Kiss My Caboose, Teamsters

I started to comment on a Dennis York post, and decided that I had enough material to be blog worthy. Apparently, the state assembly is considering a demented bill to "protect our rail system from terrorism:"

Now this may look like a bill just to protect unionized train engineer jobs, but are you ever wrong. Apparently the engineers are shopping this pamphlet shows that with one engineer passengers are more susceptible to – TERRORISM.

Not to be too serious about a ridiculous idea, but from what I understand, many trains are almost fully automatic.

With the GPS systems and such, the only purpose an engineer has is as a lookout. In fact, someone once seriously suggested to me as fact that the engineers need to push a button every few minutes to prove that they are awake. And that's IT! Cushy job. Where's my paycheck?

Just give the engineer a firearm and lock the cabin. Better yet, give him a kill switch that stops the train until a third party comes along with the code to restart it. Or, own up to the fact that probably the worst thing a terrorist can do to a train is blow it up at a bad time. In that case, we're just adding one more potential casualty. Granted, it will be a well-paid, pensioned, unionized casualty. At least the family will be compensated dearly.