Tag: trucking industry

Obama Issuing EO to Change Fuel Standards of Trucking Industry to Combat “Climate Change”

On By kingsjesterIn Politics3 Comments

trucking21814President Barack Hussein Obama is using his #2 pencil and Big Chief Tablet to write another Executive Order, and this time he may just erase an entire American Industry with it.

The New York Times reported that

President Obama on Tuesday ordered the development of tough new fuel standards for the nation’s fleet of heavy-duty trucks as part of what aides say will be an increasingly muscular and unilateral campaign to tackle climate change through the use of the president’s executive power.

The new regulations, to be drafted by the administration by March 2015 and completed a year later so they are in place before Mr. Obama leaves office, are the latest in a series of actions intended to cut back on greenhouse gases without the sort of comprehensive legislation the president failed to push through Congress in his first term.

The new regulation would primarily affect the country’s 600 coal-fired power plants, like this one in Texas, and could ultimately shutter hundreds of them.E.P.A. Staff Struggling to Create Pollution RuleFEB. 4, 2014

The limits on truck tailpipe pollution would combine with previous rules requiring passenger cars and light trucks to burn fuel more efficiently and pending rules to limit the carbon emissions of power plants. Cumulatively, experts said the à la carte approach should enable Mr. Obama to meet his target of cutting carbon pollution in the United States by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020. But they said he would still be far short of his goal of an 80 percent reduction by 2050.

“Improving gas mileage for these trucks is going to drive down our oil imports even further,” Mr. Obama said at a Safeway grocery distribution center here, flanked by a Peterbilt truck and Safeway and Coca-Cola cabs. “That reduces carbon pollution even more, cuts down on businesses’ fuel costs, which should pay off in lower prices for consumers. So it’s not just a win-win, it’s a win-win-win. We got three wins.”

Not everyone sees it that way. United States car and truck manufacturers have lobbied heavily against aggressive increases in federal fuel economy standards, saying that they could increase vehicle prices and diminish safety. More broadly, Republicans have said that the president should not single-handedly impose what they consider onerous requirements on vast swaths of the energy economy when Congress has opted against its own intervention.

The announcement was part of the president’s vow in his State of the Union address last month to advance his agenda “with or without Congress.” But while most of the actions taken since then have been relatively modest, like ordering a study of job training programs, one area where Mr. Obama both has the power to take more sweeping action and seems intent on using it is the environment.

…A coalition of shippers that stand to benefit from lower fuel costs, including FedEx, Wabash National Corporation and Waste Management Inc., welcomed the president’s action and released its own suggestions to shape the administration’s new regulations.

“This collaborative approach will result in realistic, achievable goals and an effective regulatory framework to improve fuel efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” said Douglas W. Stotlar, president of Con-way Inc., the nation’s third-largest freight company and a member of the coalition.

The American Trucking Association took a more cautious view, saying that it had worked with the administration on previous rules. “As we begin this new round of standards, A.T.A. hopes the administration will set forth a path that is both based on the best science and research available and economically achievable,” said Bill Graves, the association’s chief executive.

Mr. Obama pointed to what he called an emerging consensus. “If rivals like PepsiCo and Coca-Cola or U.P.S. and FedEx or AT&T and Verizon, if they can join together on this, then maybe Democrats and Republicans can do the same,” he said.

The fact that the Trucking Industry plays a crucial part in our nation’s economy is no surprise to anyone who works in it.

But, did you know how big a role the Trucking Industry plays?

According to the Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, trucks moved 73.7 percent of the country’s freight in 2012, carrying $10 trillion worth of the country’s $13.6 trillion in freight.

These fact come straight from the DOT’s recently released Commodity Flow Survey, a survey which is  done roughly every five years.

Trucks also carried 70 percent of the tonnage moved in 2012, hauling 8 billion of the 11.7 billion tons shipped last year.

Per the CFS, the for-hire trucking industry carried $6.6 trillion in freight, or 48.5 percent of the total, while private trucks hauled 25.2 percent, or $3.4 trillion.

In the Trucking Industry, like every other industry, the name of the game is revenue.

When this battle in Obama’s Quixotic tilt against his evil nemesis, the fictional Climate Change, comes to fruition, it will damage the Trucking Industry, by cutting into their profitability.

This decrease in revenue will be compensated for by raising their price per mile to their clients, who include the Food Industry, the Construction Industry, the Retail Industry, the Pharmaceutical Industry, and, to bring it around full-circle, the Oil Industry itself, among others.

Obama, in his zeal to “appear to be doing something” about a Liberal and Celebrity Cause Du Jour, will harm our nation’s economy, placing American workers even further behind the eight ball than we are now, regarding of what his sycophants in the industry and he himself will tell you.

