Link to Drudge Report here.

You can always count on Pat Buchanan to speak his mind and to jump headlong into the waters of controversy. Apparently, his new book delivers just that. Here’s what jumped out at me in the article:

The Republican Party, a wholly owned subsidiary of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, is in the grip of a cult called “Economism.” It is all about money now. The GOP worships at the “Church of GDP”

Link to article here.

Trans-Texas Corridor has no hope as long as secrecy reigns
By Jaime Castillo
San Antonio Express-News
08/20/2006

It has gotten to the point where you don’t know whether to pity Gov. Rick Perry and the toll road zealots in this state or arm some of their equally scary foes with pitchforks and torches to storm the governor’s mansion.

And I say that as someone who is willing to give Perry and company the benefit of the doubt and agree that new funding mechanisms like tollways should be part of the state’s solution to future highway needs.

But the way state transportation officials are approaching the Trans-Texas Corridor, a 50-year plan to produce a statewide network of toll roads and rail and utility lines, invites only two explanations:

Either they aren’t smart enough to pass the TAKS, the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, we give schoolchildren every year, or they’re arrogant beyond belief.

I don’t think it’s the former. Perry hasn’t gotten this far by being all hair and no cattle, and the group awarded the first phase of the huge highway contract, Cintra-Zachry, is a marriage of two highly successful and profitable companies.

So, I’m going to buy a vowel and go with the “A” word.

And it goes beyond the usual gripes about the $7 billion superhighway, which include gobbling up vast amounts of private land and turning over the infrastructure to be run by private interests.

The biggest problem the public should have with this deal is the secrecy in which it has been put together.

Cintra, a Spain-based company, and its minority partner, Zachry Construction Corp. of San Antonio, are fighting tooth and nail in court to keep the financial aspects of the arrangement out of the public eye.

And it’s a posture Cintra continued last week when the Dallas Morning News reported that Perry’s former liaison to the Legislature, Dan Shelley, had gone back to work for the highway builder, this time as a lobbyist.

Two years ago, it came to light that Shelley had worked as a consultant for the company prior to being hired by the governor’s office. State officials deny the arrangement had anything to do with Cintra being awarded the corridor contract a few months later.

So what is Shelley’s or Cintra’s response to the latest news unearthed by the Dallas Morning News?

Silence. In the newspaper’s words, “A call to Mr. Shelley seeking comment was returned by an Austin spokeswoman for Madrid-based Cintra, who said that Mr. Shelley’s contract with the company prohibits him from discussing his work with reporters.”

Despite this arrogance, Perry and state highway officials push ahead with the belief that tolls and private involvement in public roads are merely a dose of bad-tasting medicine that will relieve the symptoms of future traffic congestion.

With some justification, Perry has even invited his opponents in November’s crowded gubernatorial race to come up with an alternative or be quiet.

“If someone has a better idea … please lay out the plan,” Perry was quoted as saying in Sunday’s Austin American-Statesman.

Here’s a plan, Mr. Governor: If you want to have a chance at getting public support for the Trans-Texas Corridor, either call on Cintra-Zachry to stop being so secretive or ask it to stop bidding on public contracts.

Headline: Southern border sheriffs outgunned by drug cartels (link to article here)

Headline: Texas Sheriffs Say Terrorists Entering US from Mexico (link here)

Headline: Chinese set their sights on Kelly AFB (see article below)

These are just two recent headlines and they demonstrate how toll agreements and trade agreements may be inviting border violence to San Antonio. With hundreds of thousands of containers arriving at the Port of San Antonio (formerly known as Kelly USA) without ANY prior inspection by US customs or officials (read more on containers here), it opens the door to all sorts of smuggling operations.

