Highway safety be damned: The lame ducks of the Bush regime are looking a lot more like cornered rattlesnakes

Howie has written before about the Bush Department of Transportation's unrelenting push for a "pilot program" to allow Mexican long-haul trucks into the U.S. with essentially no safety standards or requirements or oversight. (The illustration is "borrowed" from The Conscience of 294, "an unofficial website for the members of Teamsters Local 294, Albany, NY.")

This is an important highway safety issue, and under normal circumstances we might want to talk more about it. Unfortunately, these are not normal circumstances, and there is a more urgent reason to revisit the issue. It has escalated. Now it's a question of the Bush regime, going into its final year (finally!), moving toward outright imperial government, openly and explicitly flouting the law.

As Howie subsequently reported, Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) took the lead in passing an amendment terminating that pilot program--amassing 74 votes in the Senate!--for inclusion in the Omnibus Budget Bill, which was signed by Chimpy the Prez and everything. However, the DoT is going right ahead, as TeamsterPower reports on DailyKos:

DOT to Congress: F@#K You! We'll do what we want.

by TeamsterPower

Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) authored a provision that scrapped the pilot program allowing Mexican long-haul trucks into the United States. It was included in the Omnibus Budget Bill that was signed by President Bush just before the Christmas break.

So far so good, right?

Well, last week the Department of Transportation announced it will continue the pilot program anyway. And this, my friends, is called breaking a federal law.

The DOT, is trying to get around this bipartisan mandate by saying the law says that funds will not be used to establish a pilot program. "Well," they say, "we don’t need to establish a pilot program; we already have one ... So keep em rolling!"

But the U.S. Senate Legislative Counsel says otherwise:

...The phrase "establish" was to be construed in its broadest context and that such a broad construction would include implementation. In fact, the legislative history in the Senate indicates that it was intended to preclude the carrying out of any demonstration program, including the pilot program put into effect in September 2007

Senator Dorgan is pissed off and had about enough of the DOT. He penned a letter to the department yesterday telling them that their statement to continue the program –despite the law scrapping it – "is both arrogant and wrong," which we categorically agree with.

TeamsterPower goes on to talk about the "huge safety issues that top the list of chief motivations behind Dorgan writing the amendment in the first place," and I encourage you to read on.

My concern here is the alarming signal that, as the Bush regime finally waddles into lame-duck status, it may in fact be throwing off all perceived limitations on its power, and may plan to govern in the belief that it is truly accountable to no one.

Let's see what Senator Dorgan's letter to the DoT turns up. In the meantime, if you choose to be very afraid, I don't blame you.

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