining months of his second term.

Calling Karl Rove the architect not only of the Republican electoral victory in 2004 but also of the Republican electoral defeat in 2006, Corsi told the group the main issue was immigration.

“Yes, the war in Iraq was an issue in 2006,” Corsi acknowledged, “but even Richard Nixon won a landslide in 1972 despite the growing unpopularity of the Vietnam War. The Democrats will lose any time they run a far-left anti-war electoral campaign.”

C-span’s Book-TV recorded Corsi’s presentation for later broadcast.

Corsi asserted in 2006 “grassroots Americans voted against open borders and illegal immigration, whether Karl Rove or the Republican National Party want to admit it, or not.”

“Every time President Bush pushes to have Mexican trucks cross our borders, the American grassroots feel betrayed,” Corsi told the group.

“George Bush can put Hillary Clinton in the White House,” Corsi said, “and all he has to do is keep ridiculing the idea of a North American Union or NAFTA superhighways, instead of answering the question directly.”

TxDOT funding gripes get cool reception
by Christine DeLoma
Lone Star Report
October 2, 2007

As lawmakers take a deeper look at the implications of leasing state roads to private contractors, state transportation officials are fighting back – warning lawmakers there will soon be a shortage of funds for transportation projects.

It’s a showdown over the private toll road moratorium.

No more money? Transportation Commission chairman Ric Williamson sounded the alarm at the Sept. 27 commission meeting, saying the private toll road moratorium, along with rising highway costs and federal grant cuts, may cause the agency to scale back its plan to build new roads throughout the state.

The warning is nothing new. Williamson has talked in the same vein for several months. Now, deep-seated mistrust between many lawmakers and the agency is causing the alarm to fall on deaf ears.

Rep. Joe Pickett (D-El Paso), for example, who attended the meeting, was quoted in the Austin American-Statesman as saying, “[I]t’s always gloom-and-doom” with the Department of Transportation (TxDOT).

Williamson has repeatedly criticized the Legislature for taking away the agency’s primary tool in raising funds to build new roads, the use of comprehensive development agreements (CDA’s) with private developers.

Lawmakers had a variety of concerns over the length of contract agreements, the setting of toll rates, the inclusion of non-compete clauses, and the buy-back provisions. Accordingly, legislators voted for a two-year moratorium (with several exceptions for urban areas) on CDA’s.

Study committee excludes Krusee. During the private toll road moratorium, lawmakers will study the use of CDA’s in building private toll roads. Speaker Tom Craddick on Sept. 27 named three members to the Legislative Study Committee on Private Participation in Toll Projects.

“This session, the issue of toll roads built with private equity became a matter of much concern among the Legislature and the general public,” Craddick said. “It is my hope that this committee will come up with substantive recommendations so that we can resolve conflicts on this issue.”

Craddick named the following members: Reps. Aaron Peña (D-Edinburg), Larry Phillips (R-Sherman) and Wayne Smith (R-Baytown). Missing from the committee is the primary defender of CDA’s, Transportation chairman Mike Krusee (R-Round Rock). Lt. Gov. David Dewhust and Gov. Rick Perry have yet to make their appointments.

Court says TxDOT advertising OK
Toll road opponents were rebuffed this week in their efforts to stop TxDOT’s campaign extolling the virtues of toll roads in Texas.

State Dist. Judge Orlinda Naranjo denied San Antonio Toll Party Terri Hall’s request for a temporary injunction on TxDOT’s $9 million “Keep Texas Moving” advertising campaign. Naranjo said the Legislature gave TxDOT the legal authority to promote its activities throughout the state.

TxDOT is using taxpayer funds to promote the use of toll roads and the controversial Trans-Texas Corridor through a multi-media campaign using radio, TV, print, and Internet to solve the state’s traffic congestion problems.

At an expected second hearing next week the state Attorney General’s office is predicted to move for dismissal. Hall and her lawyers will allege that TxDOT, contrary to state law, advanced a political rather than an educational campaign.

Paxton asks for interim charge
Meanwhile, Rep. Ken Paxton (R-McKinney) has requested that the Speaker issue an interim charge for the Legislature to study taxpayer lobbying.

“The Texas Department of Transportation has recently been called into question for spending taxpayer money promoting the Trans Texas Corridor and other projects,” Paxton said. “While I appreciate the Department’s efforts to share with the public information regarding its initiatives, I believe the Legislature has a responsibility to ensure that state resources are spent efficiently. For this reason, I have requested an interim charge to research the use of public money for advertising government programs, as I believe the government should not spend the money raised from taxpayers to lobby the public.”

Tolling existing interstates?
When lawmakers learned TxDOT was lobbying Congress for the authority to buy a portion of our federal highways in order to put toll plazas on them, U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison quickly crafted an amendment to ban the idea outright.

However, as with most legislative wrangling, the content of the legislation has changed. Hutchison has teamed up with Pennsylvania Rep. John E. Peterson to help secure the provision to the Fiscal Year 2008 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD) Appropriations bill. The most recent iteration of the ban now would allow states to opt-in to a one-year ban on tolling existing interstate highways.

The other major change to her proposal: Individual states would be allowed to toll newly constructed roads or lanes.

Hutchison said she will work for a national prohibition on tolling existing federal highways in 2009.

Link to article here. Trade and transporting the influx of Asian goods into the U.S. via Mexico is the primary reason for the Trans Texas Corridor. Considering our massive $230 billion trade deficit with China alone, it’s not hard to fathom that these failed trade policies and the rapidly declining U.S. dollar will quickly bring America to its knees economically. Trade has now become a national security issue.

Are Iran, Russia, China behind dollar’s free-fall?
Some see ‘Currency Cold War’ meant to bring U.S. to its knees
October 2, 2007
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com
WASHINGTON – The hottest selling book in China right now is called “Currency Wars,” which makes the case that the U.S. Federal Reserve is a puppet of the Rothschilds banking dynasty and it has persuaded some top officials Beijing should resist America’s demands to appreciate its own undervalued currency, the yuan.

