Best printers for Home

Best Mixer Grinder

Best wired Earphones

Best 43 Inch TV in India

Best Wi Fi Routers

Best Home Theatre in India

Smart Watch under 5000

Best Laptops for Education

Best Laptop for Students

<ul class="summary-list"><li>The US Marshals Service is offering a $10,000 reward for information on Pedro Argote.</li><li>Argote is suspected of shooting and killing a Maryland court judge on Thursday.</li></ul>A manhunt was ongoing on Saturday for the man suspected of fatally shooting the Maryland state judge overseeing his divorce proceedings.The Washington County Sheriff's Office told reporters in a press conference that a local resident recently found the abandoned car belonging to the suspect, 49-year-old Pedro Argote. Argote is wanted for the shooting death of Andrew Wilkinson, a Maryland circuit court judge, on Thursday.On Friday, the US Marshals Service announced a $10,000 reward for information leading to Argote's arrest. The agency said Argote should be considered <a target="_blank" href="https://www.usmarshals.gov/news/press-release/us-marshals-searching-fugitive-wanted-murder-of-state-judge">armed and dangerous</a> and has "ties" to other cities, including Brooklyn and Long Island, New York; Tampa and Clearwater, Florida; Columbus, Indiana; and other unknown cities in North Carolina.Washington County Sheriff Brian Albert told reporters he doesn't believe the public is at risk, but said people should remain vigilant as authorities search for Argote.Albert said police are searching vacant residences in the Williamsport area, and are concentrating their search in a fairly remote area."We're gonna catch this guy, it's just a matter of time," Albert said.Wilkinson on Thursday gave Argote's wife sole legal custody of their four children at a hearing which Argote did not attend, according to <a target="_blank" href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/manhunt-continues-suspect-targeted-killing-maryland-judge-us-marshals-rcna121535">NBC</a>.Wilkinson attributed his decision to a finding of "cruelty of treatment" and "irreconcilable differences" in court, according to the outlet.Argote's wife filed a domestic violence report against him in June 2022, alleging physical abuse against a child, NBC reported. The petition was dismissed less than two weeks after the filing, according to the report.In the report, the woman said she felt unsafe because Argote kept a weapon and she was scared he would try and take the children away, according to NBC.On Saturday, however, Albert told reporters Argote did not have issues with law enforcement prior to Wilkinson's shooting. Albert said police had responded to his home multiple times in the past for verbal domestic disputes, but not physical ones.Wilkinson's shooting death is part of a disturbing <a target="_blank" href="https://www.insider.com/judge-andrew-wilkinson-killing-growing-risk-judicial-attacks-expert-2023-10">trend of violent attacks against sitting judges</a> that has escalated in recent years. Judicial attackers frequently target judges at their homes, over perceived grievances stemming from their cases, according to John Muffler, a former US Marshal and principal of Aequitas Global Security, who specializes in security threats to the judiciary."With judicial attackers, it's most likely always case related. So you have that connectivity. It's because of their job, it's because of their decision that they made that puts this person on what's called a pathway to violence," Muffler said.

US Marshals offer $10,000 reward in manhunt for Maryland man suspected of gunning down judge who was overseeing his divorce proceedings

After <keyword id="6354944" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Aam-Aadmi-Party">Aam Aadmi Party</keyword>’s splendid show in the in <keyword id="461643" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Delhi-assembly-elections">Delhi Assembly Elections</keyword>, <keyword id="6354814" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="prime-minister-Narendra-Modi">Prime Minister Narendra Modi</keyword> called and congratulated ‘<keyword id="2720777" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="muffler-man">muffler man</keyword>’ <keyword id="260213" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Arvind-Kejriwal">Arvind Kejriwal</keyword> on his party’s success in the national capital. 
 
