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

August 14, 2007

Human Events, a ridiculously-conservative political magazine, recently reported, “Quietly but systematically, the Bush Administration is advancing the plan to build a huge NAFTA Super Highway, four football-fields-wide, through the heart of the U.S. along Interstate 35, from the Mexican border at Laredo, Tex., to the Canadian border north of Duluth, Minn.”

It’s hard to understand exactly what the right is arguing here, but apparently the idea is that the free-trading Bush administration wants to sell out U.S. interests and let Mexicans move products and people through the American Heartland, while bypassing Teamsters on the coasts. Or something. It’s hard to keep up with conservative conspiracy theories.

Yesterday, Christopher Hayes at The Nation tackled the subject, debunked the myths, and connected the bizarre ideas to domestic fears over globalization.

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. […]

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.

Well, sure, if you’re going to let facts get in the way of perfectly good demagoguery, the existence of the highway project might matter.

What’s more, Digby emphasized just how seriously the right is taking this, fueled by nonsense from predictable corners.

Apparently Lou Dobbs is talking about this too, with no mention that it’s complete nonsense of course. But then his relationship with the truth is pretty flexible when it comes to teh mexicanos. And I’m sure many of you will not be surprised to learn that one of the prime spreaders of this NAFTA Highway tale is the first class fabulist Jerome Corsi, of Swiftboat fame. You remember the documented liar and lunatic who all the newspeople treated with respect when he trashed John Kerry?

As it turns out, there is a foreign owned toll road being planned in Texas that has nothing to do with NAFTA and that’s causing quite a stir. People seem to have mashed the whole thing up in their lizard brains and come up with some one-world plot by Spain and the Council on Foreign Relations. Or something.

Look, people are scared about their economic future. Globalization is unsettling, and a lot of Americans feel like their government won’t help with any kind of safety net, should their families need one.

But this NAFTA Superhighway myth is racist propaganda, and not incidentally, a scam.

That said, it is amusing to see Republican presidential hopefuls jump through the nativist hoops.

Romney spokesman Craig Stevens said the road comes up at town meetings second only to immigration policy.

“He’s addressed this in all of his town halls recently,” Stevens said. “We believe it’s urban legend.”

But, Stevens added, Romney does not back the idea. “He does not support it,” he said.

Romney doesn’t support the imaginary project. What a relief.

But here is where right and left fall away, or, more accurately, the continuum becomes a circle and the extreme ends meet.

The Pat Buchanan wing of the R’s is nativist and isolationist (some might argue racist), and virulently anti-NAFTA.

But the anti-globalization, economic/labor protectionist wing of the D’s is also virulently anti-NAFTA.

I might add that both parties have subsets that have shown a willingness to buy fanciful conspiracy theories and “impaginary” projects, too.

Sometimes its hard to tell the players without a scorecard.

  • Foreign cargo moving along the NAFTA Superhighway will be protected by the black helicopters. And don’t tell me it isn’t true. I read it on the internets.

  • Interesting. There was a guy over on Kos, running for some state position in Texas last year (Treasurer?) who posted on this all the time.

  • While there may not yet be a Super Highway, just yesterday on Cspan was a panel of Free Market Pundits pushing the idea of the SPP and why we should have totally open borders. The idea of a SPP is a fact. Why those on the Left continue to try and make it a Tinfoil Fedora issue instead of looking deeper escapes me. All too often what was ” debunked” a year or two ago as a CT has turned out to be truth. I find this kind of head in the sand thinking dangerous .

  • Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul thinks that the NAFTA Superhighway is a real threat to our national sovereignty! Check out this link to his House website:

    http://www.house.gov/paul/tst/tst2006/tst103006.htm

    Paul’s “amen corner” on the tubes has neglected to point this out to us. What are they trying to hide? Sounds like a conspiracy to me.

  • But this NAFTA Superhighway myth is racist propaganda, and not incidentally, a scam.

    You don’t know that, Steve.

    The comments in this thread are disappointing. I get the feeling some of you aren’t thinking for yourselves.

  • The thing posted about from the Texas perspective was the Trans-Texas Corridor, our contribution to the hypothetical highway. However, this boondoggle was voted down in the latest two budgets (a two-year moratorium was passed in SB 792).