This might not be news of concern to most Americans if the U.S. dollar were not in precipitous free-fall, having reached record lows against the euro yesterday.

What would it mean if China ever threw its economic weight around by dumping dollars in a major way?

Suffice it to say it is referred to in some quarters as China’s financial “nuclear option,” because it would be the economic equivalent of detonating a thermonuclear weapon in the world’s financial markets.

But the American dollar’s fate is hardly in the hands of the Chinese alone. Other foreign parties suspected of participating in a new “Currency Cold War” are Iran, Russia and Venezuela.

Diane Francis, a financial reporter for the National Post in Canada, says it plainly and boldly: “There is a Currency Cold War being waged by Russia, Iran and various allies such as Venezuela.”

The grand strategy being engineered by Vladimir Putin, she writes, is to force the use of euros as the international monetary standard as a transition to the Russian ruble.

“This is simply a monetary version of the old Cold War, minus the missiles,” she writes.

Experts don’t see any short-term reprieve for the falling value of the dollar. Kathy Lien, chief currency strategist with DailyFX.com in the US, told Bloomberg she expects the American dollar to slide even further, forcing more lending rates cuts in the U.S. to stave off recession.

“It seems like every single passing day we have a new record low in the dollar, and a new record high in the euro, and it’s driven by the fact that U.S. data is continuing to deteriorate,” she said.

If other nations do not follow the U.S. in cutting rates, the slide in the value of the dollar would most likely continue.

If the dollar trend continues spiraling downward, the risk is that nations like China – or Japan or Saudi Arabia – which have been buying U.S. Treasury bonds and thereby funding America’s deficit, would stop that practice.

That would be the nuclear option.

China, with $1.3 trillion in foreign exchange reserves as a result of the massive and growing $260 billion U.S. trade deficit, has taken huge losses with the falling dollar, given that some 80 percent of China’s $1.3 trillion in foreign reserves is held in U.S. dollar assets, largely in U.S. treasury securities.

Meanwhile, Song Hongbing, the author of China’s runaway bestseller, “The Currency Wars,” says he’s pleasantly surprised at the 200,000 copies his book has sold. He is probably not eager to see the dollar punished as he lives in Washington, D.C.

“I never imagined it could be so hot and that top leaders would be reading it,” he says during a book tour in Shanghai. “People in China are nervous about what’s going on in financial markets, but they don’t know how to handle the real dangers. This book gives them some ideas.”

Among the research findings that shocked him most was that the Fed is a privately owned and run bank.

“I just never imagined a central bank could be a private body.”

Some, meanwhile, are standing on the sidelines cheering the currency wars – seeing them as a way of reducing the power and influence of the “imperialistic” U.S.

Rohini Hensman, who describes himself as “independent scholar, writer and activist based in India and Sri Lanka,” says it’s about time the U.S. got its comeuppance.

“As the bombs started falling on Iraq in 2003, I wrote and circulated an appeal entitled ‘Boycott the Dollar to Stop the War!,’ arguing that although the military strength of the U.S. was enormous, its economy was in a mess; with a massive gross national debt, the only reason it could finance its foreign wars and occupations was because of the inflow of over a billion dollars a day from countries accumulating foreign exchange reserves in dollars because it was the world’s sole reserve currency. The denomination of the oil trade in dollars made it additionally desirable. With the advent of the euro, however, there was the possibility of an alternative world currency; therefore individuals, institutions and countries opposed to the war on Iraq should refuse to accumulate dollars or use them outside the U.S., because these were activities that helped to finance U.S.-Israeli aggression against Palestinians, Iraqis and Afghanis. After the World Social Forum meeting in 2004, the Boycott Bush Campaign adopted the dollar boycott as part of its strategy.”

In early trading today, the dollar advanced slightly, prompting gold prices back from 28-year highs set yesterday. The dollar’s value against a basket of six major currencies rose slightly to 77.950 from a lifetime low of 77.657 a day earlier. The dollar traded at $1.4223 per euro, stronger than a record low on Monday of $1.4283.

WND has reported the Federal Reserve is in a dilemma.

The stock market has demanded rate cuts, wanting to return to the free credit policies of the Federal Reserve that fueled the liquidity bubble that has boosted home prices and pumped the Dow Jones Industrial Average since 9/11.

Yet, the Fed giving in to stock market demands and lowering rates threatens an international dollar sell-off that could lead to a dollar collapse.

Former Fed Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan also sparked controversy by suggesting in his recently published book, “The Age of Turbulence,” the euro is rivaling the dollar as the international foreign exchange reserve currency of choice.

The Wall Street Journal recently quoted a rule of thumb advanced by Harvard University economist Kenneth Rogoff, a former chief economist for the International Monetary Fund. According to Rogoff’s “back-of-the-envelope” calculation, a 20 percent drop in the dollar’s exchange value reduces Americans’ income by 3 percent, adjusted by inflation.

Link to article here.

Rep. Virgil Goode says below: “We are giving away the country so a few very rich people can get richer.” Goode stressed that the Bush administration supports both a NAU regional government and a NAFTA Superhighway system.

Congress debate begins on North America Union
Resolution calls for end of NAFTA superhighway, abandonment of integration with Canada, Mexico
By Jerome R. Corsi
WorldNetDaily.com
September 25, 2007

Rep. Virgil Goode, R-Va. (Photo: University of Virginia)

A House resolution urging President Bush “not to go forward with the North American Union or the NAFTA Superhighway system” is – according to its sponsor Rep. Virgil Goode, R-Va., in an exclusive WND interview – “also a message to both the executive branch and the legislative branch.”As WND previously reported, on Jan. 22 Goode introduced H.C.R. 40, titled “Expressing the sense of Congress that the United States should not engage in the construction of a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Superhighway System or enter into a North American Union with Mexico and Canada.”

