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Special Action to Take! Our Troops Need to Hear From You!

September 11, 2007 Volume 10, Issue 8

US Marine Colonel Simcock, the commander of USMC Regimental Combat Team (RCT) 6 in Iraq, is asking for 6,000 positive emails to his Marines. That's one email for each Marine in his RCT command. COL Simcock is concerned about the effect of the negative barrage that those Marines are getting through the electronic media.

So far, they've only mustered 2,000 emails. That's a crying shame compared to the amount of garbage I get daily. This is a legitimate request. It's not one of the "little Johnny wants to break the world's record in Christmas cards" situations. It takes only 30 seconds of your time. Here's the email address: RCT-6lettersfromh@gcemnf-wiraq.usmc.mil

If you're reading this email, then you can probably click on the address, type a few words, and then hit "send" to be all done. It doesn't have to be the Gettysburg Address. Something as simple as "Hello, Marine. We thank you for what you're doing. You are in a noble task. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Best wishes & get home soon" is more than sufficient. An excerpt from an interview with the Colonel:

GRIM: Is there anything that you and your Marines need that we could send you?

COL. SIMCOCK: (Chuckles.) I'll tell you what, the one thing that all Marines want to know about - and that includes me and everyone within Regimental Combat Team 6 - we want to know that the American public is behind us. We believe that the actions that we're taking over here are very, very important to America. We're fighting a group of people that, if they could, would take away the freedoms that America enjoys.

If anyone - you know, just sit down, jot us - throw us an e-mail, write us a letter, let us know that the American public is behind us. Because we watch the news just like everyone else. It's broadcast over here in our chow halls and the weight rooms, and we watch that stuff, and we're a little bit concerned sometimes that America really doesn't know what's going on over here, and we get sometimes concerns that the American public isn't behind us and doesn't see the importance of what's going on. So that's something I think that all Marines, soldiers and sailors would like to hear from back home, that in fact, yes, they think what we're doing over here is important and they are in fact behind us.

IT JUST TAKES A MINUTE OF YOUR TIME… THAT'S NOT MUCH TO ASK FOR WHAT THEY'RE DOING FOR US!

.... AND, PLEASE PASS THIS EMAIL ALONG TO YOUR FRIENDS! ... SHOW OUR MARINES WE CARE!

Stop the Mexican Trucks!
Unsafe Mexican Trucks/Drivers Plowing Across U.S. Border

Commencing September 6, 2007, (or weeks ago according to the Mexican government) Mexican trucking companies will participate in a "pilot program," allowing them to send their drivers and cargo anywhere within the United States as the Bush administration complies with little known, and less discussed, parts of NAFTA that require all roads in the U.S., Canada and Mexico be open to carriers from all three countries. This pilot program will eventually allow 100 Mexican trucking companies unlimited access to the United States, without physical inspection at the border, safe equipment and practices, and without definitive proof that the drivers do not have criminal and/or drug use histories.

Gravely concerned, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed H.R. 1773, the Safe American Roads Act of 2007, to ensure this, or any other, pilot program allowing Mexico-domiciled trucks to travel within the U.S. would not jeopardize the safety of Americans.

The Teamsters Union, and other groups, filed suit to stop this program until and unless the Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) meet their obligations on behalf of the American People. The 9^th Circus denied their request last week, effectively opening to border to a flood of Mexican trucks and drivers that do not comply with the maintenance and safety standards enforced on American truck companies and drivers.

Mexico does not maintain a reliable national criminal database. It has recently come to light that Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila, the drug smuggler who testified against Border Patrol agents Ramos and Compean, holds two Mexican commercial driver’s license, one for hauling hazardous waste that’s valid until 2013.

Mexico has no certified drug or alcohol testing laboratories. If specimens were sent to U.S. labs there is no assurance the specimens came from the Mexican drivers submitting them. This contravenes the vigorous drug and alcohol testing requirements for U.S. truckers. The U.S. Department of Justice acknowledges that Mexican trucks are the primary "vehicle" by which the Mexican drug cartels move their product into this country, yet there will now be no physical inspection of Mexican trucks at our border. They could contain consumer goods, drugs, or troops, and be passed into the very heartland of our nation.

Mexican truck drivers are not insured as American drivers are. If you are injured or your property damaged by a Mexican trucker, how do you seek recompense? Additionally, there is no system in place to ensure these Mexican truckers do not stay within the U.S., in violation of many U.S. laws, stealing work and paychecks from American truckers.

