An Irishman walking through a field in Ireland sees a man drinking water from a pond with his hand. The Irishman shouts “Na ól an t-uisce, tá sé lán de chac bo!”
(Don't drink the water, it's full of cow dung!)
The man yells back “I’m English, speak English, I don’t understand you”.
The Irishman shouts back “Use both hands, you’ll get more in.”
Yeh, you know, just doing my part to be in the spirit and so forth. The translation is there if you feel like looking for it.
I believe that seven hours is the appropriate length of a driving day. That's what today involved for me and it seemed like a pretty good day. I got to Atlanta after the morning rush and then through Nashville before the afternoon rush. Dragging such a heavy load around still requires a bit of patience, as it's tough to manage the merging traffic and hills and all the rest of it, but I think I kept my cool pretty well.
I stopped in Paducah for the night, having covered a little over half the drive to Kansas City. Another seven hours or so tomorrow will keep me on my preferred pace.
Now for some bonus commentary:
Quite some time ago, there was a great deal of discussion surrounding the evil Bush administration's efforts to allow Mexican trucks on U.S. highways. Not surprisingly, most people in my line of work were (and continue to be) against the program, regardless of their economic philosophies. Setting aside the fact that we were simply fulfilling a legal obligation under the NAFTA treaty, I found that I was among a very small minority of drivers who didn't want the program to be scrapped. At the time, my biggest disagreement with the nature of the discussion was that the loudest objections were outright falsehoods and that the legitimate concerns would have failed to persuade anybody. I also had reason to believe that the future of our country, perhaps well after my time on earth has ended, would benefit from the program. For anyone who cares to read them, my thoughts at the time were consolidated here.
Congress continued doing whatever it could to grandstand on the issue and the president continued giving them the finger. The program went forward and the dubious claims about safety continued to be overstated. Why dig up an old message board discussion now? New sheriff in town. The recently passed federal spending bill to finish out the 2009 fiscal year included, among the numerous policy shifts that were not disclosed at the time, a provision to end the pilot program that had placed a whopping 100 Mexican trucks (out of the millions of total trucks) on our freeways. And now the completely predictable response from the Mexican government has followed.
Political favors for the Teamsters are part of the game. I get that. You win, you write the bill, blah blah blah. We can all debate our pet economic theories and pretend that we have data to back us up. Maybe condoms for drug addicts are really an emergency stimulus for the economy and maybe they're not. This blog will never be the place to resolve those differences of opinion. However, a large chunk of my individual income is derived from hauling freight to the border for export to Mexico. The impact of economic meddling for political gain has always been real. Now it's personal. My truck driving colleagues are free to believe as they wish about Mexican trucks, but reality has arrived upon us. While everyone feigns indignation over $165 million in contractually required bonuses for a failing insurance company, this regime has jeopardized $2.4 billion in trade in order to appease a failing labor union. (Here's a hint for the outraged populists out there: The taxes paid on $2.4 billion in business would far exceed $165 million.)
As the economy at large has gone into a tailspin, the value of exports carried into Mexico by truck was up 9.7% in December even as overall NAFTA traffic dropped dramatically. Now we're determined to undermine the one bright spot and cause a trade war over 100 trucks. I'm sure that the ubiquitous references to the Great Depression have begun to wear on many of us by now. Unless we stop repeating the same mistakes that we made in the 30's though, we may begin to see the reasons for such references up close and personal. The administration has indicated that it intends to seek a new way to resolve the matter. I, for one, hope that they do so quickly.
(Don't drink the water, it's full of cow dung!)
The man yells back “I’m English, speak English, I don’t understand you”.
The Irishman shouts back “Use both hands, you’ll get more in.”
Yeh, you know, just doing my part to be in the spirit and so forth. The translation is there if you feel like looking for it.
I believe that seven hours is the appropriate length of a driving day. That's what today involved for me and it seemed like a pretty good day. I got to Atlanta after the morning rush and then through Nashville before the afternoon rush. Dragging such a heavy load around still requires a bit of patience, as it's tough to manage the merging traffic and hills and all the rest of it, but I think I kept my cool pretty well.
I stopped in Paducah for the night, having covered a little over half the drive to Kansas City. Another seven hours or so tomorrow will keep me on my preferred pace.
Now for some bonus commentary:
Quite some time ago, there was a great deal of discussion surrounding the evil Bush administration's efforts to allow Mexican trucks on U.S. highways. Not surprisingly, most people in my line of work were (and continue to be) against the program, regardless of their economic philosophies. Setting aside the fact that we were simply fulfilling a legal obligation under the NAFTA treaty, I found that I was among a very small minority of drivers who didn't want the program to be scrapped. At the time, my biggest disagreement with the nature of the discussion was that the loudest objections were outright falsehoods and that the legitimate concerns would have failed to persuade anybody. I also had reason to believe that the future of our country, perhaps well after my time on earth has ended, would benefit from the program. For anyone who cares to read them, my thoughts at the time were consolidated here.
Congress continued doing whatever it could to grandstand on the issue and the president continued giving them the finger. The program went forward and the dubious claims about safety continued to be overstated. Why dig up an old message board discussion now? New sheriff in town. The recently passed federal spending bill to finish out the 2009 fiscal year included, among the numerous policy shifts that were not disclosed at the time, a provision to end the pilot program that had placed a whopping 100 Mexican trucks (out of the millions of total trucks) on our freeways. And now the completely predictable response from the Mexican government has followed.
Political favors for the Teamsters are part of the game. I get that. You win, you write the bill, blah blah blah. We can all debate our pet economic theories and pretend that we have data to back us up. Maybe condoms for drug addicts are really an emergency stimulus for the economy and maybe they're not. This blog will never be the place to resolve those differences of opinion. However, a large chunk of my individual income is derived from hauling freight to the border for export to Mexico. The impact of economic meddling for political gain has always been real. Now it's personal. My truck driving colleagues are free to believe as they wish about Mexican trucks, but reality has arrived upon us. While everyone feigns indignation over $165 million in contractually required bonuses for a failing insurance company, this regime has jeopardized $2.4 billion in trade in order to appease a failing labor union. (Here's a hint for the outraged populists out there: The taxes paid on $2.4 billion in business would far exceed $165 million.)
As the economy at large has gone into a tailspin, the value of exports carried into Mexico by truck was up 9.7% in December even as overall NAFTA traffic dropped dramatically. Now we're determined to undermine the one bright spot and cause a trade war over 100 trucks. I'm sure that the ubiquitous references to the Great Depression have begun to wear on many of us by now. Unless we stop repeating the same mistakes that we made in the 30's though, we may begin to see the reasons for such references up close and personal. The administration has indicated that it intends to seek a new way to resolve the matter. I, for one, hope that they do so quickly.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Don't be shy. Chime in any time.