With sheriffs already seeing criminal smuggling of terrorists into the country via drug cartels, and with the trade agreements and toll plans in place to allow exponential growth in foreign trade (mostly to benefit China), security and our way of life may be threatened since criminals exploit such openings regardless of the assurances and precautions taken by those playing by the rules.
Read these and decide for yourself…

China sets sights on Kelly AFB
American Free Press
By Mike Blair
August 14, 2006

The Chinese are eyeing facilities in Texas to further their economic invasion of the United States.

Negotiations are under way for communist Beijing to utilize as a “logistics hub” the former Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, which was closed in 1995 during the Clinton administration’s base reduction program.

If the deal is consummated the Chinese will also gain access to two major Texas ports at Corpus Christi and Houston on the Texas coast of the Gulf of Mexico, an 11,000-foot-long airstrip, which is part of the Kelly base facilities, rail links with railcar switching facilities and links with five interstate highways. The Chinese are keenly interested in the deal because the San Antonio base will help facilitate its trade with Mexico.

San Antonio will give China access to a highway corridor along I-35, linking San Antonio to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, which is just across the border from Laredo in west Texas.

Nuevo Laredo is a major staging ground for Mexican drug cartels, which have fostered an atmosphere of lawlessness in the city. Almost daily people, including police, are shot in the streets. In addition, frequent clashes occur between drug smugglers and U.S. Border Patrol and state and local police on the U.S. side of the border in Laredo.

There have also been reports that Chinese military units have been operating with Mexican army troops, who assist the drug smugglers and have made incursions into the United States.

“San Antonio is a strategic site for commerce between China and the United States and for the exportation of Chinese products to Mexico and Latin America,” Zhou Ming, general director of the Chinese State Agency of Promotions and Chinese Investments, said after a Chinese delegation visited San Antonio last year, according to a report in the Spanish-language newspaper Rumbo, which reports on activities in Mexico and U.S. border states.

Like most Chinese industrial, investment and commerce kingpins, Ming has ties to the People’s Liberation Army, which controls most industry in China with much of the profits going to build up the Chinese military.

Considerable slave labor is used, making it impossible for U.S. workers to compete.

A year ago, San Antonio Mayor Phil Hardberger and other municipal officials traveled to China to promote the former air base facilities, now renamed the San Antonio Port Authority.

The mayor’s office is working with the Port Authority, the Free Trade Alliance San Antonio and the San Antonio based Omega Group International, which maintains offices in Austin, Texas, San Francisco, Mexico City and Beijing and Qingdao, China.

According to Rumbo, Omega International sponsored visits by Chinese officials last year to San Antonio. J.J. Saulino, press secretary to Hardberger, told AFP that the mayor is interested in the project and traveled to Guangdong province in China to promote it.

Jorge Canavati, vice president of the San Antonio Port Authority, claimed the Rumbo article was “not accurate” and abrasively brushed off questions about the effort to get the Chinese into the former U.S. air base facilities.

The former air base, often referred to as a “dry port” or an “inland port,” because it is not a coastal facility or located on a navigable waterway, “has no limits for the products, from toys to heavy equipment [from China],” Vivian Lee, president of the Omega Group, was quoted by Rumbo as saying.

AFP was told by Rogello Garcia, a spokesman for the Free Trade Alliance San Antonio, that a Chinese delegation was in San Antonio last spring to further work out details of the project.

Kelly Air Force Base was opened in 1916 as a training facility. Nearby Lackland Air Force Base was a spin-off from Kelly. The Texas Air National Guard 149th Fighter Wing still utilizes the facility, along with the Air Force Reserve 433rd Airlift Wing.

A spokesperson with the Port Authority told AFP that the base has been used to repair and maintain C-5A Galaxy transport planes, which are the largest aircraft in the Air Force. The base has an 11,000-foot runway to accommodate the C-5A, which the military shares with the Port Authority.

