A Response to a Letter from

The Honorable Barack Obama President of The United States of America Moving Forward South Central Texas
By Gregory O'Dell July 4, 2011 Full article at http://www.burntorangereport.com/diary/11241/moving-forward-insouth-central-texas

Living in one of the hardest hit districts from the economic collapse of Fall 2008 in South Central Texas, a ride in the country side makes one's head hang low to avoid the view of every other farm with an empty house with broken windows that once had children playing and a big yellow school bus that was forever in the way of traffic. Taking a family ride south of San Antonio Texas, the view out the window is of ghost towns in the old west including an occasional tumble weed that rolls across farm to market roads in need of immediate maintenance. These small farm to market roads are the Royal Highways that makes mineral resources accessible. Rural Americans live on all the resources and produce the food that triggers economic prosperity of City States of the new millennium! All Rural Roads lead to American prosperity including our South American neighbors. Not too long ago, one could drive safely from north San Antonio on the Pan American Freeway all the way to Chile in 1995. Reference: FaceBook Image I have seen this down turn before when the strength of the American dollar put travelers on airplanes that ruined 1000 of miles of the passenger rail all the way to Mexico City. Not long ago, I could hop on train in one of two railway stations of Old San Antone with a backpack and a few hundred dollars in my pocket. The scenic view by rail was worth the few extra hours to visit friends living near ancient city ruins of the Aztec empire, deep and safely in to what has become a DMZ zone 500 miles wide between our border and the main metropolitan areas of the Republic of Mexico. You ask for my ideas to keep moving forward. I can tell you heads are up and people standing tall with the bustle of rough neck oil workers filling once empty cafes in small South Central Texas towns with just a dream- The American Dream! Economic recovery may be years down the road but you cannot tell it now on the faces of locals after the permitting opened for the Eagle Ford Shale drilling operations. If we want to keep moving forward in South Central Texas, is to go back in time of conservative spending by government and citizens. Invest some of the profits of oil wealth back in passenger rail that will make Argentina assessable to the average middle class family and heal relations with war

torn Mexico which will strengthen our border security better than a battalion of Army Soldiers, Squadron of Surveillance Drones, or an impenetrable wall twenty feet high, stretching from Del Rio to Matamoras. Reference FaceBook Page

Some would say that would take a miracle, or a goal that is not obtainable within reason. While others before us such as Friar Bartolome de Las Casas wrote in his letters to the King of Spain "Apologtica historia de las Indias" about the same Royal Highway made without heavy equipment or metal tools as follows:
Then, there is that miracle -- such it may be called for being the most remarkable, singular and skilful construction of its kind, I believe, in the world -- of the two highways.... across the mountains and along the coast. The finer and more admirable of these extends for at least six and perhaps eight hundred leagues and is said to reach the provinces of Chile....In Spain and Italy I have seen portions of the highway said to have been built by the Romans from Spain to Italy, but it is quite crude Citation: http://www.columbia.edu/acis/ets/CCREAD/lasbib.htm

A miracle is a positive event in our lives that seem to oppose the laws of physics or the natural order of things. Reinvesting in passenger rail, rural road maintenance, and freight lines from De Rio, Laredo, and Eagle Pass, would just take an investment of profits paid by oil resources. The return on investment would not only save Billions is wasteful sending on border control but regain trusted relations with our South American Neighbors and a balance in economic trade.

All Rural Roads Lead To Economic Prosperity

The construction and new routes of roads and freight railway are already in the works by oil companies to gain access to Eagle Ford Shale in South Central Texas. Why not keep on moving forward by laying new track where once the old systems lay, infrastructure lost by inexpensive fuel consuming air travel over the last 30 years in South Central Texas.
Gregory ODell 1290 Mc Coy Road Somerset Texas 78069 830-429-1965 arctotraveler@gmail.com