The bill has been referred to the House Subcommittee on Highways and Transit of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

WND asked Goode if the president was risking electoral success for the Republican Party in 2008 with his insistence on pushing for North American integration via the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, or SPP.

“Yes,” Goode answered. “You won’t hear the leadership in the Republic Party admit it, but there are many in the House and Senate who know that illegal immigration has to be stopped and legal immigration has to be reduced. We are giving away the country so a few very rich people can get richer.”

How did he react when President Bush referred to those who suggest the SPP could turn into the North American Union as “conspiracy theorists”?

“The president is really engaging in a play on words,” Goode responded. “The secretary of transportation came before our subcommittee,” he explained, “and I had the opportunity to ask her some questions about the NAFTA Superhighway. Of course, she answered, ‘There’s no NAFTA Superhighway.’ But then Mary Peters proceeded to discuss the road system that would come up from Mexico and go through the United States up into Canada.”

Goode is a member of the Subcommittee on Transportation, Treasury, Housing and Urban Development of the House Committee on Appropriations.

“So, I think that saying we’re ‘conspiracy theorists’ or something like that is really just a play on words with the intent to demonize the opposition,” Goode concluded.

Goode stressed that the Bush administration supports both a NAU regional government and a NAFTA Superhighway system: “The Bush administration as well as Mexico and Canada have persons in the government in all three countries who want to a see a North American Union as well as a highway system that would bring goods into the west coast of Mexico and transport them up through Mexico into the United States and then in onto Canada,” Goode confirmed.

The Virginia congressman said he believes the motivation behind the movement toward North American integration is the anticipated profits the large multinational corporations in each of the three countries expect to make from global trade, especially moving production to China.

“Some really large businesses that get a lot from China would like a NAFTA Superhighway system because it would reduce costs for them to transport containers from China and, as a result, increase their margins,” he argued.

“I am vigorously opposed to the Mexican trucks coming into the country,” Goode continued. “The way we have done it and, I think, the way we should do it in the future, is to have the goods come into the United States from Mexico within a 20-mile commercial space and unloaded from Mexican trucks into U.S. trucks. This procedure enhances the safety of the country, the security of the country, and provides much less chance for illegal immigration.”

As WND reported, the Department of Transportation has begun a Mexican truck “demonstration project” under which 100 Mexican trucking companies are being allowed to run their long-haul rigs throughout the U.S.

Previously, Mexican trucks have been limited to a 20-mile commercial zone in the United States, with the requirement that goods bound for locations in the U.S. beyond the 20-mile commercial zone be off-loaded to U.S. trucks.

WND reported last month that Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., successfully offered an amendment to the Department of Transportation Fiscal Year 2008 appropriations bill to block DOT from spending any federal funds to implement the truck project.

Dorgan’s amendment passed 75-23, after Sen. Elizabeth Dole, R-N.C., changed her vote to support Dorgan.

By a voice vote, the House passed an amendment offered by Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., to the DOT appropriations bill comparable to Dorgan’s, designed to block the agency from using federal funds to implement the truck project.

DeFazio chairs the House transportation subcommittee that oversees motor carriers.

“With the Trans-Texas Corridor, which I would say is part of the NAFTA Superhighway system, and with this NAFTA plot with the Mexican trucks just coming in and not loading off to U.S. trucks, they will just drive right over the Rio Grande and come on over into Texas,” Goode argued. “A lot of these Mexican trucks will be bring containerized cargo from the west coast of Mexico where they will be unloaded in Mexican ports to avoid the fees and costs of unloading at U.S. ports.”

“So, when you look at the total package,” he continued, “we do have a NAFTA Superhighway system already in place. There are those in all three countries that believe we should have a North American Union and the Security and Prosperity Partnership, in my opinion takes us down that road. And I am vigorously opposed to the loss of our sovereignty.”

Why, WND asked, do so many congressmen and senators insist on writing and telling their constituents that they don’t know anything about the Security and Prosperity Partnership, or that SPP working groups are really just to increase our competitiveness?

“In the House, a strong majority voted to provide no money in the transportation funding bill,” Goode responded. “I commend Congressman Duncan Hunter for submitting an amendment to the Department of Transportation funding bill [which] got over 360 votes that said no funds in the transportation appropriation measure, prohibiting Department of Transportation funds from being used to participate on working groups that promote the Security and Prosperity Partnership.”

As WND reported, Hunter’s amendment to the FY 2008 Department of Transportation funding bill prohibiting DOT from using federal funds to participate in SPP working groups creating NAFTA Superhighways passed 362 to 63, with strong bipartisan support. The House approved H.R. 3074 by 268-153, with the Hunter amendment included.

“So, I think a majority the House, if you had an up or down vote on the SPP, would vote down on the SPP,” Goode concluded. “But some still say, and it’s a play on words, that we don’t have a Security and Prosperity Partnership that will lead to a North American Union. I don’t think they can say anymore that we don’t have a Security and Prosperity Partnership arrangement between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada, because that was done in Waco, Texas, on March 23, 2005, and the recent meeting at Montebello was to talk about it further.”

WND asked Goode to comment on the North American Competitiveness Council, or NACC, a group of multinational corporations selected by the Chambers of Commerce in Mexico, Canada and the U.S. as the central adviser of SPP working groups.

At the SPP summit in Montebello, Quebec, the NACC met behind closed doors with the three leaders, cabinet secretaries who were present, and top SPP working group bureaucrats, while various public advocacy groups, environmental groups, labor unions – and the press – were excluded.

Should SPP working group meetings be open to the public?

