Link to story here.

Left, right unite to protest Quebec summit
By Julie Smyth
National Post
Friday, August 17, 2007

OTTAWA — The far right and far left will find common ground next week as representatives from both political spectrums protest the summit between Canadian, American and Mexican leaders in Montebello, Que.

An ultra-conservative U.S. group calling itself the Coalition to Block the North American Union, made up of politicians and activists, as well as singer Pat Boone, will hold a news conference in Ottawa on Monday to oppose the two-day Security and Prosperity Partnership meeting of U.S. President George Bush, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and President Felipe Calderon of Mexico.

Members of the group also plan on going to the meeting to voice their concerns about what they deem secretive talks. They tried, unsuccessfully, to book rooms at the high-end resort hotel where the meeting is being held under intense security. They will go along in an attempt to engage anyone in discussion about their opposition to the leaders, all of whom share conservative values. The group is to the political right of Mr. Bush.

The coalition will make strange bedfellows with others protesting the summit, including the Green party and the People’s Global Action Bloc, an activist organization that rejects capitalism and all trade agreements.

Howard Phillips, chairman of the U.S. coalition, said in an interview Friday that he will not engage in any violent protests or street demonstrations but is travelling to Canada to find others interested in his cause. He is upset he will not have access to the meeting or the hotel — all protesters will be kept away from the building and grounds but the demonstrations will be videotaped and shown inside the summit meeting.

Mr. Phillips’ group is opposed to a North American union and was against the North American Free Trade Agreement. It is concerned these meetings and agreements detract from each of the country’s ability to achieve national independence and self-determination, he said yesterday. Mr. Phillips, who runs a public policy action group called Conservative Caucus and once worked for government agencies during the Nixon administration, said his other complaint is the “secrecy” of the talks.

He said protesters with opposite political views to his own share his concerns about the loss of independence for countries — and have for years — and he welcomes them all to the battle against next week’s discussions.

“We share many of the concerns that people on the liberal side have on NAFTA, WTO, etc.,” he said in a telephone interview.

In a press release to be released on Monday, he states: “Our message is, ‘President Bush, President Calderon, Prime Minister Harper, tear down the wall of silence and let the people see what you are scheming to do.’ Behind closed doors, step by step, the leaders of Mexico, Canada, and the United States are setting the stage for, first, a North American Community and, ultimately, a North American Union [NAU], in which new transnational bodies would gain authority over our economy, our judiciary, and our lawmaking institutions … Our message is similar to the one which Ronald Reagan delivered to Mikhail Gorbachev when he said, ‘Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall.’ ”

On Monday and Tuesday, the three leaders will be discussing issues around security and the economy, as well as timely matters such as the mass import of products from China following the recent toy recalls. This is an annual summit that began two years ago in Texas. The impetus was to expand NAFTA but that has become less of a focus following public opposition and protests.

Mr. Phillips’ coalition is made up of about 100 U.S. politicians and conservative public policy advocates. Tom DeWeese, president of the American Policy Center and John McManus, president of the John Birch Society, will be at the Ottawa press conference and Congressman Virgil Goode, Jr., the chief sponsor of House Concurrent Resolution 40, which opposes the North American union and “NAFTA Superhighway,” will participate through video conference.

Crooner Pat Boone, as well as U.S. Congressmen Ron Paul and Walter Jones will be issuing statements of protest.

Link to article here.

Upcoming Meeting Fuels ‘North American Union’ Fears
By Nathan Burchfiel
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
August 15, 2007

(CNSNews.com) – An upcoming meeting among President Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexican President Felipe Calderon is raising concerns on both sides of the northern border and the political aisle over sovereignty, immigration, natural resources and corporate influence over government.

The Aug. 20-21 meeting is the fourth in a series of meetings among the leaders of the three countries as part of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), a “trilateral effort to increase security and enhance prosperity … through greater cooperation and information sharing.” The first meeting took place in 2005 in Waco, Texas.

A lack of transparency and openness about what occurs at the meetings, however, has led skeptics from both sides of the political aisle to question the SPP’s goals and possible outcomes.

Many opponents in the United States raise concerns about forfeiting U.S. sovereignty to the other governments — especially Mexico — in regard to immigration and labor policies. Opponents in Canada, as well as some liberals in the U.S., worry the United States is making a power play for control of Mexican and Canadian resources.

The SPP is “quite literally about eliminating Canada’s ability to set independent regulatory standards, environmental protection, energy security, foreign, military, immigration and a frighteningly wide range of other policies,” according to the Council of Canadians, an anti-SPP group.

In a fundraising letter Monday, Council of Canadians National Chairperson Maude Barlow wrote that “the decisions that Harper, Bush and Calderon make on Aug. 20 and 21 will affect the food we eat, the air we breathe and the human rights and civil liberties we enjoy.”

“The SPP’s objectives include removing barriers and securing access to Mexican and Canadian natural resources,” Dana Gabriel, author of the blog New World Order Must Be Stopped, wrote in a column opposing the SPP. “This will lead to the further corporate takeover of our resources, with more control of our oil and gas reserves in the hands of U.S. corporations.”

Stephen Lendmen, a self-described “progressive” activist from Chicago, in July described the SPP as “a corporate coup d’etat against the sovereignty of three nations enforced by a common hard line security strategy already in play separately in each country.”

“It’s a scheme to create a borderless North American Union under U.S. control without barriers to trade and capital flows for corporate gains, mainly U.S. ones,” Lendmen wrote.

While Lendmen’s complaints center on a perceived corporate effort to gain control of resources, he also touched on the main concern for conservative opponents within the United States: the creation of a “North American Union” where each country must get approval from the other two to enact policies normally subject to individual sovereignty.

Some opponents openly refer to their concerns as a “conspiracy theory.” The Web site “Stop the NAU” states that “this ‘conspiracy’ is transpiring between top U.S., Canadian and Mexican officials, the U.S. Departments of Commerce and Homeland Security and the media who are keeping these plans out of the public spotlight.”

The group’s primary concerns involve American national sovereignty, open borders, immigration policies, the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs and increases in foreign aid to Mexico.

“It is incredible, but just three years from now … the United States may cease to exist as an independent political entity,” the Web site states. “Its laws, rules and regulations — including all freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution — will be subject to review and nullification by the North American Union’s governing body.”