Earlier in the run up to the Delhi Assembly Elections, the Prime Minister had urged a crowd of over 45,000 people at Ramlila Maidan to punish Kejriwal for wasting a year as the AAP government had quit just in 49 days. But today, there is no more vicious attack against the AAP chief, rather PM Modi has assured full support of the Centre to the Delhi government, who tweeted this information: 
 
If we believe the news reports, Kejriwal, 46, had requested the Prime Minister for a meeting. And Modi has reportedly agreed to meet him for tea. 
 Not to forget, it was Prime Minister Modi who had won the <keyword id="2128072" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Varanasi-Lok-Sabha">Varanasi Lok Sabha</keyword> seat in the <keyword id="2050254" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="2014-national-elections">2014 national elections</keyword> by defeating Arvind Kejriwal by a massive margin of 3.37 lakh votes. 
 This time, too, the BJP was banking on ‘<keyword id="2720776" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Modis-magic">Modi’s magic</keyword>’ as the PM had campaigned extensively to assure victory for the party. But Delhi is scripting a different story by choosing ‘muffler man’ over NaMo's charisma.

Delhi Assembly Polls: PM Modi congratulates ‘muffler man’ Kejriwal on AAP's success

<ul><li><keyword id="260213" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Arvind-Kejriwal">Arvind Kejriwal</keyword> was called the giant killer as it dethroned the late Sheila Dikshit of Congress — the chief minister of Delhi for three consecutive terms then.</li><li>Six years later, the muffler-wearing Arvind Kejriwal is ready to face the people’s verdict on his administration so far.</li><li>AAP may win a comfortable majority of 59 seats of the total 70 in the Delhi assembly elections. </li><li>A win in the upcoming Delhi elections of 2019 will raise his stature in India’s national politics. </li></ul>When Arvind Kejriwal resigned from the office of the Chief Minister after the 49-day stint in 2013, the first thing he did was to walk up to his party office ⁠— in full media glare and commotion from his supporters ⁠— opened a creaky, old window on the first storey and blamed both the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Congress for colluding with none other than India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, the billionaire Chairman of Reliance Industries. The imagery that Kejriwal relied on was starkly reminiscent of an iconic scene from a movie, Hey Ram, based on the life and times of the Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi. 
 
 <div type="image" title="image (1)" msid="73153796" hostid="261"></div>





 In one stroke, Kejriwal had put Mukesh Ambani, the then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, and the Congress leadership under Sonia Gandhi in <a href="https://aamaadmiparty.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/arvind-kejriwals-letter-to-mukesh-ambani/">one bucket</a> and portrayed himself as ‘holier’ than all of them. It possibly struck a chord with the angry voters who were disillusioned by a system that had failed them inordinately. His continued onslaught on Ambani was <a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/sue-me-not-tv-channels-arvind-kejriwal-to-mukesh-ambani/articleshow/18173553.cms">followed by defamation suits against media </a>houses that gave Kejriwal airtime. However, Kejriwal’s persistence, which was later called <a href="https://www.firstpost.com/politics/arvind-kejriwals-madness-just-persecution-complex-or-is-there-method-to-it-2920550.html">persecution complex from some quarte</a>rs, did give him a thumping victory in the Delhi assembly election that followed in 2015, when AAP won a whopping 67 of the 70 seats. 
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	<div type="Slideshow" msid="73145646" hostid="261" title="Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal⁠— the man with a knack for Carpe Diem" firstImageMsid="73145771" slideCount="6"></div>

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal⁠— the man with a knack for Carpe Diem

