Border Security/Border Patrol/Border Agents, Mexico, NAFTA, Teamsters, Tennessee, Terrorism/Terrorists, Terrorism/Terrorists Domestic, TSA/Transportation Safety Authority, Unions

Mexican Trucks Roll Across America: TSA Guarding Tennessee Highways from Terrorists

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Mexican trucks have to stop at the border and transfer goods to U.S. truckers, until tomorrow, Friday October 21st. Then everything changes and we lose jobs and security. Congressmen Duncan Hunter (R-CA) and Bob Filner (D-CA) have been, and are still, fighting against this 1994 NAFTA provision, which has been contested in court, but apparently survived. Unlikely that I would ever agree with the Teamsters on anything, but I think I’m on their side with this one. In the meantime, Tennessee is the first state to have TSA agents showing up on highways, as well as in their airports. “Where is a terrorist apt to be found?…more likely on the interstate,” says a Tennessee Homeland Security Commissioner. See an UPDATE below.

Mexican Trucks Roll Across America

MSNBC:

Washington on Friday last week approved the first Mexican trucking company, Transportes Olympic, nearly two decades after the hotly contested provision of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement set off lawsuits and a costly trade dispute between the neighboring countries.

Transportes Olympic’s long-haul truck will cross the border Friday at Laredo, Texas, and head about 450 miles north to Garland, Texas, to deliver industrial equipment, said Guillermo Perez, the transport manager at the firm in the industrial Monterrey suburb of Apodaca, about two hours south of Laredo…

U.S. inspectors will check the trucks Thursday and will also have a database on truckers who have been approved by the U.S. Department of Transportation, Perez said.

The database? Like our terrorist watch lists? We know how well that works.

Tennessee’s Homeland Security has deployed “Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR) (whaaaat???) at five weigh stations and two bus stations throughout the state.

Agents are recruiting truck drivers, like Rudy Gonzales, into the First Observer Highway Security Program to say something if they see something.

“Not only truck drivers, but cars, everybody should be aware of what’s going on, on the road,” said Gonzales.

It’s all meant to urge every driver to call authorities if they see something suspicious.

“Somebody sees something somewhere and we want them to be responsible citizens, report that and let us work it through our processes to abet the concern that they had when they saw something suspicious,” said Paul Armes, TSA Federal Security Director for Nashville International Airport.

The Tennessee Highway Patrol checked trucks with drug and bomb sniffing dogs during random inspections.

“The bottom line is this: if you see something suspicious say something about it,” Gibbons said Tuesday.

 

I found this reminder at DeadEnders:

Remember back in 07-08 when Obama and his crew of crafty cronies got caught telling the Canadians the truth that he would do nothing about NAFTA while blathering about changing or repealing it on the trail. (Has NAFTA even been mentioned in the news in the past 3 years)

Transport Fool:

The new regulations will allow Mexican trucking companies to use the less expensive drivers to undersut the US compaies. In reality those drivers have been getting green cards and coming across the border to drive US trucks for years.

Under NAFTA the drivers must speak english, but if they get a green card, and sign on with a company on this side of the border, they can bypass that requirement.

I don’t disagree with the Tennessee program, assuming they are not harrassingAmericans, but it would be far more helpful to keep terrorists out the country in the first place, and yes, I do realize that some terrorists among us are both Americans and terrorists. Another reason this program might be needed is the first story above. We now have Mexican truckers whizzing around on American soil.

This will not be a trouble-free program. I can think of numerous chilling scenarios that may make the TSA Highway program a necessity. We continue to lose our freedom daily, when we could prevent 99% of the terror if we chose to do so. Shaw’s Blog was talking about this story last July. Read the details.

 

UPDATE 4:15 pm CDT: Just heard an interesting conversation on The Five about the Mexican truckers. Eric Bolling is for it and this is his reasoning: Mexican truckers will not be Union and be paid less.  U.S. Unions worker will say, I’m not getting the business anyway, so I’m not going to pay Union dues. This will encourage truckers to work outside of Unions, and in Bollings opinions, it Unions who will be the losers. What do you think?

Posted by Maggie @ Maggie’s Notebook 

  • The Unions are screaming the loudest. If it is screwing them after the years of them screwing us, then more power to the Mexican truckers. Eric Bolling is right on the money.

  • Don Laird

    This is one case where neither Left nor Right wins the argument.

    The transportation of goods crossing international borders has been very successful when one looks at the relationship between Canada and the United States. Every day millions of dollars of goods flow back and forth across our borders without hindrance, with Americans trucking their goods into and out of Canada and vice versa. The only action not tolerated is “inter-stating” , which is an American trucking firm transporting goods point to point within Canada or vice versa for a Canadian trucking company in the USA.

    In Europe trans-border transportation of goods has been the order of the day for years, with varying degrees of success. In short, it has worked and has streamlined the movement of freight across continents.

    That said, the participants in the European and Canada/USA models, largely but with a couple of exceptions, do not suffer the vagaries of close geographic relations to, and forced with, a backward third world country.

    The reality is this: Mexico is a veritable toilet, a cesspool of criminality and humanity that has at its core a sense of expectation and entitlement from the United States, nay, the world, that is based on the specious and frivolous argument of “original citizenship”.

    Mexico’s primary export to, and influence on the USA, is misery and death in the form of drug trafficking, arms trafficking, provision of support infrastructure for terrorists and an unending wave of illegal immigrants who are bankrupting the United States.

    Mexican cartels walk amongst Americans with virtual impunity and with the full support of the American federal government. The Mexican government is quite simply a corrupt, complicit and impotent joke, completely incapable of controlling its own corruption and criminality let alone that of those who run amok within its borders.

    Now you face cheap labour from the Mexican transportation industry.

    The arguments and division amongst Americans that has resulted are much to the benefit and amusement of the Mexicans.

    The reality is that the vast majority of truckers and owner-operators in the USA are non-union. The industry was deregulated years ago and the unions now play a minor role. This is not a Left/Right argument this is a “hard working man trying to feed his family but now has his throat cut by a NAFTA agreement” issue.

    Compounding this devastation of the trucking industry is the emergence of the TSA. The difficulties you witnessed at the airports with children and grandmothers suffering virtual sexual assault will pale in comparison to the liberties that will be taken by the TSA when stopping families on the highways and byways of America…..mark my words….you ain’t seen nothing yet.

    Once again I say this……in the history books I read about the decline and fall of a great empire, the Roman Empire….I never, in my wildest dreams thought I would witness firsthand the decline of another great empire, the American Empire.

    Regards, Don Laird
    Edson, Alberta, Canada