Supporters of the SPP and the group itself, through the American government’s Web site about the partnership, deny that groundwork is being laid for a North American Union. But a lack of available information about what takes place at the meetings fuels those fears.

The SPP “does not change our courts or legislative processes and respects the sovereignty of the United States, Mexico and Canada,” according to spp.gov. “The SPP in no way, shape or form considers the creation of a European Union-like structure or a common currency.”

“It builds on efforts to protect our environment, improves our ability to combat infectious disease … and ensures our food supply is safe through the exchange of information and cooperation — improving the quality of life for U.S. citizens,” the Web site states. “Americans enjoy world-class living standards because we are engaged with the world.”

Robert Pastor, an American University professor who has been at the forefront of calling for the establishment of a “North American community,” said in a panel discussion Monday that the leaders of the three nations ought to be more open about what’s going on.

Criticizing the “secretive, bureaucratic implemental process,” Pastor called for a new approach to cooperation because the SPP is “clearly inadequate to the tasks that lay in front of them.” He predicted the Montebello meeting will amount to little more than a “photo opportunity.”

“What should come is a very different approach than SPP,” Pastor said during the discussion at the conservative Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. “It’s one that invites a public debate in all three countries about the future of our relationship.”

He said that if the people were really to be heard, a majority of the public would support what the SPP is trying to accomplish.

“The silent majority … is out there wanting some leadership by our president,” Pastor said, adding that “such leadership would find resonance in our country and hopefully might quell some of the loud screaming that’s going on against working with our neighbors.”

Americans need China-free food
By Phyllis Schlafly
Tuesday, August 14, 2007

The scandal of imported products from China has accelerated to a level that the public should demand “China-free” labels on anything that goes into a mouth. This includes not only food, vitamins and medicines but toothpaste and toys which, as all parents know, go into children’s mouths.

The U.S. recall of nearly 1 million toys sold by Fisher-Price, because its paint contains excessive amounts of lead, is only the latest in a string of Chinese product safety scandals. Those toys are Fisher-Price’s multimillion-dollar mistake, but the safety of food and drugs is a government responsibility; that’s why there is a U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The Chinese government’s response was, first, to deny the problem, then, to execute its top food and drug regulator. Sorry, that doesn’t assuage our anxiety.

It would take a couple of generations and many billions of dollars to bring Chinese food up to U.S. health and safety standards. Nearly half of China’s population lives without sewage treatment, and the water isn’t safe, whether from the tap or in the sea or a pond.

The Chinese food scandal first came to public attention this spring when cats and dogs in the United States died. The FDA discovered that pet food processed in the United States and Canada used wheat flour from China contaminated with melamine, a chemical used to make plastics and fertilizers that fooled testers with false high protein readings.

The FDA announced an extensive recall of 100 pet food brands, but nobody asked the question, why is the United States importing wheat products? Can America possibly be short of wheat?

The U.S. Department of Agriculture said that as many as 20 million chickens and thousands of hogs in several states may have been fed contaminated feed. In May, 900,000 tubes of toothpaste imported from China were withdrawn because tests showed that glycerine had been replaced by diethylene glycol, a chemical used in antifreeze. This poisoned toothpaste has turned up in U.S. hospitals, prisons, and juvenile detention centers.

The United States imports 80 percent of the seafood consumed by Americans, and China is the largest foreign source. The FDA says that a quarter of the shrimp coming from China contains antibiotics that are not allowed in U.S. food production and cannot be eliminated by cooking.

The FDA rejected 51 shipments of catfish, eel, shrimp, and tilapia because of contaminants such as salmonella, veterinary drugs, and a cancer-causing chemical called nitrofuran.

China raises most of its fish in water contaminated with raw sewage, and China compensates by using dangerous drugs and chemicals, many of which are banned in the United States. The Chinese try to control the spread of bacterial infections, disease and parasites by pumping the food with antibiotics and the waters with pesticides.

Chicken pens are often suspended over ponds where seafood is farmed, recycling chicken feces as fish food.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture wants to allow China to sell cooked (but not raw) chickens to the U.S. even though public health officials have warned for several years about a potential avian influenza pandemic. Doesn’t the United States have enough chickens?

China exports more than 80 percent of the world’s vitamin C, which is put in thousands of processed foods from fruit drinks to applesauce to granola, and is used as a key food preservative. There is no claim of contamination yet, but many worry about dependence on China, which has driven all U.S. competitors out of business.

Last year, China sold $675 million in pharmaceutical ingredients and products to the United States. It is estimated that 20 percent of finished generic and over-the-counter drugs, and 40 percent of the active ingredients for pills come from China or India.

The United States long ago banned lead in paint because it can cause learning disabilities, kidney failure, anemia and irreversible brain damage in children. But lead is widely used in Chinese manufacturing, and 80 percent of toys sold in the United States come from China.

Every one of the 24 kinds of toys recalled for safety reasons in the U.S. so far this year was manufactured in China. Because of lead paint, the U.S. has recalled hundreds of thousands of children’s necklaces, bracelets, earrings, charms, rings, toy drums, and 1.5 million Thomas & Friends wooden trains. Other recalled products include a ghoulish fake eyeball toy filled with kerosene, Easy-Bake Ovens that could trap children’s fingers and burn them, and 450,000 tires that lacked an essential safety feature called a gum strip to keep the belts of a tire from separating.

The FDA inspects 1 percent of our imports from China. It’s not realistic to believe that doubling or tripling the inspection rate would make any significant difference in the safety of foods or toys.

Nor would FDA on-site inspection of producers in China be practical. When FDA investigators visited China in May, they found factories closed, machinery dismantled, and records destroyed.

Link to article here.

The primary reason for the Trans Texas Corridor, or NAFTA Superhighway, is to facilitate the free flow of goods from China into the United States. Just reading the headlines of late, consumers not only need to be wary of Chinese goods, they ought to question why U.S. taxpayers (through federally backed loans) and Texans (through gas taxes) are footing the bill to import DANGEROUS and even life-threatening cheap goods into our country. Wonder why Chinese goods are so cheap? They lace them with melamine, anti-freeze, and lead paint. Their standards cannot come close to U.S. standards. It’s well past time to re-think free trade.

