Do We Really Need Illegal Aliens To Drive Commercial Vehicles.

By now you likely heard of two recent incidents with illegal aliens driving commercial trunks. On August 12^th, an 18-wheeler truck, driven by an illegal alien named Harjinder Singh, was operating in Bay County FL. Mr. Singh attempted an illegal U-turn, jackknifed and collided with a minivan. The crash killed all three people on board. Besides Singh, another illegal alien with a commercial driver’s license (CDL), issued by New Jersey, was taken into custody for an ICE hold. Singh was licensed by both Washington state and California. 

On October 22^nd, an illegal alien named Jashanpreet Singh, operating an 18-wheeler outside of Los Angeles plowed into seven vehicles on Interstate-10. This crash killed three and injured four others. What do these three men have in common? One, they are all illegal aliens. Two, their English comprehension was, to put it nicely, limited. Three, they were issued license to drive commercial vehicles in the US by three liberal states. 

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The canard liberals push constantly is illegal aliens are only here to do “the jobs Americans won’t do anymore.” I find that factitious at best. At 18 you can get an initial CDL for instate transport in less than two months and under $4,000. If you have a job already with a company, they often times will pay for your training. Additional endorsements (e.g., hazardous materials) will take additional training and experience. Also, for intrastate commerce the federal government requires the driver be at least 21. 

 

The average CDL driver starts at well over $50,000 and it climbs with experience, a safe driving record, and endorsements. I have a high school friend who went the vo-tech route and got his CDL at 19. Now he manages a trucking company in Houston and makes a very good income with great benefits. The endorsements on his license are half the alphabet, you name it, he can haul it. He can command a high five or low six figure income. Not bad for someone who’s only experience with college is delivering things there. 

 

One day I asked him how much had been put into his training over the years. He had to think for a minute and answered, “Mike at least a quarter million dollars.” I asked how much of that he paid for himself? “Nothing.” So he started off in his late teens making good money without having to take out a mortgage for tuition. Sounds like a great career field for someone who’s not college oriented. 

 

More to the point, we need to remember driving any vehicle is someone perilous. Driving a rig is orders of magnitude worse. Two tons verses eighty. There are reason commercial drivers are limited to eleven hours of driving, followed by mandatory ten hours of down time. 

 

As a rookie officer I saw what happens when rigs are driven poorly. A drunk driver was driving an unsecured load in his rig and took a curve too fast. He flipped and crushed an SUV, killing most of the occupants. I believe he is still in prison for intoxication manslaughter, but he should have never been allowed on the road. Same with these three drivers. 

 

Liberals want illegal aliens to cast the votes Americans won’t cast anymore (the dead have their limits). If it means we import gang members that rape and kill your family, tough. But that’s not the only threat. I’ve found too many illegal aliens driving who are not concerned they are a hazard on the road (e.g., speeding, stopping in the middle of the highway for no reason, no insurance, impaired driving). Now we have greater threats on the highway with illegals driving rigs that weigh over 100,000 pounds. 

 

First, we need to continue our efforts to secure the border and deport the illegals already here. Cut it off before it starts. 

 

Second, we need to start holding companies and their staff criminally liable for hiring illegal aliens. If they knew or should have known, the federal government should be prosecuting these people and putting them into jail. And families should be getting multi-million-dollar civil judgements. Hit them where it hurts the most, the wallet. 

 

Next we need to ensure states are not issuing licenses to illegal aliens (as opposed to immigrants). If you issue a CDL to an illegal alien who kills someone, hold the licensing bureau staff legally liable. If it was I my power, the bureaucrats who issued those CDLs would be looking at charges of criminal negligent homicide. Back to my friend with the CDL, it infuriates him that by law you must be fluent in English to possess a CDL. But (in Texas) you can take the written exam in Spanish. What’s wrong with this picture?