    Trust me, though: this is far from dead, as it’s supported by major campaign contributors and top GOP elected officials in Texas, much to the dismay of actual “eminent domain” conservatives” and nearly everyone else.

  • What sovereignty?

    America is ruled by a Private Corporate Cabal of anational, amoral imperialists under the edict and authority of King George XLIIV. The Dick-tator calls the shots and King George makes them law. An oligarchy has been substituted for our “Constitutional Republic.”

    So I don’t put anything past this bunch of traitors. But apparently, many people, even those in the Reality-Based Community continue to afford King George a distinct level of trust and the benefit of the doubt, despite an unhinged and unprecedented level of secrecy and lawlessness.

    I’m not one of them.

    Is there such a thing as a proposed NAFTA Superhighway? I don’t know (after all, so many deliberations of this administration are conducted in secret). It would not surprise me to see such a thing come to fruition. The articles from The Nation and Digby do little to convince me that it is not possible (foreign owned infrastructure? Pardon me, but that’s fucked up).

    Is there such a thing in our future as the North American Union? I certainly do not put it past Dick&Bush when I look at Presidential Directive 51, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, and the Defense Authorization Act of 2007.

    I guess I’m just cynical. But I’ll continue to ascertain the available facts for myself.

  • Can’t let the facts get in the way of good old-fashioned fear mongering conservative/GOP style.

  • I have to agree with norbizness, the Trans-Texas Corridor is actually a real proposal and far from dead. I currently live in Oklahoma and this state’s legislators are concerned the TTC may turn east and bypass OK (considered a bad thing). Not sure how I feel about it, but if Bush and backers like it, I would tend to be opposed – though need more info. Shouting “scam” doesn’t help.

  • It seems to be that this can easily be ascertained or debunked. Determine the sites of the so-called Highway, and physically check the origins. Surely, if correct, action will certainly have been visibly started.
    The fact that this has spread far and wide means that an awful lot of people are already interested in the truth of this. I know that I am!

  • Well, as a TX lefty who got pretty involved in the 2006 local and state elections, as someone interested in the development of the TTC (well, stopping the boondoggle), and as someone who has sniffed around the border lately, I wouldn’t dismiss NASCO’s dream project. It, or something close to it, is gonna happen. Put me on a list with those who look at the Nation article and smile knowingly!

    The TTC project has been beaten back to some extent by environmentalists and a variety of other interests. But one of its major political opponents here in TX was defeated last November and the corporate interests are very strong, particularly Bechtel, and let’s not forget investment firms like Carlyle with rapidly increasing interests in Mexico.

    The Nation article seems like a heated (August?) outburst.

  • I’m with norbizness on this one… Cintra was/is giving the state a couple of billion up front in exchange for the rights to collect tolls for the next 75 years. pRick perry has also agreed to a clause in the contract that kills any spending on upkeep and maintenance on any of the other interstates that run through Central Texas (I-35 for example) for the 30 years after this thing is built.

    Bad voodoo, this one….

    You can check the anti-corridor side at http://www.corridorwatch.com/ttc/index.htm
    The Pro corridor side at http://www.keeptexasmoving.org/index.php/trans-texas_corridor

  • Now Haik. . . I’ve rarely seen a more freethinking bunch than the congregation here.

    But I no more fear that changing a 4-lane border-crossing Interstate highway to a 10-lane one will destroy my sovereignty than I believe that two lesbians getting married will destroy my marriage. Fear is used by both left and right; I am skeptical and cautious when confronted with either. Yesterday Steve made a post that was roundly agreed with that Islamists are not really going to take over America and turn it into part of the caliphate. If they can’t, other North Americans using a highway really wont either. The argument is the same, except that parts of the left like to bash NAFTA like the right likes to bash all Muslims.

    This has gotten me thinking, however, about how it seems each generation feels compelled to change the definitions of its predecessors – a way of being original.

    When I was in college, the leftist organizations on campus rallied and marched in favor of globalization. That “one world government” the wingnuts fear? That was our goal – unity, harmony, peace. Borders were artificial constructs to create “thems” that had to be kept away from “us.” The right hated the rest of the world and its people; they were xenophobic isolationists. We wanted to embrace all of humanity, to be one big family.