<ul class="summary-list"><li>A Maryland judge was shot to death, and police suspect a man the judge had ruled against in a divorce case.</li><li>The suspect is on the run, and police say he is considered "armed and dangerous."</li></ul>A Maryland judge was shot to death outside his home on Thursday night — and police say the suspect is the man he ruled against in a divorce case earlier that day.The judge was killed in his driveway while his wife and son were home, law enforcement said, adding that the 49-year-old suspect is still at large.The shocking attack on a sitting judge is part of a violent trend that thousands of judges across the country have already been exposed to, according to John Muffler, a former US Marshal and principal of Aequitas Global Security, who specializes in security threats to the judiciary.Muffler said attacks against judges and their families occur "frequently," though they don't always result in death. Even more common than attacks are violent threats and inappropriate communications."There isn't any judge at any level that is not at risk," Muffler told Insider. <h2>Judge Wilkinson was shot to death Thursday</h2>Maryland Circuit Court Judge Andrew Wilkinson, 52, was found with gunshot wounds in the driveway of his Hagerstown, Maryland, home on Thursday night, the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/WashingtonCountySheriffsOfficeMaryland/posts/pfbid02iCDA2uWZ4SifkrVD2J8gta9CjwSUK9tRDBvPZ7bFm2dPk9YJD36A6FwryJ6ohcLyl" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Washington County Sheriff's Office said in a Facebook post</a>.Wilkinson later died at a nearby hospital, Sheriff Brian Albert said at a press conference Friday.Earlier that day, Wilkinson had ruled against 49-year-old Pedro Argote in a divorce proceeding where he banned Argote from having any contact with his four children or their mother, granted possession of the family home to Argote's wife, and ordered Argote to pay $1,120 a month in child support, <a href="https://www.heraldmailmedia.com/story/news/local/2023/10/19/police-investigating-slaying-of-county-judge-in-western-maryland/71247680007/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Herald-Mail reported</a>, citing court documents.It was Wilkinson's only case of the day, leading police to pursue Argote as the primary suspect in the targeted killing, the sheriff said.Argote does not have a criminal record in Washington County, the sheriff said, but officers had responded to several verbal domestic assaults at Argote's home in the past few years.Police are still searching for Argote, who is considered "armed and dangerous," the sheriff said.Albert said officers were stationed at the homes of other local judges throughout Thursday night as a precautionary measure, but his department does not believe any other judges in the county or state are currently in danger. <h2>Threats against judges are on the rise</h2>Muffler said the killing reflects a growing society-wide issue where everyone from judges to politicians to celebrities face regular threats from the public. Threats to the judiciary have always been a "consistent problem," he said, but law enforcement has noticed an increase within the last 10 years.Though Muffler said data for state and local courts is difficult to come by, the federal data from the US Marshals Service shows that <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-judges-faced-over-4500-threats-2021-amid-rising-extremism-official-2022-02-14/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">federal judges were the targets of over 4,500 threats</a> and other inappropriate communications in the year 2021.Judges who rule on family law cases appear to be at particularly high risk, Muffler said. That appears to be the case in Thursday's fatal shooting in Maryland.Muffler said the facts that have been disclosed so far line up with the stereotypical profile of a judicial attacker."With judicial attackers, it's most likely always case-related. So you have that connectivity — it's because of their job, it's because of their decision that they made that puts this person on what's called a pathway to violence," Muffler said. "They have a grievance, whether it's real or perceived."Judicial attackers also frequently target the judges' homes, rather than their workplaces, as has been the case in multiple prior judicial attacks. In 2020, Judge Esther Salas was targeted at her New Jersey home by a man whose civil case she presided over. The man posed as a FedEx driver, rang Salas' doorbell, and <a href="https://www.insider.com/man-dressed-fedex-shooting-son-husband-esther-salas-new-jersey-2020-7">shot her 20-year-old son Daniel Anderl to death</a>.In 2015, Travis County District Judge Julie Kocurek was similarly targeted at her home by a man whose criminal case she previously ruled on; <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/julie-kocurek-austin-texas-judge-ambushed-outside-her-home-survives-attack-with-a-mission-to-protect-others/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">she was shot at four times and survived the attack</a>.And in 2005, US District Judge Joan Lefkow was targeted by a man who lost a medical malpractice case she presided over; <a href="https://apnews.com/article/87e2badcaba05aa96a17ad6bf61688ad" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the man shot Lefkow's husband and mother to death</a> in Lefkow's Chicago home."The gloves are off for people in authority," Muffler warned.

