(TTNews.com)
Posted on 02/24/2007 2:35:24 PM PST by Pete-R-Bilt
(TTNews.com) |
In return, 100 U.S. trucking companies will be allowed to operate in Mexico but at a later date.
Calling for congressional hearings, Teamsters General President Jimmy Hoffa compared the announcement to the "Dubai Ports debacle," charging President Bush is "playing a game of Russian roulette on America's highways."
As WND previously reported, the Teamsters Union has strongly protested the opening up of U.S. highways to Mexican trucks, citing safety concerns.
A spokesman for Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development and Related Agencies, told WND the senator plans to hold hearings March 8 on the DOT pilot program.
A statement from Murray's office said she wants "to find out if the administration has really met the safety requirements that the law and the American people demand before long-haul Mexican trucks can travel across all our highways."
A spokeman from the office of Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, told WND hearings will most likely be held by Subcommittee on Highways and Transit, chaired by Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore.
Both Oberstar and DeFazio are traveling today and a spokesman from Oberstar's office said the lawmakers have not had a chance yet to confer, so no hearings have yet been scheduled.
Oberstar and DeFazio have posted statements on the homepage of the House Transportation and Infrastructure raising questions about DOT's proposed Mexican truck pilot program.
Todd Spencer, spokesman for the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, told WND that "to reach a conclusion that the safety regime in Mexico is compatible in any way, shape, or form with what we have here in the U.S. is ignoring reality. Mexico has never had hours-in-service regulations or drug testing of drivers. We still can't verify the accuracy of somebody's Commercial Driver’s License in Mexico for safety or compliance."
Spencer stressed the decision is not just a border decision.
"Once Mexican trucks are in the United States on this pilot program, they can operate everywhere in the U.S.," Spencer told WND. "If some state highway policeman in Vermont or Iowa stops a Mexican commercial truck in their state, they have absolutely no idea of deciding if that vehicle is in compliance with federal safety requirements. Who's going to provide the training or the equipment for state police to verify the legality of a commercial truck from Mexico, in terms of its cargo, its haul, its log book, or even the driver? Local police aren't going to have a clue."
Hoffa cited Mexico's inability to satisfy the DOT Inspector General's requirements for safety that have been mandated to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, or FMCSA.
WND previously reported applications of some 678 Mexican motor carriers seeking long-haul authority to operate about 4,000 vehicles was being held up pending the completed DOT Inspector General's review of proposed FMCSA rules regarding safety reviews for Mexican trucks seeking to operate in the U.S., including rules for on-site safety inspections in Mexico.
The DOT spokesman also affirmed to WND the FMCSA has now drafted regulations that the DOT Inspector General has accepted, after an audit of the enforcement mechanisms and regulations the FMCSA created.
The Teamsters Union posed to WND a series of "unanswered questions," including:
According to a DOT spokesman, the pilot program "is predicated on the notion that Mexican trucks operating in the U.S. under the pilot program will operate pursuant to every single requirement that pertains to U.S. trucks operating in the United States, including both safety and security requirements on both the state and federal level."
DOT has increased its inspection staff by some 270 inspectors to implement the program. Still, DOT plans to continue the on-site inspection activities in Mexico that were announced by DOT Secretary Mary Peters earlier this week in Monterrey, Mexico.
The DOT spokesman confirmed there is no limit to the number of trucks the 100 Mexican trucking companies can operate in the United States. There is no restriction on the roads within the United States that the Mexican trucks can travel once they are admitted in the pilot program at the border.
The Mexican trucks, however, will be limited to carrying international cargo, in that they will be prohibited from stopping at one point in the U.S. destined for another point within the country.
On their return home, Mexican trucks, however, will be allowed to pick up in U.S. cargo originating in the U.S. destined for delivery back to Mexico.
While in the U.S., the Mexican drivers will operate under U.S. rules and regulations, including those controlling hours of time allowed at the wheel without a break.
The DOT spokesman specified that under agreements with Mexico already in effect, Mexican and U.S. commercial driver's licenses will be consider equivalent during the pilot program.
Mexican trucks operating in the United States will be required to have U.S. insurance coverage for all liabilities, including traffic accidents.
"The intent is for the Mexican trucking operations in the U.S. to be indistinguishable from U.S. trucking operations," the DOT spokesperson affirmed, "except that the driver and the truck began their trip in Mexico."
"Wouldn't it be nice to have politicians that placed the welfare of the United States ahead of other countries?"
You're asking for too much. Both the gutless and the nasties are lacking this quality.
Hey I know that place
I'll be there in Fresno next week
and for many pesossss
Ok, I'll play the ignorant part here....
And the EPA is where......?
