Opinions on Mexican truck drivers being allowed in US?

it's like American food but with a little more northern exposure!!

 

haha.. Canadian mountain moose oysters for sure, or was that Canadian mounty?

 

Did someone say Mountee?

 

To sum it up, were screwed..

 

http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm/issuebriefs_ib119

NAFTA AND THE STATES
Job destruction is widespread
by Jesse Rothstein and Robert Scott
September 19, 1997 Issue Brief #119

Proponents of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), eager to expand it to Chile and other Latin American nations, have consistently used misleading job numbers to support their case. For example, the Clinton administration claims that 2.3 million jobs in the U.S. are supported by exports to Mexico and Canada, with 311,000 of them attributable to increased trade under NAFTA. It also claims that rising exports have created jobs in every state in the U.S. (EOP 1997).

Discussions of trade, however, must consider imports as well as exports. Ignoring the effect of imports is like trying to balance a checkbook by counting the deposits and not the withdrawals. If the U.S. exports 1,000 cars to Mexico, many Americans will be employed in their production and assembly. If, however, the U.S. imports 1,000 cars from Mexico rather than building them domestically, then a similar number of Americans who would have otherwise been employed in the auto industry will have to find other employment. The analysis used in this study considers both imports and exports in assessing NAFTA's effect on U.S. employment and corrects for methodological problems that have plagued earlier studies. The study reveals that an exploding deficit in net exports with Mexico and Canada has eliminated 394,835 U.S. jobs since NAFTA took effect in 1994 (Table 1), contributing significantly to the 4% decline in real median wages since 1993.

Although gross U.S. exports have increased dramatically, with real growth of 31% to Mexico and 24% to Canada, these gains have been dwarfed by the growth in imports, which have increased by 87% from Mexico and 33% from Canada. By 1996, the United States' net export deficit with its NAFTA partners, which was $16.1 billion in 1993, had surged to $48.3 billion (all figures in inflation-adjusted 1987 dollars).

Job Loss in All 50 States
This study's analysis allows a determination of NAFTA's impact on state-by-state employment (it also permits demographic breakdowns; see Rothstein and Scott 1997). The analysis shows that, despite claims to the contrary, all 50 states and the District of Columbia have experienced a net loss of jobs under NAFTA (Table 2). Exports are offset in every state by a larger loss of jobs due to imports. Net jobs lost range from a low of 621 jobs in Vermont to a high of 38,406 in California. Other hard-hit states include Texas, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida, each with more than 10,000 jobs lost.

Several states, notably Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Michigan, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas, experienced job losses disproportionate to their share of the overall U.S. labor force. These states have high concentrations of industries (such as motor vehicles, textiles, apparel, computers, and electrical appliances) in which a significant amount of production has moved to Mexico.

Some may dismiss these numbers as small relative to the size of the economy, but it is important to remember that the promise of new jobs was used by the Clinton administration and the business community as a principal justification for NAFTA. According to proponents, new jobs are supposed to compensate for the increased environmental degradation, economic instability, and public health dangers the agreement brings (Lee 1995, 10-11). If NAFTA does not deliver net new jobs, then it cannot provide enough benefits to offset the costs it imposes on the American public.

As for NAFTA's impact on workers' wages, even when displaced workers are able to find new jobs in the growing U.S. economy, they face a reduction in wages, with average earnings declines of over 16% (Farber 1996). Their new jobs are likely to be in the service industry-the source of 112% of net new jobs created in the U.S. since 1993-where average compensation is only 77% of that in manufacturing (Mishel et al. 1997, 185).

A study commissioned by NAFTA's own Labor Secretariat further demonstrated that the wage effects of NAFTA extend beyond the workers who are actually displaced. The study found that many U.S. employers have been winning wage and benefit concessions from their workers simply by threatening to shut down and move production to Mexico. The percentage of firms that move rather than continue to bargain with their workers has tripled since NAFTA's inception (Bronfenbrenner 1997).

