Showing posts with label trucking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label trucking. Show all posts

Saturday, January 05, 2008

What would happen if you ignored the law?

I've taken a lot of flak from right wing "law and order" types, who, especially when they talk about illegal immigration, always come back to "the law is the law and they broke it."

Well, last year, congress voted to cut off funding for a pilot program that allows Mexican trucks drive deep into the US, a provision of NAFTA. Bush signed the bill cutting off funding for the controversial program, making it the law of the land. The program, administered by the Bush administration's Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, part of the Department of Transporation, has not been cut. In fact, the FMCSA

...quietly acknowledged last week that the program is still under way, adding that it has issued permits to 11 Mexican companies with a total of 56 trucks.


Senator Byron Dorgan (D, ND), in a letter to Transportation Secretary Mary Peters, called for an immediate end to the program. Well, that ought to stop it, eh? After all, when the branch of government that is supposed to enforce the laws is actually breaking the law, what's a lonely executive brancher to do? Go to court? The Teamsters union is suing. But, how much will the anti-union CEOs make in the mean time by using cheaper Mexican labor as truckers in this country?

What do you GOP voters think about an administration that just ignores laws it doesn't like. Bush signed this law. Why not just veto it? This pattern of ignoring the law looks like a full assault on the constitution, the opposite of what Bush and Cheney swore in their oaths of office.

This is, of course, another example of what David Addington, Cheney's Chief of Staff,
told us was going to happen.

"We're going to push and push and push until some larger force makes us stop."


There is only one larger force that will stop these people. Impeachment.