Truckers bristle at anti-terror rules

Con-Way Transportation Services' truck drivers mostly haul common household products such as house paint and nail polish - potentially hazardous to the environment if a truck tipped over, but hardly weapons of mass destruction.
....
Beginning May 31, the 2.7 million truckers who haul materials that the government deems hazardous will face immigration and criminal background checks before they can renew special commercial licenses. The licenses allow them to haul everything from explosives and radioactive medical waste to Bic lighters and household cleaning products.
....
But trucking companies and associations criticize the program, which has been in effect since Jan. 31 for drivers seeking hazardous-materials licenses for the first time. They say it's a costly, unnecessary burden for drivers and question whether it will enhance security.
....
"We've already experienced drivers saying, 'I'm not going to go through this. I'll go work for Wal-Mart where I'll haul paper towels and power tools,' " says Cliff Harvison, president of National Tank Truck Carriers, which represents 210 trucking companies that employ about 40,000 drivers with hazardous-materials licenses.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/usatoday/20050420/pl_usatoday/truckersbristleatantiterrorrules

Talk about a paranoid white house.

more inflation - wow.

We need people to realize that the anti-terror fever will eventually reach them too - hopefully before it's too late.

Has to get bad enough to change. On the other hand, I am imagining someone being accused of terrorism by wanting to put nail polish on Mr.bush's toenails.

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

And yes, it may serve as a wake up call to the
rest of Amerikkka.
Can't you just see it now?
All the nail salons and manacurists in the country having to
meet HS requirements, screenings and investigations to operate
with all those bottles of flammable polish and remover?
:silly: BHN

What is it when to work, one must first payoff a bully?

I wonder what happens to the pensions of these truck drivers, one's who've been in the biz for a long time, and who decide they don't want this trouble?

Pensions?
Truckers?

:rofl:

FreedomWorks (GOP PR group)
May 12, 2000
Scott Hodge
Virtually all of the major unions in the U.S. have joined Vice President Al Gore in a well-orchestrated campaign against any proposal that would to allow workers to invest a portion of their Social Security taxes in personal retirement accounts that they control. Like Gore, the union bosses say that personal retirement accounts will undermine Social Security and put workers’ retirement “at risk” to the uncertainties of the stock market.
If the stock market is so risky, then why does virtually every union pension fund in America invest the bulk of their assets in the “risky” stock market? Gone are the days when America’s major union pension funds invested most of their money in Las Vegas and Atlantic City. They are doing the smart thing by investing workers’ pension funds in real assets that will grow in value over time and be there when its time to pay workers’ retirement benefits.
<snip>
The Western Conference of Teamsters Pension Trust has 40 percent of its $22 billion in assets invested in domestic stocks.
<snip>
Al Gore and the union leadership are out of touch with their own rank and file: a recent Zogby poll showed that more than 66 percent of union members would “support Social Security privatization if it allowed you to take your Social Security money and invest it in a retirement account of your choosing.”
http://www.freedomworks.org/informed/issues_template.php?issue_id=566

FAST FORWARD FOUR YEARS

November 15, 2004
In the 1960's and 1970's, the Teamsters' huge Central States pension fund was a wellspring of union corruption. Tens of millions of dollars were loaned to racketeers who used the money to gain control of Las Vegas casinos. Administrative jobs were awarded to favored insiders who paid themselves big fees. A former Teamster president and pension trustee was convicted of trying to bribe a United States senator.
Yet for nearly half a million union members who are expecting the fund to pay for their retirement, those may have been the good old days.
Since 1982, under a consent decree with the federal government, the fund has been run by prominent Wall Street firms and monitored by a federal court and the Labor Department. There have been no more shadowy investments, no more loans to crime bosses. Yet in these expert hands, the aging fund has fallen into greater financial peril than when James R. Hoffa, who built the Teamsters into a national power, used it as a slush fund.
http://www.cepr.net/Economic_Reporting_Review/nytimesarticles/teamsters_11_22.htm

You, too, can lose your life savings. Invest in Enron today.
You, too, can lose your retirement funds. Invest in BushCo today.

and it will only get worse---next they will want to place a computer chip under their skin so they can tell where they are at all times---its going to be one awful world unless we the people get our act together and shut it down

Time to put the foot down on the Patriot Act now.

now it will only get worse

Who stands to gain if trucking is weakened? Who would step in? Are they business partners with BushCo?

truly hazardous stuff being transported. They could refuse licenses to anyone who refused to drive the crap.

They all sounded very content to keep George W. as their preznit.

One in Ohio said, "I'm for Bush, there isn't anybody running against him."

Cry in your beer, Mr. 18 wheeler.

He thinks he is a conservative (votes that way), although if you ask him his actual positions on a multitude of issues he is actually quite liberal (pro-choice, anti-capital punishment, pro-drug legalization, lapsed Catholic, etc.). He just thinks truckers must be conservative, hence he must be conservative, hence he must vote conservative. It is a sort of tribal identification. I think this is actually rather common with a lot of job groups.

mostly and deserve more than they get. My entire family vote dem. Can't judge a book by its cover. And, if they didn't drive it, you wouldn't have it.

Like I say, he is a friend. I am just making the observation that people's political self-identity is often framed by their inclusion in a larger group, rather than a personal introspection of their actual beliefs. I think this is why so many people don't vote their interests, as they say.

There are, of course, many exceptions to this observation, as you point out. Happily so, it keeps politics interesting, and unpredictable.

I went on a 10 trip with my trucker friend once, just riding along for the experience. It was a very worthwhile time, and made me appreciate what they do.

It's not like they have great listening choices while on the road. Lame music stations that play the same old shit over and over and over... right wing talk, sports and religion. If truckers are rightards, that is where they are getting it from.

of Shrubya's ability to "protect us from terrorists" now? He said Kerry couldn't be trusted to keep the US "safe" so he voted for Bush...:eyes:

God damn truckers are anti american. God damn commies. What are they trying to hide? (Me thinks the right wing needs to start berating truckers for their lack of patriotism.)