“I wish they were,” Goode responded. “If it is as the Bush administration says, ‘We’re not planning any North American Union,’ then why wouldn’t those meetings be open, why wouldn’t you let the media in?” Goode asked.

“But some of the very big corporations want the goods from China to come in here unchecked,” he continued. “It costs money for U.S. trucks to transport Chinese goods from West Coast ports like Los Angeles or Long Beach. But if you can have a Mexican truck and Mexican truck driver, that’s going to be cheaper. And it’s all about the margins. The margins relate directly to how much money the multi-national corporations are going to make.”

Has the Senate debate on the Dorgan amendment brought the issues of the NAU and NAFTA Superhighways more to the attention of the Senate?

“I think so,” Goode said. “That debate had a very positive effect. You had grassroots support calling the Senate on the Dorgan amendment.

“The Bush administration engages in the same play of words with all these issues,” Goode added. “Take a look at the Kennedy-McCain comprehensive immigration reform, which the Bush administration has now tried to jam through the Senate not once, but twice.

“The Bush administration claims it’s not [amnesty] when you let someone stay in the country and give them a path to citizenship,” Goode pointed out. “Well, that’s their definition, not my definition, and not the definition of the majority of the public. The majority of the public called in and buried the amnesty bill because of public pressure. Public pressure also got de-funded the pilot program on Mexican trucks in this country.”

So should the U.S. pull out of the SPP?

“Yes,” Goode answered, “but the best way to end SPP would be to have a chief executive that wouldn’t do anything with it.”

What does Goode think of the state legislatures that are passing anti-NAU, anti-NAFTA Superhighway and anti-SPP resolutions?

“If enough state legislatures pass resolutions like that, it surely should have an impact on the House and the Senate,” Goode said.

“President Bush’s position is that we need to carry out NAFTA and we need to have this free flow of goods with Mexico and Canada,” Goode explained. “Well, Bush’s approach involves a derogation of our sovereignty and it also undermines the security and the safety of the country.

“It will be much easier for a truck to get a container on the west coast of Mexico and haul in a biological or radiological or nuclear weapon than it would be if you are going to have to unload the trucks on the Texas-Mexico border and put the goods and material in a U.S. truck,” he continued.

“The problem is that the NAU, NAFTA Superhighways and SPP all go back to money,” Goode stressed. “The multinational companies want their goods from Mexico and China because they want the cheap labor.”

What about the U.S.’s large and growing trade imbalance with China?

“I don’t want to have to be an ‘I told you so’ person,” Goode answered, “but I was a vigorous opponent of PNTR (“permanent normal trade relations”) and before that of ‘most favored nation’ trade status with China. We need tariffs and quotas with China. Personally, if I know food is coming in from China, I won’t buy it. The American people with the adoption of COOL, country of origin labeling, with the food clearly labeled, I think you will see the American public will shy away from Chinese products.”

In 2000, Congress voted to extend to China PNTR. “Most favored nation” or MFN trade status, was given to China first in 1980 by the Carter administration. COOL rules are administered by the Department of Agriculture.

Goode concluded the interview by thanking WND for covering the SPP, NAU and NAFTA Superhighway issues: “I want to thank you for putting these issues out where people can read it,” Goode said. “You have enlightened hundreds of thousands if not millions of American citizens who otherwise would have been greatly in the dark on the SPP.”

Link to article here.

Port sparks NAFTA super-railway challenge
Another national line plans ‘Asian gateway’ to North America
By Jerome R. Corsi
September 19, 2007
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com

Canadian National railway’s North America logo

With the focused development of the port in Prince Rupert, British Columbia, as an official “Asian Gateway,” Canadian National is positioned to compete with Canadian Pacific as the first truly continental NAFTA super-railroad, reaching from Canada to Mexico through the heart of the U.S. On Sept. 12, Canadian National used the opening of its new container terminal at Prince Rupert to declare the railroad the “Midwest Express,” a reference to its ambition to move containers of good manufactured in China into the heartland of North America through distribution hubs in Chicago and Memphis. James Foote, Canadian National’s vice president of sales and marketing, boasted Canadian National could move containers from China into the U.S. Midwest more quickly through Prince Rupert than through any other West Coast port, including Los Angeles and Long Beach.

According to the Canadian National website, the now-completed Phase I development of the Canadian National Prince Rupert container terminal has a capacity to handle 500,000 20-foot containers per year, growing to a 2 million container capacity in 2010, when Phase II development of the 150-acre facility is completed.

A video on the Canadian National website bills Prince Rupert as “North America’s Northwest Gateway,” stressing the 54th parallel location as the closest connection with the Far East and China, “shaving 30 hours shipping time for the shortest, quickest route across the Pacific.”“It’s all in the numbers,” Canadian National boasts, pointing out Prince Rupert is 5,286 miles from Hong Kong, while Los Angeles is 6,380 miles away. Also, Shanghai is 4,642 miles from Port Rupert but 5,810 miles from Los Angeles.”

Protected by the Queen Charlotte Islands, Prince Rupert is a natural deep-water tidal harbor easily capable of handling the new class of 12,500 container-capacity post-Panamax ships now being built for China.

The Canadian National route map can be conceptualized as a giant “T” that stretches across Canada from Prince Rupert and Vancouver in British Columbia to Halifax in Nova Scotia.

The Canadian National then crosses into the U.S. at Winnipeg and at Windsor, to complete the “T” through Detroit, Chicago and Memphis, ending up in the Louisiana Gulf Coast.

As WND reported, the route map of rival Canadian Pacific in the U.S. roughly parallels Interstate 35, while the Canadian National route map follows more the Mississippi River and roughly the proposed NAFTA superhighway route planned for Interstate 69.

A map on the Canadian National website shows containers from China will enter North America at Prince Rupert.

