Community Forum: Now is not the time for building toll roads

July 14, 2008 10:34 PM

Editor:
The governor's proposed program, "Keep Texas Moving," smells of an urging to the citizens of the state to get on the toll road bandwagon.

Wherever there is a problem of congestion on any of our interstate system, it will not be solved by having toll roads.

The original purpose of the interstate system was not adhered to not only in Texas, but around the country. Various cities and towns did not like the idea of bypassing their locations and wanted to have many accesses, when the original idea was to get away from the local traffic.

With the present fuel problem in a mood to get worse, traffic will not be on the increase, but will develop into massive decreases as the populace makes many changes in coping with the fuel costs that will have to be dealt with. The superhighway idea has reached the point where it is not the method for people and material transport to go from place to place.

The biggest mistake made in the transportation arena in this country was the neglect of a mass transit system by rail. Rapid transport by rail can be observed in all of Europe and Japan and other countries of the world and are a much safer and efficient method of mobility for people and materials.

Now, the Texas Department of Transportation wants to mess around some more with overpasses on Expressway 77 and a few other money-wasting projects to keep you motorists and others in keeping the pot full of them to splurge.
Carl R. Strong
Harlingen
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Socialist countries happy, peaceful and live better
Editor:
Now that Mr. Segel has turned over Maxine's "rock" and found socialism lurking below ("Socialism crawled out from Maxine's rock," June 21), perhaps we should take a good look at what else was found.

One way to compare democratic countries to socialistic countries is to look at the results of each. Starting with the United Nations Human Development Index - currently accepted as a good measure of the standard of living - we find that eight of the top 10 countries are socialist.

(Experts disagree about whether Switzerland, which is ranked seventh, is socialistic, which would make it nine out of 10, but my point is clearly made without including it.)

The United States ranks 12th. OK, so our standard of living is lower than most socialist countries; at least we are a democratic country. The Economist's Democracy Index finds nine of the top 10 most democratic countries are socialistic (and, if you add Switzerland, all 10 would be.) The United States ranks 13th.

Even if we are not more democratic, we surely must be more peaceful. Actually, in the Economist's Global Peace Index, the United States ranks 96th, just above Iran, while our neighbor to the north ranks eighth.

So ... I guess we are just happier with our democratic capitalism than they are with their socialistic capitalism. No, not according to researchers at Britain's University of Leicester who found, when creating their Happiness Index, that Denmark's socialist folks are the happiest. We came in 23rd. (See Business Week for details and the rankings of the other socialistic countries.)

Perhaps we ought to see what these countries are doing that we are not doing, and what we are doing that they are not doing ... if we care. If so, keep in mind that there are two steps necessary before developing any solutions: Step 1.) Accept the facts. Step 2.) Acknowledge the problem. Step 3.) Act to solve it.

It seems to me that many U.S. citizens have not yet arrived at Step 1.
R. Gary Dean
Omaha, Neb.
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Navarro case the latest in Valley corruption
Editor:
It appears there's a few more in need of lawyers and excuses to wait out the few months before they walk away, just like many others have before them.

Teresa Navarro was the Democratic election administrator for Hidalgo County. Others in this little episode are Amado Cavazos, Patricia Zapata and Rene Solis. They all have been indicted by grand juries for allegedly being thieves, which is about as low as you can stoop when it involves taxpayers' money.

Its almost an everyday occurrence here in good old South Texas for an appointed or elected person to be caught stealing. It's really a sick situation for people here to accept this as a common practice and treat it as a joke.

Anyone would have to be beyond naive to not believe this to be one of the most corrupt areas in the United States. Here in South Texas, we don't tolerate political corruption, we demand it.
L.L. Webb
Rio Hondo
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