The killing of a Maryland judge is part of a growing trend that's putting the judiciary at risk, a former US Marshal says

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div></div></div>Everyone's always talking about the insanely high rents in the New York City and San Francisco housing markets.
But that doesn't mean people with money should scoop up a 5th Avenue condo and rent it out.
Landlords seeking returns need to consider the differential between the cost of the property and the rent they can potentially bring in.
A <a href="http://www.realtytrac.com/content/foreclosure-market-report/q3-2014-residential-rental-market-report-8152">report by RealtyTrac</a> found that the average returns were actually the highest in high-risk markets, where unemployment and vacancy rates are higher than national averages.
RealtyTrac ranked these US housing markets based on gross rental yield, which is "the average fair market rent of three-bedroom homes in each county, annualized, and divided by the median sales price of residential properties in the third quarter."
Although rents are high in New York and San Francisco, the property prices are also high, which means that returns are low.
On the other side, these smaller markets have low property prices, but relatively high rents - which means that returns are high.

8 American Housing Markets Where Landlords Are Making A Killing On Rent

NEW DELHI: He was one of the 4,500 guests but Delhi CM <keyword id="260213" type="PERSON" weightage="100" keywordseo="Arvind-Kejriwal">Arvind Kejriwal</keyword>, in his maiden outing at President <keyword id="9937" type="COMPANY" weightage="40" keywordseo="Pranab">Pranab</keyword> Mukherjee’s ‘At Home’, stole the show. 
 
Wearing his trademark maroon sweater, muffler and floaters, Kejriwal stood in the sprawling Mughal Gardens as India’s swish set vied for autographs, pictures and sometimes just a handshake with him. 
 
It was a power moment that no one in the establishment may have imagined. Two years ago, Kejriwal had negotiated with Mukherjee, chairman of the joint drafting committee, on the Lokpal bill and had returned empty-handed. On Saturday, the two displayed a public difference of opinion. Mukherjee spoke against “populist anarchy” and Kejriwal defended his dharna as constitutional. On Sunday, as Mukherjee gave an audience to invitees from the world of diplomacy, politics, administration, arts and media, Kejriwal held a parallel durbar. 
 
Men and women showered him with unabashed praise. Several ambassadors and bureaucrats took the opportunity to introduce themselves to Kejriwal who was accompanied by his Cabinet. German ambassador Michael Steiner sought a meeting with Kejriwal for German President Joachim Gauck who is visiting India next month. The request, it emerges, was turned down by the CM’s office. Kejriwal assured him that it would be rescheduled. Another diplomat shared a joke, saying how his broken Hindi left him confused about the party’s name initially (he thought aam only meant mango). 
 The power elite gave up its pretensions, some offered him advice and encouragement, some said they were inspired and others sought his time. The CM even received a muffler as a present. The argumentative asked why he had sat in the VIP enclosure at the <keyword id="6416557" type="PERSON" weightage="100" keywordseo="Republic-day">Republic Day</keyword> parade or why his party’s name had no mention of the “aam aurat”. To them all, Kejriwal gave a patient ear. In fact, the <keyword id="6356115" type="CITY" weightage="40" keywordseo="AAP">AAP</keyword> durbar went on well after the President and the PM had left the venue till security personnel stepped in to guide Kejriwal to the exit. 
 
Mukherjee too was his accessible self, meeting people gathered in the Rashtrapati Bhavan lawns. Visiting Japanese PM Shinzo Abe also met the invitees. 
 Later, <keyword id="1575" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="40" keywordseo="Congress">Congress</keyword> president Sonia Gandhi and BJP leader Sushma Swaraj got up from their chairs in the VIP enclosure and mixed with the crowd. 
 Other dignitaries present were Vice-President <keyword id="6491214" type="PERSON" weightage="40" keywordseo="Hamid-Ansari">Hamid Ansari</keyword>, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, <keyword id="6355187" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="40" keywordseo="Lok-Sabha">Lok Sabha</keyword> Speaker Meira Kumar, home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, besides BJP leaders L K Advani and Arun Jaitley. Cabinet ministers P Chidambaram, Veerappa Moily and A K Antony were also present. 
 