A secondary, southern route is shown on the Canadian National map, with Chinese containers traveling through the Panama Canal and linking up with Canadian National routes in Louisiana, or heading north into the Atlantic to connect with Canadian National in Halifax.

WND reported plans to build a deeper and wider Panama Canal are aimed at opening a route for Chinese post-Panamax container mega-ship from the Pacific to U.S. ports in the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean.

To complete its route map into Mexico, Canadian National has marketing agreements in place with Kansas City Southern, or KCS.

KCS’s reach into Mexico qualifies it as a NAFTA railroad, but a combination between KCS and either Canadian National or Canadian Pacific is required before the configuration of a continental NAFTA super-railroad becomes apparent.

WND reported the Canadian Pacific acquisition of DM&E gives Canadian Pacific a connection with KCS at the Knoche Yard in Kansas City.

Thus, both Canadian National and rival Canadian Pacific rely on KCS to compete for the claim to be the first North American continental NAFTA railroad.

A route map on the Canadian National website shows the railroad connecting through KCS Mexican railroads down to the Mexican port Lazaro Cardenas, a port WND frequently has identified as another alternative to Los Angeles and Long Beach for containers from China to enter North America.

While the KCS marketing agreements give Canadian National the reach into Mexico, the Canadian National website emphasizes Prince Rupert as the railroad’s primary gateway for containers from China to enter North America.

Through Prince Rupert, Canadian National can transport containers from China along 100 percent Canadian National lines, down into the heartland of the U.S., from Detroit and Chicago south to the Louisiana coast.

Yet, Canadian National would have to partner with KCS to reach into Mexico to transport containers from China north from Lázaro Cárdenas.

As WND previously reported, KCS operating alone can already bring Chinese containers from the Mexican ports of Manzanillo and Lazaro Cardenas to Kansas City where Kansas City SmartPort is planning to be an “inland port” for switching Chinese containers to destinations east and west on U.S. rail lines.

For a brief period, 1993-1995, Canadian National operated under a CN North America logo, even entering into negotiations to acquire the rival Canadian Pacific.

We put out this information earlier in the year and the mainstream press is beginning to pick-up on Rudy Giuliani’s conflicts of interests and deep ties to a controversial public policy gripping the nation, superhighways in the hands of foreign companies to benefit multi-national corporations through a massive influx of imports from China. Giuliani’s going to directly profit from the Trans Texas Corridor…this man has no business being the next president!

Giuliani Builds Political Base in Texas
September 21, 2007 – AUSTIN, Texas
from ABC 7 News

Republican Rudy Giuliani – thrice-married, liberal on social issues and a consummate New Yorker – seems an unlikely White House contender to be embraced by a Texas’ GOP establishment rooted in the energy industry and dominated by religious conservatives. But the former New York mayor has built a formidable political base in Texas with the help of well-connected Republican money men. He owes his advantage in part to his role as a name partner with a powerhouse, Houston-based law firm known for its impressive roster of energy-giant clients, Bracewell & Giuliani.

His partnership in the law firm has also brought Giuliani unwelcome criticism in connection with some of the firm’s more controversial clients, including a Spanish contractor involved in planning part of a Texas superhighway toll road known as the Trans-Texas Corridor.

Texas farmers and other landowners are worried their property rights will be trampled to make way for the highway. Conspiracy theorists see Giuliani, because of his highway connections, as allied with a cabal of international monied interests plotting to supplant the United States with a North American Union that includes Mexico and Canada.

Giuliani joined the law firm – then called Bracewell & Patterson – in March 2005. More than 400 lawyers work for the firm, which has offices in New York, Washington, Connecticut, Dubai, Kazakhstan and London.

Giuliani reported in a federal financial disclosure form in May that he received $1.2 million in income from Bracewell & Giuliani during 2006 and the first five months of 2007. He was also entitled to a 7.5 percent share of revenue from the firm’s New York office.

The firm’s managing partner, Patrick Oxford of Houston, is the national chairman of Giuliani’s presidential campaign. A former University of Texas System regent appointed by then-Gov. George W. Bush, Oxford has strong ties to many of Texas’ top political leaders. He raised $100,000 for Bush in his 2000 presidential run, served as co-chairman of Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison’s re-election campaign last year and is treasurer for Sen. John Cornyn’s current re-election campaign.

The law firm’s employees in several Texas cities have also donated to Giuliani’s campaign, federal election reports show.

“The relationship with Bracewell has given Giuliani a financial foothold in the state,” said Craig McDonald, director of Texans for Public Justice, which tracks money in politics.

While Giuliani isn’t “totally in sync with the base on social issues,” Texans liked his take-charge approach during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and his mayoral record on crime-fighting and budget control, said Austin-based GOP consultant Reggie Bashur, who is not working with any presidential candidates.

“The grassroots in Texas is … strongly conservative. … very much right-to-life, very fiscally conservative, strong on national defense, very strong on the war on terror, not overly sympathetic to the gay rights movement,” Bashur said.

Because Texas’ primary comes late in the lineup of nomination contests, the state’s role in the nomination is primarily that of money generator. Giuliani’s campaign finance chairman is Roy Bailey, a former finance chairman of the Texas Republican Party. Dallas billionaire T. Boone Pickens and Texas Rangers owner Tom Hicks are major fundraisers.

Giuliani had raised $3.69 million in Texas as of July 30, the most of any presidential candidate. Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton was second with $2 million. Among Giuliani’s Republican rivals, Sen. John McCain has raised $1.79 million from Texas donors and Mitt Romney has raised $1.76 million.

“I think there are many issues, principally on the issue of leadership and overall electability, that are causing many voters in Texas to support the mayor,” said Giuliani spokesman Elliott Bundy.

Giuliani has also developed a bond with Texas Gov. Rick Perry, whom he helped win re-election last year. That groundwork could make Perry a high-profile ally in Texas, although the governor hasn’t yet endorsed a presidential candidate.

