Mexican trucks to start polluting US highways this Saturday

[bananas]

Thanks to Eugene for posting this important story in LBN,
let's hope the Teamsters are successful in stopping this!

"... the first Mexican trucks will be coming
across the border on Saturday."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2970862

Teamsters to Try to Block Mexican Trucks
Source: Associated Press

Teamsters to Try to Block Mexican Trucks

By JESSE J. HOLLAND, AP Labor Writer

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

(08-29) 08:26 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) --

The Teamsters Union said Wednesday it will ask a federal
appeals courts to block the Bush administration's plan to
begin allowing Mexican trucks to carry cargo anywhere in
the United States.

The union said it has been told by officials in the
Transportation Department's Federal Motor Carrier Safety
Administration that the first Mexican trucks will be coming
across the border on Saturday.

Teamsters leaders said they planned to seek an emergency
injunction Wednesday from the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of
Appeals in San Francisco.

-snip-

Joining the Teamsters in seeking the emergency stay were
the Sierra Club and Public Citizen. "Before providing
unconditional access throughout the country to tens of
thousands of big rigs we know little to nothing about, we
must insure they meet safety and environmental standards,"
Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope said.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/08/29/national/w080756D88.DTL

[Double T]

1. Mexican trucks do NOT belong on U.S. highways.

bushco's spitting in the eyes of American workers must be stopped. Where the hell is our DO NOTHING congress on this one?

[NNadir]

2. I have always admired the Teamsters.

My dad's 30 years of pension funding disappeared with Jimmy Hoffa.

My dad was a laborer and he worked his ass off in freezers for thirty years mostly hauling meat carcasses from freight cars to trucks.

It was a real step up for him when he got to trim fat from the carcasses.

After thirty years, the company fired its workforce. The union couldn't have cared less. The big concern in the union was that Jimmy Hoffa's body would be found somewhere.

It wasn't.

Maybe he was ground up in a meat packing plant.

Interestingly enough, my dad got a job driving nuclear medicines around in his car after he lost his pension. It was a great job.

My dad died from cancer and the union couldn't have cared less.

The Teamsters couldn't care less about their membership. A few pay offs from the Mexican truckers association should straighten everything out forthwith.

Personally I'm opposed to trucks. I believe that we should stop hauling brazillions of tons of metric tons of coal around with our rails and should switch all trucking to rail lines.

Most people however couldn't care less how much coal is hauled around and they couldn't care less about how much damage US trucks cause.

Most people couldn't care less about Mexican poverty either. Don't worry though. They don't feel pain the way we do in Mexico.

[phantom power]

5. I thought it was that Mexicans feel the pains that Americans won't feel for less than $50.

Or something.

[liberal renegade]

6. My Dad is a retired teamster

drawing $3500 a month in pension. I'm a conductor for the Union Pacific Rail Road, a conductor who rides a coal train as a matter of fact.

The coal business is on the rise and not likely to ever level off, at least not in my lifetime...

The Teamsters, United Transportation Union, and The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers take care of their members and families.

Unions are what built the middle class!

Conductors and Engineers can earn 6 figure incomes after 5 years on the job. Not many places you can work and earn that can of money with just a high school education...

www.uprrjobs.com

[phantom power]

11. You say "coal biz is on the rise" almost like it's a good thing.

[KansDem]

3. Wow!, when the Teamsters and the Sierra Club team up...

you know something big is in the mix!

Here's another Teamsters/Sierra Club partnership:

Odd Bedfellows Against Illegal Logging
by Carl Pope
July 30,2007

Washington DC—It's been clear to environmentalists for years that illegal logging was one of the major threats to the world's forests. While it happens, pathetically often, here in the US, it has become a central problem in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

We now understand that illegal logging is a big part of the global warming problem. Deforestation is responsible for 30 percent of total CO2 emissions every year. While some of it is the result of legal logging, most is caused by either illegal forest clearing to convert rainforest into livestock pasture, or for the illegal logging trade. Eighty-three percent of the mahogany logged from Peru is illegally cut.

US policy actively encourages this trade and foreign trade agreements facilitate illegal shipments. Since the US signed a free trade agreement with Singapore, illegal Indonesian timber shipments through Singapore have increased by 62 percent. Free trade agreements proposed by the Bush administration had no enforceable mechanisms to discourage illegal logging, and when Greenpeace exposed the trade, the US government tried to shut down Greenpeace, not the loggers.

And the damage is not just environmental. Proceeds from illegal logging propped up the regime of Liberian strong-man Charles Taylor until environmental activist and Goldman Prize-winner Silas Siakour risked his life, blew the whistle and got the UN to shut down the illegal logging trade. Legitimate governments also lose badly needed tax revenues to the illegal timber market. The leakage is an estimated $15 billion a year, TEN TIMES total US Foreign Aid for economic development! Illegal logging is often carried out through modern day slaver— 33,000 people are estimated to be subjected to forced labor producing illegal Peruvian mahogany.

Like most illegal businesses, the global market in stolen timber also hurts honest producers. Legitimate forest products producers in the US lose about $1 billion a year due to depressed prices and loss of export markets. This reality has produced a ray of hope in an otherwise fairly gloomy situation. An unprecedented coalition that includes the Sierra Club, the Rainforest Action Network, the United Steelworkers, the Teamsters Union, the American Forests and Paper Association, and the Nature Conservancy has joined together to support legislation that would extend the protections of the Lacey Act, which prohibits the importation, exporting, transporting, sale and purchase of illegally captured and endangered species. The Lacey Act has been one of the most effective global environmental treaties, and extending its protections to flora could be the first step towards producing a global timber business that is honest, instead of an armed racket, which is what most of it is today.

