The Plans for Economic Integration
By Phyllis Schlafly
Monday, August 6, 2007

Canada in the summer and Mexico in the spring offer good weather for planning international policies. Nervousness about the political weather, however, is putting the third Security and Prosperity Partnership summit taking place Aug. 20-21 at a site where the uninvited can be easily excluded: the Fairmont Le Chateau Montebello resort about 50 miles outside of Quebec.

The cheering gallery for SPP is hysterically chanting that its goal is not a North American “union” modeled on the European Union – and that anyone who thinks otherwise must be peddling conspiracy fears. But SPP supporters candidly admit they want North American “integration,” which might be a distinction without a difference.

President George W. Bush started down this trail on April 22, 2001, when he signed the Declaration of Quebec City in which he made a “commitment to hemispheric integration.” After Communist Hugo Chavez took over Venezuela, “hemispheric” was quietly scaled down to the Security and Prosperity Partnership of just North America.

The lobbyists for integration are bringing heavy-artillery reinforcements to their cause: a pro-integration report written by a prestigious think tank, the Center for Strategic & International Studies. The report is now being translated into Spanish and French so it can be presented to all three governments in September.

The importance of the Center for Strategic & International Studies comes from the political influence of its trustees. They are longtime internationalists and architects of some of the worst foreign and defense policies of the past 50 years.

A 25-page advance peek at the report has been released under the caption “North American Future 2025 Project.” The core of the plan for America’s future is North American “economic integration” and “labor mobility,” key words that are repeated again and again in this report.

The threat to good U.S. jobs is obvious from the redundancy of demands to import cheap labor without limits: “international migration of labor,” “international movement not only of goods and capital, but also of people,” “mobile labor supply,” “North American labor mobility,” “flows of labor migration,” and “free flow of people across national borders.”

The report explains that “border infrastructure” means the “efficient flow of labor across North American borders” so we can “pool the human capital necessary to source a competitive North American work force.” It’s unlikely that U.S. workers want to “pool” their jobs with Mexico where the median minimum wage is $5 a day.

Slyly revealing the plan to integrate governments as well as economies, the report states: “To remain competitive in the global economy, policymakers must devise forward-looking, collaborative policies that integrate governments.” In an attack on the unique American patent system and fountainhead of U.S. innovation superiority, the report calls for “harmonizing legislation” with other countries in the area of intellectual property rights. The report also calls on us to “harmonize” regulations of all kinds by adopting “unified North American regulatory standards.”

No wonder the CSIS admits that its report was developed in “seven closed-door roundtable sessions.” Let’s call the roll of the trustees of this influential think tank: Henry Kissinger, who was the architect of the Nixon-Ford policies repudiated by Ronald Reagan; James R. Schlesinger, the secretary of defense for Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford; Zbigniew Brzezinski, the trilateralist who was President Jimmy Carter’s chief foreign policy adviser.

William Cohen, who was President Bill Clinton’s secretary of defense; Harold Brown, who was the secretary of the Air Force carrying out Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s disarmament policies in the 1960s; and Brent Scowcroft, former vice chairman of Kissinger Associates and national security adviser to President George H.W. Bush.

The frontman for this galaxy of globalists is former Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga. One more household name is former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, the man who leaked Valerie Plame’s name to the press.

Business authority Peter F. Drucker wrote in his 1993 book “Post Capitalist Society” (Collins, $16.95) that the European Union “triggered the attempt to create a North American economic community, built around the United States but integrating both Canada and Mexico into a common market.”

He gleefully added, “So far this attempt is purely economic in its goal, but it can hardly remain so in the long run. … The economic integration of the three countries into one region is proceeding so fast that it will make little difference whether the marriage is sanctified legally or not.”

Now that the game plan is laid out, we can connect the dots: the North American Free Trade Agreement; the admission of Mexican trucks onto U.S. highways; the contract to build the TransTexas Corridor and the plans to extend it into a NAFTA Superhighway; making Kansas City an international “port”; the “totalization” of illegal immigrants into the U.S. Social Security system; and the recently defeated Senate amnesty bill. That bill would have integrated 20 million illegal immigrants into the U.S. labor force, locked us (by Section 413) into the SPP, and spent massive foreign aid to “improve the standard of living in Mexico.”

Link to article here.