Sources said close to 4,500 people had turned up. Rashtrapati Bhavan had issued e-invites this year and the entrances were manned by bar-code scanning personnel. About 60% of the invites were sent out through e-mail, bringing down costs and resources as part of Rashtrapati Bhavan’s greening exercise.

Republic Day: President Pranab Hosts The Show, Kejriwal Steals It

<div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Silencerco_Osprey_9,_SWR_Octane_45,_and_Silencerco_Saker_5.56.JPG">Wikimedia Commons</a></div></div>Three senior Naval intelligence officials are being investigated by federal authorities for their alleged role in a plot to charge the government $1.6 million for $8,000 in homemade weapons silencers, according to <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/senior-navy-civilians-investigated-in-alleged-scheme-to-defraud-military-for-16-million/2013/11/12/74383ffa-4bbb-11e3-9890-a1e0997fb0c0_story.html">a report by Craig Whitlock with the Washington Post</a>. 
The officials, all civilians, allegedly arranged for a California mechanic to make $8,000 in unmarked and untraceable weapons silencers and then billed the government for more than 200 times the cost of manufacture.
The only person charged so far in the case is the mechanic, Mark Landersman, who is thought to be the brother of one of the officials.
Mark Landersman commissioned a machinist who used to work for him to build the functioning silencers, based off of blueprints he provided, the report states. He told the man they were mufflers, then allegedly sold the 349 silencers to the <keyword id="42407" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="Navy">Navy</keyword> for $1.6 million.
After the alleged scam, the recently bankrupt mechanic went on a spending spree:
He bought stock shares in a microbrewery for $100,000, a restored 1988 Porsche 911 for $49,084, an off-road racing vehicle for $15,000, a Ford Ranger for $40,000, a red 2013 Ford F-150 Raptor pickup truck for $59,294 and a $5,760 welder.
This story is just the latest in a string of scandal and <keyword id="46183" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Corruption">corruption</keyword> among senior military officials. Last week, the Navy <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/navy-admiral-suspension-bribery-2013-11">stripped two admirals of their access to classified material</a> as part of an investigation into a bribery scandal that involved prostitutes and Lady Gaga tickets.

Naval Officials Investigated In Alleged Plot To Charge Government $1.6 Million For $8,000 In Silencers