In addition to the airstrip, the Port Authority has a 1,200-acre yard operated by the Union Pacific Railroad. The Burlington Northern-Santa Fe Railroad is also linked to the inland port. A retired Air Force intelligence officer told AFP that taking over the San Antonio base would likely streamline Chinese exports to the United States and would give them access to ports in Houston and Corpus Christi on the Gulf coast. The Chinese already control the Panama Canal, through the Hutchison-Whampoa Company, and maintain a major airfield and port facility at Freeport, Bahamas, where Hutchison-Whampoa has a contract through the Bush administration to provide security for container ships bound for U.S. ports on the East Coast.

Chinese state-owned shipping company Cosco has taken over port facilities and warehousing space at the California ports of Los Angeles, San Francisco and Long Beach. This is one of the reasons cited for China’s interest in the San Antonio inland port, as it has extensive space available for constructing warehouse buildings. According to Port Authority sources, a 108,800-square-foot warehouse facility has already been built at the former base at a cost of $5 million and a slightly smaller 102,400-squarefoot building has also been built.

Best known for his ground-breaking work exposing the U.S. government’s abandonment of American POWs and MIAs in Korea and Vietnam, Mike Blair specializes in military affairs and gunowners’ rights, Blair was cited by Project Censored for having uncovered the top “most censored” story of 1990—a scheme to scuttle the Bill of Rights in the name of “fighting crime.” ________________________________
Texas Sheriffs Say Terrorists Entering US from Mexico
By Kevin Mooney
CNSNews.com
August 21, 2006

(CNSNews.com) – The chief law enforcement officers of several Texas counties along the southern U.S. border warn that Arabic-speaking individuals are learning Spanish and integrating into Mexican culture before paying smugglers to sneak them into the United States. The Texas Sheriffs’ Border Coalition believes those individuals are likely terrorists and that drug cartels and some members of the Mexican military are helping them get across the border.

Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez of Zapata County, Texas told Cybercast News Service that Iranian currency, military badges in Arabic, jackets and other clothing are among the items that have been discovered along the banks of the Rio Grande River. The sheriff also said there are a substantial number of individuals crossing the southern border into the U.S. who are not Mexican. He described the individuals in question as well-funded and able to pay so-called “coyotes” – human smugglers – large sums of money for help gaining illegal entry into the U.S.

Although many of the non-Mexican illegal aliens are fluent in Spanish, Gonzalez said they speak with an accent that is not native.

“It’s clear these people are coming in for reasons other than employment,” Gonzalez said.

That sentiment is shared by Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.).

“For years, Muslims and other ‘Special Interest Aliens’ from places other than Mexico have been streaming into the U.S. across our porous border,” Tancredo told Cybercast News Service. “These people are not paying $50,000 or more a head just to ‘take jobs no American will do.’

“Terrorists are working round the clock to infiltrate the United States,” he added. “Congress and this administration must address this gaping hole in our national security and they must do it now.”

Patch with Arabic lettering lion’s head and paratrooper wingsSome of the more high profile pieces of evidence pointing to terrorist infiltration of the U.S. have been uncovered in Jim Hogg County, Texas, which experiences a high volume of smuggling activity, according to local law enforcement.

“We see patches on jackets from countries where we know al Qaeda to be active,” Gonzalez explained.

The patches appear to be military badges with Arabic lettering. One patch in particular, discovered this past December, caught the attention of federal homeland security officials, according to Gonzalez and local officials familiar with the investigation.

Patch with Arabic lettering depicting airplane flying toward towersSheriff Wayne Jernigan of Valverde County, Texas, told members of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in March about one patch that read “midnight mission” and displayed an airplane flying over a building heading towards a tower. Translators with DHS have said some of the various phrases and slogans on the items could mean “martyr,” “way to eternal life,” or “way to immortality.”

Gonzalez told the House International Relations Subcommittee on International Terrorism and Nonproliferation in July that the terrorists are getting smarter.

“To avoid apprehension, we feel many of these terrorists attempt to blend in with persons of Hispanic origin when entering the country.” Gonzalez stated. “We feel that terrorists are already here and continue to enter our country on a daily basis.”

