Monday, December 1, 2008

How did my compadre's feel about the election?

The Trucker magazine held polls all throughout the election. In March they asked "If the presidential race is between McCain and obama for whom would you vote.
McCain won 68% to 32%

In June they asked two questions: "If the election were held today, for whom would you vote for?"
McCain won 68% to 32%
But when asked whom they thought would win, it was McCain by only 53% to 47%

In September, after both men had picked their running mates, it was McCain 59% to 41%

Then on the day of the election they asked whom the truckers had voted for and it was McCain 70% to 30%.

One final poll. A year ago the Trucker asked truckers who they would prefer as the candidates for the parties. Clinton was the democrats choice and Thompson was the Republicans choice. Obama finished behind Edwards on the democrat poll. The lineup on the Republican side was Thompson, Romney, Guiliani, Huckabee, McCain.

When truckers heard the acceptance speech their first question was where's "There"? "We may not get 'There' in one year or even in one term." ~ Obama.

Obama didn't have trucking as an issue on his website but he did say last June that he didn't want to unilaterally reopen negotiations on NAFTA, I thought NAFTA was a republican thing?

Obama said that too many of the nation's railways, highways, bridges, airports and neighborhood streets are slowly decaying because of lack of investment and strategic long term planning. Well no shit sherlock.. This has been a problem for 20 years, he's just now waking up to this? Hell he was in the Senate where were the bills from him to fix this? He was part of the raiding going on of the trust fund.

The only thing concrete truckers will have to look forward to is more road taxes. The highway trust fund had to get an $8 billion infusion this summer because of the lower intake of fuel taxes. Obama says he's going to start a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank to expand and enhance, not supplant, the existing federal transportation investments.

Hey that's all well and good, we can see our bridges crumbling. But that NIRB is planning on a $60 billion infusion of federal money over 10 years. Come on now.. What the hell is that going to do? That's $6 billion a year and a new bridge costs hundreds of millions of dollars. We have 100's of thousands of bridges needing repair right now. AASHTO said in July that it would take $140 billion to repair or replace those bridges... Then add up the millions of miles of roads that are falling apart and then the highways that go through our towns. Yea $60 billion sounds like a lot of money until you start looking at the enormity of the problem.

They're going to be looking for new ways to tax this money out of your pockets. Instead of using the Highway Trust Fund for it's intended purpose CONgress has been stealling from it just like they do every year to Social Security and using it for other purposes instead of what it's intended for.

You could be seeing a federal per mile tax to pay every year. You will see more roads becoming toll roads. Again, we the taxpayers have to pay for the irresponsible spending of our government, as if we haven't seen enough of that in the last month alone.... When are they going to start running the government check book the way we have to? When it's to late?

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