I hope I'm misreading your implications when you say "you make your children obey you by physical means", because it sounds like you're accusing the parent commenter of child abuse. I'm sure that's not what you intended but I wanted to make it clear how that could come across.
Spanking isn't considered abuse in American culture. But you can make children obey physically without spanking. There is snatching from them, picking them up, etc. Those are physically asserting yourself over them to enforce a specific outcome. Not saying that's good or bad, just showing how the poster didn't imply abuse.
As for any of those projects? Likely just a facade for what's really been going on which is essentially good ol' boy politics to keep the money flowing and people in power. The place you want to look at is Marshall, TX. It's not really that exciting of a town but you can find economic reports of that community so see that it's not really a hotbed of economic growth outside of the oil field business.
My opinion comes from many years of maintaining gas stations from DFW to Shreveport off I20 and all through ETX.