LOU DOBBS TONIGHT: NAFTA Superhighway

Aired May 28, 2008 - 19:00   ET [CNN]

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[ EXCERPT ]

DOBBS: Well open borders advocates are refusing to acknowledge rising evidence of plans for a NAFTA superhighway. Many in the mainstream media absolutely refuse to acknowledge the reality. The plans could be a major step toward that North American Union of the United States, Canada and Mexico.

President Bush says opponents of a NAFTA superhighway in his view are laying out a conspiracy. Senator Obama says he sees no evidence of a North American Union. Even some news organizations are criticizing me for raising the issue.

"TIME" magazine journalist Joe Klein accused me of, "spewing false inflammatory nonsense". So we asked Bill Tucker to report on the issue. He found there's plenty of evidence of plans for new transportation links between Mexico and Canada and only in my opinion a fool would refuse to see those links.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BILL TUCKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): There is no NAFTA superhighway. Not officially. Some even call it the invention of the far right wing, but some politicians find the denials almost laughable.

REP. TED POE (R), TEXAS: The folks in Washington are in denial about the super NAFTA highway or whatever you want to call it. It's the concept that there will be a highway, free trade from Mexico through the central part of the United States all the way to Canada.

TUCKER: In Texas planning a development is under way for what are officially called transportation corridors. The Trans Texas Corridor, I-69, a combination of rail lines, utility lines, car and truck lanes, plan to be as wide as three football fields laid end to end.

It will be financed by a private foreign company. Most likely Spain Centra (ph) who will then own the lease on the road and the revenue generated by the tolls. Texas may use eminent domain to lay claim to some of the land needed to build it. For an imaginary road there's a lot of money and effort involved in some very real opposition.

UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (INAUDIBLE) TERRI HALL, TEXASTURF.ORG: There's just no doubt that this is happening. We've been to the public hearings. We've seen the presentations. We've seen the documents. We waded through them and there's a whole lot more groups besides just ours. And we've got Farm Bureau, Sierra Club, a whole host of groups from the left and the right.

TUCKER: In Kansas a resolution opposing the superhighway overwhelmingly passed the State House.

JUDY MORRISON, KANSAS STATE LEGISLATURE: The documentation is there and some of it has been obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, so I think that when you read this it is very hard to believe.

TUCKER: The lawmakers concerned about the impact of increased traffic flowing into Kansas City where an intermodal center known as the Kansas City Smart Port is being developed to capitalize on flow of good from Mexico's Port of Lazaro Cardenas to the nation's heartland.

The Smart Port Web site says it offers quote, "the heart of a rail corridor spanning coast to coast across the U.S. and extending from Canada to Mexico, a NAFTA railway. And what drives it all? Imports, the U.S. Business and Industry Council, a business group, says in the past 10 years imports from and passing through Mexico rose by 326 percent, reaching almost $211 billion last year.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TUCKER: And according to the Texas Department of Transportation, three-quarters of all the traffic from Mexico to the United States comes across the Texas border and all that traffic they say needs to be accommodated somehow and, Lou, it's hard for an imaginary road to accommodate that much real traffic.

DOBBS: It's what happens when you have, let's say, so-called mainstream journalists in what I would call Napoleonic denial. They're laughable. They are so arrogant in their ignorance of these issues and yet the little delititions (ph) step in to it as if they know something.

They think it's like they're political reporting that they can simply bring an impressionistic brush across the sweep and that that will pass for facts. Good job. We'll keep reporting on the NAFTA superhighway so the little darlings can finally figure out what in the heck is going on in this country should they want to.

It's inconvenient to the orthodoxy and the establishment press of course as it is the establishment of political parties who would love to see this accommodation take place irrespective of the discomfort, the dislocation that it would cause American citizens and property owners. Thanks, Bill Tucker.

Well Congressman Ron Paul is the only presidential candidate who has come out against the NAFTA superhighway. In point of fact, he's the only candidate who even acknowledges it exists.