California Law With Big National Consequences For Trucking… Will SCOTUS Hear The Appeal?

Democrats in the last couple of years don’t seem to care that everything they touch turns to crap. And Biden’s fingerprints are all over it.

We’re on the precipice of a legitimate depression. Inflationary pressures are coming at us from every direction. The supply chain that did survive the pandemic shutdowns has been choked off by miles of red tape.

And with so much of our trade coming through West Coast seaports, what is California doing? They are picking a fight with independent truckers.

The Biden administration tells us they are going to ‘fix’ our broken supply chains. What does that look like in practical terms? Kicking independent truckers when they’re down.

We already face looming employment shortages in the trucking industry… shortages that are getting worse, not better.

With Biden kicking the crap out of our energy sector, the price of diesel has soared to dizzying heights. Every mile of road the trucker drives to bring your goods to market drives prices higher and trucker profits lower.

For the people (including some of the Green New Deal stooges we have elected) who want to destroy our system and throw our economy into chaos, this is great news. For everyone left holding the bag, this is hell.

Team Biden wants it to get worse.

How else can you explain this? At some point, incompetence isn’t an adequate defense. You have to start asking real questions about ideology and intent.

California’s Assembly Bill 5 was designed to target gig economy workers and independent contractors. Turns out, truckers working as independent contractors are not exempt from the reach of that bill.

Rather than letting SCOTUS hear their case and decide whether the trucking industry should get an exemption, Biden’s Solicitor General is doubling down, asking SCOTUS to NOT hear this case. She wants to allow California’s restrictions on independent truckers to stand.

Joe is such a wonderful friend of that blue-collar worker, isn’t he?

“The petition for a writ of certiorari should be denied,” Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in an analysis to the high court, asking it to pass on this case. “The court of appeals correctly determined that petitioners were unlikely to succeed on their claim that the [Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act of 1994] preempts applying the ABC test as codified under California law to owner-operators.”

Prelogar granted that “the circuits have reached differing outcomes” but argued, pun likely unintentional, that the case is “a poor vehicle in which to address the question presented.”

… The case is titled California Trucking Association, Inc. v. Bonta, with “Bonta” being California Attorney General Robert Bonta. As of June 2, the court had not made up its mind one way or another to hear the case, according to SCOTUSblog.

If the court doesn’t hear it, the stay holding a lower court decision back will be lifted, which R Street Institute Western Region Director Steven Greenhut believes would have many negative ramifications.

“A failure to review the California Trucking Association case would have disastrous results in the state,” he told the Washington Examiner. “If Assembly Bill 5 becomes law, it will destroy the owner-operator model for trucking.” — WashingtonExaminer

What, exactly, would those disastrous results look like?

Generally, it’s the condition B that has posed difficulties for the contracting efforts of trucking companies. Consider that a trucking company may hire independent truckers to carry out day-to-day deliveries. But the AB5 rule mandates that all these truckers need to be counted in the workforce of the company, as they are carrying out tasks that are directly linked to their main business objectives i.e., transportation and logistics. Considering them as employees makes it more expensive for these companies to employ contractors as it becomes necessary to factor into the costs administrative overheads, mental and dental plans, etc.

Companies are looking for innovative solutions to this problem. Some of the big carriers have started offering relocation packages to the owners-operators, who used to work for them as independent contractors, to move out and start a new business outside the state. They are also giving them the option to sell their trucks and become a part of their workforce, thus totally changing the way they used to function. Either way, the trucking industry could witness an upheaval. —TruckX

Democrats have long been fascinated with the top-down authoritarian model of soviet-style central planning economies. They’re convinced the only reason it didn’t work in all those other countries was that the wrong people were in charge. But it’ll work this time. Honest.

Then again, the Democrats put Bernie Sanders in as Chair of the Senate Budget Committee. Remember what he said about breadlines?

“You know, it’s funny, sometimes American journalists talk about how bad a country is because people are lining up for food,” Sanders said. “That’s a good thing. In other countries people don’t line up for food. The rich get the food, and the poor starve to death.” —Free Beacon

With clowns like these in charge, how could things possibly go wrong?

Psalms of War: Prayers That Literally Kick Ass is a collection, from the book of Psalms, regarding how David rolled in prayer. I bet you haven’t heard these read, prayed, or sung in church against our formidable enemies — and therein lies the Church’s problem. We’re not using the spiritual weapons God gave us to waylay the powers of darkness. It might be time to dust them off and offer ‘em up if you’re truly concerned about the state of Christ’s Church and of our nation.

Also included in this book, Psalms of War, are reproductions of the author’s original art from his Biblical Badass Series of oil paintings.

This is a great gift for the prayer warriors. Real. Raw. Relevant.