As the "Change in Real Median Wage" column of Table 2 illustrates, median wages in the United States dropped 4% between 1993 and 1996. NAFTA is not the only factor influencing wages, and several states (e.g., Indiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee) have experienced rising wages in spite of high job loss. Median wages, however, fell in 29 of the 50 states and in the District of Columbia; many states with high job losses attributable to NAFTA, especially Texas, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Alabama, experienced large drops in median wages.

Methodology 1
For this study we have developed a new model for analyzing the effects of trade on employment, solving some of the problems prevalent in current research. These problems include:

• looking only at the effects of exports and ignoring those of imports
• including foreign exports (transshipments)-goods produced outside North America and shipped through the U.S. to Mexico or Canada-as U.S. exports
• using trade data that have not been adjusted for inflation applying single employment multipliers to all industries, despite differences in labor productivity and utilization

This study's model is based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics' 183 sector employment requirement table, which was derived from the 1987 U.S. input-output table and adjusted to 1993 price and productivity levels (BLS 1996). We use three-digit-industry, SIC-based trade data (Census Bureau 1997), deflated with new industry-specific, chain-weighted price indices (BLS 1997a).

We have extended our model for this paper to calculate state-level employment effects. Imports and exports are allocated to the states on the basis of their share of three-digit, industry-level employment (BLS 1997b).2

Endnotes
1. See Rothstein and Scott (1997) for a more detailed treatment of the methodology used.
2. Other studies have allocated all employment effects to the state of the exporting company. (See, for example, California State World Trade Commision 1997, which finds 47,600 jobs created in California from increased trade with Canada alone.) This practice is problematic because the production-along with any attendant effects-need not have taken place in the exporter's state. If a California dealer buys cars from Chrysler and sells them to Mexico, these studies will find job creation in California. The cars, however, are not made in California; the employment effects should instead be attributed to Michigan and other states with high levels of auto industry production. Likewise, if the same firm buys auto parts from Mexico, the loss of employment will occur in auto industry states, not in California.

References
Bronfenbrenner, Kate. 1997. "We'll Close! Plant Closings, Plant-Closing Threats, Union Organizing and NAFTA." Multinational Monitor, March 1997, pp. 8-13.
Bureau of the Census. 1997. Unpublished data from "Special Compilation of U.S. Trade Statistics." Available in machine-readable form. U.S. Department of Commerce.

Bureau of Labor Statistics, Office of Employment Projections, U.S. Department of Labor. 1996. Employment Outlook: 1994-2005 Macroeconomic Data, Demand Time Series and Input Output Tables. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Labor.

Bureau of Labor Statistics, Office of Employment Projections, U.S. Department of Labor. 1997a. Unpublished data from upcoming Employment Projections. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Labor.

Bureau of Labor Statistics. 1997b. ES202 Establishment Census. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Labor.

California State World Trade Commision. 1996. "A Preliminary Assessment of the Agreement's Impact on California." Sacramento, C.A.: California State World Trade Commission.

Economic Policy Institute et al. 1997. The Failed Experiment: NAFTA at Three Years. Washington, D.C.: Economic Policy Institute.

Executive Office of the President (EOP). 1997. Study on the Operation and Effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Report to Congress.

Farber, Henry S. 1996. "The Changing Face of Job Loss in the United States, 1981-1993." Working Paper No. 360. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University International Relations Section.

Hufbauer, Gary Clyde and Jeffrey J. Schott. 1993. NAFTA: An Assessment. Washington, D.C.: Institute for International Economics.

Mishel, Lawrence, Jared Bernstein, and John Schmitt. 1997. The State of Working America 1996-97. Economic Policy Institute Series. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe.

Rothstein, Jesse and Robert E. Scott. 1997. "NAFTA's Casualties: Employment Effects on Men, Women, and Minorities." Issue Brief. Washington, D.C.: Economic Policy Institute.