President Bush has advocated for this pilot cross-border program as part of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) of North America. Yet, the White House website carries no "News" or "Press Release" announcement that the program is underway. Neither does the White House’s official SPP website, www.spp.gov, carry either general or specific details on the program. The Transportation Working Group section doesn’t even mention the documented, and inexcusable, backlog of structural deficiencies in our nation’s roads and bridges. The Minnesota Department of Transportation was specifically warned by the Federal Highway Administration that increased NAFTA truck traffic would endanger Minnesota bridges along the I-35 corridor (http://publications.iowa.gov/archive/00002975/01/i35study.pdf). This increased Mexican truck traffic will only hasten future failures, subjecting more Americans and American cities to the tragedy Minneapolis recently experienced.

According to the Truck Safety Coalition (http://www.trucksafety.org/Unsafe_Pilot_Program.php), Trucks and Drivers from Mexico Do Not Yet Meet U.S. Standards for Safety and Inspection. Among the safety dangers identified for trucks and buses from Mexico are –

Driver Violations: Drivers that have been stopped on U.S. highways have high out of service (OOS) rates for operating without a drivers license, for not having a legal license to operate the vehicle they were driving, and for not having hours of service (HOS) logbooks and records of duty status (RODS) as required under U.S. law.

Vehicle Violations: Vehicles that have been stopped on U.S. highway have high rates of poorly adjusted brakes and inoperable lamps.

Drug/Alcohol Testing: Mexico does not require workplace drug and alcohol testing of truck drivers as under U.S. law –

There are no certified drug/alcohol testing laboratories in Mexico;
Samples collected in Mexico have to be sent to a U.S. lab for analysis;
The DOT Inspector General cannot verify that drug/alcohol sample collection procedures in Mexico meet U.S. standards for quality, purity and security;
Samples collected at the U.S. border may prove more reliable, but letting drivers know when and where they will be tested defeats the purpose of random testing and does not address U.S. requirements for pre-employment and reasonable suspicion testing.

Hours of Service: In addition to not maintaining HOS records, Mexico has not enforced HOS requirements so drivers can operate for an unlimited number of hours within Mexico and arrive at the U.S. border fatigued. FMCSA admits that it cannot penalize a driver for actions that occurred in Mexico if they have a logbook and other required records.

Operating Authority Enforcement: Half of the U.S. States either have not enforced the laws against vehicles that lack operating authority or have problems obtaining the information needed to confirm if a vehicle lacks operating authority.

Data Quality: States are required to supply data on violations and convictions of Mexican drivers in the U.S. to a federal database. There have been serious problems with reporting these violations and convictions in each border State. About one-quarter (25%) of the requests for information on Mexican drivers indicate that the driver has a violation or conviction.

Bus Safety Inspections: The DOT Inspector General found that further improvements are needed at border crossings including inspection ramps and full-time personnel to accommodate bus and motor coach inspections. In order to evade the fact that preparations for bus inspections are not complete, buses and motor coaches are not included in the pilot program.

Hazardous Materials: The U.S. and Mexico have not reached agreement regarding the movement of placarded hazardous materials shipments from Mexico into the U.S. and beyond the commercial border zones. U.S. law requires criminal background checks be performed for CDL drivers with a hazardous materials endorsement. In order to evade the fact that the safety of cross-border hazardous materials shipments have not been addressed they are also excluded.

Vehicles Not Built to U.S. Standards: Federal law requires that vehicles operated in the U.S. must meet the federal motor vehicle safety standards. Until 1996, most trucks and buses built in Mexico were not built to U.S. standards. Since then, an unknown number of trucks have not included safety equipment required by U.S. standards, such as antilock braking systems. Unless the vehicle has a certification label border inspectors will not be able to determine whether a truck or bus entering the U.S. is as safe as vehicles built to the U.S. safety standards.

The DOT knew in 2005 that many Mexican trucking companies don’t have accurate data about their trucks and drivers, and failed to certify random drug and alcohol testing required of U.S. truck drivers. Not all Mexican truck drivers maintain paper logbooks, which document working, driving and rest time; this frees them to ignore drive time limits and condemn American drivers to fatigue-related accidents, injuries and deaths.

DOT’s Inspector General, on September 6, 2007, issued a report, "Issues Pertaining to the Proposed NAFTA Cross-border Trucking Demonstration Project (http://www.oig.dot.gov/item.jsp?id=2117)." Prior to initiating any demonstration project, Congress has required the Secretary of Transportation to take any action necessary to address any issues DOT raised in this report. Notably, DOT identifies "three issues (needing action by FMCSA):

Ensure that sufficient plans are in place to carry out the Department’s commitment to check every demonstration project truck every time it crosses the border into the United States,
Ensure that state enforcement officials understand how to implement recent guidance on the demonstration project and that training initiatives filter down to roadside inspections, and
Address our determination that FMCSA has implemented policies, rules, and regulations that differ slightly from the language in 3 of 34 specific Congressional requirements."