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Today's network of big-box retailers and online shopping likely wouldn't exist without the deregulation of the <keyword id="996559" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Trucking">trucking</keyword> industry 40 years ago this month.</li><li>The Motor Carrier Act of 1980, passed by President Jimmy Carter, slashed the cost of moving goods by truck.</li><li>It also eroded one of America's great blue-collar jobs: truck driving.</li><li>A truck driver's salary has decreased by as much as half since deregulation.</li></ul>When Larry Heine was a working man he drove a truck eight hours a day. He saw his family every night, owned his home, sent both his kids to college, and took his wife on vacation to Hawaii whenever he could land some overtime.As a member of the Teamsters, Heine was guaranteed good health care and a pension. He retired at 51, receiving a cake and a $250 gift card to a fishing store on his last day.In 2020, truck drivers work a median of 60 hours a week, according to a 2010 study by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. One in five reported logging more than 75 hours.At the same time, their pay has sunk. In the late 1970s, driver salaries were up to 50% higher than they are today, even when accounting for inflation, according to Wayne State University economics professor Michael Belzer.In the US, the median salary for the 1.9 million truck drivers stands <a href="https://www.bls.gov/ooh/transportation-and-material-moving/heavy-and-tractor-trailer-truck-drivers.htm">at $45,260</a>. Nearly 40% <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4511102/">lack health-insurance coverage</a>, compared to 17% of the working population.From his home in Northern California — which he built after he retired — Heine told Business Insider he was shocked at those changes."They've depressed the market so bad," Heine said. "You can't make a living on that. Give me a break."<div type="image" title="A truck driver strike in 1979." height="2070" width="2760" msid="77169555" hostid="261"></div>To Heine, truck driving was a "standard blue-collar job."To today's drivers, his was a good life in a golden age — an age that many say ended on July 1, 1980, when President Jimmy Carter put his name to the Motor Carrier Act of 1980, the law that deregulated the trucking industry.Starting in 1935, the federal government set the price to move a good from one city to another. Trucking companies had to apply for the right to carry a certain good, which made it challenging for folks like Heine to even become a truck driver.The 1980 MCA broke up that system, allowing anyone to haul any good, to any place, for any price they liked.In signing the bill, <a href="https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/motor-carrier-act-1980-statement-signing-s-2245-into-law">Carter said</a> he hoped it would stymie "excessive and inflationary Government restrictions and redtape." The goal was to slash the price of goods by forcing truckers to compete with one another on the price of <keyword id="34991" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="100" keywordseo="transportation">transportation</keyword>. It would save consumers as much as $8 billion — $25 billion in 2020 dollars — each year, Carter said. And he was right. But another of his claims — "All the citizens of our Nation will benefit from this legislation" — lies on shakier ground. Because Carter's law also undermined one of America's leading blue-collar professions.The biggest winners of the 1980 MCA, though, didn't earn a mention in Carter's signing statement, perhaps because neither the president nor anyone else saw them coming. They were the national and international retail chains that have surged to market dominance in recent decades.Experts say that today's big-box and online retailers wouldn't exist if the government had not given up its ability to control freight prices. No Walmart. No Home Depot. No Amazon. And certainly no Amazon Prime.<div type="image" title="Walmart" height="3483" width="4644" msid="77169559" hostid="261"></div>Deregulating trucking created significant cost savings for America's emerging class of retail mega-chains. Truckload shipment rates fell by 25%, adjusted for inflation, from 1977 to 1982. Logistics — half of which are trucking costs — used to account for 16% of the US's annual expenditure. Even though we're shipping more goods than ever, it's now under 8%.Today, America's most successful retailers wield transportation as a weapon. It's why Jeff Bezos opened Amazon's first fulfillment center <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-timeline-history-fedex-ups-logistics-trucking-planes-vans-2019-12#march-2012-amazon-acquires-robot-maker-kiva-systems-for-775-million-1">five years after he founded the website</a> and why Sam Walton used to drop by his Walmart drivers' break rooms <a href="https://www.walmartmuseum.com/content/walmartmuseum/en_us/timeline/decades/1970/artifact/2576.html">bearing boxes of donuts</a> to hear their thoughts about the business.If deregulation hadn't enabled these retailers to so ruthlessly rationalize their supply chains, Americans would certainly have access to fewer goods — and those goods would be more expensive."The American consumer benefited," John Kent, an associate professor of supply-chain management at the University of Arkansas' Walton College of Business, told Business Insider.Those benefits were not free."A low price has unintended costs that are not shown to customers," Shane Hamilton, a senior management lecturer at the University of York, said. "A low price includes hidden costs that someone other than those customers or the retailers have to pay."