NAFTA Superhighway traffic tied to bridge collapse
WND uncovers federal study warning of high risk in 1998
August 5, 2007
By Jerome R. Corsi
WorldNetDaily.com

Evidence of increasing international trade truck traffic on Interstate 35 through Minnesota raises concerns that NAFTA Superhighway traffic contributed to last week’s collapse of the freeway bridge in Minneapolis.

President George W. Bush, aboard Marine One, takes an aerial survey of the Interstate 35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis, Saturday, Aug. 4, 2007

WND has unearthed a Federal Highway Administration report dating back to 1998 that warned increasing NAFTA truck traffic was expected to create a safety concern with bridges in states along the I-35 NAFTA Superhighway, including Minnesota.

The study concluded that, “The I-35 Corridor’s multimodal transportation hubs – where air, rail, river, and truck cargo converge – make I-35 ideally positioned to be a major route for what is expected to be increasing levels of international trade activity.”

The study warned that, “Over the next few decades, about 65 percent of I-35 will require major upgrades, however the entire route will have a continued need for rehabilitating pavements, resurfacing sections of the highway, and providing replacements of some bridge decks. Bridge substructures and superstructures will also need to be maintained, requiring repairs to maintain the integrity of the bridges.”
The FHWA study was conducted in conjunction with the Departments of Transportation in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa and Minnesota, and assessed I-35 from Laredo, Texas, to Duluth, Minn.A comprehensive study of freight traffic conducted by the Federal Highway Administration, or FHWA, shows conclusively a large percentage of the freight carried through Minnesota is carried by truck.FHWA data show that in 2002, a total of 280.7 million tons of freight moved through Minnesota, 86 percent of which was carried by truck.

The trend line shows dramatic increases projected, with freight traffic through Minnesota expected to double by 2035, to a total of 551.5 million tons, of which 88 percent will be carried by truck.

The bridge collapsed at rush hour, with an estimated 100-150 cars and trucks on the structure in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

Officials in Minnesota had been warned since 1990 that the bridge was “structurally deficient” and severely fatigued from the increasing volume of traffic the bridge, which spans the Mississippi River along Interstate 35, was receiving.

North America’s SuperCorridor Coalition, Inc. (NASCO), a Dallas-based trade association, also designates I-35 as a NAFTA Superhighway.

NASCO’s website states, “There are no plans to build a new NAFTA Superhighway – it exists today as I-35.”

The original 2005 NASCO website opened with a graphic map of I-35 that highlighted in yellow the continental nature of the I-35 NAFTA Superhighway, illustrating clearly the highway’s links into Mexico and Canada.

NASCO’s original map highlighted the I-35 corridor from Mexico to Canada

WND has previously reported the Minnesota Department of Transportation joined NASCO as a member in 2006, after a heavy lobbying campaign launched by NASCO executive director Tiffany Melvin.

As fully documented on the Texas Department of Transportation website, the department plans to build a new Trans-Texas Corridor parallel to Interstate 35, and NASCO has yet to repudiate these new superhighway construction plans.

The debate whether or not to build a new TTC-like NAFTA Superhighway parallel to I-35 or to repair and rebuild I-35 to accommodate NAFTA and other global trade traffic required by 2025 and beyond, including projections of international truck and train freight travel, is now being debated by the states north of I-35.

As WND has reported, Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett has repudiated his signing in 2004 of a document described as “The Declaration of North American Integration.”

Cornett told WND he was opposed to the creation of a North American Union or the extension of TTC-35 into Oklahoma, “if the whole point is to make it cheaper to transport containers from China coming through Mexican ports.”

WND has also reported Oklahoma House Speaker Lance Cargill has invited to Oklahoma Robert Poole, a prominent expert advising states to build toll roads as “public-private partnerships,” complete with financing from private investment consortia seeking long-term operating leases on the new highways once completed, according to the Trans-Texas Corridor model.

Link to story here.

Hunger pangs
By Pat Driscoll
Express-News
August 01, 2007

Saliva drips from the teeth of global investors eyeing toll roads, airports and seaports in the U.S., but more often lately they’ve had to sit, knife and fork in hands, and wait, a recent analysis says.

(William Luther/Express-News) In February, more than 650 people showed up for a hearing on proposed toll lanes along U.S. 281 in San Antonio. Almost one in 10 signed up to speak, and most were opposed to the plan.

