I wasn’t able to attend yesterday’s special City Council meeting. So I didn’t get to witness the Hunt Institute for Global Competitiveness’ presentation. Fortunately, KVIA had me covered.
“So what the Hunt Institute is trying to do, we are trying to show our community from a regional perspective. We are trying to show how everything fits together so we can rely on each other. So we can make a lot of complementary investments in aerospace for example, in energy between New Mexico, Texas and Chihuahua, with water and infrastructure, ” [Patrick Schaefer, the Institute’s executive director] said. “We can tell a story that no other region can tell based on the shared assets and the shared prosperity and shared future of our communities here.”
. . .
“There is no other region if you look at the map of North America that is situated strategically between such key cities markets and regions. We are half way between Los Angeles and Chicago. We are between Albuquerque and Chihuahua city. We are between Los Angeles and Houston. So if we can think about and understand what things are being traded between these cities, what things are coming into these cities, what these cities are manufacturing us as intermediaries can always benefit from learning what is coming through and how we can add value to it,” Schaefer said.
Obviously I am not as smart as Patrick Schaefer, because I don’t see how being located between manufacturing hubs can help us. What are we going to do, open truck stops? Motels? Charge tolls and tariffs?
I’ve got an idea, let’s become land pirates, like characters from a Mad Max movie.
El Paso only exists because it is between places. In 1659, the Spaniards founded El Paso del Norte as a transit point on the Camino Real. It was a way through. It still is.
Typically, when freight is loaded for delivery, the shipper wants to keep the truck, or railway car, or shipping container, sealed until it reaches its destination, to assure that there’s no loss or adulteration of the original product. I have no idea what Mr. Schafer’s plan is, unless he wants to throw up some graffiti art on the containers.
Also, an alert commenter at KVIA noted that Denver is located between Chicago and Los Angeles. El Paso is a detour, and it’s dangerous, because of the burgeoning land-pirate industry in the region.
Of course, I’m basing all of my assumptions on KVIA’s reporting, and prior results delivered to date. I’d love to hear the whole presentation, but I guess I never will, because those Special Meetings aren’t recorded, as far as we know.
Sanders already knew the added value. Bought the entire swath of borderland on both sides to put up warehouses and import/export waystations. I’d garner he’s got opportunistic enterprise fully covered on all levels.
Meanwhile, as long as transportation giants, like Fedex, ship packages from California, destined for El Paso, right on through and beyond El Paso, all the way to Dallas, we are not even close to being what they used to call a transportation hub, are we?
So true, John Dungan, and when airline routes are still routinely sending us East before we can go to our Westward destinations there’s a schism in their so-called strategy.
El, consider yourself lucky that you didn’t have to listen to that politician-jive, convoluted, gobbledygook caca. But it actually looks kind of fun so let me give it a try…..The monetary ramifications of a sustainable regional developmental outcome is paramount to the interwoven fabric of the adjacent communities. This is why joint proprietary consequences is processed through conglomerates that have only the most positive of outcomes. – OMG, l just spoke “weasel talk” and it WAS kind of fun! Don’t worry, l’m going to quarantine myself for at least a few weeks.