Bracewell & Giuliani’s political action committee gave $10,000 to Perry a year ago, just a few weeks before his re-election. Perry and Giuliani have talked in person and by telephone several times and have a good relationship, Black said.

Bracewell & Giuliani represents a business consortium involved in the Trans-Texas Corridor, a costly, high-profile toll road pushed by Perry and opposed by farmers and ranchers.

The first phase of Perry’s proposed $184 billion toll road, envisioned as part of a superhighway stretching from Oklahoma to the Mexico border, was planned by the Cintra Zachry consortium, composed of Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte SA of Spain, one of the world’s largest developers of toll roads, and Zachry Construction Co. of San Antonio.

Landowners say they worry that fields and farmhouses in Texas families for generations would be bulldozed for the highway. The state acknowledges some private land will be taken, but Perry said new roads are needed to handle Texas’ growing population and trade.

The consortium sued Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott last year to keep parts of its development agreement with the state secret, saying the information was proprietary. The Texas Department of Transportation took the unusual step of siding with the consortium in the lawsuit against Abbott, whose office had ruled the agreement should be made public.

The transportation department and the consortium dropped the lawsuit last October and agreed to release the contents of the contract.

But the lawsuit further fueled concerns about foreign ownership of a major Texas highway, and the project continues to be criticized by conservative groups like the Eagle Forum and the John Birch Society, who see it as part of an international conspiracy to create a North American Union. The conspiracy theory has also provided fodder for cable television commentators like CNN’s Lou Dobbs.

Earlier this year, Giuliani sold his investment firm, Giuliani Capital, for an undisclosed sum to the Macquarie Group, which is part of Macquarie Bank of Australia.. Cintra and Macquarie’s infrastructure group formed a consortium that operates a major toll road in Indiana.

Scott Segal, a Washington-based Bracewell & Giuliani partner in charge of its government relations division, said Giuliani was not involved in the Texas toll road legal work and that the law firm doesn’t lobby on behalf of Cintra Zachry.

“Mayor Giuliani has had no association or has done no work for the Cintra Zachry venture,” Segal said.

Black, Perry’s spokesman, said he doubts Perry even knows that Giuliani’s firm has represented the transportation companies in connection with the project.

“The governor does not concern himself with who Rudy Giuliani’s law firm may or may not represent,” Black said.

© 2007 WJLA-TV
© 2007 The Associated Press

Link to article here.

Mexican official urges North American Union
Tells Denver trade conference EU is ‘model we need to follow quickly’
By Michael Howe
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com
September 21, 2007

Mayor Evaristo Lenin Perez of Ciudad Acuna, Mexico

At a Denver conference on intercontinental trade corridors, a Mexican mayor called for a swift move toward a European Union-style merger of the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Referring to Europe, Evaristo Lenin Perez of Ciudad Acuna – a sister city of Del Rio, Texas – told the Great Plains International Conference, “It’s a model we need to follow quickly.”

Perez later told WND, “If only people know the benefits of opening the borders and working together, improving the quality of life for all, then no one would be opposed to the idea of a North American Union.”

A spokesman for organizers of the conference – which began Wednesday and concludes today – rejected the Mexican mayor’s view.

“This is not what the conference is about, it is not about a North American Union,” said Joe Kiely, vice president of the Ports-to-Plains Trade Corridor Coalition. “It is about developing infrastructure and economic opportunities in the Great Plains. I am equally surprised the other items were brought up here.”

Ports-to-Plains describes itself as “a planned, multimodal transportation corridor including a multi-lane divided highway that will facilitate the efficient transportation of goods and services from Mexico, through West Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, and Oklahoma, and ultimately on into Canada and the Pacific Northwest.”

The conference, held at the Adams Mark Hotel, is promoted as an opportunity to “highlight the efforts of communities and citizens working together to bring the benefits of investment in transportation infrastructure and trade home to the Great Plains region.”

Asked why he chose the conference to promote the idea of a North American Union, Perez told WND, “It’s as good as any place and the right people are here.”

“This is not a new idea,” he said. “In fact when there are border meetings between border governors or border legislatures this is a topic that continually comes up.”

Perez also affirmed the Ports to Plains Corridor is basically a NAFTA Superhighway and needs to be developed as such.

“We need to begin by building the infrastructure in the three countries, investing in Mexico, and then we can sell the main idea that Mexicans should stay in Mexico. We just need to create an equal level for all,” Perez said.

Del Rio, Texas, Mayor Efrain Valdes told conferees he came to build relationships he hopes will last for decades to come.

“We are all North Americans,” he said. “Three countries, but we are all North Americans.”

Michael Reeves, president of Ports-to-Plains Trade Corridor Coalition, kicked off the conference with brief remarks.

Eduardo Arnal, consulate general of Mexico in Denver, later provided numerous statistics documenting the strong economic relationship between Mexico and the U.S.

“Because of NAFTA, we are partners in the fight against terror and need to help ensure each other’s safety,” Arnal said.

Arnal later discussed with WND the relationship between Mexico and the U.S. and the issue of illegal immigration.

“The best and only way to stop illegal immigration is for the United States to invest in Mexico,” he said. “A fence will not work. It’s a simple equation of supply and demand – Mexicans go to the U.S. for work because the demand for their labor and wages is there.”

Arnal said although Mexico must share responsibility for the immigration issue, it is the U.S. that really needs to step up and begin investing more in Mexico to help bring the country to a level playing field.

The Canadian perspective was delivered by Phillippe Taillon, vice consul and trade commissioner of the Canadian Consulate in Denver. Like his Mexican counterpart, Taillon presented statistics on the relationship between the three countries and told the crowd “NAFTA has been hugely profitable for all three countries.”

He also expressed an interest in continuing to integrate rail, truck and air transportation networks as Canada looks to open new markets from Asia.