All the emission laws we have, in every state.....
lemme guess....don't apply...?
"Had this been a Mexican truck, driven by a Mexican national, what would she have received?"
A fistful of pesos?
"Our elected officials aren't making any decisions. They leave that up to the secretive business councils.."
They will only start making decisions if they or a member of their family gets run over by one of these trucks.
Imagine the potential for truckers to smuggle in illegal aliens. This is going to destroy the culture of the United States and she is going to lose her sovereignty. On top of it NAFTA should have been treated as a treaty because a treaty is defined as :
a : an agreement or arrangement made by negotiation: (1) : PRIVATE TREATY (2) : a contract in writing between two or more political authorities (as states or sovereigns) formally signed by representatives duly authorized and usually ratified by the lawmaking authority of the state b : a document in which such a contract is set down
However, because big business lobby didn't want to deal with a 2/3 majority needed to ratify a treaty in the Senate, Congress chose to treat as if it were normal legislation. The enforcement of this legislation should be immediately suspended and the laws should be repealed or overturned on consitutional grounds. Too bad our president doesn't care about US sovereignty or culture.
Another article in the San Diego Union Tribune on the Mexican trucks are coming.
Where are the Eco-WackOs.
This is constitutionally subversive and at the least a dangerous precedent to set. All agreements laws and treaties made in contradiction to the Constitution of the United States are null and void. Its too bad no one will wake up to this before the damage is already done. The longer it is allowed to continue, the more people will think that it is normal.
"This decision was made by our elected officials. We are a Republic.
Do you have a problem with that?"
I do, I have a problem with any elected official doing what he or she wants to do in violation of the Law. If it had been done properly, there would be no reason for the Congress to hold hearings. It seems to me that the only ones who have any idea of this is the administration.
Well, here it is: http://www.fina-nafi.org/eng/fina/presentation.asp?count=eng
A N. Am. Parliament idea.
Also see http://angelsfortruth.com/North%20American%20Union.html
for a grand look at the N Am security BS.
What then can we do?
I've certainly got a problem with it. It must be one of the dumbest decisions made by this administration.
Once complete, the new road will allow containers from the Far East to enter the United States through the Mexican port of Lazaro Cardenas, bypassing the Longshoreman’s Union in the process. The Mexican trucks, without the involvement of the Teamsters Union, will drive on what will be the nation’s most modern highway straight into the heart of America. The Mexican trucks will cross border in FAST lanes, checked only electronically by the new “SENTRI” system. The first customs stop will be a Mexican customs office in Kansas City, their new Smart Port complex, a facility being built for Mexico at a cost of $3 million to the U.S. taxpayers in Kansas City.
As incredible as this plan may seem to some readers, the first Trans-Texas Corridor segment of the NAFTA Super Highway is ready to begin construction next year. Various U.S. government agencies, dozens of state agencies, and scores of private NGOs (non-governmental organizations) have been working behind the scenes to create the NAFTA Super Highway, despite the lack of comment on the plan by President Bush. The American public is largely asleep to this key piece of the coming “North American Union” that government planners in the new trilateral region of United States, Canada and Mexico are about to drive into reality.
Do you oppose our Representative form of government and favor a true Democracy?
I for one believe we have lost the Republic. The buying and selling of America to foreign bidders atarted a long time ago, say, by 1920 anyway. FDR secured it. Johnson moved it forward.
With the corruption in DC so overpowering it's nauseating, I suppose this is a national political pastime.
When jackboots can take a boy out of his relatives arms and send him home to a communist papa, or, to anywhere else for that matter, without public standing those men down, Paul Revere and Ben Franklin are names in a book, not icons to live up to.
Clinton, though, was our Caligula. Hillary is our Nero. She'll burn us to bits.
This is just my 2 cents, and I do hear your differentiation.
I answered your post as fairly as I could.
Yes I do support our Republic. I spent most of my adult life defending the very Constitution it rests on.
What I said, and I reiterate, the administration has ignored our borders and violated the sanctity of our Country and our Constitution by continuing to allow unfettered access to our country by Illegal Aliens. This is not merely a jobs issue. This is a National Security issue. One that our Government is going to continue to ignore and overlook right up until the time that some terrorist group sneaks a nuke across that border (if they haven't done so already) and detonates it in one of our Cities.
This "North American Union" is treason in it's highest form, IF half of what is being said about it is true.
Our truckers don't get half of the lattitude these Mexican drivers will, and I assure you, sooner or later one of these vehicles is going to be dragging something far more sinister than lettuce across that border.
I work part time for a truck driver. I can assure you that when he's sitting in Laredo, TX waiting for a load to haul up north, he has no desire to ever take a load from the US into Mexico.
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