Life on the Road – Trucking News Blog

Well, MATS has come and gone for another year-but it’ll take us at least that long to digest and assimilate all the new information we’ve been exposed to. And, we’ll be busy daydreaming about the Harley LoneStar for even longer.

Now it’s time to get down to the serious business of keeping up with current events. And one that just hit my radar is the new epidemic report from the Center For Disease Control: you remember them-they’re the ones who try to tell us 36,000 people die of the flu every year, but can only list less than two hundred deaths? (Get your flue shot, Charlie!) Well, their latest report is regarding a new cause of death that is inordinately impacting people in the South.

Is it some new food-borne illness? A deadly mosquito plague? Mal-nutrition from poverty? Nope, you’ll never guess. . . .it’s car accidents!

Now, excuse me if I snicker-death isn’t funny. Auto accidents aren’t funny. What’s funny is that this tax-supported government-sponsored disease-tracking entity considers death from car wrecks an epidemic in Mississippi. The CDC’s study of this issue discusses possible reasons car accidents might be a bigger cause of death in the Deep South than other places, including the possibility that later access to medical care or a shortage of emergency care may account for the higher death rates. But, reading the report kind of gives you the feeling they think it’s some kind of nefarious domestic terrorist plot to kill people from Mississippi.

Are they planning to approve a new vaccine for Mississippi auto accidents? Or, maybe outlaw the Confederate flags flying from pick-up trucks that may be a causative factor? How about a complete moratorium on the phrase, “Here, Leroy-hold my beer and WATCH THIS!”

They Just Keep Piling It On

About the same time, the CDC came out with a report that suggests that one in four people suffer from some kind of food poisoning every year. Why, that’s an even higher number than those poor folks in Mississippi who are being inordinately victimized by car accidents! Of course, most of this food-borne illness is the self-limiting, ‘one-day flu’-type stuff and not serious but certainly not ecologically healthy due to the amount of extra toilet paper used by truck drivers who ate the three-day-old chicken at the fuel stop. And instead of being over at the FDA offices pointing out that the suspect salmonella peanuts that have caused thousands of products to be recalled are a foreign import (PCA bought 90% of their product from China and Argentina, according to a report in the CS Monitor), they’re carrying on about car accidents in the south!

This is the same agency that tries tor force all of our babies to be inoculated against Hepatitis B at birth, a third-world disease caused by sexual contact, and is now pushing Gardasil Vaccine for both little girls and boys to protect against a very limited number of self-limiting sexually transmitted diseases that might cause some forms of cervical cancer-and has serious side effects up to, and including, death. If we seriously believe our infants and young children are in danger of sexually-transmitted diseases in nursery and elementary school, we’ve got a problem the CDC sure wont be able to solve (sounds more like a 2nd Amendment issue to me, but that’s probably a culturally-insensitive statement).

Getting Deeper!

So, given this is the way our governmental bodies make sense of and respond to perceived problems, is it any wonder they bailed out AIG? And AIG gave a bunch of the bail-out money to Goldman-Sachs? And everybody gave it to foreign banks? And the Treasury Dept told Congress to slip in the usual bonuses to AIG top execs-and then tried to say they didn’t-and got caught? And why Congress and the current occupant of the White House are planning to try to pass a very unconstitutional Bill, called a Bill of Attainder to take the money back under the guise of a special tax?  And Obama says he didnt do it? And ACORN has organized bus tours to go to AIG execs homes and try to terrorize their families? And there are over 1000 Tea Parties organized in all states to protest the money-wasting garbage passing for governance in Washington? Or that Postal Inspectors have had to throw out thousands of teas bags, many used, that have been mailed to Congress and the White House.

I just don’t get it-we’re out here slogging away, trying to do our jobs and keep food on the table and the people we PAY to take care of this stuff have not only broken into and emptied the liquor cabinet, borrowed the car and wrecked it, they’ve set the house on fire and poisoned the dog. Where’s my pitchfork and torch? I’m heading to Washington!

Wikipedia : A bill of attainder (also known as an act or writ of attainder) is an act of the legislature declaring a person or group of persons guilty of some crime and punishing them without benefit of a trial. Bills of attainder are forbidden by Article I, section 9, clause 3 of the United States Constitution.