Link to article here. Senator John Carona is a listed speaker for this conference on privatization. After encouraging Senator Robert Nichols to file a private toll moratorium, Carona then tried to kill the bill in his committee (privately telling a pro-toll industry magnate that the moratorium “was bad public policy”) and then later brokered a back room deal, SB 792, with pro-toll, pro-privatization Governor Rick Perry. Then in yet another flip-flop, Carona tried to act outraged that TxDOT was trying to circumvent the moratorium by attempting to continue to funnel money to private entities in his hearing August 7. So in public, it’s outrage over privatization, in private, it’s give privatization a green light. So who knows what Carona will say at this conference since they’re banning a reporter from telling the public what our elected officials are saying about the most controversial road financing scheme in Texas history.

Reporter banned from secret meeting on selling U.S. assets

‘We don’t feel WND is appropriate for a business conference’
September 19, 2007
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com

EuroMoney PLC, the UK-based company that arranges dozens of financial conferences around the world each year, has refused to allow WND staff reporter Jerome Corsi to attend next week’s “North American PPP (Public-Private Partnership) & Infrastructure Finance Conference” in New York, even though WND offered to pay the $1,999 conference fee required to attend.

“When government officials want to go behind closed doors with investment bankers and lawyers to discuss selling our public infrastructure to foreign investment leaders, investigative reporters need to be there to tell the public what is really going on,” Corsi said.

“Why is it that all these PPP and SPP (Security and Prosperity Partnership) meetings are behind closed doors,” Corsi asked, “and government officials and their supporters think that’s normal? But when investigative reporters want to attend and report on what is being said, we are the ones who get accused of being the conspiracy theorists?”

“By refusing to allow WND to attend as a paying customer,” Corsi argued, “EuroMoney is telling the American public that they intend to conduct a secret meeting designed to teach government officials how to sell out U.S. public infrastructure to foreign investment concerns.” “I’m sure we will all be told that EuroMoney seminars and PPP structures are really for our ‘security and prosperity,’ just as President Bush asserts for the SPP itself,” Corsi continued. “Evidently we are just supposed to close our eyes and trust government officials, investment bankers and international lawyers, putting aside national security concerns and other economic issues which we believe may be of concern to our readers.” According to the conference brochure, the purpose of the EuroMoney seminar is to teach state and local government officials in the U.S. how to lease a wide range of public assets to international and foreign private investment groups. “Your online news service is known for its political rather than business content,” EuroMoney’s Joanna Johnson explained yesterday to WND in an e-mail, while refusing to allow Corsi permission to attend the conference. “We don’t feel it’s appropriate for a business conference.”

In an Aug. 29 e-mail, Johnson told WND that the seminar was “only open to those who are internal to EuroMoney or those with whom we have a media partnership. In this instance I am unable to extend a press pass to your organization.”

WND then offered to pay the full registration fee.

In response, Johnson sent a second Aug. 29 e-mail asking WND for payment details and confirming that Corsi could attend, provided WND paid the full registration fee as offered.

Yesterday’s e-mail shutting the door to Corsi came after WND pressed EuroMoney to send an invoice.

“So, EuroMoney made a political decision to keep me out of their private meeting,” Corsi commented, “but WND is the one EuroMoney objects to as being too political. Seems to me like a case of guilty conscience where EuroMoney is accusing WND of a fault EuroMoney knows itself to be committing.”

Public-private partnerships, or PPPs, were authorized by Executive Order No. 12803 President George H.W. Bush signed on April 30, 1992, clearing federal barriers for cities and states to lease public works infrastructures to private investors.

Writing in WND, Corsi has repeatedly exposed the PPP structure the Texas Department of Transportation has used to allow Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte, a foreign investment consortium in Spain, to finance the Trans-Texas Corridor, retaining for Cintra resulting rights to operate and receive tolls from TTC superhighways for 50 years after completion.

Corsi first exposed the EuroMoney seminar agenda in an article published in WND on Jan. 5, discussing an earlier EuroMoney seminar on PPP financing of public infrastructure projects scheduled for Miami in March, entitled “PPP: The North American Private Partnerships Intensive Seminar.”

“This is an outrageous affront to freedom of the press,” Corsi said, “but it affirms the government officials and investment bankers who are pushing PPP structures have something to hide.”

The EuroMoney brochure for next week’s seminar in New York indicates that attendees will include officials from the state departments of transportation in Virginia, Wisconsin, Louisiana, Texas, Delaware, Colorado and Washington, D.C.

Other attendees will be investment bankers including managing directors from the Carlyle Group, Nuveen Asset Management, Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, AIG Highstar, Allstate Investments and Morgan Stanley.

The brochure names David Narefsky as the workshop leader.

Narefsky is listed as a partner in the Government Practice Group of the law firm Mayer, Brown, Row, and Maw, an international law firm that “has been counsel in the major privatizing transactions that have been completed or are now under way in the United States, including the Chicago Skyway, the Indiana Toll Road and Chicago-Midway Airport.”

The brochure further notes that Narefsky has played “a leading role in these transactions,” crediting Narefsky as being “actively involved in the drafting and analysis of PPP legislation for various state and local jurisdictions.”

In the Jan. 5 WND article, Corsi reported a spokesman for EuroMoney in the UK told WND the target office was government employees at the state and local level who want to learn the “how-to” of putting deals together such as the one by Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte to finance the Trans-Texas Corridor.

The EuroMoney seminar brochure notes a director of Cintra from Spain is scheduled to attend the conference and speak to the attendees.

Panels at the New York seminar are scheduled to discuss the Trans-Texas Corridor, taking up such topics as “Is the politics a knee-jerk or a ground swell?” “Reviewing current activity in the state legislature,” “What will the effect be on different states and the industry in general?” “Will Texas deals get through the instability?” and “What does this mean for equity partners?”

