By Frosty Wooldridge
\nMarch 5, 2007
\nNewsWithViews.com
\nPresident Bush announced that Mexican truck drivers will be allowed on America’s highways within sixty days. Soon, he’ll announce that Mexican drivers will “do the jobs that American truckers won’t do.”<\/p>\n
How many ways can an American president screw his own citizens? On Bush’s watch, America’s poor suffer job losses in landscaping, construction, dry wall, hotel, restaurant, lawn mowing, retail, fast food, roofing, taxi and dozens of other trades. On Bush’s watch, outsourcing, insourcing and offshoring work cost American citizens 1,000,000 jobs. On Bush’s watch, America’s manufacturing sector lost 3 million jobs. On Bush’s watch, over 10 million illegal aliens crossed our borders in six years. On Bush’s watch, hundreds of thousands of killers, drug dealers, rapists and child molesters roam free in America.<\/p>\n
Now, President Bush drives his serrated knife into the heart of American truckers.<\/p>\n
Why? Soon, Mexican truck drivers will undercut wages of all American truckers, just like Mexicans destabilize wages from construction workers, roofers, landscapers and other trades.<\/p>\n
This is a reality check from a man who has driven the big rigs across 48 states. As a teacher in the 70s, my salary at $5,400.00 a year, barely kept me above the poverty line. Each summer for 24 years, I loaded, drove 1,500 to 2,000 miles across America, and unloaded for United Van Lines. I busted my hump. I worked 70 to 100 hours a week. Don’t tell the DOT. I earned four times as much money in three months as I made in nine months teaching math and science.<\/p>\n
What did I discover? American truckers consist of the finest, most dedicated and outstanding professionals in the world. Their office is America’s Interstates. They’ve got to be 100 percent perfect 10 hours a day as they drive 40,000 pounds of freight down the expressway. “Breaker one nine, you got the Rubber Duck here; what’s your 20?” CB radios make up their communication network. They listen to country and western music; wear cowboy boots and baseball caps. Truckers fill your life with food, clothing, cars, gasoline, mail and everything else. America moves by trucks. I still carry my CDL.<\/p>\n
As a teacher and a trucker, you need to know what I know. The average Mexican trucker tops out with a 6th grade education in a foreign language with Third World educational standards. For starters, 63 percent of Mexico’s 104 million people remain illiterate. What does a 6th grader think about? Mostly: me, now and perhaps recess in ten minutes. They lack critical thinking skills and cognitive reasoning of an adult.<\/p>\n
That means Bush allows thousands of substandard, uneducated Mexican truck drivers on America’s highways at 70 milers per hour carrying 40,000 pounds of freight. It means that every accident they cause will leave American families as collateral damage.<\/p>\n