Wednesday, January 2, 2013

More Dangerous than a Madman with a Rifle


Over the last five years, an estimated 25-times as many kids have died than were killed by an armed mad-man in Connecticut ten days before Christmas. And, it’s because our government has done nothing.

By its own estimates, the government of the United States says that some 110 children, under 10, die every year when they are backed over by drivers who can’t see them. As you would expect, most of those drivers are related to the victims.

This is one you can’t blame on George Bush. In 2008, before leaving office, then President Bush signed into legislation a LAW calling for new manufacturing techniques to provide better visibility BEHIND a car. That law went into effect almost five years ago. Since then, an estimated 500 kids have died.

You want to get mad about something, then get mad about this. The standards signed into law have yet to be mandated because of delays by the U.S. Department of Transportation. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has pushed back that deadline three times — promising last February that the rules would be issued by the end of 2012. And, guess what? Not yet.

Seems to me that Transportation Secretary LaHood needs to become history. Sure looks like he is a politician who needs to find a pasture. What really sucks is that he had announced plans to retire after Obama’s first term, but is now indicating he wants to stick around for a while longer. I guess he doesn’t have enough blood on his hands. Perhaps another 500 children will have to die before he takes this situation seriously. 

Politicians certainly make strange bedfellows. Bloody LaHood is a republican, appointed to the position in 2009. If he can’t carry out one little command that, once implemented, could save the lives of as many as 100 children every year, then he should be ridden out of town on a rail, wearing a combination of tar and feathers.

Won’t happen, of course. He may be a registered republican, but he’s an Illinois politician.

 

No comments:

Post a Comment