Obama’s over-reaching economic ignorance will leave our nation in a hole we will never be able to climb out of, if he is not stood up to…immediately.

Until He Comes,

KJ 

Obamacare Gets Personal

On By kingsjesterIn Politics3 Comments

obamadoctorI hope that all of you had a blessed Easter Sunday with your family. I know that I did. My step-son, daughter-in-law, and 5 year old grandson, came over for honey-baked ham and scalloped potatoes.

I was glad to see them and to get to spend time with them and to get a chance to talk to my steep-son. He was let go, last Thursday, from the trucking company he worked for. He had consistently been one of their top drivers for over a year. However, that wasn’t enough. You see, his company, which is run out of the great White North, is slowing eliminating all of their company drivers, in favor of owner-operators.

The reason? The coming of Obamacare.

The 2012 National Survey of Employer-Sponsored Health Plans, predicts that the average per-employee cost of health coverage will rise about 6.5 percent in 2013 and that 58 percent of employers surveyed have already made plans to shift costs to their employees to reduce the hit that they will take.

Even though the study found that while very few employers anticipate canceling their health benefit plans after reform is fully implemented, smaller employers are nearly three times as likely to say they will. When asked whether they plan to end their employee health coverage in five years, after Obamacare is fully implemented, 16 percent of smaller employers (between 10 and 499 employees) said they probably would end their employee health plans. Only 6 percent of bigger companies claimed that they would cancel coverage once insurance exchanges go online and individual mandates and employer penalties become effective. (The penalties won’t apply to companies with fewer than 50 employees.)

Although Obamacare is not supposed to go into full effect until 2014, several aspects of it are due to swing into effect in 2013:

Exchange enrollment. Open enrollment for individual and small business health insurance exchanges begins Oct. 1, 2013. “Exchanges are probably the most important provision of health-care reform for small businesses because they will help lower costs and improve choice of plans,” says Erin Musgrave, communications director at Small Business Majority, an advocacy group that has pushed for health-care reform.

States have until the middle of November 2012 to declare whether they will operate their own exchanges or default to exchanges operated by the federal government. There is some question about how many states will have their exchanges ready for business by the Jan. 1, 2014, target date. The exchanges will allow individuals and small businesses with up to 100 employees to shop for qualified health insurance coverage online, using a one-stop option.

Tax implications. As in recent years, dating to tax year 2010, eligible employers that provide health coverage will again get a tax credit for up to 35 percent of their contribution toward employee insurance. The credit is calculated based on average wages and number of employees; it goes up to 50 percent for tax year 2014.

High-income individuals. For singles with modified adjusted gross income over $200,000 and married taxpayers with $250,000 MAGI, a 3.8 percent Medicare contribution tax will apply for tax year 2013 to investment income, including interest, dividends, annuities, royalties and rents.

W-2 reporting. Tax form W-2s issued in January 2013 for wages paid in 2012 must for the first time include a line showing the benefit employees receive from their employer-sponsored health care. The provision is an attempt to make health-care benefits and spending more transparent. Small companies may face an increase in their W-2 preparation costs to cover gathering that information and reporting it, Starkman says.

After this report was issed, the Obama Administration gave the states until December 14th of last year to declare for the Healthcare Exchanges. When the dust settled 26 states told the Administration to get lost, refusing to install Obmamcare in their states. That forces the Administration to scramble to run those exchanges, themselves.

That brings another problem.

If the White House can’t get their act together, and build these exchanges, it could mean that some of the states which opted out will not have an exchange in place by Oct. 1, 2013, the deadline for all exchanges to be operational.

The folks who wrote Obamacare did not foresee the states standing up to them, as demonstrated by the fact that there is no language in the law to address the possibility.

While Uncle Sugar has enough of our money to build these exchanges, they will have a rough time working with the different health insurance rules and regulations in each state, which have been set in place by the individual health insurance commissioners over several decades.

Another problem is one of the Obama Administration’s own device.

The law was written specifically to provide that a health-insurance exchange run by a state is eligible to receive subsidies from the federal government, but it does not state that an exchange run by the Department of Health and Human Services is eligible to receive the same money.

For now, the IRS is ignoring this fact, but someone eventually may mount a legal challenge over the issue, leaving the matter up to the courts to decide.

Meanwhile, businesses, such as the Trucking Company who just let my step-son go, will continue to lay off workers as they coping with this horrible economy and the upcoming mandates that will be forced upon them by Obamacare.

What a fiasco.

Until He Comes,

KJ