Sheriff Arvin West of Hudspeth County, Texas, told Cybercast News Service that he believes some Mexican soldiers are operating in concert with the drug cartels to aid the terrorists.

“There’s no doubt in my mind,” he said, “although the Mexican government and our government adamantly deny it.”

Statistics made available through the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) show more than 40,000 illegal aliens from countries “Other Than Mexico,” designated as OTMs, were apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol in the period ranging from October 2003 to June 2004, as they attempted to cross the southwestern border. An overview of border security challenges produced through the office of Texas Gov. Rick Perry indicates that almost 120,000 OTMs were apprehended while attempting to cross into the state from January through July 2005.

Local authorities are particularly concerned about illegal aliens arriving from Special Interest Countries (SICs) where a radical version of Islam is known to flourish. Perry’s office cites Iraq, Iran, Indonesia and Bangladesh among those countries. A Tancredo spokesperson said the list also includes Afghanistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen.

As Cybercast News Service previously reported an internal audit of DHS that combines the number of illegal aliens arriving from SICs with the documented instances of illegal aliens arriving from countries identified as being state sponsors of terrorism (SSTs) yields a grand total of over 90,000 such illegal aliens who have been apprehended during the five year period from fiscal year 2001 to fiscal year 2005.

The border security report delivered by Perry’s office focuses attention on the “Triborder region” of Latin America, which spans an area between Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay.

“The Triborder Region is a focal point of Islamic extremism,” the report states. “Al Qaeda leadership plans to use criminal alien smuggling organizations to bring terrorist operatives across the border into the U.S.”

Carlos Espinosa, a press spokesman for Tancredo, said his office is aware of a training camp in Brazil that actually teaches people from outside of Latin America how they can assimilate into the Mexican culture.

“They come up as illegal aliens and disguise themselves as potential migrant workers,” Espinosa said.

Link to article here.

This story also appeared in the Dallas Morning News, the San Antonio Express-News, and the Houston Chronicle.

Trans-Texas Corridor firm hires ex-Perry aide
Associated Press
August 18, 2006

DALLAS — Republican Gov. Rick Perry’s former liaison to the Legislature is working once again for the Spanish company that won the rights to develop the state’s $7 billion Trans-Texas Corridor toll road project.Lobbyist Dan Shelley worked for the firm as a consultant just before he went to the governor’s office, a connection first revealed in 2004.

State officials denied any connection between that circumstance and the decision, three months later, to award Cintra-Zachry the huge highway contract. Now Shelley has left the governor’s office, and he and his daughter have large contracts to lobby for the road builder, The Dallas Morning News reported today.

This week, Shelley had planned to take four state lawmakers on a four-day, all-expense-paid trip to Canada. But the trip was abruptly postponed by the state transportation department after the newspaper asked questions about it.

A call to Shelley seeking comment was returned by Rossanna Salazar, an Austin spokeswoman for Madrid-based Cintra, who said Shelley’s contract with the company prohibits him from discussing his work with news reporters. Salazar confirmed that Shelley was helping to arrange the fact-finding trip to visit a Cintra toll road near Toronto.

“Dan Shelley was going to cover those costs” for the lawmakers’ expenses, Salazar said. “He would have had to publicly report those costs to the Texas Ethics Commission.”

Texas law does not restrict former gubernatorial staffers from lobbying, but Perry has instituted his own rule for former high-level staffers. They can lobby the Legislature and state agencies but are banned from lobbying the governor’s office for a year, or until the end of the first legislative session after they’ve left, whichever is longer.

“Governor Perry has the strongest ethics policy that any Texas governor has ever had,” said Kathy Walt, Perry’s spokeswoman.

The Canadian trip was to include a visit to Cintra’s state-of-the-art Highway 407 Electronic Toll Road. Interviews with Ontario government officials also were scheduled.

