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Reporter's Notebook: Stephen Peacock

Building (Mexican) Bridges... With U.S. Tax Dollars

Posted by Stephen Peacock - August 3, 2007 at 9:22 pm
The blame-game has begun over this week's deadly collapse of the Interstate 35 bridge in Minnesota. Pundits and analysts are posing questions such as "Is the federal government doing enough to maintain the nation's bridges and highways?" More specific to Narcosphere readers, I pose an additional question: if indeed there are such structural shortcomings in the national infrastructure of the United States, why then are U.S. taxpayers being fleeced to help upgrade Mexico's highways and ports? The answer, of course, is that such subsidies enable U.S.-based multinationals to simultaneously siphon the U.S. Treasury -- and hence the pockets of U.S. citizens -- to more effectively exploit the Mexican labor pool.

As I reported here and via ThePeacockReport.com, the U.S. Trade & Development Agency (USTDA) last year began financing several "feasibility studies" leading toward the eventual financing of projects to modernize Mexican transportation and shipping networks. The goals of these endeavors were to ease the shipment of goods in and out of Mexico, as well as to ameliorate the flight of companies from Mexico to Asia, where even cheaper labor could be found, believe it or not. It's time for policymakers and the mainstream media to take a closer look at this theft by the USTDA. See U.S. Developing Port & Highway Master Plan for another look at this questionable initiative.

About Stephen Peacock

Biography
I'm a former Washington, DC, journalist (1998-2003) who most recently worked for Communications Daily and Washington Internet Daily (WID), investigative newsletters that cover the telecommunications, broadcast and Internet industries. Following the 9/11 attacks, my news beat expanded beyond Capitol Hill telecom/TV/IT policy and began to include technology-policy coverage at the Pentagon and Dept. of Homeland Security. I've written over a thousand articles about government and industry affairs, and I'm pleased to say that I was the reporter who broke the story about the Total Information Awareness surveillance/data-collection initiative of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. I've written articles for publications including NACLA Report on the Americas, Drug Enforcement Report, Corrections Journal, SoJo Mail (Sojourners), and the Tampa Tribune. I've also written a memoir about my former career as a plainclothes security officer of the Helmsley Palace hotel in New York City, Hotel Dick: Harlots, Starlets, Thieves & Sleaze. I look forward to contributing to the fine work being done here at NarcoSphere.

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