Another nanny state control us some more BS, Lahood can go..............................
From reuters:
Drivers of any vehicle would be covered
* 3,000 U.S. fatalities from distracted driving last year
* Approach to compliance akin to anti-drunk driving campaign
By Jim Forsyth
SAN ANTONIO, April 26 (Reuters) - U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood called on Thursday for a federal law to ban talking on a cell phone or texting while driving any type of vehicle on any road in the country.
Tough federal legislation is the only way to deal with what he called a "national epidemic," he said at a distracted-driving summit in San Antonio, Texas, that drew doctors, advocates and government officials.
LaHood said it is important for the police to have "the opportunity to write tickets when people are foolishly thinking they can drive safely or use a cell phone and text and drive."
LaHood has previously criticized behind-the-wheel use of cell phones and other devices, but calling for a federal law prohibiting the practice takes his effort to a new level.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that 3,000 fatal traffic accidents nationwide last year were the result of distracted driving. Using a cell phone while driving delays reaction time the same amount as having a blood alcohol concentration of .08, the legal limit, the highway agency said.
But Gary Biller, president of the National Motorists Association, said laws banning specific actions like talking on a phone or texting are not necessary because those actions are already covered by existing distracted-driving laws. It would be more productive, he said, to invest resources in campaigns that discourage inattentive driving in general.
"It shouldn't matter if the driver is distracted by a conversation with another vehicle passenger, tuning the radio, eating a snack, or talking on a cell phone," Biller said in a statement. "Existing laws cover all those distractions and more."
LaHood said, however, he was not as concerned about people who eat, apply makeup, or perform other distracting activities in cars because "not everyone does that."
"But everyone has a cell phone and too many of us think it is OK to talk on our phones while we are driving," he said at the summit, sponsored by insurance company USAA, the Texas Department of Transportation and Shriners Hospitals for Children.
LaHood was joined by people who have been hurt in accidents caused by motorists talking on cell phones, including children in wheelchairs who were paralyzed. Such accidents are "100 percent preventable," he said.
He compared the situation facing the United States today with the problem of drunk driving 20-30 years ago.
"It used to be that if an officer pulled you over for drunk driving, he would pat you on the back, maybe call you a cab or take you home, but he wouldn't arrest you," LaHood said. "Now that has changed, and the same enforcement can work for people who talk on cell phones while driving."
Thirty-eight states have laws restricting or outlawing the use of electronic devices while driving, LaHood said.
LaHood said his department was researching the effect that hands-free devices and new systems like Ford Motor Company's Sync have on distracting drivers. He said he has called the CEOs of major car companies and encouraged them to "think twice" before placing too many Internet-based systems into new cars. (Editing By Corrie MacLaggan and Philip Barbara)
I laugh long time.
Yes, Dorothy they are fascists, all of them. HR347, I'm sure you all know about this and aren't bothered by it.
Probably been posted before................ but never hurts to re-visit.
LET'S NOT FORGET NO ONE WANTS YOUR GUNS MORE THAN SOME LIBERALS, SO WHEN YOU VOTE TAKE THIS UNDER CONSIDERATION.
Interesting slant on things
AMERICA'S HUNTERS --- Pretty
Amazing!
The
world's largest army... America's hunters!
I had never thought about
this...
A blogger
added up the deer license sales
in just a
handful of states and
arrived at a striking
conclusion:
There
were over 600,000 hunters
this season
in the state of Wisconsin .
Allow me to restate that number:
Over the last
several months,
Wisconsin's hunters
became the eighth largest army in
the world.
More
men under arms than in Iran.
More than
Franceand Germany combined.
These men
deployed to
the woods of a single American state,
Wisconsin,
to hunt with
firearms, and
no one was killed.
That
number pales in comparison to the 750,000
who hunted the woods of Pennsylvania and
Michigan's
700,000 hunters,
all of whom
have now returned home safely.
Toss in a quarter million hunters
in West Virginia
and it literally establishes
the fact
that the
hunters of those four states alone
would
comprise the largest army in the world.
And then add
in the total number of hunters
in the other
46 states.
It's millions more.
The
point?
America will forever be safe
from foreign
invasion
with that
kind of
home-grown
firepower.