    So I am often struck that now the idea of a “North American Union” seems to bother the left as much as the right, and that WTO meetings are met with left-wing anti-globalization protesters. That the left is now all about borders and a populist need to protect the native workers – to the point of finding a mere highway threatening. Just a generation ago, the right were the anti-globalization protesters. (A similar story can be told about the evolution of gentrification – once applauded and encouraged by the left while the right left inner cities to fail, now anathema to progressives except those who are on wait list for cool gentrified condos). What was right is left, and what was left is right.

    How times change. As I said, you need a scorecard to know what side claims what issue this year. Globalization: the new hemline.

  • I guess what I’m mainly curious about is why this issue has such resonance for many Republicans. It’s not like highways are some shocking, unknown thing out in the heartland. Maybe if a highway was going to go through my propoerty, I might get upset about it, but otherwise, my reaction would be, “gee, I wonder if there are any good real estate investment opportunities to be had along the planned route.”

    How is it that telling people that the US might buld a north-south highway causes such a huge groundswell of reactions?

  • If they think they’re going to turn I-35 into a 20-lane highway going through downtown Kansas City (or anywhere within 5 miles of it), they’re clinically insane.

    Ain’t no room, and we have a hard enough time keeping up our 2-lane roads around here.

    As far as whether or not it’s real? I have no idea, as I haven’t read enough on it.

  • It strikes me that being against “globalization” is like being against aging. Like okay, what are you planning to do instead?

  • I suppose we should watch out for any funny incidents along I35. You never know whan a nativist wingnut might decide to take out a bridge or something, like where I35 crosses the Mississippi at Minneapolis/St. Paul.

  • You know, if Don Young can insert a highway project (in exchange for a little cold hard cash) into a law after it’s already been passed by Congress, then who knows what the hell is in the works?

  • How is it that telling people that the US might buld a north-south highway causes such a huge groundswell of reactions? – Tyro

    Mainly because here in Central Texas it means cutting a 10 mile wide swath through the most fertile farmland and grassland prairies in the state. Not to mention wiping out communities and towns in it’s path. Some of which are historic German and Czech communities that have been around for a long time. This is not about widening I-35 here into 10 lanes… the TTC will run parallel to I-35.

    Nobody likes to have their property taken/forced buyout by eminent domain, so I think that’s where part of the groundswell of reaction comes from.

  • I don’t see anything inherently wrong with increasing trade between Canada, the US, and Mexico, or even just Canada and Mexico. NAFTA, & other free trade laws, need to require that goods imported into the US be manufactured under conditions closer to US & Canadian labor laws and environmental laws, otherwise we do have issues of unfair trade, but other than that increased trade has been a net benefit. The US has greatly augmented per capita wealth over the past 300 years in part because it has built a huge internal market that fosters trade (e.g., excellent roads, uniform laws, etc.). Having many natural resources and (for the most part) peaceful neighbors has also been a great help. Electrification, water projects, and building roads and bridges from Georgia through the Carolinas made them richer which in turn contributed to growing the US, and there’s no reason to think that the same benefits couldn’t come from improving and integrating Mexico. NAFTA done properly seems appropriate.

    In the mean-time, I’m working up a secret, sinister, socialism-insired plan to build a huge fast road link so that liberals, and most especially gay liberals, can drive straight through the heartland from New York to San Francisco without risking exposure to small-town values and Republican thinking en route. I’m planning to avoid the centers of small towns and to build long detours around the cities, so except for some service plazas, motels, fast food outlets, and the like (which I’ll quarantine a reasonable distance from the actual towns), there should be limited interaction with any actual citizens in the fly-over states. What’s more, I’m planning to do this with public money! I’m thinking of calling it I-80. It should send right-wingers everywhere into a frenzy! 🙂

  • My issue with this highway is that it is a foreign company they are selling both American land and infrastructure to, a company that will collect tolls (read profits to a different country) yet our tax dollars will be spent to enforce toll regulation.

    That’s wrong on so many levels.

    Do not sell American soil to foreign entities.

    Do not outsource infrastructure (how about some American jobs that actually pay well?)

    Do not use our taxes to support money going to a company owned outside the US.

    I’m surprised the GOP is turning its back on it. It has GOP written all over it.

  • I’m unsure if the gist of the discussion is whether a superhighway is actually being built between Laredo, Texas and Port Huron, Michigan, or whether the resulting highway itself will cause according to Ross Perot a “Giant Sucking Sound” of lost manufacturing jobs in the mid-section of North America. I am certain, however, that Interstate 69 (no joke) is being constructed, with pieces of the interstate system already in use and more to come.

