Free Republic

I live in a college town in the Midwest. Took a day off today to take a trip to a winery with my wife. When we passed the local shopping mall there were so many charter buses lined up I couldn't count them all. On the highway there were lines of them heading West as we headed East. I think it is pretty much a certainty they were filled with the illegals Brandon plans on replacing us with. I cannot adequately express the rage I feel at our country being stolen from us.

The Massachusetts National Guard was activated to help communities with student transportation as the state contends with a shortage of bus drivers at the start of the school year. An order from Gov. Charlie Baker on Monday provides up to 250 personnel to assist local communities with training starting Tuesday for 90 members in several cities. The decision comes as states across the country deal with shortages of drivers...

Two quarreling city bus drivers locked horns and refused to move their massive rigs in a bizarre stand-off on a narrow two-way avenue in Brooklyn, a video released Friday shows. The B35 buses, each facing the opposite direction, stopped a few feet from each other on 13th Ave. near 39th St. in Borough Park about 6:45 p.m. Thursday, but both drivers refused to budge, sparking some gridlock in the area, the video shows. “Back it up! Back it up!” one of the MTA drivers screamed to the other. “How am I going to back up? Why can’t you back up?”...

Half of the drivers who work a bus route on which two colleagues were shot to death last week, possibly by a woman seeking revenge for purported sexual abuse of female passengers, didn’t show up for their jobs Tuesday. Only 10 of the 20 drivers assigned to the 4A bus route in this border city took the wheel, “because they are afraid,” a dispatcher said. … Authorities say a woman wearing a blond wig, or dyed hair, boarded one of the school bus-style vehicles that serve as transport in Ciudad Juarez last Wednesday morning. She approached the driver, took out...

The Detroit News reports that 15,600 students in the Walled Lake School District didn't have school Wednesday because bus drivers called in sick. The Walled Lake school board last week voted to contract out for busing to save money. Walled Lake Superintendent Kenneth Gutman told The News that contracting will save the district $1.4 million a year. In addition to that $1.4 million, Walled Lake will save money on workers' compensation and legacy costs, according to the West Oakland Spinal Column. This money is not trivial — the district needs to erase a $10 million deficit. And, current bus drivers...

Press Release: International Trade Union Confederation Iran says Osanloo to be freed – good but not good enough, say ITF and ITUC The ITF and ITUC today welcomed an Iranian government promise that Mansour Osanloo is to be freed – but stated that there are still 52 other innocent trade unionists who should also be released. The two organisations were speaking out after discovering that Iran has told the International Labour Organization (ILO) that Osanloo is due for release. The assurance is contained in the ILO’s report* on the complaints made against the country by the ITF and ITUC, and...

Thanks to a bizarre MTA policy and a union contract, city bus drivers are taking an average of two months off each time a rider spits on them. This was revealed at an MTA committee meeting today where officials explained that they define an "assault" on a driver broadly enough to include getting spit on. Under the drivers’ contract, each time they are assaulted they are entitled to take sick time to recover. Last year 51 bus operators reported they were spit on and got to take an average of 64 days off, MTA officials said.

The mother of jailed Iranian labor activist Mansour Osanlou has told RFE/RL's Radio Farda he has been transferred to a prison ward for drug addicts and prisoners suffering from Hepatitis and AIDS. Osanlou's mother, Fatemeh Golqezi, said the conditions in the ward are dangerous to her son's health. She said Oslanou, who headed Tehran's municipal bus service union, is being held at Ward 5 of Gohardasht prison in Karaj, a suburb of Tehran. Golqezi said prison officials had explained Osanlou's transfer by saying he had planned to set fire to blankets in his cell to celebrate the Fire Festival. This...

Some UA students are showing their support for CrimsonRide bus drivers through call-ins today, a day before the bus drivers try to negotiate a new contract with their parent company. First Transit. Currently the 50 to 60 drivers who work for CrimsonRide are demanding fair wages from First Transit, which provides bus drivers for the UA campus bus system. CrimsonRide bus drivers are not UA employees. They work under contract with First Transit, a transportation company. The University pays First Transit $55 an hour per driver, and each driver receives only $9.50 of that amount. In May 2009, the drivers...

<p>A dissident Iranian labour leader who is serving a five-year jail sentence has been hospitalised with a heart problem, a source close to him said yesterday. Mansoor Osanloo, leader of a union grouping bus drivers, was detained in July last year for "distributing statements against the system" and a judiciary official was in October quoted as saying he had been sentenced to jail.</p>

Iran Arrests Five Trade Unionists August 12, 2007 AFP The Peninsula Iranian security forces arrested five members of Tehran's bus drivers' union after they visited the home of their imprisoned chief, the men's lawyer said yesterday. Tehran and suburbs bus drivers' union chief Mansour Ossalou, who has pushed for stronger trade unions in Iran, has been detained in Tehran's Evin prison since July after being convicted of acting against national security. "Ebrahim Madadi, Yagoub Salimi, Davoud Razavi and Ghojari and Homayoun Jaberi went to Mansour Ossalou's house to meet his family, where they were arrested," said lawyer Parviz Khorshid, quoted...

Unions rally to free Iran's 'Lech Walesa' By Colin Freeman Sunday Telegraph 22/07/2007 Iran has sparked a storm of protest from trade unionists around the world after imprisoning a bus driver known as the Lech Walesa of the Islamic Republic. Mansour Osanloo, who leads a 17,000-strong bus workers' union, was abducted on the streets of Teheran on July 10 by an unidentified gang, thought to have been secret policemen. He had just returned from a trip to Europe, including Britain, where he met officials from the London-based International Transport Workers' Federation (ITWF) to discuss the government harassment his members were...

WASHINGTON -- Suspected members of extremist groups have signed up as school-bus drivers in the United States, counterterror officials said yesterday in a cautionary bulletin to police. But an FBI spokesman said, "Parents and children have nothing to fear." The bulletin, parts of which were read to The Associated Press, did not say how often foreign extremists have sought to acquire licenses to drive school buses, or where.

PARIS, 24 Dec. (IPS) In its first major social challenge and in continuation of the crackdown of all freedoms in Iran, the new Government under the Islamo-populist President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has arrested at least 14 members of the Single Bus Company of Tehran and Suburbs (SBCTS), informed sources reported on Saturday. The order for the arrest, detention and seizure of all documents of the arrested men was issued by Judge Sa’id Mortazavi, the Prosecutor for Tehran and Islamic Revolution Tribunals. A protégé of Ayatollah Ali Khameneh’i, the leader of the Islamic Republic, Mr. Mortazavi is better known by the public,...

Washington -- Iranian authorities have arrested 14 members of a group representing thousands of Tehran bus drivers for engaging in "illegal activities." The group has been staging protests for months as part of efforts to form an independent union and have wages paid. Among those arrested today was group leader Mansour Osanlou and an associate, Mansour Hayat-Ghaybi. Maryam Hayat-Ghaybi told Radio Farda that government agents searched her house, seizing all documents related to her husband's union activities. "(The agents) only told me I should not be worried, he is safe," she said. "They told me they took my husband to...

Who is the baddes of all our special forces? Rangers? SEALs? Other?

<p>LOS ANGELES (AP) --  About 800 bus drivers went on strike Tuesday against a company that transports students in the nation's second-largest school district.</p> <p>One of the Los Angeles Unified School District's largest transportation providers, Laidlaw Transit Inc., was informed that its Teamster-represented employees did not show up for work Tuesday, said the company's area Vice President Jim Ferraro.</p>