April 5, 2007
La Entrada and China
By Jack D. McNamara

The air in the Big Bend is still, as of this writing, breatheable.

At the same time that air if full of commentary concerning the detestable “La Entrada al Pacifico” (LEAP). Public meetings in Presidio, Alpine, Midland and Ft. Stockton brought out a large, well-informed and committed opposition to the LEAP. It is fair to say that the public in the core Big Bend communities of Alpine, Marfa and Ft. Davis heatedly oppose LEAP and will continue to do so. For the present the boosters, turnip truckers and boodlers are lying low in the grass.

We therefore have the beginning of a grassroots effort to kill or modify the project which proposes to put hundreds of trucks transporting goods and services from China to Mexico to the U.S. through our small and fragile communities daily.

This will be a long hard fight even if we succeed. We use the word “if” because there is substantial sentiment on the public record that LEAP is a “done deal.”

The term is denied by the Dallas coordinator for the TxDoT study (sometimes). Others use the term as a justification for supporting LEAP. And others still use the term as one of opprobrium against the project. So what does “done deal” mean?

At the center of the problem an increase in cross border traffic is an agreement to degrade the lives of citizens in the U.S. by exporting capital, jobs and national prerogatives to other nations, particularly Mexico and China. This “done deal” is memorialized as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) signed in 1994.  Both Republicans and Democrats promoted that deal including presidents George Herbert Walker Bush (Bush I) and Bill Clinton.

NAFTA has been followed by other agreements and this group of like-minded “free traders” more or less dominate the political process. They do it for money of course but many of that ilk truly believe in a world without borders, freely exchanging goods and services, moving labor wherever the cost is lowest. Halliburton goes to Dubai.

One element of the treaty is the upgrade of roads and ports, like Presidio-Ojinaga, to move the goods. Hence the prospect of more Mexican trucks.

But the Mexican trucks have been delayed for years on the premise that the Mexican system of truck regulation is not up to U.S. standards. This March the Bush Administration directed that a “pilot project” nevertheless be begun for six months. The U.S. Senate blocked (albeit temporarily) the Bush initiative.

So it is not necessarily a done deal.

But what about here in Texas? The Midland-Odessa area is the most enthusiastic promoter of LEAP and since 1992 a group calling itself MOTRAN (Midland-Odessa Transportation Alliance) has collected and spent millions lobbying the U.S. Congress and the Texas Legislature to put money into those Texas highways which are their preferred route for the NAFTA traffic — from Midland-Odessa to McCamey to Fort Stockton to Alpine to Marfa to Presidio. The Texas Legislature’s Republican Speaker of the House is Midland Representative Tom Craddick. Texas Governor Rick Perry’s most ambitious project has been a series of roads, rails and easements criss-crossing Texas with quarter-mile right-of-ways and private toll roads financed abroad. One of the corridors connects to the proposed LEAP.

In the current Texas Legislature the vocal opposition of farmers, ranchers and small communities has blocked the Governor-39%-Rick Perry's road project. This week the Lege and the Texas Department of Transportation stated that federal support for highways would be reduced for this biennial budget.

So it may be a done deal in the minds of some pols but they can’t do it without money.

If the globalists do anything with these roads the most expensive route is the one they propose. Longtime residents scratch their heads and wonder that if trucks are coming, why do they put them through the mountains? The most logical highway route is west of Marfa to I-10 in the vicinity of the intersection with I-20 at Kent.

Such a route would be less expensive than widening and bypassing Alpine and Marfa.

And of course the least expensive is to use the old South Orient railway to transport the truck containers rather than spend money for new highways.

Oops — the least expensive is not to do anything at all and TxDoT insists that this is an option.

One forgets oneself in trying to be fair to the proponents of an idea (MOTRAN), even if the proponents are the absurd LEAP. But Permian Basin business interests recently tried to take our water; now they threaten our air. Can the land be far beyond their acquisitive intentions?

Ray Hendryx of KVLF in Alpine characterized this deal as benefiting the “Red Chinese.” That’s what the greater La Entrada represents and our political leaders have been kowtowing (an appropriate word of Chinese derivation) since President Richard Nixon’s “opening” to China in 1973.

Nothing is “free” about trade with China. China is an authoritarian dictatorship which depends on slave labor and destructive development. The Chinese do not follow the international rules of conduct.

For 31 consecutive years the United States has run an increasing deficit in our balance of payments. We buy more in the world than we sell. In order to continue spending we borrow money. Increasingly we borrow from the Chinese with the result that China’s central bank now has the world’s largest foreign exchange reserves of $1.06 trillion. The Chinese use this money to buy influence in the world and pursue projects in their interest. Like dredging the port at Topolobampo so it can accommodate larger ships carrying more goods to sell to Americans.

This will be a long haul. The highway improvements projected to cross Copper Canyon are not even speculated for completion before 2010. We note that will be after our next presidential election. Something changed in the body politic in 2006 and that something included a revulsion against the boodlers who have been stealing from their fellow Americans.

In the modern world there are no deals which cannot be undone. •

(Also published by the Big Bend Sentinel of Marfa, Texas April 5, 2007.)