Scott, Robert E. 1996. North American Trade After NAFTA: Rising Deficits, Disappearing Jobs. Briefing Paper. Washington, D.C.: Economic Policy Institute.

U.S. Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration. 1996a. "U.S. International Trade in Goods and Services, December 1996." Commerce News. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce. FT-900.

U.S. Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration, Office of the Chief Economist. 1996b. "Preliminary Data Release: U.S. Jobs Supported by Exports of Goods and Services." Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce.

U.S. Trade Representative. 1997. NAFTA-TAA "Alpha" Database, August 16, 1997.

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2 weeks old but it may open your eyes to what Uncle Sam is up to!

The NAFTA superhighway for Oklahoma?
Charlie Meadows
The Edmond Sun


EDMOND ' Last month in one of my columns I wrote about a possible plan to lease our turnpike system to a private entity in what is referred to as a "public-private partnership" often called a PPP. My contention is that by doing little more than changing the management of our turnpike system from a quasi-government authority to the private sector would result in much higher turnpike fees. This is because the private sector management team would want to reap a big ole profit for its investment and efforts.

However, there is another possible intention for those supporting the PPPs and that is to provide the financial mechanism to extend the NAFTA super highway north of the Red River, through Oklahoma, on its way toward Kansas City and eventually Canada. To be more accurate it actually will be a multi-modal transportation corridor.

The plan is for the corridor to extend from the deep water port of Lazaro Cardenas on the Pacific side of Mexico, which is hundreds of miles South of our border, all the way to Canada as one of 80 independent but interconnected corridors throughout the three nations.

In Texas it is referred to as the Trans-Texas Corridor. The project has become controversial with the Texas Legislature passing a veto-proof, two-year moratorium on the project toward the end of this year's session. Texas Gov. Rick Perry simply waited until the Legislature adjourned and then vetoed the legislation. Therefore, the massive project is proceeding with land being acquired, much of it through eminent domain takings.

With the corridor planned to be more than two football fields wide in some places it is expected to consume more than a million acres in Texas alone as it moves North, generally parallel to Interstate 35. The route north of Dallas has not been revealed at this time so we have no idea as to where it might cross the Red River. The plan calls for six lanes for autos, three each direction, two lanes each direction for trucks, multiple rail lines, utility-lines, pipelines and infrequent cross-overs. Just imagine the costs associated with cross-overs for a corridor that wide.

I like to refer to these corridors as the "cardiovascular system" necessary to create a "North American Union." Critics claim this is an effort to create a "Supranational" regional government, where individual member nations will begin to lose their sovereignty and national identity to an all-consuming regional government much like the European Union.

If the critics are correct, I believe such a move will have a dramatic impact on our God-given rights, our liberties and our ability to pursue happiness by being able to choose our course in life and control our own private property.

Folks in central Oklahoma as well as Tulsa soon will have an opportunity to hear top-notch speakers on these issues. Speakers who have been to many planning meetings, conferences and have researched volumes of information by the proponents of these efforts.

On Sept. 28, just two weeks from today, David Stall, city manager of Shoreacres, Texas, will be doing a Power Point presentation on this subject in the auditorium inside the Davison American Heritage Building on the campus of Oklahoma Christian University on Memorial Road. The meeting will begin at 6:30 p.m. and there is no charge to attend.

He will talk about the NAFTA I-35 superhighway, possible loss of U.S. sovereignty to courts outside of our judicial system, international financial consortiums, toll roads operating under 50- to 99-year leases, eminent domain confiscation of farm and ranch land, how the super corridors will limit access to local businesses and the financial impact on our communities.

The next day, Stall will be one of five speakers at the Defending America's Sovereignty seminar in Tulsa on the same issue.

This is a really huge issue that could affect the lives of all Americans. Therefore I would highly recommend making every effort to attend at least one of these two meetings.



CHARLIE MEADOWS is chairman of the Oklahoma Conservative Political Action Committee.

 

keep tellin um vulcan. Maybe somday they'll wake up but freind I'm afraid it'll be to late.