Finally, we need to start making it painful for liberal states to continue doing this. Start cutting off all federal transportation funding to states that issue any driver’s license to an illegal alien (commercial or not). You want your Democratic voter endangering your citizens, fine, you do with without the tax dollars of the rest of the states. You’re not only endangering your citizens, but you’re also endangering the lives of others. And that cannot be tolerated. 

Security Weekly: The Danger of Security Theater, November 20, 2014

By Scott Stewart

I've often written about how terrorism is a type of macabre theater, or as early anarchist terrorists referred to it, the "propaganda of the deed." As I wrote in a previous Security Weekly, the intent of terrorist planners is to create hysteria that transcends the immediate impact of their attacks by drawing other people into the trauma of their attack as vicarious victims. The goal is to maximize the social and psychological impact of physical efforts.

But terrorism theater does not exist in a vacuum. It has a counterpart that lives alongside it and largely in response to it, in some ways exerting a Newtonian opposite and equal force in misleading the public. This force is, of course, security theater — theater that is intended to abate, rather than create, hysteria. But as the name suggests, this purportedly secure facade constructed of smoke and mirrors is no more universally effective than terrorism is universally dangerous. Both terrorist attacks and security measures are real, but neither is as significant or substantial as the public is led to believe.

Acting for the Sake of Acting

Now perhaps this topic is just coming to mind because I am traveling this week, and aviation security is one area in which security theater is perhaps the most readily apparent. Highly visible, knee-jerk security measures have been implemented to stop the methods and tactics used in previous attacks, but they have very little ability to stop any future attacks that use new techniques.

The Transportation Security Administration, for example, was created in the wake of 9/11 and charged with preventing similar attacks. Following the shoe bombing attempt in December 2001, aviation security authorities enacted measures requiring passengers to remove their shoes for screening. This change in procedure caused terrorist planners to switch to alternative methods of concealing explosives, such as liquids or underwear, to smuggle them onboard aircraft. Consequently, after the 2006 discovery of a plot to smuggle explosives disguised as liquids aboard aircraft, authorities limited the amount of liquids travelers could take in their carry-on luggage. Finally, in response to the failed attempt to detonate a bomb hidden in underwear in December 2009, the Transportation Security Administration began to employ full-body scanners at airports. Indeed, aviation security has a long history of being a reactionary arms race, and I see no end to this pattern.

In truth, there is only so much that aviation security authorities can do to prevent explosives from being brought onboard an aircraft so long as passengers and luggage are permitted onboard and attackers are willing to die. But because of the hysteria caused by incidents like the failed shoe and underwear bombings — and the economic implications of such panic — authorities feel compelled to do something to reassure and calm the traveling public, even if other smuggling tactics can circumvent those measures.

Creating the Illusion of Security

Security theater is not restricted to the domain of aviation security; it is much more widespread. The typical corporate office building, for example, is "secured" by access control devices, badge readers and closed-circuit television cameras. Such measures are highly visible and help prevent low-level intrusions, but they do very little to protect facilities from clever and sophisticated criminals, brute force attacks, or perhaps most significantly, insider threats. During my career I have seen many cases of expensive access control systems being rendered useless by people propping doors open with trash cans, failing to check the identifications of people tailgating in the door behind them, or simply refusing to lock doors for the sake of convenience. In many cases, the presence of access control devices and cameras can actually create a false sense of security, a psychological crutch that can be dangerous if people assume they are safe, fail to practice good situational awareness and even go into denial at the first sign of a criminal or terrorist attack, all because they don’t think such an attack could happen at their "secure" location. This attitude often proves fatal when it causes people to ignore warning signs or go into shock and freeze.

Training can also contribute to a false sense of security. Safety training can be extremely helpful and effective, but if it is not done correctly (or sufficiently) it can lead to overconfidence and dramatic failure. When I was in high school, a kid who had taken a few Kung Fu classes became unduly cocky and was taken out with one punch by an experienced street fighter. Throughout my career as a diplomatic security special agent and corporate security manager, I have encountered many people who have received a little training and have begun to think entirely too highly of their capabilities. Closely related are the security hucksters, or self-described "security experts" who heavily self-promote their expertise for financial gain. Yet despite the multitude of initials they like to include behind their names, these hucksters have little idea of what they are doing in the real world. Whenever I encounter such people, I think of that Kung Fu kid, and of how these poorly trained charlatans are setting themselves (and their clients) up for a similar type of spectacular failure.

