Originally published July 6 2008
Insightful Texans Stall the NAFTA Superhighway
by Barbara L. Minton
(NaturalNews) Texans may well be handing the rest of America a blueprint for fighting big government. The people of Texas have finally found a way to halt the progress of the government in stripping them of their homes, businesses and property to build the Trans Texas Corridor (TTC), a critical link in the NAFTA Superhighway. By utilizing a little known state law, Texans are ensuring that their voices of opposition will finally be heard.
Four rural cities and their school districts have demanded that the Texas Department of Transportation stop its movement on the superhighway and coordinate with them in all planning, studies and management for the TTC, as required by state and federal law. This first substantial legal attack on the TTC is spearheaded by the Eastern Central Texas Sub-Regional Planning Commission (ECTSRPC), the first sub-regional commission formed under the Texas Local Government Code 391. If the Texas Department of Transportation complies with the demand, the TTC and therefore the NAFTA Superhighway and North American Union could be delayed for years.
The Texas Local Government Code, Chapter 391, requires state agencies "to the greatest extent feasible" coordinate with local commissions to "ensure effective and orderly implementation of state programs at the regional level". Coordinated studies would reveal the impact of the TTC on the people and the environment of Texas, which has so far been ignored. If the Department of Transportation refuses to comply with the demand, a federal lawsuit would be filed, also delaying the project for years.
To the citizens of these four communities, the effort seems to represent more than just stopping the TTC. It's a real step in fighting the dictatorial intrusiveness of big government and big business into the lives of everyday folks. Finding a legal way to conduct this fight has been empowering to the people whose feelings against the TTC run deep. One proposed TTC route would parallel State Highway 95, and would therefore cut the towns of Holland, Bartlett, Little River-Academy and others in half. It would also pave over much of the area's good river bottom land and destroy many farms in its wake.
Last month, the commission went to East Texas to explain its message and tactics to others who are opposing another federal highway project that would cover seven states, also under the TTC master plan. The Texas portion would run approximately 650 miles from Laredo to Texarkana. Since that meeting, a city in East Texas has passed a resolution to form a 391 commission similar to the ECTSRPC model.
The NAFTA Superhighway is designed to be a borderless, open transportations system for goods that is four hundred yards wide. Plans are in the works that will link another stretch of highway to form a SuperCorridor that will run north from Panama, facilitating the joining of CAFTA to the trade block. At the root of all this is the long-range plan to form a North American Union, learn more at (http://www.naturalnews.com/022707.html) . This Union remains a covert action of the Bush administration, the Canadian Government, and the Mexican government, coordinating with members of the largest and most powerful multi-national corporations.
Financing for the project comes in part from Cintra, a Spanish company that will lease and operate it as a toll road. In January of this year, Texas Congressman Ron Paul filed a bill in the house of Representatives to prevent the TTC from receiving federal funds. Millions of acres of land for the completion of this highway will be taken under the new, convenient, laws of eminent domain.
The Superhighway will facilitate easy entrance and movement as cheap goods from China and cheap labor from Mexico and Latin America come flooding into American and on into Canada. The benefits to multinational corporations, who view borders as barriers to trade and greater profits, will be boundless. To average Americans, it spells the end of economic life as we know it.
"By virtue of multinational economic cooperation on a level unprecedented in all of global history, things that become necessary to facilitate such cooperation gradually dissolve that which distinguishes national identities," writes Joshua Herring, Renew America analyst. He sees that as resulting from the loss of private economic interests and enterprises, such as the small businesses that have so characterized the American scene. What is being passed off on Americans as progress, is really enslavement as the national economy becomes weakened and dependent on the multinational system.
The multinational system also means a leveling and homogenizing of laws, culture, role of government, and standard of living for all but the ruling elite. As the standard of living of the less prosperous areas of the trade block rise, it seems inevitable that the standard of living of the more prosperous, particularly Americans, will decline.
Sources:
(www.renewamerica.us/columns/herring/070901)
(www.countryworldnews.com/news/2008/4-April/)
(www.libertymatters.org/newsservice/newsservi...)
(www.stewards.us/)
About the author
Barbara is a school psychologist, a published author in the area of personal finance, a breast cancer survivor using "alternative" treatments, a born existentialist, and a student of nature and all things natural.
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