 

Keep smoking them is more like it.

Can someone of the North American Union and NAFTA Superhighway crowd please tell me why they think this would happen?

Why would Canada agree to it?
Why would Mexico agree to it?
Or is America going to forcibly overthrow these two countries?

This is all nonsense and you people need to worry about serious issues.

Like when will Britney Spears get her kids back.

P.S. It is already possible to drive from Laredo to International Falls. Not really news there kids.

 

You know this is happening right in front of our faces and we all just keep on smiling or making jokes. I think most people believe it could never happen here. Well think how many Americans in 1941 would have never dreamed Japan would attack us or How many Japanese never guessed we would have a bomb like we did or The Soviet Union never dreamed they would fall or Rome would fall. I could go on and on here of people believing their to great and nothing that horrible could happen to them, but it does and has.

I personally don't want my Grandkids to have to grow up in a country where there are two classes of people Rich and Poor and that's where were headed. I just feel the Mexican Truckers is just another nail in the coffin of the American Worker and the Middle Class.

 

By Philip Dine
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

WASHINGTON — Forget conspiracy theories about JFK's assassination, black helicopters, Sept. 11, 2001. This is the big one.
We're talking about the secret plan to build a superhighway, a giant 10- to 12-lane production, from the Yucatán to the Yukon. This "SuperCorridor" would allow the really big part of the plan to take place: the merging of the governments of Canada, the United States and Mexico. Say goodbye to the dollar, and maybe even the English language.
The rumor is sweeping the Internet, radio and magazines, spread by bloggers, broadcasters and writers who cite the "proof" in the writings of a respected American University professor, in a task force put together by the Council on Foreign Relations and in the workings of the Commerce Department.
As do many modern rumors, fears of a North American Union began with a few grains of truth and leapt to an unsubstantiated conclusion.