Hunting...
it's not just
a way to fill the freezer.
It's a matter
of
national
security.
***************************************
That's why all enemies,
foreign and
domestic,
want to see us
disarmed.
Food for thought,
when next we
consider gun control.
Have A Great
Day!
-------------------------------------
Overall it's true,
so if we
disregard some assumptions
that hunters
don't possess the same skills as soldiers,
the question
would still remain...
what army of
2 million
would want
to face
30, 40,
50 million armed citizens.
(IF YOU AGREE, AS I DO, PASS IT ON, I FEEL GOOD THAT I HAVE AN ARMY OF MILLIONS WHO WOULD PROTECT OUR LAND AND I SURE DON'T WANT THE GOVERNMENT TAKING CONTROL OF THE POSSESSION OF FIREARMS)
For the sake of our freedom,
don't
ever allow gun control
or confiscation of
guns.
From the Washington Examiner:
Vice President Joe Biden described former Saturday Night Live comedian, Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., as a "leading legal scholar," presumably in the Senate, today.
"He has been one of the leading legal scholars," Biden said of Franken today, according to the pool report. He also said that Franken "is deadly serious" as a senator. He made the comments while recalling concerns that then-candidate Franken could not be taken seriously as a Senate candidate given his SNL work.
Franken's comedic spirit got him in trouble on Washington. "This isn't ‘Saturday Night Live,’ Al," Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had to remind the freshman senator after Franken made faces while McConnell spoke during the Supreme Court nomination process for Elena Kagan.
Kagan is now regarded as an able defender of Obamacare, which could be struck after oral arguments last month seemed to indicate that five of the nine justices regard it as unconstitutional.
The king hath no clothes! The $h1t$tream media will be unable to obfuscate the truth anymore. Gasoline in these parts is well above $4.00, everything is higher in price, housing is messed up still, and the king has a meeting with women to change the subject some more.
And now for something completely different. Dogs, burn in hell fires.
She is a liberal by UK standards, naked on top of that.
What a deal! Nice! Real budget hawk! You know read to the end...... What a bunch of f^$^'ing B$ he's always available yadah yadah............... I did that for 25 years!!!!!!!
OLITA C. BALDOR
(AP)
From:
State Budget Solutions - facts on crisis in each state real time data and news
www.statebudgetsolutions.org
WASHINGTON (AP) - Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has commuted on military aircraft to his home in northern California more than two dozen times since he took over the Pentagon in July, paying about $630 per trip for a roundtrip flight that costs the Pentagon about $32,000.
The totals detailed by defense officials lay out his reimbursements for the first time, showing he paid the Treasury about $17,000 for the 27 personal trips. Based on fuel and other operating expenses for his Air Force plane, those same trips cost the government as much as $860,000.
As Pentagon chief, Panetta is required to travel on military planes because they have the secure communications equipment he needs to stay in contact with the president and other top civilian and military leaders.
His bill for the travel is calculated according to reimbursement formulas dictated by longstanding federal policies using what a full-fare coach trip would cost. And the Pentagon says it costs about $3,200 per flight hour to operate the small plane he usually uses for the 10-hour round trip.
When he took the job, Panetta made it clear that he would continue to return home to his family on the weekends as he had done as CIA director for the previous two years, and as a member of Congress from 1977-1993.
The cost of the flights is a tiny fraction of the Pentagon's proposed $614 billion budget. But Panetta comes to the defense job at a particularly difficult financial time for the department. If Congress can't reach an agreement on savings or additional revenues elsewhere in the federal budget by next January, officials could be forced to cut nearly $1 trillion in defense spending over the next 10 years.
When Panetta took the post it was noted that he came with budget skills honed during his time as chairman of the House Budget Committee, head of the White House Office of Management and Budget and White House chief of staff for President Bill Clinton.
"No one understands the budget pressures on the Pentagon better than Secretary Panetta, who is responsible for identifying nearly $1 billion per week in defense cuts - or roughly $140 million per day - over the next 10 years," Pentagon press secretary George Little said. "As a required-use traveler, he must use government aircraft for all travel."
Little said Panetta values his time with his wife and family, and "spending time away from Washington, in fact, helps him focus on the job and recharge."