Getting in Touch with Reality

So what, then, is the antidote for security theater? It starts with a sober assessment of the threats facing a person, company or agency. Can the threat be defeated, or is it something that can only be contained, avoided or abated? The next step is to share that rational assessment with the people you are seeking to protect. Education is an important element of effective security, and I have found that if security managers and government officials are open and honest with their people, and explain the threat they are trying to protect against in a candid and rational manner, most people will cooperate with security programs, especially if the programs are logical and designed to protect against the threat that has been defined. Yes, there will still be people who will buck any security system, but if security managers are able to get buy-in from most of the people they are protecting and establish a good security culture, then cooperative individuals will help provide positive peer pressure for any non-conformists.

Once security managers or agency directors have formed their rational assessments, they must implement security programs and measures that are balanced, sensible and cost-effective. Will your multimillion-dollar closed-circuit television system ever be able to prevent an attack or theft? Will it ever be able to help you recover enough stolen property to pay for itself? If not, you may need to rethink spending that much money for it.

Security professionals must understand that the people they are trying to keep safe are really the best line of defense against security threats of all kinds. The protected population has many more eyes than the security staff, even in companies that employ widespread video surveillance. If people are treated as adults and buy into security programs, they can become a critical part of the solution rather than the problem. When we expand this to a larger scale and incorporate individuals into the national security strategy — if you see something, say something — citizens can become highly effective grassroots defenders. This concept is becoming especially important as the terrorist threat becomes increasingly concentrated in the grassroots itself.

While the protected people in the office (or nation) can be a great security asset, they can also become cynical and jaded if they are alienated by security personnel. Nothing pushes people away faster than hyped-up, melodramatic security theater. By making theatrical and unreasonable security claims and demands, you can lose the trust and respect of the people you are trying to protect. And as a security professional, it is extremely hard to regain a person's — or a population's — trust and respect once you have lost it.

The Danger of Security Theater is republished with permission of Stratfor.

Again I ask, why? The latest and greatest, high speed rail between Houston and Dallas.

One of the causes that I've noticed over the he last decade or so it "We need high speed rail" in California, or between California and Las Vegas, etc. Now no one seems to ask "Is there a market for this?" Translation, if you build it, will they come?

The latest and greatest comes from my adopted home state of Texas. The usual suspects want to put in a rail from Houston to Dallas.

Proposed routes for Dallas-Houston high-speed rail revealed

Texans got their first glimpses Tuesday of the potential routes a proposed bullet train could take from Dallas to Houston.

The 240-mile project, which could be the first high-speed rail line in America, is expected to get people between the two cities in 90 minutes. If funding is secured and federal approval granted, the train could be running by 2021....

...That downtown station would make it easier for Texas Central to achieve a chief goal for the project: tying in to existing public transit at both end points. Dallas City Council members Lee Kleinman and Vonciel Jones Hill lobbied for Union Station to serve as the North Texas terminus. Union Station serves two Dallas Area Rapid Transit light-rail lines, an Amtrak line and the TRE passenger train that connects Dallas and Fort Worth.

“We want the train speeding to Union Station,” Hill said to applause at the meeting at the Dallas Infomart. A handful of residents later agreed in a public hearing.

The company is eyeing four general areas for the Houston station. One is downtown; the three others are northwest of the city center....

...Texas Central plans to build the project completely with private funds and has already begun soliciting investors. Although the company has not said how much the project will cost, estimates put the amount at about $10 billion.

The company has the power to use eminent domain for the project. The two routes selected for closer consideration largely follow existing rail lines or utility rights of way, which would minimize the need for land purchases or seizure.

The company estimates it needs only 3,000 acres between Dallas and Houston in addition to existing rights of way to build the 240-mile line.