The analysis, by Joseph A. Giannone of Reuters, describes the worldwide privatization wave:

The global volume of deals involving public and private infrastructure assets — from power utilities and seaports to airports and toll bridges — last year tripled to $150 billion from the year before.By some estimates, specialist funds have earmarked more than $75 billion for infrastructure investments, which with additional borrowing represents up to $400 billion in dry powder. Some bankers say buying power exceeds $750 billion.

To give you an idea of how much that is, Cintra of Spain and Zachry Construction Co. of San Antonio say they can build a four-lane toll road from San Antonio to Dallas for $6.8 billion, which is more than two thirds of Texas’ highway budget last year.

The Cintra-Zachry toll road is part of the Tran-Texas Corridor, Gov. Rick Perry’s idea to carve 4,000 miles of toll lanes, rail lines and utility lines through rural areas over the century. That’s been estimated at $184 billion.

But drooling investors trying to sink their funds where they can get stable, long-term returns are starving for action.

Giannone said:

All across Wall Street, firms have assembled teams and raised new specialized funds to handle the expected surge of public asset deals.Yet U.S. deal activity has come to a halt amid unexpectedly strong public resistance to parting with taxpayer-funded assets, many of which are monopolies.

Privatization plans have run afoul of legislatures … in recent months, including Indiana, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. In Texas, lawmakers declared a two-year moratorium on privatized highways.

Ah yes, Texas’ moratorium bill, also know as SB 792, the bill that’s so holey it’d be going to church regularly if it could grow legs.

Nearly every toll project in the pipeline, worth some $15 billion in all, was exempted from the moratorium bill. A notable exception to the exemption was U.S. 281 in San Antonio, which means a planned eight-mile tollway there can’t be leased over the next two years.

In June, the Texas Transportation Commission decided to move forward on another 87 toll projects worth $56 billion (list and map), but that was mainly to establish local or state dibs on ownership. Most of them are likely years away, well beyond the moratorium.

But there’s still some fear over leasing toll roads in Texas, and there’s a ripe opportunity to run afoul of the Legislature. In the oven is a sunset review of the Texas Department of Transportation, which lawmakers intend to wrap up in the 2009 session.

Will the heat get turned up?

Link to article here.

Goldman Sachs Guru Warns of War-Debt Failure
Date: Monday, July 30

Is America becoming a global credit risk? How to get back on track
By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch
Published: 07-30-07

Will Moody’s downgrade America’s debt next? Actually, that’s already happening; our credit rating is collapsing with the dollar.

Foreign banks are dumping dollar reserves, while we gorge on cheap toys and bad pet food. Actually, our biggest “terrorist” threat is internal: Distorted values are downgrading our nation’s “creditworthiness.” We’re like out-of-control kids with stolen credit cards, spending our future with no plans to repay.

Recently Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs (International), appeared before the U.S. House Budget Committee to “discuss an issue of great economic, financial and national security importance to our country — the growing dependence of the United States on foreign capital.” Currently we import $1 trillion new debt annually, with no repayment plans. That’s a historic break from over two centuries of American policy.

Hormats was in Washington with warnings from his brilliant new book, “The Price of Liberty: Paying for America’s Wars.” He traces the history of American wartime financing from the Revolution through the War of 1812, the Civil War, the two World Wars and the Cold War to the present.

Conclusion: “One central, constant theme emerges: sound national finances have proved to be indispensable to the country’s military strength” and long-term national security.

1776 to Iraq, national security demands fiscal responsibility
America’s long tradition of war financing began with Alexander Hamilton: “In January 1790, Hamilton, by then the country’s Treasury secretary, confronted the American people with a stark fact: the nation had run up a huge debt fighting the Revolutionary War. This debt, he wrote, was the ‘price of liberty,’ and the new government had to repay it.

The future creditworthiness of the United States, and ultimately the security and ability to finance future wars, would depend on how successfully and faithfully this was done.”

Hamilton’s principles have kept America’s credit strong through every war since the Revolution … until the Iraq War. Since then, “although U.S. leaders have warned that the war against terrorism could last for decades, the country lacks a multidecade financial strategy to address the challenge.”

Iraq tossed the lessons of history out the window. Hormats says that despite the oft-repeated remark that 9/11 “changed everything, in the area of fiscal policy, however, it changed nothing. The country is pursuing a pre-9/11 fiscal policy in a post-9/11 world.” That assessment comes from someone who worked inside Washington for over a decade before joining Goldman Sachs in the 1980s.