White House national security spokesman Tommy Vietor added that, "Secretary Panetta has done an exceptional job in both his role at the CIA and as secretary of defense. He has been on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and has always been reachable through secure channels whenever necessary, wherever he is."
Panetta's two predecessors didn't make such frequent, long trips home. Robert Gates spent most weekends in the nation's capital, but traveled occasionally to his family home in Washington state. Donald H. Rumsfeld also lived in the D.C. area, but often spent weekends at his house in St. Michaels on Maryland's Eastern shore.
Panetta's wife, Sylvia, works full time at the Panetta Institute for Public Policy, which they established in Monterey, Calif., in 1997.
As a result, Panetta, 73, routinely works, makes phone calls and, when necessary, travels a short distance for secure video conferences while he is at home at his family's walnut farm.
Occasionally he's been there when tragedy has struck.
On March 10, he was at home when he got the call that a U.S. soldier allegedly had gone on a rampage and shot Afghan villagers - including women and children - at point-blank range while they slept in their beds. Over the next hours and day, he spoke with U.S. military and national security officials, participated in discussions about what the U.S. response should be, and called Afghan President Hamid Karzai to express his condolences and promise that the perpetrator would be held accountable.
Panetta usually flies out to California on Friday evening and comes back Sunday night. For those personal trips, according to the federal Office of Management and Budget, he is required to reimburse the Treasury for the equivalent "full coach fare" that would be available to the public for the same flight.
But on nine occasions so far, official domestic trips have been scheduled for Thursdays and Fridays, allowing the secretary to travel part way across the country for business, then fly the rest of the way to California for the weekend.
In those cases, which included visits to Fort Campbell, Ky., Barksdale Air Force Base, La., Camp Pendleton, Calif., and Fort Bliss, Texas, he pays only part of the trip.
According to the formula, he essentially reimburses the government for the difference between the cost of the full trip minus the cost of flying directly to the base or official event location and back to Washington.
Those trips sometimes incur additional costs because a few staff members traveling with Panetta have had to return to Washington separately, either on a military plane, if available, or on a commercial flight.
Little said the Friday trips are not planned to mesh with Panetta's travel to California. Instead, he said, travel on Fridays or Mondays allow Panetta to "maximize his time in light of regularly scheduled meetings in Washington," including congressional testimony and White House and National Security Council sessions that are usually mid-week.
Typically Panetta flies on an Air Force C-37 - somewhat comparable to a Gulfstream jet - which is the lowest-cost aircraft that can carry the necessary communications equipment. In contrast, the Air Force E-4B, the "doomsday plane" Panetta uses for overseas travel because it can refuel in flight, accommodate secure video conferences and serve as an airborne command post, costs about $70,000 per flight hour to operate.
The requirement that all travel - official and personal - by a defense secretary be conducted on military aircraft was instituted during the George W. Bush administration in 2001.
When Panetta took over as defense chief he asked for a legal review to insure all regulations were being followed. In a memo obtained by The Associated Press, Jeh Johnson, the department's general counsel, laid out the reimbursement rules, including for trips that include both official and personal travel.
This is the GSA Govt Services Admin. at its best, makes $300 toilet seats and $135 hammers look cheap.
This Judge is my hero. Boy O Boy!! Houston. Houston. Houston, Texas is a great place!!!!!!!!
3-4 pgs. single spaced by Thursday!!!!!
This is really irking me.....................Why are ALL the news organizations so interested in determining the identities of Friday's Mega jackpot winners???????????????? It is over, done, finished.........mind your own business!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is what is wrong with this country now and needs to be fixed, why don't they chase down the retired members of congress, federal, and state workers when they retire?????? They hit the fricking lotto!!!!!!!!!!!! Dam.
And the Hunger Games.....Why is this being portrayed and considered some kind of hyper violent movie???????????????? Compared to hundreds of much more graphically violent movies, this movie is mild. They are focusing on it because of the MESSAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They want to repress its wild success and popularity which is hitting home with everybody, they want to keep people from seeing it!!! Totalitarians enslaved the districts after an uprising. Analagous to the US & World govts. right now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Exercising way too much control over the US & remaining free citizens around the world which is leading to totalitarianism.
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