On March 23, 2005, U.S. President George W. Bush, former Canadian Prime Minister, Paul Martin and former Mexican President, Vicente Fox, authorized the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), now beneath auspices within the U.S. Department of Commerce. Most Americans have little to no understanding this seemingly innocuous sounding unofficial treaty therefore believe if you don't reason for being alarmed.However, what is misinterpreted as legislation which has been scrutinized, and it has gone through the proper channels of government could not be far away from the truth, because the U.S. Congress has experienced no direct disclosure of nor has gotten part rolling around in its execution.Legally, a treaty would have to have a two-thirds flavor the U.S. Senate to concur ready for its ratification as dependant on the U.S. Constitution. Cleverly, however, because SPP is not a treaty, obama could avoid an extremely required procedure by utilizing the power of your Executive Branch. As well as in August 2006, President Bush additionally designed a Signing Statement to passed legislation declaring it Constitutional for his administration to withhold information from or deny authority required with the U.S. Congress on the SPP and the negotiations.With the recent swell and frequency of free trade agreements being passed during the U.S. Congress before several years alone, seemingly rushed through without genuine debate or challenge, it might be feasible for the populace to visualize the SPP was authorized by Congress and thinking matters related to it were from the welfare within the American people. But, many U.S. free trade agreements you should never directly better the employees of the countries involved, however you are solely available to big business profiting from cheap labor, and foreign lobbyists and bureaucrats enriching themselves.However SPP is cleverly disguised being a boon for all three North American countries and its citizens, yet has lacked input or oversight from federal, state, or municipal legislators nationwide. The goals for the SPP agenda largely add a focus on transparency and unprecedented cooperation when it comes to all 3 governments' commerce and trade. The endeavor is usually to get together in uniting as one competitive body inside the global marketplace and to function as a United states Union (NAU), which while doing so whittles away at each country's sovereignty, its national security along with its laws.The facilitation of the SPP will stem belonging to the use of the U.S. interstate highway system providing the roads for inter-continental and interstate commerce. For those to take place require retro-fitting of existing interstates and also building new roads, including gas and utility lines, including light rail, belonging to the interior of Mexico, from your central corridor of this U.S. is without a doubt into Canada.Both proposed NAU and NAFTA Superhighway are offshoots for the American Free Trade Agreement, signed in 1992 at the same time President Bill Clinton. At the time it had been sold for the American people together with the Mexican government for a win-win for both peoples and would re-balance the flow of trade returning to Mexico to help Mexican workers to earn money wage. But that never transpired and instead backfired, inducing the onslaught of nearly 20 million illegal aliens since, illegally crossing the U.S. southern border, supposedly in search of decent paying jobs.But to fully view the evolution within the call for requiring a NAFTA Superhighway it is important to at a minimum appreciate the recent history behind it. The roll-out of free trade policy has morphed to a priority belonging to the U.S. government today, even putting national security in danger of order in order to satisfy its agenda. It's the Reagan Administration's vision of free trade, a principal reply to Japan's explosive growth and expansion inside the motor car and electronics industries with the U.S., which started to shift the total amount of trade and also the lopsided result we've got today generally our trading partners.And 15 years because the passage of NAFTA hasn't only enabled the U.S. to globalize arguably beyond proportions in every one elements of commerce, industry and trade, it also helps to foster public-private partnerships, a benign expression used to mask what exactly are essentially foreign-direct investments. And foreign-direct investment has grew precipitously since 1988 when former President George H.W. Bush signed the Exon-Florio Amendment to the Defense Production Act of 1950.It was subsequently also in 1988 when then President George H.W. Bush, through Exon-Florio delegated his opportunity to approve or disapprove such foreign acquisitions with the Chairman within the Committee on Foreign Investments around the U.S. (CFIUS), relieving obama for the responsibility in determining national security threats in foreign-direct acquisitions. Unfortunately, the phrase national peace of mind in a post-911 world