Perhaps the final insult comes in a New York Times article this summer (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/22/automobiles/22SAFETY.html) which states the U.S. has fallen from its former 1st place, worldwide, in lowest traffic fatalities per capita to its current position of 42nd out of 48 developed countries. Clearly our nation’s roads are fundamentally more dangerous than they were before NAFTA. Immediate remedial steps must be taken if we are to reverse this deplorable situation AND protect ourselves for further danger.

ACTION TO BE TAKEN

Contact the Ranking Minority Member, Senator Mitch McConnell, by phone at (202) 224-2541. Tell him to do all possible to stop this pilot cross-border trucking program, and restrict unsafe Mexican trucks and drivers access to U.S. roads and travelers beyond the border area they’re currently allowed to operate within.

Phone calls would be the most effective way to contact Senator McConnell, as emails and faxes are many times ignored. If you prefer, though, you can email the Senator at (202) 224-2499, or send him an email at senator@mcconnell.senate.gov, or by going to his website at http://thomas.gov.

If you choose to write, and do not know your Senators’ mailing addresses, you may simply address your letters as follows:

Office of Senator (Name)
United States Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510

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Coalition Letter Detailing Risks of National Heritage Area Designation

The following letter - signed by a diverse group of more than 110 organizations, elected officials and citizens - was delivered on September 4 to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Leader John Boehner, Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman, Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Pete V. Domenici, House Committee on Natural Resources Committee Chairman Nick Rahall, House Committee on Natural Resources Ranking Member Don Young as well as all the members of the House and Senate Natural Resources

Committees.

Dear [Elected Official]:

The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Kelo v. City of New London ignited a national outcry against government abuse of property rights. The "bridge to nowhere" and other wasteful programs triggered angry protests against the practice of earmarking.

National Heritage Areas are the Kelo decision and earmarks rolled into one.

National Heritage Areas are preservation zones where land use and property rights can be restricted. They give the National Park Service and preservation interest groups (many with histories of hostility toward property rights) substantial influence by giving them the authority to create land use "management plans" and then the authority to disperse federal money to local governments to promote their plans.

As a March 2004 General Accountability Office report on Heritage Areas states: "[National Heritage Areas] encourage local governments to implement land use policies that are consistent with the Heritage Areas’ plans, which may allow the Heritage Areas to indirectly influence zoning and land use planning in ways that could restrict owners’ use of their property." The proposed "Journey Through Hallowed Ground National Heritage Area Act" provides a good case study on how Heritage Areas can be self-perpetuating federal pork and influence projects. The chief lobbying organization for this Heritage Area, the Journey Through Hallowed Ground Partnership, received a one million-dollar earmark in the 2005 federal transportation bill at the behest of Members of Congress sponsoring legislation to establish this Heritage Area - an earmark that was granted before the organization was even incorporated. A million-dollar earmark thus was issued to help create a steady stream of future pork, at the expense of the rights of local landowners. We believe zoning and land use policies are best left to local officials, who are directly accountable to the citizens they represent. National Heritage Areas corrupt the principle of representative government and this inherently local function by giving unelected, unaccountable special interests the authority to develop land management plans and federal money with which to finance their efforts.

Once established, National Heritage Areas become permanent units of the National Park Service, and as such, permanent drains on an agency that currently suffers a multibillion-dollar maintenance crisis. According to the GAO, "sunset provisions have not been effective in limiting federal funding [for National Heritage Areas]: since 1984, five areas that reached their sunset dates received funding reauthorization from the Congress." Supporters of new Heritage Areas have the public will precisely backward: Americans want stronger property rights protections and less pork barrel spending - not more earmarks to programs that harm property rights. Please do not support the creation of additional National Heritage Areas or federal funding for

Heritage Area management entities, support groups, or groups that lobby for or advocate the creation of new Heritage Areas.

Sincerely,

ACTION TO TAKE

Please mail this letter to the above-named Representatives and Senators. You may cut and paste the above letter into your own Word document to print and mail. Additionally, you may view the signatories and, if you prefer, print the entire letter here http://www.nationalcenter.org/NHACoalitionLetter0907.pdf.

If you do not know your Congressman’s mailing addresses, you may simply address your letters as follows:

Office of Congressman (Name)
United States House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515

Office of Senator (Name)
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510

Alternatively, you may phone the United States Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121. A switchboard operator will connect you directly with the House or Senate office you request.