Recalls are just plain bad business
By Meena Thiruvengadam
Express-News Business Writer
08/15/2007

A “Made in China” label used to be the sign of a bargain.

That was before Tuesday, when Mattel recalled 9.6 million toys because of detachable magnets and lead paint. And it was before other massive recalls of toys, dog food, toothpaste, seafood and a slew of other household items tarnished the reputation of the world’s factory.

Now, a growing number of American consumers are looking at the “Made in China” mark as a sign of potential danger.

“To be honest, I’d rather not buy anything from China right now,” said Phillip Garcia, a Family Services Association employee who was outside the Target store on Jones Maltsberger Road near U.S. 281.

Garcia said he never used to pay much attention to where products were made.

More coverage KENS video: Mattel recalls more toys made in China News links • Consumer Product Safety Commission • Food and Drug Administration • National Highway Traffic Safety Administration • Health and Human Services – Import Safety • China’s Ministry of Commerce

San Antonio veterinarian Suzi Hahn also is paying more attention to the products she buys.

“Buying toothpaste at the dollar store and checking the label never would have crossed my mind,” she said outside Target. “If something’s made in China, I’ll really think about buying it now.”

Since October, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has issued 370 recalls, putting it on track to meet or beat the record 467 recalls issued in fiscal 2006. Of the recalls issued since October, 61 percent have been for products manufactured in China.

In January, more than 100,000 children’s necklaces made in China were recalled for high levels of lead. In May, Pier 1 Imports recalled 180,000 pieces of glassware made in China because of a threat of cuts. In June, Thomas & Friends wooden railroad toys made in China were pulled from store shelves because of high levels of lead.

“You’re bound to see an increase in the number of recalled Chinese products because China is such a huge and growing exporter to the U.S.,” said Patty Davis, a spokeswoman for the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

In 2006, China exported more than $287.8 billion to the United States, nearly triple the $102.3 billion it exported to the U.S. in 2001. In 2003, China beat Mexico to become the United States’ No. 1 import source.

Last year, about half of the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s recalls involved products made in China.

The commission is just one of many that tracks product recalls. It handles recalls for 15,000 consumer goods such as toasters, bicycles and jewelry.

The Food and Drug Administration handles recalls for canned goods, toothpaste, dog food and similar items. And the National Highway Safety Administration issued a recall this month of hundreds of thousands of Chinese-manufactured tires that lack a safety feature to prevent tread separation.

No agency was able to provide a comprehensive list of recalled products or a list of recalled products by country.

Of the 21 products recalled so far this month by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, 12 were manufactured in China. Six were made in the United States, one of them in San Antonio.

There’s no clear evidence that Chinese manufactured goods are more dangerous than products made elsewhere. But there is concern that China’s ability to police itself hasn’t grown with its economic prowess.

After a visit to Beijing this month, Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt released a statement mentioning “systemic problems” related to China’s ability to ensure its seafood exports are safe.

A Chinese government survey cited on the country’s Ministry of Commerce Web site also found “problem products” among exports, but overall the Chinese government insists its products are safe.

A statement from the Chinese Ministry of Commerce estimates more than 99 percent of the country’s exports are safe. Even if that statistic is accurate, it leaves room for nearly $2.9 billion worth of potentially dangerous exports to the U.S.

“When developing nations are suddenly global suppliers, often their internal processes haven’t matured as quickly as their economic opportunities,” said Nancy Childs, a professor of food marketing at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. “When you drive things to the lowest possible price in a developing economy with minimum standards, this will happen. This pursuit and priority on lowest price does have a tipping point.”

The shift toward low-cost manufacturing in China, although most visible in the past decade, began with toys in the 1970s, said Conrad Winkler, a partner with the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton.

Now, most of the world’s toys are made in Chinese factories. Winkler doesn’t expect the recent spate of recalls will divert that business.

“The economics are pretty good for low-cost manufacturing,” he said. “I don’t think there’s going to be a major shift of all these products that are manufactured in China suddenly shifting back to be manufactured in the U.S.”

Instead, Winkler expects U.S. companies to work to develop stronger relationships with their suppliers and their suppliers’ suppliers.

“I expect more scrutiny of the processes the contracted company uses,” he said.

Now, U.S. manufacturing deals in China are handled in one of two ways. In one scenario, American companies rely on long-term relationships with suppliers. In another, suppliers make “a product to a specification and it doesn’t necessarily matter how they do it,” Winkler said.

Contractors often farm out work without always telling their clients, leading to an environment in which companies can’t always be sure of the origin of their products.

Safe or not, Utah-based Food for Health International, which sells health foods and emergency supplies, is attempting to capitalize on Americans’ fears about Chinese manufactured goods.

It recently began labeling some of its health bars “China Free.”

“My preferable message would be synthetic free, but it just doesn’t resonate with people,” said Frank Davis, the company’s president. “I have no bone to pick with China. I’m just reassuring people that our product doesn’t include ingredients made in China.”

Davis isn’t pulling China-made components from other, nonfood products he sells. One of them, an emergency kit sold in Arizona Costco stores, contains Chinese-made tools, radios and pots.

“I believe you can get top-quality stuff out of China,” he said. “The problem is with contracting and subcontracting.”

Link to article here.

Connecting the dots on “availability payments”…The Legislature knew TxDOT intended to try to circumvent the private toll moratorium using this type of maneuver, and tried to head it off in HB 1892. However, the Governor’s compromise bill, SB 792, didn’t plug it up. So it shouldn’t shock legislators like Carona, who actually brokered the deal, that TxDOT will try to employ its use. They did NOTHING to stop them, they only fed the beast by failing to override the Governor’s veto of HB 1892.

My guess is TxDOT is going to try and pay Cintra for Hwy 121 using availability payments in Carona/Shapiro’s backyard. Cintra was granted the rights to the 121 toll road using a CDA and then due to a massive political backlash, it was yanked from Cintra and given to the public North Texas Toll Authority (NTTA). Wham, Cintra was out billions and Rick Perry and Ric Williamson had egg all over their faces. Guess Carona thought he could make a deal with the devil and not get burned. Now he’s beginning to learn what it feels like to be a Texas taxpayer who was betrayed by the Governor and the Legislature not once but multiple times with HB 3588, HB 2702, SB 792 and many other toll road bills over their LOUD objections.