WND has reported Texas Gov. Rick Perry has vetoed a series of laws passed overwhelming by the Texas legislature with the intent of blocking TTC superhighway construction altogether, or at a minimum placing a two-year moratorium on the project.

The 300 senior decision-makers from state government, investment banking, and legal counsel that Money expects to attend the New York meeting will hear seminars instructing them how to create private finance deals on public infrastructure projects including toll roads, water treatment and waste management facilities, port infrastructure, state lotteries, airports, municipal parking, and military housing developments.

“The complex nature of politics in North America has led to challenges for financiers, investors and contractors in convincing all from local to national levels that PPP is an accountable and credible form of public finance,” the EuroMoney conference brochure notes. “Moreover, on an electoral level, those in the public sector that have pushed for such solutions have often had to fight hard to gain public acceptance. What is clear is that to push projects through, strong leadership is needed, along with effective communication and an increasingly credible history of procurement success.”

The conference chairman is scheduled to be Tom Nelthorpe, the editor of Project Finance Magazine, a EuroMoney publication promoting private investment structures in public infrastructure deals.

Link to article here.

Former Federal Reserve Chief, Alan Greenspan, indicates the Federal Reserve may shift its reserve currency to the Euro due to the decline of the dollar. As Jerry Corsi warns in his book, The Late Great USA, the Coming Merger with Mexico and Canada, that the collapse of the dollar is coming in large part due to “free trade,” which has undermined American wages and our national wealth which will subsequently open the door to the Amero. The excuse will go something like this. See, we can’t compete with the strong European Central Bank and the Euro, so we need to join with our regional North American partners, Canada and Mexico, to remain competitive in the “global market.” For a guy who criticizes Bush for abandoning smaller government, Greenspan’s rush to the Euro and centralized banking and governments is interesting if not hypocritical.

Greenspan: Euro Gains As Reserve Choice
Report: Former Fed Boss Says Euro Could Replace U.S. Dollar As Favored Reserve Currency
Monday September 17, 2007
Associated Press

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — Former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan said it is possible that the euro could replace the U.S. dollar as the reserve currency of choice.According to an advance copy of an interview to be published in Thursday’s edition of the German magazine Stern, Greenspan said that the dollar is still slightly ahead in its use as a reserve currency, but added that “it doesn’t have all that much of an advantage” anymore.

The euro has been soaring against the U.S. currency in recent weeks, hitting all-time high of $1.3927 last week as the dollar has fallen on turbulent market conditions stemming from the ongoing U.S. subprime crisis. The Fed meets this week and is expected to lower its benchmark interest rate from the current 5.25 percent.

Greenspan said that at the end of 2006, some 25 percent of all currency reserves held by central banks were held in euros, compared to 66 percent for the U.S. dollar.

In terms of being used as a payment for cross-border transactions, the euro is trailing the dollar only slightly with 39 percent to 43 percent.

Greenspan said the European Central Bank has become “a serious factor in the global economy.”

He said the increased usage of the euro as a reserve currency has led to a lowering of interest rates in the euro zone, which has “without any doubt contributed to the current economic growth.”

Link to article here. Excuse me, but no one asked the American people if we wanted to undermine our national sovereignty with NAFTA. This is no free trade agreement, it’s a treaty and didn’t receive the Constitutionally required two-thirds vote from Congress to make it legal in the first place. At least 1.2 million Americans have been put out of work due to NAFTA, and countless more who never applied for federal assistance.

And this is before putting American truckers out of business with this hoax of a Mexican trucking program being cloaked as beneficial when it’s bringing in more trucks to beat up our roads and is certain to push our air quality into non-attainment (where it’s been teetering on the edge as it is). Border patrol is already admitting waving Mexican trucks trough because of the backlog. The safety of these trucks cannot be assured.

A NAFTA tribunal is forcing the U.S. to comply with a treaty that’s unconstitutional and mandate a controversial bi-lateral trucking program against the will of Congress (that overwhelmingly voted to ban the program!). If the Editorial Board of this newspaper will give up our national sovereignty this easily, no wonder we’re under assault by globalists and terrorists! REPEAL NAFTA NOW!

Banning all Mexican trucks violates NAFTA
Editorial Board
The Herald-Zeitung
September 13, 2007

The Senate vote Tuesday night that proposes to stall the pilot program allowing Mexican trucks on American highways is Democracy at its worst.

A week ago, we encouraged restricting any Mexican trucks that don’t meet the standards required of U.S. trucks and drivers. We stand by that opinion; safety for drivers and passengers traveling on U.S. roads must be the goal of whatever laws are passed.

Whether you agree or disagree with the North American Free Trade Agreement, it has been signed and in place for a decade. Texas Sen. John Cornyn attempted to have an alternative amendment to the $106 billion transportation bill that would have put strict checks in place that could have suspended the pilot program if a Mexican truck passed outside the border zone but was not checked.

American truckers unions, including the Teamsters, have opposed allowing the Mexican trucks into the U.S. citing safety fears. However, the safety aspect is insufficient by itself to ban Mexican trucks from U.S. highways. A blanket ban is a violation of the NAFTA obligations the U.S. signed up for. The fear that Mexican truckers will take work from U.S. drivers and trucking companies is very real. If the U.S. companies are more expensive than their Mexican counterparts  just as automakers found with their production facilities in the last two decades  the unions fears could be realized.

The United States needs to stand by its transportation safety laws and its democratic and capitalist principals on this issue. Unsafe Mexican (or American) trucks should be banned from U.S. highways, but while a complete ban on Mexican trucks may have been passed by the Senates democratic vote, it ignores the principles of fair trade that America should hold dear.

Ultimately, President Bush could veto the transportation bill because of its cost. Protecting American trucking jobs is important, but the U.S. also needs to live up to its NAFTA obligation.