Unsustainable debt is weakening national security
America’s new faith-based guns-and-butter policy is hurting both guns and butter. The war is costing us $12 billion a month. Hormats examined the Congressional Budget Office’s projections for domestic costs: “In 2006, spending on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and interest on the federal debt amounted to just under 60% of government revenues” and “if they continue on their current path, they will account for two-thirds by 2015.”

• Social security from $550 billion to $960 billion
• Medicare from $372 billion to over $900 billion
• Medicaid from $181 billion to $390 billion

Worse yet, these commitments will continue skyrocketing in later decades. The CBO projects the federal debt rising from 40% of GDP to 100% in the next 25 years: “Continuing on this unsustainable path will gradually erode, if not suddenly damage, our economy, our standard of living, and ultimately our national security.”

Hormats warns of the risks of this gross departure from Hamilton’s principles: “Of late, the precedents and experiences of past generations have been cast aside. The 9/11 attacks were seen by many legislators as a license to spend more money on non-security programs, and Americans have not been called to make sacrifices. Tax cuts and spending increased on politically popular security-irrelevant domestic programs have been enacted as if there were no expensive defense programs to be funded.”

Turning point in Iraq, where ‘deficits don’t matter’
In my opinion, the turning point occurred in late 2002. Remember, the Afghan War was hot. America was in recession and a bear market. The surpluses of the 1990s rapidly disappeared. Corporate scandals were damaging our global standing. Washington was pushing a second round of tax cuts. And the Iraq invasion was imminent.

Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, true to Hamiltonian principles, warned the White House of a coming fiscal crisis. The vice president retorted: “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter.” (Hormats tells me Reagan never said that.) Soon after, Cheney “fired” O’Neill … and Hamilton’s principles of sound war financing were dead.

Unfortunately, Washington’s radical new faith-based financing is sabotaging national security. America’s unsustainable deficits are making us extremely vulnerable to terrorists whose goal is to “attack the United States, perhaps with chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons capable of killing enormous numbers of people and seriously disrupting the American economy,” targeting a “major port or transportation center.”

Hormats says America is now “relying on faith over experience, hoping that sustained growth will erase deficits and that the ballooning costs of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will be manageable in the coming decades without difficult reforms.”

Yet economists now estimate these entitlements can only be “reformed” by either a cut in benefits or an increase in taxes greater that 40%. In short, today’s faith-based economics is failing us.The current Treasury secretary also appears to be supporting this new approach: Henry Paulson, former Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, recently told Fortune that “this is far and away the strongest global economy I’ve seen in my business lifetime.”

Well, that sure sounds to me like yet another rejection of Hamiltonian principles in favor of the new faith-based policy, which assumes that global economies will always be strong and, therefore, foreign capital will indefinitely bankroll America’s war machine at a low cost.

The danger is, it also assumes that American taxpayers will be able to indefinitely pay the interest costs of our burgeoning foreign debt … on top of exploding unfunded domestic entitlements in Social Security and Medicare.

Time to rediscover ‘Hamilton’s gift’ of war financing
Hormats was being much too diplomatic in summing up his warning to the House Budget Committee: “If government debt continues to pile up, deficits rise to stratospheric levels and heavy dependence on foreign capital grows, borrowing the money will be very costly. If America remains on its dangerous financial course Hamilton’s gift to the nation — the blessing of sound financing — will be squandered.”

The truth is, America’s leaders have already squandered “Hamilton’s gift,” and along with it, more than two centuries of experience, replacing it with a new “faith-based” policy: “Deficits don’t matter.”

No wonder Main Street Americans have a “gut instinct” that we’re a disaster waiting to happen. Not only are we “transferring an inordinate burden to future generations,” says Hormats, Washington’s undisciplined spending and total lack of a financial repayment plan is undercutting our national security and exposing America to the worst-case scenario: Another domestic terrorist attack that would trigger a “massive disruption of our economy” and a meltdown of America’s credit rating throughout the world.

The truth is, America desperately needs a new “Hamilton” who understands that in calculating “the price of liberty,” not only do deficits matter, Americans must have a plan to repay our debts … if we want a strong credit rating that insures our national security for future generations.