This attempt to invoke availability payments explains why Alamo Regional Mobility Authority Executive Director Terry Brechtel told the San Antonio MPO that a “private partner” may still be used on area toll projects in spite of the two year private toll (CDA) moratorium. TxDOT’s willingness to flout the will of the Legislature has infected the RMA & Ms. Brechtel who told Rep. David Leibowitz to his face she intended to flout the intent of the law, too.

Transportation panel finds another way to skin toll cat
‘Availability payments’ are TxDOT’s newest idea for bringing the private sector into the toll road game.
By Ben Wear
Austin American Statesman
August 13, 2007

The folks at the Texas Department of Transportation, and their friends in the Worldwide Tolloplex, are nothing if not resourceful.

Witness their newest invention for slow dancing with the private sector on toll roads: availability payments.

Haven’t heard of this creature? Consider yourself in good company with about 99.999 percent of all Texans. But the Texas Transportation Commission has been talking about using them for a couple of months, at least publicly, which coincides with the interval since the Legislature passed a bill restricting private toll roads and then went home for awhile.

Availability payments — you gotta love the perfect bureaucratic inscrutability of that name — are an attempt to split the difference between government-run tollways and the privately financed and operated toll roads that had the public and Legislature steamed up earlier this year. In theory, it would be a best-of-both-worlds thing, tapping the private investment sector’s purportedly bounteous piggy bank while leaving full ownership and operation of tollways in public hands.

In theory, this would stand in contrast to concessions. With those, a private entity (like Cintra-Zachry, which is building the next 40 miles of the Texas 130 tollway) gets a long-term lease from the government to finance, build and operate a tollway, including the right to set the tolls (within contractual limitations). Concessions can be accompanied by upfront payments to the government, money that can be used for other transportation projects.

The Legislature said it didn’t like concessions and put a two-year moratorium on them, although the promise of those upfront payments and quickly getting critically needed roads built moved lawmakers to allow about a dozen exceptions across the state.

How would availability payments work? The private entity (probably some sort of consortium) would use its own money to design, build and maybe even maintain the road. In return, its contract with the state or a local toll authority might guarantee minimum and maximum payments.

The size of those periodic payments would be based on how well the toll road performs, fluctuating based on the money “available.” Thus, the name.

There could, of course, be endless variations on this theme, limited only by the seemingly limitless capacity of financial experts to structure deals. The private entity, for instance, could instead get a percentage of toll revenue, Transportation Commission Chairman Ric Williamson said last week. But that starts to look uncomfortably similar to a concession, and one imagines that a percentage partner would want some contractual say in toll rates.

Williamson said an availability payment scenario could even include the beloved upfront payments.

This might be relevant in Central Texas. The Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization board in October probably will vote on a second wave of tollways for the Austin area, and the five-road plan is said to be at least a half-billion dollars short of state and local tax money. Availability payments, and tolls to generate the money for them, could fill in that hole. Or the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority, which probably will operate the roads, could go the traditional route and just borrow money on the bond market.

Availability payments, some argue, offer a lower financing cost. One would hope the mobility authority would do whatever it takes to make a gimlet-eyed comparison of the two approaches.

Given the raw feelings generated by the Perry administration’s tollway and concession push, legislators are wary of this new animal. They fear that availability payments might just be concessions with rouge and lipstick.

“On first blush, it appears this is an attempt to get around what the Legislature did in Senate Bill 792,” state Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, chairman of the Senate Transportation and Homeland Security, said last week.

Williamson would say this is an attempt to pay for needed highways, after lawmakers diverted more road money to other stuff and failed to raise the gas tax.

Carona opposes those diversions and supports raising the gas tax. But until the Legislature actually agrees with Carona and addresses the problem, it’s hard to blame Williamson too much for using what’s, eh, available.

Link to article here. Considering all the people bringing us the NAFTA Superhighway (the Alamo Regional Mobility Authority Chair even called it such) are the ones denying its existence, let’s remind ourselves of a few more facts before digging into this lengthy treatise…19 state legislatures have now passed resolutions against the NAFTA Superhighways and the U.S. House of Representatives just OVERWHELMINGLY passed an amendment de-funding the highway that’s purported NOT to exist. I think it’s safe to say we’re past conspiracy theories. This is being done in the wide open…the first leg is under construction and it’s currently called Hwy 130.

The NAFTA Superhighway

by CHRISTOPHER HAYES

[from the August 27, 2007 issue of the Nation Magazine]

When completed, the highway will run from Mexico City to Toronto, slicing through the heartland like a dagger sunk into a heifer at the loins and pulled clean to the throat. It will be four football fields wide, an expansive gully of concrete, noise and exhaust, swelled with cars, trucks, trains and pipelines carrying water, wires and God knows what else. Through towns large and small it will run, plowing under family farms, subdevelopments, acres of wilderness. Equipped with high-tech electronic customs monitors, freight from China, offloaded into nonunionized Mexican ports, will travel north, crossing the border with nary a speed bump, bound for Kansas City, where the cheap goods manufactured in booming Far East factories will embark on the final leg of their journey into the nation’s Wal-Marts.

And this NAFTA Superhighway, as it is called, is just the beginning, the first stage of a long, silent coup aimed at supplanting the sovereign United States with a multinational North American Union.

Even as this plot unfolds in slow motion, the mainstream media are silent; politicians are in denial. Yet word is getting out. Like samizdat, info about the highway has circulated in niche media platforms old and new, on right-wing websites like WorldNetDaily, in the pages of low-circulation magazines like the John Birch Society’s The New American and increasingly on the letters to the editor page of local newspapers.

“Construction of the NAFTA highway from Laredo, Texas to Canada is now underway,” read a letter in the February 13 San Gabriel Valley Tribune. “Spain will own most of the toll roads that connect to the superhighway. Mexico will own and operate the Kansas City Smart Port. And NAFTA tribunal, not the U.S. Supreme Court, will have the final word in trade disputes. Will the last person please take down the flag?” There are many more where that came from. “The superhighway has the potential to cripple the West Coast economy, as well as posing an enormous security breach at our border,” read a letter from the January 7 San Francisco Chronicle. “So far, there has been no public participation or debate on this important issue. Public participation and debate must begin now.”