Among the lawmakers included were Rep. Mike Krusee, the Round Rock Republican who heads the House Transportation Committee, and three members of the Senate committee that writes the state budget: Democrats Royce West of Dallas and John Whitmire of Houston, along with Republican Kim Brimer of Fort Worth.

Several top employees of the Texas Department of Transportation also were to go on the trip, but the agency was to pay their way. Transportation department officials said they postponed the trip because a more pressing duty arose.

Though the payment of trip expenses for legislators by Cintra would have been legal, companies stand to gain by having lawmakers’ undivided attention for several days, said Tom “Smitty” Smith, director of Public Citizen of Texas, a watchdog group. Lawmakers should use their campaign funds for such expenses, Smith said.

“That’s preferable from taking money from corporations that stand to make billions in the continuation of this Trans-Texas Corridor project,” he said.

Shelley resigned his state job in September and struck a lobbying deal with Cintra worth between $50,000 and $100,000 to work from March through the end of this year. His daughter and lobbying partner, Jennifer Shelley-Rodriguez, will earn between $25,000 and $50,000 from the company over the same period, state records show.

The Trans-Texas Corridor is Perry’s vision for a statewide network of toll roads, rail lines and utility lines to improve transportation for the next 50 years. Cintra-Zachry won the development rights in 2004 to the first corridor section, which will parallel Interstate 35.

The corridor has become an issue in the governor’s race, as independent candidate Carole Keeton Strayhorn has tried to capitalize on opposition from landowners and others to the project.

When Shelley worked for Cintra before, he never registered as a lobbyist. Instead, he worked nine months as an unregulated “consultant” trying to generate business for the company in Texas.

At the time, the governor’s office said Shelley was never paid by the company, because his fees were to be based on any deals closed. They said that when he left the firm before the contract was complete, he gave up the right to such fees.

The director of Texans for Public Justice, a group that tracks money in politics, said the Shelley case demonstrates that the policy and the law both need tightening to prevent “the revolving lobby door.”

Link to article here.

Bush delays foreign airline ownership
By Leslie Miller
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – The Bush administration is delaying a plan to give foreigners more say in running U.S. airlines. The House and Senate voted earlier this year to prevent the administration from going forward with the plan.

Opponents say the administration doesn’t have the constitutional right to undo a law that restricts foreign ownership of U.S. airlines to 25 percent. They also say it will undermine safety, security, national defense and U.S. jobs.

Jeffrey Shane, the Transportation Department‘s undersecretary for policy, said Tuesday that the Bush administration recognizes it needs to spend more time discussing it with Congress.

The Bush administration also wants to sign an aviation treaty with the European Union to liberalize commercial aviation between the U.S. and Europe.

“The Europeans have suggested in their minds that there’s a linkage between a final rule and their willingness to sign a treaty,” Shane said.

Shane said the administration planned to issue a final rule this month allowing more foreign control. The delay will prevent EU ministers of transport from reviewing it at their Oct. 12 meeting, he said.

The treaty would let European and U.S. airlines fly wherever they want between European cities and the U.S., and charge whatever they want.

Shane listed the benefits of the proposed treaty as “a lot more competition, a lot more variety of service in the trans-Atlantic marketplace, more destinations served more conveniently, more economic opportunity for the airlines on both sides.”

Labor unions and some airlines oppose more foreign control, fearing it would damage U.S. security and cost U.S. jobs.

“I am opposed to the change because it will result in the loss of American jobs, will hurt rural and small communities and could severely jeopardize our safety and security,” said Illinois Rep. Jerry Costello, ranking Democrat on the House aviation subcommittee.

Link to article here.

This article focuses primarily on the Kansas City interior port, but a previous one mentions the same principle for the Port of San Antonio.

