The Aedes aegypti species of mosquito, which is answerable for spreading the Zika virus. (picture: IAEA Imagebank)
In every week, households all over the nation will pack up their automobiles and make a visit to the seaside, to a family unit picnic or simply to get far from everyday existence for the break weekend.
And if the trucking trade had its manner, these households would be sharing the interstate with semi-truck drivers who are exhausted from working greater than eighty hours per week.
seriously.
See extra information and opinion from Thom Hartmann at Truthout right here.
If that sounds reckless and unbelievably hazardous for both the public and the drivers, that's because it is.
well-nigh 4,000 people die in significant truck crashes each and every 12 months, and driver fatigue is a number one factor in accordance with the department of Transportation.
Take truck driver Dana Logan, who these days told newshounds the heartwrenching story about how she in my view witnessed yet another truck driver nod off and ram an SUV from behind.
The SUV become slammed under Logan's trailer, shearing off the properly of the SUV and decapitating both fathers and two toddlers interior.
The truck driver who had fallen asleep and rammed the SUV managed to ask one last question before he died, effectively "Did I hit anything?"
greater famously again in June of 2014, a Walmart truck driver had been unsleeping for greater than 28 hours when he slammed his truck into actor Tracy Morgan's limo van, killing one passenger and leaving Morgan in a coma for two weeks.
we all power on the roads, so this is really a matter of public concern.
So when will the general public comment length be on this inspiration to let trucking groups push their drivers even past an 80-hour week?
When will the general public get to weigh in on even if the truck drivers are allowed to work themselves to exhaustion and threaten public safeguard?
on no account.
this is as a result of these measures are being inserted right into a ought to-move spending measure that includes funding for transportation, funding for housing and armed forces construction initiatives, funding for the Veterans Administration (VA), as well as new funding for Zika prevention in the u.s..
each the condo and the Senate models of this law would block the Obama administration from imposing a law that requires laborers to take two days in a row off per week, and caps truck drivers' hours at 70 every week.
and as the Huffington publish points out, bribing -- excuse me, "making crusade contributions to" -- compliant congressmen to use this variety of legislative backdoor to roll lower back protection laws is anything that the trucking business has been doing for as a minimum the remaining three years.
nonetheless it's now not just the trucking business that does this, pretty lots every lobbying group on Capitol Hill can pull a couple of strings to get riders inserted into must-flow spending bills, and even though they hardly ever have anything to do with the better bill, they all the time have a clear benefit to particular pastime factions.
within the remaining few years now we have viewed spending bills amended with trade-friendly riders that might roll lower back clear water protections and web neutrality suggestions, to defund planned Parenthood, to defund Obamacare, to intestine the countrywide Labor family members Board and hence block a litany of safeguard laws, and the record goes on and on.
This rider that might let truckers work as much as 83 hours, which is greater than two full work weeks, in a row, is a primary illustration of how damaged our legislative technique is.
The fact that there aren't any public hearings on any of these things is rarely an indication of how busy Congress is, as an alternative, or not it's a sign that our lawmaking process is installation so that lawmakers handiest get enter from industry about how Congress can aid business, on the cost of public defense and the average first rate.
thus far in 2016, the contributors of the house have taken a full week off throughout every single month of this year, and that they've really been in session for less than 59 days. The Senate become most effective in session for sixty five days.
There were 95 working days and best five public vacations in 2016, and given that the proven fact that every single representative is up for reelection this year, you can be sure that they've been spending their weekends and weeks off hustling crusade donations.
And now the Republicans in Congress are earning their contributions from the trucking lobbying corporations that have already given practically $2 million to Republican candidates in 2016.
What's even more insidious is that this rider is buried in a bill that includes funding for the VA along with lots necessary funding for Zika prevention.
That skill that the Democrats and President Obama are left with the choice of both letting this rider circulate -- endangering americans on our public highways all over the place the country -- or risking being known as out for playing political soccer in the face of a looming public health crisis.
it's time to get money out of politics in order that our lawmakers in reality spend their time carefully on the grounds that legal guidelines and getting public enter earlier than they vote.
Rolling returned these trucking regulations will put each adult who drives on our roads in danger, and the general public is being fully blocked out of the lawmaking system.
until we get cash out of politics, we will be caught with a legislative agenda that locations the well being of particular pursuits and corporate bottom lines over public pursuits and the usual respectable.
For greater counsel on how we can get money out of politics, try move to Amend.
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