In some senses it has. Prompted by angry phone calls and e-mail from their constituents, local legislators are beginning to take action. In February the Montana state legislature voted 95 to 5 for a resolution opposing “the North American Free Trade Agreement Superhighway System” as well as “any effort to implement a trinational political, government entity among the United States, Canada, and Mexico.” Similar resolutions have been introduced in eighteen other states as well as the House of Representatives, where H. Con Res. 40 has attracted, as of this writing, twenty-seven co-sponsors. Republican presidential candidates in Iowa and New Hampshire now routinely face hostile questions about the highway at candidate forums. Citing a spokesperson for the Romney campaign, the Concord Monitor reports that “the road comes up at town meetings second only to immigration policy.”

Grassroots movement exposes elite conspiracy and forces politicians to respond: It would be a heartening story but for one small detail.

There’s no such thing as a proposed NAFTA Superhighway.

Though opposition to the nonexistent highway is the cause célèbre of many a paranoiac, the myth upon which it rests was not fabricated out of whole cloth. Rather, it has been sewn together from scraps of fact.

Take, for instance, North America’s SuperCorridor Organization (NASCO), a trinational coalition of businesses and state and local transportation agencies that, in its own words, focuses “on maximizing the efficiency of our existing transportation infrastructure to support international trade.” Headquartered in borrowed office space in a Dallas law firm, the organization, which has a full-time staff of three, advocates for increased public expenditure along the main north-south Interstate routes, including new high-tech freight-tracking technology and expedited border crossings. It has had some success, landing federal money to pilot cargo management technologies and winning praise from the Bush Administration. Speaking at a NASCO conference in Texas in 2004, then-Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta congratulated the organization for its efforts. “The people in this room have vision,” Mineta said. “Thinking ahead, thinking long term, you began to make aggressive plans to develop…this vital artery in our national transportation system through which so much of the NAFTA traffic flows. It flows across our nation’s busiest southern border crossing in Laredo; over North America’s busiest commercial crossing, the Ambassador Bridge in Detroit; and through Duluth and Pembina, North Dakota, and all the places in between.”

A few years ago NASCO put on its home page a map of the United States that more or less traced the flow that Mineta describes: Drawn in bright blue, the trade route begins in Monterrey, Mexico, runs up I-35 and branches out after Kansas City, along I-29 toward Winnipeg and I-94 toward Detroit and Toronto. The colorful, cartoonlike image seemed to show right out in the open just where NASCO and its confederates planned to build the NAFTA Superhighway. It began zipping around the Internet.

The organization soon found itself besieged with angry phone calls and letters. “I think the rumor going around was that this map was a blueprint and it was drawn to scale,” says NASCO executive director Tiffany Melvin. (Given the size of the route markings, that would have heralded highways fifty miles wide.) Ever since the map went live, NASCO has spent a considerable amount of time attempting to refute charges like those made by right-wing nationalist Jerome Corsi, whose recent book The Late Great USA devotes several pages to excoriating NASCO for being part of the vanguard of the highway and the coming North American Union. Until recently, NASCO’s website contained the following FAQs:

Is NASCO a part of a secret conspiracy?

Absolutely not… We welcome the opportunity to share information about our organization….

Will the NAFTA Superhighway be four football fields wide?

There is no new, proposed NAFTA Superhighway….

Is the map on the website an approved plan for the proposed NAFTA Superhighway?

There is no proposed NAFTA Superhighway…. The map is not a plan or blueprint of any kind…. They are EXISTING highways.

The Trans Texas Corridor is the first section of the proposed, new NAFTA Superhighway….

There is no proposed, new NAFTA Superhighway.

But NASCO is just one part of what Corsi and his ilk view as a grand conspiracy. There’s also a federal initiative called the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), which they portray as a Trojan horse packed with globalists scheming to form a European Union-style governing body to manage the entire continent. The reactions of those in SPP to this characterization seem to range from bemusement to alarm. “There is no NAFTA Superhighway,” Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Market Access and Compliance David Bohigian told me emphatically over the phone. Initiated in 2005, the SPP is a relatively mundane formal bureaucratic dialogue, he says. Working groups, staffed by midlevel officials from all three countries, figure out how to better synchronize customs enforcement, security protocols and regulatory frameworks among the countries. “Simple stuff like, for instance, in the US we sell baby food in several different sizes; in Canada, it’s just two different sizes.”

Another star in the constellation of North American Union conspiracies is the Mexican deep-water port of Lázaro Cárdenas. Located on the Pacific coast of the state of Michoacan, the port is undergoing a bonanza of investment and upgrades. According to a 2005 article in Latin Trade, the port is adding a terminal that could provide enough capacity to process nearly all of the cargo that comes into Mexico, making it “the logical trade route connecting the United States and Asia,” in the words of the Mexican officials overseeing its overhaul. Since it’s the only Mexican port deep enough to handle Super Panamax container ships from China–the most efficient means of shipping products across the Pacific–it’s an attractive alternative to the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, which are unionized and increasingly congested. (More than 80 percent of Asian imports come in through these two ports.)

Of course, if cargo switches from Los Angeles to Lázaro Cárdenas, more and more manufactured goods will have to travel through Mexico to reach their US destination, and there will be a significant uptick in the northbound overland traffic. The Kansas City Southern Railroad company is already betting on that eventuality, spending millions of dollars to purchase the rail routes that run from the port up to Kansas City. At the same time, a business improvement group called Kansas City SmartPort, whose members include the local chamber of commerce, is pushing for Kansas City, which is already a transportation hub, to transform itself fully into a “smart port,” a kind of intermodal transportation and cargo center. The group recently advocated a pilot program that would place a Mexican customs official in Kansas City to inspect Mexico-bound freight, relieving bottlenecks at the border. The notion of a Mexican customs official on American soil fired the imaginations of those already disposed to see a North American Union on the horizon, and SmartPort staff have been fending off angry inquiries ever since.

In his essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” Richard Hofstadter famously sketched the contours of the American tradition of folk conspiracy–a tradition that has, at different times, seen its enemy in Masons, Jesuits, immigrants, Jews and Eastern bankers. There’s certainly a strong continuity between that tradition and the populist/nationalist ire that drives the NAFTA highway myth. Hofstadter’s original essay was motivated in part by the activities of the John Birch Society, which today is one of the leading purveyors of the highway myth.

