Walter Moore Says: You Are Buying New Trucks For Union Employees Only

Walter Moore Says: You Are Buying New Trucks For Union Employees Only


Los Angeles Times">

From Walter Moore:

"Well, the Los Angeles Times reports today that U.S. District Court Judge Christina Snyder has upheld the "provision, backed by the Teamsters Union, that truck drivers moving through the harbor must be employed by a trucking company." Her reasoning, according to the paper, was as follows:

"Snyder concluded that the concession agreements were a "business necessity" that allowed harbor officials to protect its financial interests. In her ruling, she said that air pollution from trucks had jeopardized the port's future as a commercial enterprise, with lawsuits over emissions stalling growth at the harbor for seven years -- just as other ports were growing dramatically"

"With all due respect, I predict the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit will reverse this decision unless Judge Snyder reconsiders her ruling first.
Barring independent contractors serves no legitimate purpose. If the supposed problem is ensuring drivers can afford a truck, then require a minimum credit score, or require them to post a bond. Any given independent contractor's financial wherewithal may be better, worse, or exactly the same as any given corporation. To close the port to independent contractors is therefore unjustifiable."

"This provision of the "clean trucks" program has nothing to do with cleaning the air, and everything to do with rewarding the unions that fund the political campaigns of career politicians like Villaraigosa. This is special interest politics at its worst. Indeed, more fundamentally, why are you and I, through increased duties imposed on imports, buying "free" trucks for private companies at all? Assuming it makes sense to require cleaner trucks at the port than everywhere else in the city, county and state, the port should simply ban "dirty" trucks, and leave it to the companies and independent contractors in trucking to buy, rent or lease their own trucks."


COMMENT: I have mixed views on the LA Clean Trucks Program. It in effect creates a union closed shop in LA port areas where only unionized teamster EMPLOYEES of large trucking companies can move goods thru the LA Port. It goes against my ingrained free market principals, my past background as an independent contract business owner/driver, and my general stance against closed shop/public unions.
On other hand i live right next to LA Port and next to a very busy freeway thru which port trucks rumble day and night. I benefit healthwise from the ports cleaner air resulting from this ruling, as do all area residents. Also this ruling has admittedly put out of business 1000's of big rig independent contract drivers, many of them recent green card immigrants, who were driving beaten-up old rigs which belched tons of black smoke & spewed pollutants into the air, and fouled up the local streets with their beaten up old deisels.

After careful consideration i have come out against the ruling, as it does foster a closed union shop and allows for large trucking companies to be gov-subsidized. This is a big no-no for me. I ran my own independent contract delivery business for many years and always payed all my expenses of running the operation - no government ever gave me any subsidy.

L.A to give people living in cars on Venice-area streets overnight parking

L.A to give people living in cars on Venice-area streets 'safe overnight parking' | L.A. NOW | Los Angeles Times

LA city ready to allow overnight parking for folks living in cars and RV's in supposedly upscale Venice Beach. City is also looking for a social services provider to provide needed social services to the displaced homeless Venice Folks living out of their vehicles.

Venice was till recently seen as a burgeoning upscale beach front trendy hip community, a favorite haunt of LA artists involved in the movie industry, and as very hip and offbeat. Now we have this small but growing population of Venice homeless living out of their cars and RV's. Who would have guessed! When the average price of homes in VB was till recently near 1 million, no wonder some area residents who may have lost jobs or fell thru the economic roof have been turned out in the streets, or in VB's case, in their vehicles.
A sign of our tough economic times? I have seen folks in tidy suburban Orange County - not transient urchins but decent former middle-class suburbanites such as boomer-aged moms - digging thru garbage bins at OC state beaches, fishing for aluminum cans in order to survive.

Anyway , we have Venice Beach, long thought to be a hip upscale tourist trap, becoming swamped by homeless folks living out of their vehicles. Needless to say the area's residents are not too happy about it, seeing these folks as not down and out but as area nuisances. I cannot judge this as all of us can take an unfortunate economic turn and be cast out on the streets, or have to find refuge in living with friends or relatives.

These are bad economic times, and even along CA's upscale beach communities there are impoverished homeless and folks struggling to survive. These are mostly former middle-class suburbanites, mostly white and many of them aging boomers, perhaps with disabilities, unable to return to work in this badly depressed economy, or unable to afford beach-area housing prices if they do find work at reduced wages.

prospects for Long term UE older adults very bleak

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/wHtV/~3/nn71rvl_yCE/growing-ranks-of-long-term-jobless-face.html

Bad news for the long-term unemployed over 45 years old, and older boomers in general who have been out of work more than 6 months. As this article states, the prospects are bleak in this depression economy for older unemployed boomers, and the longer you go without work the harder it gets to get back into the workforce once the economy does pick up, which i believe will not happen anytime soon. Despite the rosy spin of the pundits and Obama administation economists, UE rates will hover around 10% U-3(official stats)for next several years. This is my opinion, based on the fact we are experiencing a more or less 1930's type depression, which has been mitigated in its severity by 99 month extended UE benefits and 12 % of US population receiving food stamps. In process the US is piling up enormous debt, and bankrupting itself in the process.