    I know this because my family’s farm is in the right of way for Interstate 69 as it passes through Tipton County, Tennessee. While I may sound a little “not in my backyard”, I do not believe this interstate is neither needed nor beneficial to the state of Tennessee or nation as a whole, it is just another case of pork barrel spending.

    A good example is the section from Millington, Tennessee that will bypass the city of Memphis and then dip into Mississippi (near the casinos in Tunica) prior to crossing the Mississippi River into Arkansas. This circuitous route was pushed through at the insistence of none other than Trent Lott, during the Republicans control of the Senate.

    NAFTA Superhighway -vs- Interstate 69, one and the same.

  • #17 Haik: I’m concerned that this supposed highway sounds “walmart-ian”. That is not what globalization means to this liberal. I want to see workers benefit from their labors, ie support farmer’s markets, buy fair trade coffee, buy foreign goods from co-ops, etc.

    Building a huge freeway, owned by a foreign interest, that will collect tolls, while our “American” infrastructure is failing, while we waste billions in the Iraq fiasco? Completely insane!

  • Oh sure, they build this highway, then the Muslim Horde sails from Iraq and conquer Mexico, and launch their jihad right into the American Heartland.

    Just like Red Dawn……

  • Try doing a search on “interstate 69” and check out some of the links. Although I don’t trust Wikipedia 100%, its entry about I-69 is objective. Joe S is right about this construction. The Trans-Texas Corridor may just be a piece of this route.

    Personally, I don’t worry about the Muslim hordes conquering Mexico and then using this route to invade the American heartland. I would, however, be concerned about the purpose of this artery and who controls it. Could it be that the intention is to access the cheaper cargo ports in Mexico? Maybe globalization is inevitable, but who will control the global economy in that scenario?

    I would recommend “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” by John Perkins.

    out west

  • slip kid no more says: “Hey wingnuts, your government says this.” and links to spp.gov/myths_vs_facts.asp

    Of course, a “wingnut” like Jerome Corsi is actually doing real reporting on this issue, debunking that SPP page and filing FOIA requests. Meanwhile, “liberals” are busy apologizing for a massive corporate boondoggle that, at the least, would “harmonize” regulations across North America. Of course, it could lead to much more than that, with various academics and very powerful people promoting at the least a “North American Community” and even a union of the three countries.

    At least the Canadian left hasn’t been so cowed by false charges such as those made in the post: canadians.org

  • out west, even if all this were true, personally I am forced to admit that I think that infrastructure that facilities that high-speed transfer of goods and people across large distances is a pretty good thing. I sure which that Baltimore were connected to SW Maryland in a more efficient manner.

    Echoing N.Well’s tongue-in-cheek comment, I really have driven I-80 across the country when I moved across the US, and I was really glad it was there.

    Now, building any given highway over any given route may be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on the policy issues involved, but I just can’t work myself into a lather over it, and I have a hard time understanding anyone who does.

    Personally, though, a high-speed rail link that could get from DC to Boston in under 5 hours would be my personal preference for transportation infrastructure.

  • memekiller, all Mexico has to do is ask. Heck, if Texas keeps giving us Bush and Rove and their ilk, I may pay Mexico to take it back.

  • The only reason that the leftie wingnuts are against NAFTA is because it has no worker’s rights and safety regulations in it. If it actually did, instead of saying ‘the WTO will deal with it’ they wouldn’t be against it.

    Now, who the heck cares about a frickin’ highway? Highways are the least efficient way of moving cargo, very expensive to maintain and generally just waste alot of money. No liberals are apologizing for it, we’re just saying it’s a myth – a myth that conservatives want to build or destroy, we just don’t want to get involved in it.

    Really, we should pass some sort of Federal Law that says Government Money cannot be used to build, maintain, or repair roads that have private tolls of any amount upon them.

  • Personally, though, a high-speed rail link that could get from DC to Boston in under 5 hours would be my personal preference for transportation infrastructure. — Tyro, @33

    Mine also. Every time a new highway, or enlargement of an existing one is proposed, I feel it’s a wrong way to move. For one thing, it indicates that we have long-term plans for continued dependence on huge amounts of petrol. For another, I have a suspicion that the more earth we pave over with impermeable material, cutting more trees and eliminating more farmland in the process, the more — adverse — changes in the climate we’ll see over time. And that worries me.