But there’s something more. The myth of the NAFTA Superhighway persists and grows because it taps into deeply felt anxieties about the dizzying dislocations of twenty-first-century global capitalism: a nativist suspicion of Mexico’s designs on US sovereignty, a longing for national identity, the fear of terrorism and porous borders, a growing distrust of the privatizing agenda of a government happy to sell off the people’s assets to the highest bidder and a contempt for the postnational agenda of Davos-style neoliberalism. Indeed, the image of the highway, with its Chinese goods whizzing across the border borne by Mexican truckers on a privatized, foreign-operated road, is almost mundane in its plausibility. If there was a NAFTA highway, you could bet that Tom Friedman would be for it–what could be more flattening than miles of concrete paved across the continent?–and Lou Dobbs would be zealously opposed. In fact, Dobbs has devoted a segment of his show to the highway, its nonexistence notwithstanding. “These three countries moving ahead their governments without authorization from the American people, without Congressional approval,” he said. “This is as straightforward an attack on national sovereignty as there could be outside of war.”

Though the story of the highway has been seeded and watered in the fertile soil of the nationalist right wing–promoted by Birchers and Corsi, co-author of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth’s book about John Kerry–it also stretches across ideological and partisan lines. Like immigration and the Dubai ports deal, it divides the Republican coalition against itself, pitting the capitalists against the nationalists. And more than a few on the center-left have voiced criticisms as well: Teamsters president James Hoffa wrote in a column last year that “Bush is quietly moving forward with plans…for what’s known as a NAFTA superhighway–a combination of existing and new roads that would create a north-south corridor from Mexico to Canada…. It would allow global conglomerates to capitalize by exploiting cheap labor and nonexistent work rules and avoiding potential security enhancements at U.S. ports.” Democratic Congresswoman Nancy Boyda, from eastern Kansas, invoked its specter early and often in her improbably successful 2006 campaign against Republican incumbent Jim Ryun. A campaign circular inserted in local newspapers warned that “if built, this ‘Super Corridor’ would be a quarter-mile wide and longer than the Great Wall of China.” Boyda told me that her attacks on the highway “hit a real nerve because enough people had the same concerns.”

What might at first have been a niche obsession has bled, slowly but surely, toward the mainstream. “The biggest problem of these conspiracy theorists,” says Robert Pastor, a professor of international relations at American University and a leading proponent of increased North American integration, “is that they are having an effect on the entire debate.”

Add up all the above ingredients–NASCO, SPP, Lázaro Cárdenas, the Kansas City SmartPort, the planned pilot program allowing Mexican truckers to drive on US roads–and you still don’t have a superhighway four football fields wide connecting the entire continent. Which is why understanding the persistence of the NAFTA highway legend requires spending some time in Texas, where Governor Rick Perry and his longtime consigliere, Texas Department of Transportation commissioner Ric Williamson, are proposing the $185 billion Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC), 4,000 miles of highway, rail and freight corridors, the first of which would run up from the border through the heavily populated eastern part of the state. Plans for the TTC call for it to be up to four football fields wide at points, paving over as much as half a million acres of Texas countryside. The first section will be built and operated by a foreign enterprise, and when completed it would likely be the largest privatized toll road in the country.

And unlike the NAFTA highway, the Trans-Texas Corridor is very, very real.

In 2003, amid a dramatic drawn-out battle over a legally questionable GOP redistricting plan, the Texas state legislature passed House Bill 3588. At 311 pages, it’s unlikely that many of those who voted for the bill had actually read it (and many have come to regret their vote), but it received not a single opposing vote. The bill granted the Texas Transportation Commission wide latitude to pursue a long-term plan to build a series of corridors throughout the state that would carry passenger and commercial traffic and contain extra right-of-way for rail, pipelines and electric wires.

What first triggered opposition was that under the plan, the new TTC roads would have tolls, something relatively novel in Texas. The state’s Department of Transportation–known as TxDot–pointed out that the state’s gasoline tax, which pays for road construction and maintenance, hadn’t been raised since 1991, while population and commercial traffic were growing at a dizzying pace. Tolls, the governor and his allies argued, were the only solution. (Many TTC opponents propose raising the gasoline tax and indexing it to inflation.)

But opposition quickly spread, from those in metro areas concerned about the cost of their daily commute to ranchers angry that their land might fall under the TTC hatchet. According to Chris Steinbach, chief of staff for rural Brenham’s Republican State Representative Lois Kolkhorst, when people in the district heard about the plan they responded by asking, “‘Why would you want to do that?’ It was a real front porch, rocking chair kind of question.”

Meanwhile David and Linda Stall, a Republican couple from Fayetteville, Texas, began actively organizing opposition to the proposal. As early as 2004, they started bringing friends out to local TxDot hearings and launched the website Corridor Watch. By the time the 2006 gubernatorial election rolled around, a wild four-way race with incumbent Rick Perry pitted against three challengers, the TTC had become one of the most controversial issues of the campaign. Perry was re-elected with 39 percent of the vote, but with all three of his opponents campaigning passionately against the TTC, it was hardly a popular endorsement of the plan.

What was once scattered resistance is now a full-fledged rebellion. The Stalls have pushed through a plank in the state’s GOP platform opposing the corridor, which means the governor is now at odds with the official position of his own party. In March thousands of Texans from across the state attended an anti-TTC rally on the Capitol steps, and liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans came together to co-sponsor a moratorium on the plan. It passed the House and Senate, only to be vetoed by Governor Perry. (A considerably weaker version was ultimately signed into law.)

Perry’s continued support of the TTC in the face of mounting opposition is more than just a political liability; it’s begun to resemble Bush’s Iraq policy in its obstinate indifference to public opinion. This, along with the fact that the federal government sent a letter to the state warning it not to pass a moratorium on the project, has fueled conspiracy speculations about what the real goal of the TTC is. Kelly Taylor, a John Birch Society member and Austin-based freelance contributor to its magazine, has been working hard to connect the dots between the TTC and the NAFTA Superhighway. “It first surfaced because it was a local toll issue,” she told me over coffee. “That, in and of itself, was alarming enough–all the corrupt politics that happened to make it come about. Then we thought, Wait a minute, something’s not right here, this is bigger than just a local toll issue.”