Shipping-Corridor Deal Cuts Heart Out of Heartland
by Phyllis Schlafly
Human Events Online
August 07, 2006

Grass-roots Americans of all parties and economic classes rose up out of their political apathy a few months ago and forced President George W. Bush to reverse his administration’s decision to allow a Middle East government to own America’s major ports. But the push for foreign ownership continues: the next port scheduled to be taken over is Kansas City, Mo.
Even though public schools stopped teaching geography a couple of decades ago, most Americans (especially residents of the Show Me State) are surprised to learn that Kansas City (where the only waves are “amber waves of grain”) is a port. We are also surprised, and shocked, to discover that Mexico will be running its own inspection facility there.

The plan, shrouded in secrecy, has been in the works for at least three years, but it is now coming to light because of the diligent use of Missouri’s Sunshine law by concerned citizens. Joyce Mucci and Francis Semler forced the release of the e-mails from Kansas City to Mexico, including one admitting that “The space (in Kansas City) would need to be designated as Mexican sovereign territory.”

SmartPort representatives are now running away from this written admission, blaming “the problems and pressure the media attention has created.” However, the stubborn sovereignty issue won’t go away; the plan does involve setting up Mexican customs officials in downtown Kansas City.

The mechanism for this deal is a “nonprofit” business economic development corporation called Kansas City SmartPort Inc., whose president is Chris J.F. Gutierrez. The deal calls for Kansas City to lease the valuable property at 1447 Liberty St.

As laid out on SmartPort’s Web site, the plan is to enable products made in China to travel in sealed “containers nonstop from the Far East by way of Mexico,” through “a ships-to-rail terminal at the port of Lazaro Cardenas, Mexico,” then up “the evolving trade corridor” to Kansas City, Mo., where they would have their first inspection.

A Kansas City SmartPort brochure explains further: “Kansas City offers the opportunity for sealed cargo containers to travel to Mexican port cities with virtually no border delays.”

A key purpose of the project is to take jobs away from U.S. longshoremen in Los Angeles and Long Beach, Calif., who earn $140,000 a year, and replace them with Mexican laborers at $10,000 a year. U.S. truck drivers and railroad workers will likewise be replaced by Mexicans.

The port of Lazaro Cardenas, on the west coast of southern Mexico, is controlled by Hutchison Whampoa, the same giant Hong Kong shipping firm that owns the ports at both ends of the Panama Canal. Chinese-made goods will be carried by Kansas City Southern Railway de Mexico directly to Kansas City, where freight will be distributed east and west and on to Canada.

Kansas City Southern was originally a belt railway around Kansas City but, after buying various Mexican rail companies and tracks, KCS controls a 2,600-mile artery from Lazaro Cardenas to Kansas City. KCS President Michael Haverty was one of five U.S. businessmen who met with President Bush, Mexican President Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper at their March summit in Cancun, Mexico.

Mexico was at first expected to pay for the big, expensive machines to conduct high-tech gamma-ray screening for drive-through inspections of containers, but Mexico declined the honor. SmartPort has applied for a $1.5 million grant from the U.S. Economic Development Administration (i.e., to get the U.S. taxpayers to pay for the machines).

The Kansas City City Council has already earmarked $2.5 million in loans and $600,000 in direct aid to SmartPort, which would build and own the facility and then sublet it to the Mexican government. The cost could go as high as $6 million because Kansas City has an existing lease that runs through 2045 on the same property with the 107-year-old American Royal, which uses that land for its annual livestock/rodeo/barbecue event.

The last piece in finalizing this project is getting the U.S. State Department to approve the Mexican operation on U.S. soil by signing off on what is called the C-175 document. It has already been approved by U.S. Customs.

Meanwhile, NASCO (North America’s SuperCorridor Coalition Inc.), another nonprofit business organization, has taken on the mission of building an “international, integrated and secure, multimodal transportation system” from Lazaro Cardenas through Kansas City and up to Winnipeg, Canada. This will allow Mexican trucks to haul goods along a 12-lane superhighway through the heartland of the United States.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=51282