Government officials estimate that the drive from Dallas to Houston, which now takes about four hours, could take six hours by 2035. They estimate the average speed on I-45 between the two cities will drop from 60 mph to 40 mph over that time.

A major contributor to the additional traffic is the expected population growth in both metropolitan areas.

“It’s going to be nearly doubling in both situations,” Jamie Maughan, an environmental analysis lead with the Federal Railroad Administration, said.

California is already building an 800-mile high-speed rail system. But that project has been bogged down with hometown feuds, lawsuits and political battles. Private investments involved with the Texas line could avoid the bureaucratic hurdles tied to public funds. And Texas’ rural and relatively flat terrain is easy to build on.

“We believe that high-speed rail is the biggest game changer in transportation since the federal highway system was established,” Hill said.

Ok, it's an interesting concept but again, if you build it, will people use it?

I recently read Nuts, a book written by the founders of Southwest Airlines. One of the points they made was they were not in competition with the big airlines, they were in competition with bus services and cars. We could let you fly from Dallas to Houston at 700am, have your meeting at 900am, get you back on the plane by 1100am and be back in Dallas for lunch. That is an issue now because in flying from those two cities you spend more time getting molested by TSA than you spend in the air. So again, we go back to high speed rail.

The distance from Houston to Dallas is around 240 miles. Assume you average 70 mph on I-45, that is around 3.5 hours. The planners state you will be riding the train for 90 minutes from one end to another. But does that factor in when TSA comes in and starts to molest your passengers for the privilege of getting on the train. From the New York Times of last year:

T.S.A. Expands Duties Beyond Airport Security

WASHINGTON — As hundreds of commuters emerged from Amtrak and commuter trains at Union Station on a recent morning, an armed squad of men and women dressed in bulletproof vests made their way through the crowds.

The squad was not with the Washington police department or Amtrak’s police force, but was one of the Transportation Security Administration’s Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response squads — VIPR teams for short — assigned to perform random security sweeps to prevent terrorist attacks at transportation hubs across the United States.

“The T.S.A., huh,” said Donald Neubauer of Greenville, Ohio, as he walked past the squad. “I thought they were just at the airports.”

With little fanfare, the agency best known for airport screenings has vastly expanded its reach to sporting events, music festivals, rodeos, highway weigh stations and train terminals. Not everyone is happy.

T.S.A. and local law enforcement officials say the teams are a critical component of the nation’s counterterrorism efforts, but some members of Congress, auditors at the Department of Homeland Security and civil liberties groups are sounding alarms. The teams are also raising hackles among passengers who call them unnecessary and intrusive...

So add on at least another half hour to the travel as you must go through being felt up by a unionized federal work force. Oh, and you will be paying for this. Remember, TSA surcharges on a ticket are not just for airlines. So that will increase the cost.

Now the target of this train appears to be business travelers needing to go to and from the two largest cities in Texas. But if the time required is adding up to the approximately 3.5 hours of drive time, the question again is will they bother. Or put another way, one of Houston's greatest growing suburbs in The Woodlands, approximately 30 miles north of the city. It is becoming a home mecca of many oil and high tech companies because Houston proper is being infested by liberals on the city council who love to manage Fortune 500 companies. If I live there and need to attend a meeting in Dallas at 900am, I can drive south into Houston during the early rush hour (say 45 minutes), get to the rail terminal and be molested by TSA (30 minutes), take the train (90 minutes), get off at a terminal in Dallas, take some form of transportation to get me to my destination (say 30 minutes) and then do the same in reverse. Just over three hours one way. Or I can leave The Woodlands at 500am, be in Dallas around 800am and when my meeting is over, drive straight back. The distance between The Woodlands and Dallas is 210 miles. Just over 3 hours driving.

Again, if this can be built by private funds only, God bless em. Lord knows it will be better handled than the multibillion dollar boondoggle in California. But again, I'm just curious, is there a market for this? If so, great, I wish them the best. But I just don't see it at this time.