Taylor may represent a certain fringe of the anti-TTC efforts (her name prompted some eye-rolling among other activists), but there’s a whole lot of cross-pollination between local concerns about the TTC and the growing North American Union mythology. When I asked David McQuade Leibowitz, a Democratic State Representative from San Antonio, why the governor was so determined to build the TTC, he put his boots up on his desk, leaned back in his chair and said, “I think Texas is the first link in the highway to run from South America to Canada. One nation under God. We see bits and pieces of it. We don’t see it all. It makes us cringe and sick to our stomachs.”

Texas Transportation commissioner Ric Williamson is one of those Texas personalities who seem almost self-consciously to will themselves toward caricature. One Democratic staffer in the Capitol casually referred to him as Darth Vader; Texas Monthly recently called him “the most hated person in Texas.” Owner of a natural gas production company before becoming a state legislator in 1985, he has lately been reincarnated as a transit policy wonk, a role he plays as a cross between mid-twentieth-century road builder Robert Moses and J.R. Ewing from Dallas: the planner as good old boy. He does not suffer from a lack of confidence. “We’re the greatest state agency you’ll ever interview,” he told me at one point. With his good friend Governor Perry hemorrhaging political capital, it’s fallen to Williamson to advocate for the corridor and draw fire from its opponents.

At first the press contact for TxDot told me Williamson wouldn’t be available, but after I informed her I’d lined up dozens of interviews with TTC opponents, she called me back a week before my trip to Texas for this article to set up an interview. When I was ushered into Williamson’s office, he was in the midst of a discussion with one of the four staffers who flanked him. At my appearance in the doorway, he made no move to acknowledge my presence other than slightly pulling out the chair next to him, where, apparently, I was to sit.

Williamson’s case is straightforward: The state needs a whole lot of new roads it can’t pay for. The sheer population growth in Texas, particularly in the urbanized area in the eastern part of the state that contains San Antonio, Dallas, Houston and Austin, combined with the projected increase in commercial traffic, has precipitated what Williamson says is an impending crisis. The TTC would provide the necessary increase in capacity at the low, low price the state can afford. “Our view is, you can run from the corridor if you want to,” he told me, smiling, “but that’s eventually what we’ll build. Because that’s where the fricking people live!” At that he shot up to walk over to a map of the state hanging on one wall, patting my shoulder with paternal authority as he passed. “It’s so logical to me it drives me nuts.”

He’s right about the challenges the state faces, but it’s a long jump from the diagnosis to the cure. Opponents of the plan point out that, as conceived, the corridor will run parallel to the existing Interstate, possibly far from the same cities where it’s supposed to relieve congestion. (TxDot says state law will require the roads to connect to Interstates, which connect to cities.) On top of that, the current plan employs a novel privatized financing mechanism that has many crying foul.

Under a comprehensive development agreement (CDA) signed in March 2005, the Spanish concern Cintra (in partnership with Texas-based Zachry Corp.) will pay the state for the right to develop the roads along the corridor, where it will be able to collect tolls and establish facilities within the right-of-way for fifty years. This kind of road-building deal is commonplace in other parts of the world, often in places where government lacks the ready capital necessary to develop large infrastructure projects. It’s called a BOT, for build, operate, transfer. Until recently it was unheard of in the United States.

The arrangement has been heavily criticized for a number of reasons. The CDA includes a noncompete clause that could conceivably prevent the state from building necessary roads in the future because they would “compete” with a stretch of the privatized TTC. It’s also expensive. A recent state auditor’s report estimated the cost for just the first section of the corridor at $105 billion. TxDot portrays the deal as a clever way of getting the private sector to pay for public roads, but eventually the total cost of the project, plus a layer of profit for Cintra-Zachry, will be coming out of the pockets of Texas drivers. Finally, the timeline for development of the project, which will be constructed piecemeal, is based on which sections of the corridor Cintra has identified as “self-performing,” according to Williamson–in other words, those sections that contain a high enough volume of toll-paying passengers that they will turn a profit.

Williamson argues that the state simply has no choice. Or, as he put it to one reporter, “If you aggressively invite the private sector to be your partner, you can’t tell them where to build the road.” But this seems, to put it mildly, pretty ass-backward. The point of transportation planning is to provide the infrastructure for people to move efficiently, safely and quickly from point A to point B, not to maximize the profits of some conglomerate that managed to win a state contract. You wouldn’t want to place, say, fire stations across a city using the same logic that guides the placement of Starbucks. But that’s more or less the way the TTC is unfolding.

“I always think of the corridor as a payday loan,” said Kolkhorst’s chief of staff Chris Steinbach. “You’re going to get a little money up front, but you’re losing the long-term gain you’re charged by the people to oversee.” As he said this I noticed his computer’s screensaver, which featured an image of the Texas Capitol dome with a bright red banner Photoshopped in that read Everything Must Go!

In my conversations with people in Texas, it seemed that the privatized nature of the road was what got folks the angriest. Bad enough that drivers would face tolls, that ranchers would have their land cut out from under them, but all for the financial gain of a foreign company? “If you liked the Dubai ports deal, you’ll love my TTC land grab,” taunts an animated Rick Perry on one anti-TTC website. The cartoon goes on to portray Cintra as conquistadors clad in armor riding in to steal Texans’ treasure.

“What really drives this is economic,” activist Terri Hall told me. “It’s about the money. We’re talking about obscene levels of profit, someone literally being like the robber barons of old. And this is one thing that government actually does well, build and maintain roads.”

Hall is an unlikely defender of the public sphere. A conservative Republican and an evangelical Christian who home-schools her six children, she first got interested in road policy when TxDot announced plans to toll the road near her house, which runs into San Antonio. Outraged, she brought it up with her local State Rep, and when that didn’t work, she began organizing. She founded the San Antonio Toll Party (like the Boston Tea Party, she notes) by pamphleting at intersections and calling friends. “It’s really like the old days, during the American Revolution…just fellow citizens trying together to effect change.”

Hall soon became part of the broader anti-TTC effort, and though she originally thought she was just fighting a corrupt local government, she’s come to view her battle in a much broader context. “There are big-time control issues,” she said. “Someone is really jockeying around to control some things here in America. It explains the open borders, it explains our immigration issues, it explains our free-trade issues, what it’s doing to the middle class.

