Home of Today's Common Sense

Published Brownsville Herald Jan 31, 2011

President Obama recently said he wants to put our economy into overdrive in an effort to appear to be governing from the political middle. The goal sounds good and has worked in the past, but the primary focus should certainly not be by government fiat.
One can just look around the community to see what opportunities for exist for entrepreneurs.
They are the people we need most. Business leaders — not politicians — create the wealth and drive the progress that moves our community forward.
Presidents John Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and even George Bush started the recovery of failing economies by lowering taxes and reducing the size of government during each of their administrations.
Obama’s administration already has initiated steps to seriously enlarge government with the old cliché, “to help those in need,” which merely produces more people who need to be helped. The most recent measure to control all of us is by taking control of medical services and forcing everyone to buy insurance and deal with the government for that service. It costs us all more money for fewer services.
The government has created statistical functions to create the reporting of costs as compared to incomes.
My friend Ed Mishou wrote in the Jan. 24 “Herald” about the reality of the consumer price index. “Simply put, the government manipulates the CPI to keep it artificially low in order to not provide for those pension increases,” he wrote.
“The CPI will continue to be an unrealistic indicator of the ‘cost of living.’ If Congress members would limit all federal pay adjustments, including their own, to the CPI, then you might begin to see a little less manipulation,” he continued.
Read it. Cut it out and put it on your refrigerator. Look at it every time you shop. See how the government creates the information it provides to “help us.”
Border residents have always had dealt with high prices by going to Mexico for lower costs on some things such as medical items. Now the lawlessness has reduced that option. The recent increases in jobs and business in the Valley seem to have been lost — what can be done?
Well, for one, we could help business leaders invest in the future by developing more trade opportunities with Central America, using smaller multipurpose vessels to sail around the unrest in Mexico.
Some readers might remember the Regal Voyager, a ferry that ran between Port Isabel and Puerto Cortes, Honduras. It carried up to 450 passengers and up to 360 cars or 60 tractor-trailers laden with cargo.
There were 21,153 transmigrantes exporting vehicles during 1993, which more than doubled to 50,409 by 1994 when I retired.
The numbers doubled again to 107,066 by 2008, and then started receding in 2009 when the extraordinary violence in Mexico began to be felt.
The Isabel Cortes Ferry Service operated for one year. It would be valuable now.
The Inter-development Bank aims to bring about development to Latin America and Caribbean countries to reduce poverty and inequality. While it’s a regular bank in many ways, it also provides grants, and does technical research. IDB’s shareholders are 48 member countries, including 26 Latin American and Caribbean borrowing members.
The bank studied trade through the Pan-American Maritime Highway and issued a report in March 2010. From what information I was able to glean from excerpts of the study and general conversation with some of the study participants, a number of valuable insights have convinced me even more that the Pan-American Maritime Highway is a concept whose time is overdue.
Perhaps some of our “real movers and shakers” could work with IDB to develop a real transportation network that would fit our needs.
The advancement of modestly priced transportation choices between North, Central and South America will do more to improve Western Hemisphere cohesion and stability than any other single thing that could be done.
Just for a moment, picture yourself with a small three-ship ferry operation at the point in history when relations normalize with Cuba. Even more serious profits and expansion would exist. Also envision the evolution of a cohesive hemispheric logistics system with central distribution points in Cuba and ferries of different sizes and purposes steaming off like a compass star. It would permit immediate transportation systems to develop using current and older equipment, trailers, rail cars etc.
It would also require that countries get along better to work out equipment interchanges, uniform vehicle licensing, safety requirements, etc.
Such a project could spur economic growth, and become a basis of stability in our part of the world.