California Construction Trucking Association (CCTA)

On Thursday, September 6, 2012, we finally had our hopefully “last” hearing in this phase of our lawsuit against CARB in front of U.S. District Court Judge Morrison England, Jr. in Sacramento. The hearing was delayed several times due to the judge’s repeated requests for supplemental briefing from the parties.
At the hearing, the defendants fielded three attorneys: a Deputy Attorney General from the state Department of Justice, the CARB General Counsel, and a high-profile lawyer from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Interestingly, the attorney from the NRDC, Melissa Lin Perrella, spoke 90% of time; counsel from the AG’s office 10% and the lawyer from CARB said nothing. Clearly, the NRDC is running this show for the opposition.

Our petition for hearing on CARB’s waiver application for non-road diesel engines was approved in part and denied in part. EPA agreed to hold a hearing on September 20, 2012, but it will be in Washington, D.C., not in Sacramento, as we had requested.

CCTA will be represented at the hearing by our attorney, Ted Hadzi-Antich, of Pacific Legal Foundation, as well as our own Joe Rajkovacz and our outside technical consultant Steve Milloy. They will provide testimony regarding the legal standard under which EPA must decide the CARB waiver application, the negative economic impacts of granting the application, and the lack of credible scientific evidence supporting the proposed CARB standard. 

California added the most construction jobs in the country in the year ended July, a construction industry report released in mid-August shows.
An analysis of federal data by the Associated General Contractors of America (AGC) found California’s construction adding 27,300 jobs in the year ended in July – or a 5 percent jump bringing the workforce to 576,300.  California was followed in construction job creation by Texas (22,900, up 4.1 percent) and Indiana (9,300, up 7.8 percent).

Monterrey, Mexico headquartered cement and materials manufacturer CEMEX, the third largest cement producer in the world announced on August 22 that the company plans to sell a minority stake in Latin American assets. The company noted in a regulatory filing that its Latam Holdings unit is seeking to sell a minority stake in its Latin American assets through a listing on Colombia’s stock exchange.

The U.S. economy grew at a lackluster 1.5 percent annual pace from April through June.  The economy’s other vital signs aren’t looking very healthy, either:

Jobs - Job growth nationally has slowed sharply – to an average of 75,000 a month in the April-June quarter from a robust 226,000 month in the first three months of 2012. Unemployment has been stuck at 8.2 percent for two straight months. The economy isn’t growing fast enough to generate stronger hiring.

Consumer Spending - Consumers have been holding back, one reason economic growth was so slow in the April-June quarter: Once you adjust for inflation, consumer spending barely grew from March to April – and didn’t grow at all from April to May. Spending on autos and other big-ticket durable goods actually fell in May. All this is worrisome because consumer spending accounts for about 70 percent of U.S. economic activity.

Manufacturing - Manufacturing shrank nationwide in June for the first time in three years, the Institute for Supply Management said this month. The group’s April and May surveys both showed expansion, but it slowed from April to May. Europe’s financial crisis and slower growth in emerging markets such as China and India have reduced demand for U.S. goods. Environmental regulations are also a growing burden on businesses of every size especially in states like California. CARB’s On-road Truck and Bus rule will cost business at least $13 billion with no financial or even environmental returns, as the environmental costs to build a new truck far outweigh slight emission improvements or alleged health benefits.

Business Investment - Business orders that signal investment plans have declined in three of the past four months. So-called core capital goods fell 1.4 percent from May to June. Such goods include computers, equipment and heavy machinery. Orders rose from April to May, but declined in the previous two months. The downward trend suggests that businesses are less confident in the economy.

Pay - After adjusting for inflation, wages in the private sector grew 0.8 percent from March through June.  That was the fastest three-month pace since early 2009. But inflation-adjusted wages are still below where they were when the recession ended in June 2009. Employers haven’t had to offer healthy wage increases:  In this weak job market, many workers haven’t had anywhere else to go.

Housing - The recovery of the housing market has lost some momentum. Most economists think housing is improving, but slowly, regionally and unevenly. Sales of new and previously occupied homes both fell from May to June. They had been rising, or at least flat, in May and April. The National Association of Realtors’ index of sales agreements fell 1.4 percent last month to below a reading considered healthy. But the index is higher than it was a year ago. Builders are more confident and are breaking ground on more homes. Construction of single-family homes rose to a two-year high last month. Mortgage rates are at record lows.

The infrastructure accident happened just over five years ago, on Aug. 1, 2007, at 6:05 p.m., it dropped rush-hour traffic to a halt and some commuters’ tragically into the river. The I-35W Mississippi River bridge which opened in 1967 (officially known as Bridge 9340) was an eight-lane, steel truss arch bridge that carried Interstate 35W across the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

By Dr. Nido Qubein

If a company is going to stay in business, it has to change, and that can be scary. A Navy aviator once told me that many pilots have died because they stayed with their disabled aircraft too long. They preferred the familiarity of the cockpit to the unfamiliarity of the parachute, even though the cockpit had become a death trap and the parachute had become a ticket to life.