    Virginia is in the process of a similiar fight: double the width of I-81, or revive the rail transport. Needless to say, I’m all for the rail transport revival. The idea of trains shooting straight from Mexico to Canada bothers me much less than the idea of a super-highway doing the same thing.

  • Putting through a 10 lane road in less populated areas of the country might be remotely doable, but to think that could happen here in the east is ludicrous. And why 10 lanes? I-95, the existing main north/ south corridor, is not that wide. Granted, in places it is way too crowded but do they envision fleets, masses, hoards of Mexican and Canadian trucks covering the land, that 10-lane highways will be needed to hold them all? To me, scratch the surface and this has as much hokum as any other breathless Internet fabrication. It’ll be Storm Trooper time if the US government moves in and seizes homes, stores, shopping centers, schools, factories, colleges and universities, and small towns so they can build 10 lane super trade highways. If that happens, we’ll have more to worry about than fleets of Mexican and Canadian trucks barreling through [although I suspect it is mainly Mexican trucks everybody is so wired about]. Will the government just seize this land? Or will they buy it? Where do they get the funds- you’re talking an astronomical amount of money here. And then add in the construction costs. This is pure paranoia, stoked by the far right.

  • This plan is not about a highway. The highway is merely a tool and one aspect of this drive to greater efficiency.. This is about power and supply chain economics. It is a plan to the North America into the global supply chains at an absolute minimum cost. This plan requires serious study not the type of off-hand opinions I have seen in these comments. At a minimum, the writers should check http://spp.gov to see what the US government is doing to make our regulations conform to Canada and Mexico. They need to understand the work going on in Texas in the effort to build the Trans-Texas Corridor, and they need to read the NASCO site http://www.nascocorridor.com to understand what the proponents have to say. Finally, read http://northamericanunion-sayhithere.blogspot.com

  • “advancing the plan to build”

    If you had read that, you could have saved yourself some typing. No one is arguing there *is* a superbad NAFTA deathway today.

    The statement is that people are advancing plans to build it. Good effort though.

  • If the construction of a highway ever reaches Nebraska,I will give the workers something to think about when I take my 30,06 and start to target practice on them.And talk about IEDs that they have in Iraq.These roadside bombs will do great on the semi trucks that travel this hghway.

  • It is a MYTH? That is pretty funny. We here in Arizona can see that it isn’t a Myth. What is MYTH about Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano’s Executive Order 2008-08 to “CONTINUE” with the CANAMEX corridor for the NAFTA super highway.

    See link:
    http://www.governor.state.az.us/media/sos_08.asp

    Or how about HCM2003 AZ legistlature to try and stop the North American Union???

    You think these things are just a MYTH? Open your eyes. It is not just reported my cooks and crackpots, it is all over the red hands of the Government(s) US, Mexico and Canada.

    They are the ones who coined this highway the NAFTA Superhigway. Robert Pastor (Father of the North American Union) recently came to Tempe AZ to attend and speak at a confrence called “Conference on Advancing North American Governance” at ASU with Governor Napolitano and her new Arizona-Mexico Commision.

    At the confrence that was open attendance Robert Pastor laughed about how much flack they received for the North American Union and the Superhigway and that to move away from this bad attention and continue with this “Strategic plan for North American Governance” and to do so it would not be done state by state beginning with the border states. http://www.azmc.org/event?ID=86

    Say what you want but there is plenty of proof that this is real. It is hidden in plain sight so that morons like you who post articles based on ignorant and ill-researched facts. Look again. It is there as plain as day. Perhaps you cannot see that and should remove the sunglasses.

    Perhaps it would be good for you to see their website for yourself for at least the “MYTH” CANAMEX corridor.

    http://www.canamex.org/

  • I DO NOT APPROVE OF THIS!!!!!! I DO NOT LIKE THE IDEA THAT THEIR COULD BE A HUGE HIGHWAY RUNNING THROUGH MY BACK YARD AND I DONT LIKE IT! I LIVE IN SALADO TEXAS AND IT IS A SWEET LITTLE TOWN THAT DOES NOT NEED TO BE DESTROYED BY THIS SUPERHIGHWAY!!!!!

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