This proposal builds on an earlier initiative by the Sierra Club and the Steelworkers to ask the International Trade Commission to investigate illegal Chinese logging; the Commission has agreed to do so.

The bill was introduced in the Senate by Senator Ron Wyden (OR), while on the House side a bi-partisan trio of Representatives Blumenauer (D-OR), Weller (R-IL) and Wexler (D-FL) have taken the lead.

http://angeles.sierraclub.org/environmental/Newsletter.asp

Goes to show that common ground can motivate diverse groups to work together. :)

[Double T]

4. So can a COMMON ENEMY.

[BrightKnight]

12. Teamsters are going to get a lot of support left, righ and center

Chimpy had his immigration bill handed to him. I don't think that the right wants this any more than we do.

pollution, safety, road tax, National security, driver certification, labor...

This is bad public policy any way you look at it.

Every truck driver in America should be concerned about this.

--
You don't have to be a Teamster to obstruct Mexican trucks.

[Turbineguy]

7. Mexico....

land of the untuned car...

As my roommate in college used to say.

[soothsayer]

8. Way to celebrate Labor Day, pretzeldent dumbass! Why do you hate

us for our freedoms?

[Javaman]

9. Weee!!!!

no time for breathing anymore.

climate change, pffft, forget about getting that under control now.

[YOY]

10. Jesus f***ing christ!

If there is anything they CAN outsource, they WILL. This is getting sick. Sick.

[bvar22]

13. Where is the Opposition Party???!!!!!

OOPS.
Forgot.
We don't have one.
Nevermind.


The Democratic Party is a BIG TENT, but there is NO ROOM for those
who advance the agenda of THE RICH (Corporate Owners) at the EXPENSE of LABOR and the POOR.

[LSK]

14. is there a credible source for this???

Like a link on sierra club website????????????

http://www.sierraclub.org/pressroom/releases/


And how come every link I find on this is from the same author?

[bananas]

15. It's on the Teamster's website

Teamster's official website: http://www.teamsters.org/

Press release on their website: http://www.teamster.org/07news/nr_070829_1.asp

Teamsters Sue to Stop Illegal, Unsafe Mexican Trucks From Crossing Into U.S.
Bush Administration Intends to Start Pilot Program Labor Day Weekend
Contact:
Leslie Miller
[phone]

August 29, 2007
(Washington, D.C.) — The Teamsters on Wednesday sought an emergency injunction to block the Bush administration from opening the U.S. border to unsafe Mexican trucks, three days before the pilot program is scheduled to begin.

<snip>

Here's a non-AP article written by someone else, says "several co-plaintiffs, including the Sierra Club, Public Citizen and the Environmental Law Foundation"
(edit to add: this is the local San Diego newspaper)
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/20070830-9999-1b30mextruck.html

Lawsuit targets Mexican truckers
Teamsters lead fight against test program
By Paul M. Krawzak
COPLEY NEWS SERVICE

August 30, 2007

WASHINGTON – The Teamsters filed a lawsuit yesterday to block what the union said is an unannounced government plan to open the southern border to long-haul Mexican truck traffic as early as Saturday.

Bush administration transportation officials are not saying publicly when they expect to begin a long-delayed pilot program to test the safety of Mexican trucks on U.S. highways.

But in a lawsuit filed in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, Jonathan Weissglass, an attorney representing the Teamsters, said he was told by a Justice Department official that the program will start Saturday.

<snip>

The Teamsters and several co-plaintiffs, including the Sierra Club, Public Citizen and the Environmental Law Foundation, are seeking an injunction to block the program. The court asked the administration to file a response today.

<snip>

[bananas]

16. It's now on Public Citizen's home page

http://www.citizen.org/

Groups to Court: Stop NAFTA Truck Pilot Program

Once again, the Bush administration is trying to open U.S. highways to Mexico-domiciled trucks, violating a law Congress passed in May and disregarding the safety of American drivers.

Five groups - Public Citizen, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Sierra Club, Environmental Law Foundation and the Brotherhood of Teamsters, Auto and Truck Drivers, Local 70 - filed suit today in California to delay the program, which is scheduled to take effect as early as Sept. 1.

LEARN more.

Press release on their site: http://www.citizen.org/pressroom/release.cfm?ID=2497

Aug. 29, 2007

Groups Sue to Block NAFTA Truck Pilot Program

Bush Administration Ignoring Congress; Mexico-Domiciled Trucks May Have Full Access to the Nation’s Highways as Early as Saturday

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Five groups sued today in federal court to block a Bush administration plan to allow Mexico-domiciled trucks to roam the country’s highways as soon as Saturday.

The suit, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco, maintains that the Bush administration’s pilot program, which authorizes up to 100 carriers based in Mexico to perform long-haul operations within the U.S., violates several key congressional requirements. The groups filing suit include Public Citizen; the International Brotherhood of Teamsters; Sierra Club; Environmental Law Foundation; and the Brotherhood of Teamsters, Auto and Truck Drivers, Local 70. The groups filed an emergency motion asking the court to delay the pilot program before it goes into effect in a matter of days.

<snip>

VIEW the petitioners’ emergency motion for stay.

VIEW the petition for review.

###

[lonestarnot]

17. Go teamsters!

[hunter]

18. An international union with big teeth might solve this problem.

But that's the stuff of the right wing's worst nightmares. If Mexican drivers became Teamsters, people would get shot.