From the
Houston Chronicle:
By MICHELLE MITTELSTADT and JENALIA MORENO
August 29, 2007
.....
But Rep. Nick Lampson, D-Stafford, and others in Congress said they remain concerned.
"I would hope that President Bush would reconsider what he's doing," said Lampson, who serves on the House Transportation Committee.
"We need to place the safety of Texans as high as we possibly can place this, and doing this, I think, takes some chances."
Lampson also argued that national security could be affected if the government doesn't inspect all incoming cargo.
With the House having voted overwhelmingly last May to curb the scope of the trucking pilot program, the Teamsters say they will seek additional congressional action if the 9th Circuit doesn't grant the emergency injunction.
The inspector general's audit could give fodder to critics on Capitol Hill.
Investigators noted problems with the database used to check Mexican drivers' records for traffic convictions in the United States — largely because Texas and New Mexico didn't properly report driver convictions to the federal 52nd State System that tracks Mexican drivers.
The audit noted that Texas stopped sharing conviction information with the database in 2006 — an oversight federal officials didn't notice until the inspector general brought it to their attention. New Mexico's data wasn't entered because of incorrect coding, the audit found. Since then, almost half of the Texas backlog of 40,000 Mexican driver convictions has been cleared, the report said.
.....
Even as haggling continues over the cross-border trucking program, some Mexican trucking company officials say it's the politicians — not they — who are interested in opening the border.
"We don't want to go to the United States, and the Americans don't want to go to Mexico," said Rolando Ortega, a delegate from the Matamoros, Mexico, chapter of the National Confederation of Mexican Carriers, which has 280,000 members. "It doesn't reflect the reality of the transportation industry."
Mexican trucking companies that deliver to the U.S. border zone already are struggling with rising insurance rates, longer lines to cross into the U.S. and a lack of credit to buy trucks, said Ortega, who owns 18 trucks.
Only large carriers will haul cargo from Houston to Hidalgo or Memphis to Monterrey, some Mexican trucking company executives say.
"The only companies that want to do that are the trans- national companies and the companies that move their own cargo," said Oscar Garza, a delegate for the Reynosa chapter of the confederation of Mexican carriers.
Many Mexican truckers cannot read signs in English, are unfamiliar with the U.S. highway system and don't know how to find cargo in the U.S. for their return trip to Mexico, said Garza, who once owned 35 trucks and now only has one because of decreased profitability.
So Chertoff insists that WE have passports?
How will we know how many hours these truckers are forced to drive before resting? This will be the cause of many accidents.
What about certification of these drivers?
What about checking all of the cargo before entering the US highway system?
What about the chances of drug smuggling or human trafficking?
This will depress wages and will bleed even more jobs away from American truckers.
And what about the blatant end-run around our West Coast Union workers, when all of the cheap cargo from China is off-loaded at ports on the west coast of Mexico, bypassing US western ports? That's what this is really about--- busting those Republican-hated unions!
And DON'T FORGET, the House ALREADY VOTED OVERWHELMINGLY last May to curb the scope of the trucking pilot program. But does Bush care? HELL NO!The Decider Does What He Wants.
IMPEACH, CONVICT AND IMPRISON THIS IMPOSTOR AND HIS PUPPETEERS, AND DO IT NOW.