"There is absolutely no U.S. government plan for a NAFTA Superhighway of any sort," said David Bohigian, an assistant secretary of commerce. Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., a powerful member of committees that would authorize and pay for a North American Free Trade Agreement Superhighway if one were being planned, dismissed the notion as "unfounded theories" with "no credence."
And yet: A pending congressional resolution condemns it. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, speaks darkly of "secret funding" for it. Commentators fulminate against the four-football-fields-wide behemoth as a threat to private property, national security and "a major lifeline of the plan to merge the United States into a North American Community," as conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly wrote.
Conservative commentator Pat Buchanan writes that under the North American Union plan, "the illegal-alien invasion would be solved by eliminating America's borders and legalizing the invasion."
Congressional action
Responding to denials, Rep Virgil Goode, R-Va., the chief sponsor of the House of Representatives resolution opposing the NAFTA Superhighway, scoffed: "I've heard that line before. They're just calling it something else. ... It's a decrease in our security and an erasing of our borders."
Goode is hardly alone: His resolution has attracted 21 co-sponsors, from both parties.
"Nobody is proposing a North American Union," countered Robert Pastor, the American University professor to whom conspiracy theorists point as "the father of the NAU." They cite his 2001 book, "Towards a North American Community: Lessons from the Old World for the New," as the basic text for the plan. They also note his co-chairmanship of a Council on Foreign Relations task force that produced a 2005 report on cooperation among the three countries.
This is no backwoods rumor, no small-time concern. Google "North American Union" on the Internet and you'll find 113 million references (as of Friday evening).
Fears stoked
On one recent day alone, Pastor said, he received 100 e-mails on the topic. "They get turned on by [CNN's] Lou Dobbs and [Fox's] Bill O'Reilly, who are fearful that Mexicans and Canadians are about to take over our country," Pastor said, adding that such claims are a product of "the xenophobic or frightened right wing of America that is afraid of immigration and globalization."
Not that he doesn't think cooperation — short of a merger — is a good idea. He has testified before Congress on improving coordination within North America.
"The three governments are trying to grope toward a better way to relate to one another, but they are trying to do it under the radar screen, because they know any initiative would be both controversial and difficult to get approval of," Pastor said. "But precisely because they're doing it so quietly, the conservative crowd is concerned that they're really doing something important. But they're not. The real problem is that the three governments are asleep on the issue."
Tom Fitton is president of Judicial Watch, a conservative group that promotes accountability in government. He said his group was "investigating" the rumors and that, while it hadn't uncovered proof positive, the Bush administration was fueling suspicion by the way it was handling the issue.
"You've got all these ministries in the three countries working trilaterally on transportation, energy, food safety, health, pandemics and border security," Fitton said. "The concern from some on the right is that the process is not as transparent as it ought to be, and that it is a threat to sovereignty in the sense that they're talking about integration instead of just cooperation."
The supposed superhighway would be a monster, with high-speed lanes and freight rail lines, plus pipelines, water, fiber optics and electric power, with gasoline and food concessions, stores, hotels and emergency services in the median.
Those convinced that the full-bore NAFTA Superhighway is coming point to several disparate efforts that they say prove the government isn't telling the whole truth:
• The controversial effort to build the Trans-Texas Corridor, which would largely parallel existing highways, primarily moving freight. The suspicious see it as the NAFTA Superhighway's first leg.
• A Bush administration proposal to allow some Mexican trucks to drive deeper into the U.S. heartland than previously allowed. A bill to limit the program, proposed by Rep. Nancy Boyda, D-Kan., passed the House this week, 411-3. (Boyda, a congressional newcomer, defeated a five-term incumbent who had called the superhighway a myth.)
• North America's SuperCorridor Project, or NASCO. The Texas-based nonprofit coalition advocates for improvements along major trade corridors, such as Interstates 35, 29 and 94.
• The Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP). It's a collaborative effort on several fronts, including trade and security, by the United States, Canada and Mexico. Critics call it Ground Zero for the push for a North American Union.
Bohigian, the assistant secretary of commerce whose portfolio includes the SPP, said the effort is intended only to "reduce the cost of trade and improve the quality of life" through efforts such as decreasing the wait time for trucks idling at international borders. Reducing the average wait time from 35 minutes to six minutes has saved more than $1 billion, he said.
Fitton of Judicial Watch said much of the activity dates to the establishment on March 23, 2005, of the SPP by Bush, then-Mexican President Vicente Fox and then-Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin.
Notes obtained from the U.S. government after a meeting in Canada in September 2006 contained the phrase "evolution by stealth," Fitton said.
Matt Englehart, spokesman for the Commerce Department's International Trade Administration, said the North American partnership "is absolutely not a precursor" to a loss of American sovereignty.
"It's about smart and secure borders, promoting the safe and efficient movement of legitimate people and goods," Englehart said.
He described the work by the three governments as "standard intergovernmental diplomacy and coordination that occurs all the time on various issues."
What about that highway?
The federal government has no plans for a superhighway, Englehart said, but "there are private and state-level interests" pushing something similar. "They describe themselves as NAFTA corridors, but they're not federally driven initiatives, and they're not part of the Security and Prosperity Partnership."
Michael Barkun, a Syracuse University political scientist who specializes in conspiracy theories, said a major theme long has been "that schemes are being hatched to destroy American sovereignty."
"The only thing that's new here is that it appears in the guise of a North American Union," he said. "Previously it appeared in the guise of U.N. domination. I think whatever appeal this has may derive from the fact that there are pre-existing concerns about trade that have been around since the creation of NAFTA, and even more strongly the immigration issue in the sense of border security. So in a way it becomes an issue onto which all kinds of anxieties and concerns can be projected."
Doug Thomas, professor of communications, technology and culture at the University of Southern California, said the advent of the Internet has made conspiracy theories widely available.
"It's the speed and the distribution," he said. "People are able to join in and flush them out a little quicker, so everybody can add a piece to the puzzle."
Information from McClatchy Newspapers is included in this report.

Copyright © 2007 The Seattle Times Company



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