remains too narrow to cope with protection of critical infrastructure, a scarce defense supply, or preservation of technological standards, among many other risks, unquestioned assistance programs were 1988.The Exon-Florio Amendment authorizes the President to "suspend or prohibit foreign acquisitions, mergers, or takeovers of U.S. companies if the foreign controlling interest takes action that threatens national security." And then the term "foreign control" remains ambiguous and decidedly so. The ramifications of the Exon-Florio Amendment reared its head far more February 2006 CFIUS, an arm of the U.S. Department in the Treasury, became well known for its authorization of your Dubai Ports World to perform multiple Northeastern port operations for example the Port Authority of recent York, plus the ports of Baltimore and Miami.The joggling act of national security and foreign-direct acquisitions has relegated national security concerns fot it of each afterthought, as the Department of this Treasury's prime priority is expanding commerce while in the global marketplace. Complaints for the secluded CFIUS process, however, predate the Dubai Ports World alarm bells of 2006. Because of it was in October 2005 when Senator Richard Shelby, (R) Alabama, necessary hearings over the inclusion of Congressional oversight of CFIUS approvals. Plus it was well before 2006 when Senator James Inhofe, (R) Oklahoma, lobbied for Congress youngster should be reject CFIUS approvals.Simply because it stands, just about every foreign acquisition sails with the approval process. Unless you will find a 45-day investigation process when the required 30-day review by CFIUS, the President's approval is not required and thereby never reaches the Congress for just about any interaction or input. Between 1988 and 2005 only two foreign acquisitions were unapproved away from 1,555 reviews. Both were withdrawn and qualified to apply for later re-instatement.Many foreign entities look for a "pre-screening" with CFIUS' member agencies, includes 12 departments belonging to the U.S. government, if national security concerns are anticipated if you want to mitigate the prospects of non-approval and triggering the 45-day investigation.The disparate interests of free trade and also the protection of critical infrastructure, and in particular the U.S. highway system along with public utilities, has given approach to high-powered U.S. attorneys and professional lobbyist organizations that lay the groundwork for foreign conglomerates to land foreign-acquisition contracts with cash-starved states amenable to foreign-direct investment.Such is the case along with the Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC), the brainchild of the Texas Department of transportation (TxDOT) in concert with the SPP. It's just a multi-billion dollar web of highway building, toll road maintenance, gas pipelines, public utilities and railroad contracts as complex as multi-layered being the U.S. interstate highway system itself. A flurry in excess of 20 foreign acquisitions of interstate highway projects and toll road maintenance contracts have been completely approved since 2003 with most more nationwide working their way through state legislatures, such as that of the fresh new Jersey Turnpike which Governor Jon Corzine believes is ripe for foreign funding.However TTC will be biggest and the majority of massive highway building project of those all but for the first-time will depend on an overseas entity to not only maintain toll roads but to enjoy a stake in building, controlling operations and tolls and expanding new roads and critical infrastructure. Additionally, eminent domain law occurs into play in an effort to reconcile the taking of property and farmland for road expansion to match pipelines and railroad tracks.And much similar to the SPP planning, which taken place behind closed doors, the TTC collaboration began in 2002 in Texas Governor Richard Perry's chambers, where state legislators and taxpayers were deliberately cut out of negotiations and the bidding process. Negotiations began together with the Spanish engineering transportation construction firm, Cintra Concesiones de Infrastructures de Transporte, S.A., a subsidiary within the Grupo Ferrovial, which makes a speciality of toll roads and car parks and considered a leading developer of private-sector infrastructure throughout Europe.Within the center of negotiations for multiple legs with the Superhighway Corridor throughout Texas, is none other than Rudolph Giuliani's law office which landed the Comprehensive Development Agreement for any widening of Interstate-35, now termed as the TTC-35, beyond just the Master Development Plans for State Highways 121 and 130 among other legs of your TTC. All negotiations for Cintra were and are usually presently handled through attorney at law, Bracewell & Giuliani, LLP, of which Republican Presidential candidate, Rudolph Giuliani, is a senior executive partner since March 2005. His attorney is definitely the exclusive