“It really all started with NAFTA,” she continued. “There’ve been people like Robert Pastor and the Council on Foreign Relations. All these secretive groups.” She laughed nervously and apologetically. “It sounds like a conspiracy. But I do know there are people who have tried for a long time to go to this global governance. They see there’s a way to make it all happen by going to the heads of state and doing it in a secretive way so they can do it without a nasty little thing called accountability. So they won’t have to listen to what We the People want.”

Hall had arranged to meet me in the San Antonio exurbs, in a home design center that doubled as a cafe. Outside, a thunderstorm lashed the windows with rain. As she spoke, her newborn son propped next to her swaddled and napping, it occurred to me that she was living the twenty-first-century version of the American dream. She and her husband had moved to Texas from California in pursuit of cheap housing, open space and a place to raise their family. Their web-design business was successful; their children healthy. Why, I found myself thinking, was she so upset about a road?

Ric Williamson must often ask himself the same thing. Just as the White House was blindsided by the opposition to the Dubai ports deal, just as NASCO was shocked to find that a simple schematic map attracted angry phone calls, just as the Commerce Department was shocked to find a simple bureaucratic dialogue the subject of outrage, so too have Perry and Williamson seemed ambushed by the zealous opposition of people like Hall.

But what people like Williamson don’t seem to understand is how disempowered people feel in the face of a neoliberal order whose direction they cannot influence. For corporatists within both parties (Williamson, it should be noted, was a Democrat while in the Statehouse), selling port security or road concessions to a multinational is inevitable, logical, obvious. To thousands of average citizens in Texas and elsewhere, it’s madness or, worse, treason. Both the actual TTC and the mythical NAFTA Superhighway represent a certain kind of future for America, one in which the crony capitalism of oil-rich Texas expands to fill every last crevice of the public sector’s role, eclipsing the relevance of the national government as both the provider of public goods and the unified embodiment of a sovereign people.

For Williamson, this is progress; for Hall, it’s an outrage and a tragedy. “We have so little control over our own government,” she told me, the alienation audible in her voice, thunder punishing the air outside. “We are really the last beacon of freedom in the world–the land of the free and home of the brave–and we’re letting it slip away from under our noses.”

Link to article here. Considering the Trans Texas Corridor has also been called the NAFTA Superhighway and its purpose is to serve as a trade corridor that takes jobs away from American workers at our ports and gives them to Mexico, this discussion about scrapping NAFTA and re-thinking so called “free trade” is important. Republican candidates are now being hounded about this issue as well. Read about it here.

Democratic Candidates Make Their Pitch to Union Workers
By Matt Purple
CNSNews.com Correspondent
August 09, 2007

(CNSNews.com) – Following the Democrats’ latest pitch to organized labor — a Tuesday-night debate in Chicago sponsored by the AFL-CIO — Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean reaffirmed his party’s commitment “to stand with America’s hard-working families.”

“From expanding health care coverage, to protecting the right of America’s workers to organize and be a part of a union, to ensuring that workers have a secure retirement, to strengthening our economy and creating jobs at home, Democrats understand the challenges facing workers in our country,” Dean said in a statement.

Dean ticked off what he views as the recent accomplishments of congressional Democrats: a minimum-wage hike, college affordability, and expanded health care for children.

But more needs to be done, he said – and that includes passing the Employee Free Choice Act, “to make sure that the right of workers to organize and start unions without fear of harassment or intimidation is protected. A Democratic president will continue this fight so that everyone can achieve the American Dream,” Dean said.

On its Web site, the AFL-CIO said the winner of the Democratic debate was “working families.” (The union has not endorsed a presidential candidate.)

And clearly, the candidates’ responses were intended to impress the debate’s hardhat audience.

During the debate – broadcast on MSNBC — the Democrats advocated universal health care and pension reform; recommended either reforming or scrapping the North American Free Trade Agreement; and denounced the political influence of lobbyists and corporations.

In particular, the candidates attempted to use the recent bridge collapse in Minneapolis as a springboard to discuss America’s transportation networks.

“We have to make investments in infrastructure,” Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) said. “This will create jobs” and “it’s also part of homeland security.”

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said the nation must readjust its spending priorities. This includes defunding and halting the war in Iraq, he said.

“That also will allow us to free up the kind of resources that will make us safer here at home because we’ll be able to invest in port security, chemical plant security, all the critical issues,” he said.

The Democrats also denounced corporations and Washington insiders as exploiters of workers and the lower class.

“We need to give the power in America back to you, back to the working men and women all across this country,” said Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.).

The candidates tried to gain traction on trade by denouncing trade agreements such as NAFTA and CAFTA, which are unpopular with American unions.

“I believe in smart trade,” said Clinton. “I’ve said that for years.” She advocates “pro-American trade,” which she defined as “trade that has labor and environmental standards.”

Clinton called for the creation of a special trade prosecutor and emphasized that she voted against CAFTA.

All the candidates advocated reforming and reexamining NAFTA, with the exception of Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) who wants to scrap the treaty. Kucinich also insisted that the United States pull out of the World Trade Organization.

The debate also produced an argument among some of the candidates over which one of them had walked the most picket lines.

Declining union influence

Before the MSNBC broadcast the Democrats’ debate, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney gave a brief speech, praising the candidates for their hard work on behalf of American labor. He said his union is mounting the “biggest election effort ever.”

“You can think of this AFL-CIO forum as one giant job interview, with workers doing the interviewing,” Sweeney said. “It’s workers who make our country great and it’s workers who will make a difference in 2008.”

But as U.S. industry evolves, the influence and relevance of unions may be simultaneously declining.

According to the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, 12 percent of the national workforce belonged to labor unions in 2006, down from 12.9 percent in 2004. That number is down from the 35 percent of workers who were union members in the 1950s.

Union issues have gained little traction in recent years. International trade agreements such as NAFTA and CAFTA have been passed by both Republican and Democrat administrations, and union-supported initiatives, including a recent bill making it easier for workers to organize, have gone nowhere.

Additionally, labor unions’ support for oil drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) has yielded little result, mainly due to Democrats who denounced the initiative on environmental grounds. ANWR was not mentioned in Tuesday’s debate.

Regardless of their influence, unions such as the AFL-CIO have deep pockets. Unions spent $66 million on the 2006 midterm elections, most of it going to liberal Democratic candidates.