lawyer for Cintra. Bracewell & Giuliani is comprised of 400 attorneys, within Houston, TX with offices in Ny, Washington, D.C., London and Kazakhstan.Cintra merged with San Antonio, TX-based Zachry Construction Corp. to help you land the contracts, where Zachry owns a 20% interest. The Cintra-Zachry proposal for TTC-35 carries a private investment all the way to $6 billion in upfront payments towards the complete construction, design and operation from the 316-mile toll road between Dallas and San Antonio, giving Cintra the right to set tolls and keep toll road profits for that quantity of Half a century, because will for every road it's got contracted.The NAFTA Superhighway along with its corridors will run from Southwestern Mexico through Laredo, Austin and Dallas, TX, into Kansas City, KA, in the role of an inland customs port. The corridor will split in Kansas with one leg gonna Winnipeg, Canada through Omaha, NE. And the second leg stays in Toronto, Canada through Des Moines, IA, Chicago, IL and Detroit, MI.Approximately 10 lanes, one-mile wide will incorporate double rails and pipelines. The actual corridor is planned from Brownsville to Houston, TX through Arkansas, Memphis, TN and into Norfolk, VA. Since the principal use for these corridors may be to speed Asian goods into your Central and Eastern U.S., it will require 145 acres of land per mile or 540,000 total acres of land. And Texas, hawaii may utilize their own discretion in utilizing eminent domain law in order to reach its goal.Had gasoline tax revenues been properly allocated and solely available to highway projects over time, neither Texas nor numerous other states might be as are anxious for funds since they claim they now are, a large amount of highway funds have been discovered to experience been raided for other state projects and public funding.The citizens of Texas only as recently as February 2007 started to attend state legislative hearings where lots of state lawmakers themselves were starting understand the Cintra contracts. Several have feedback a moratorium on around the TTC-35 project, envisioned being high-speed highway, until they're able to evaluate issues like eminent domain, cost benefit analysis, environmental impact and homeland security ramifications.Most interesting on the whole story isn't only has Mr. Giuliani's involvement within the NAFTA Superhighway never being previously publicly addressed, so how a foreign company is awarded the house of an mass highway system, versus keeping it up, somebody in charge of in U.S. history, and negotiated via the law firm in the top Republican candidate running for President of the us. And truly disturbing is how such will not just have national and homeland security and sovereignty implications but what it's deliberately being kept off the Halls of Congress.Giuliani fancies himself for an expert on homeland security issues with a law enforcer. And that he has amassed quite the portfolio since 2002, earning $20 million in this year alone, by selling himself that way. He owns Giuliani Partners, Giuliani Safety & Security and Giuliani Capital Advisors. In March 2007 he sold Giuliani Capital Advisors, an ancient Ernst & Young finance company he purchased in 2002, to Macquerie Infrastructure Consortium. Not coincidentally, it's a partner of Cintra's with its shared operations of toll roads within both Indiana and Chicago, IL.Bracewell & Giuliani represents most of the biggest multi-national oil, utility infrastructure and financial corporations in the U.S. and abroad. With who have come the connections that Giuliani appears to have been capable of tap into for campaign donors, a factor for his presidential bid, installing Texas but nationwide, as they is considered the consummate globalist. But more troubling than potential conflicts appealing being a public servant is his deficit of compunction to secure U.S. borders and then planting himself squarely in the course of one of the controversial and historic highway system projects for the reason that 1956 National Federal-Aid Highway Act.Particularly unnerving, given Guiliani's personal experience on 9-11, is his defense of open borders no matter what while condoning the NAFTA Superhighway Corridor and also extension its northern border American Union, without worrying about the purview or consent for the U.S. Congress or will from the United states citizens.Provide have observed it coming when Giuliani enacted Special Order 40 in 1994, during his tenure as Mayor of brand new York City, in ordering law enforcement officers to no longer confirm the legal status of suspects caught violating the law. We should always can see it coming when Rudolph Giuliani single-handedly decided that illegal aliens had not been lawbreakers plus quit upholding legal issues. And unfortunately we currently do view it coming. But sadly, he could now sometimes be handed the chance to now not defend and respect the U.S. Constitution of the us of America.Copyright ©2007 Diane M. Grassi
Contact: dgrassi@cox.net