<h2>'Destructive competition' in the trucking industry</h2>Heine blames the barking.That's the sound <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2btXzx_2Gg">a semi made in the 1950s</a> when it shifted gears, before mufflers and automatic transmissions were common features.At 6 years old, Heine heard it from the back seat of the family car on a road trip. They had stopped at a truck depot in Bakersfield, California, on their way to San Diego. The sound set Heine on his career path."It set this real manic thing in my brain off — don't ask me why," he said. "I fell in love with the noise and the sound and the mystery of people disappearing into the night time. Where are they going?"After graduating from high school, Heine started to work his way up in the trucking industry, going from school-bus driver to cement hauler to local truck driver for <a href="https://www.freightwaves.com/news/online-haul-of-fame-cf">Consolidated Freightways, then the titan of the trucking world</a>.In 2002, a year after Heine retired, Consolidated Freightways went bankrupt, as did every trucking giant of the 20th century that couldn't compete in a deregulated industry.Most failed to last anywhere near that long. In the three years following deregulation, 72 freight haulers <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1983/12/13/business/trucking-s-great-shakeout.html">shut down</a>. Those companies together generated 16% of the entire industry's revenue. By 1986, some 4,000 trucking companies <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1986/01/17/mclean-victim-of-deregulation/779fb8ab-a775-453c-a742-c8961bb1cade/">had shuttered</a>.Tiny upstarts took their place. From 1980 to '90, the number of trucking companies doubled.That slammed drivers' wages, as trucking companies were forced to begin slashing payrolls to keep up with new industry entrants. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trucking-shortage-eld-mandate-cdl-truck-driver-salary-2018-6">A Business Insider analysis</a> showed that median wages for truck drivers have decreased 21% since 1980. In some urban areas, they've declined by as much as half.<div type="image" title="trucker wages 1980 vs 2017" height="900" width="1200" msid="77169563" hostid="261"></div>The trucking industry is the rare area in the American business landscape where just about anyone can become a business owner."You or I can get into the trucking industry tomorrow if we had a friend tendering us freight from whatever city to whatever city," Kent, the supply-chain expert, said. "We could go to the bank, get money, and we're in business. "That ease of entry meant everything to people like Franklin Morales, who runs an 85-truck fleet in Newark, New Jersey."We came here with the American dream," Morales, who was born in the Dominican Republic, told Business Insider. And he made good on it.Today, there are nearly 207,000 trucking companies in the US, nearly 90% of which run <a href="https://i.insider.com/5dc44f797eece50cc9227d6c?width=2500&amp;format=jpeg&amp;auto=webputo=webp">six trucks or fewer</a>. It's a rare example of what economists call "perfect competition," Kent said.The industry has so many suppliers (those 207,000 trucking companies) and so many buyers (every retailer and manufacturer) that the price of most goods escape anyone's control and, inevitably, plummets.But that so-called perfect competition has rendered most truck drivers worse off, as <a href="https://sociology.sas.upenn.edu/people/viscelli">University of Pennsylvania sociologist Steve Viscelli</a> wrote in "The Big Rig: Trucking and the Decline of the American Dream."Viscelli calls the result "destructive competition — competition so severe that it undermines profitability to the point that it causes underinvestment by firms, industry-wide inefficiency, market instability, and poor service quality."<h2>Why deregulation was a boon for (some) retailers</h2>It's easy to forget that it hasn't always been possible to get any imaginable product at any location, like $20 packs of 50 clothing hangers, tangerines in South Dakota in January, sheet masks from South Korea at a Miami Sephora.But before trucking deregulation in 1980, and the accompanying globalization of supply chains, getting such goods on the shelves would have been a struggle for a national retailer.That's why the now bankrupt mega-retailer Sears stationed its distribution centers near America's railways during its peak in the mid-20th century, Viscelli told Business Insider. The Sears catalog, which first arrived in American mailboxes <a href="https://qz.com/emails/quartz-obsession/1427961/">in 1893</a>, contained hundreds of pages of products that took weeks to get to a customer's doorstep. Rail was slow, but moving a wide variety of goods by truck was too complicated to be workable. A trucking company had to apply for the right to move a certain good from one city to another. If that set-up stuck around today, it would render, say, Amazon's strategy of moving thousands of different types of parcels by truck across the country impossible.<div type="image" title="truck driver" height="1189" width="1585" msid="77169564" hostid="261"></div>When Carter signed deregulation into law, Walmart in particular had a chance to expand its retail network. The company's network design involved placing distribution centers and stores within a one-day, round-trip drive of each other.Truck drivers for Walmart have always been among the best-treated in America. Today, their starting salary is pegged at about $87,500. Spurred by this new opportunity in supply-chain design, Walmart grew far beyond its original business model, offering rural Americans low-cost goods. It <a href="https://qz.com/emails/quartz-obsession/1427961/">went from</a> one-fifth the size of Sears to twice as large.Local truck drivers have largely been replaced by drivers traversing the US with 53-foot trailers full of goods for manufacturers or distribution centers."The vast majority [of truck drivers] are going to a big-box retailer with a big truck — and that big truck has a nonunion driver," Kent said.<h2>Everything's cheaper, but the cost is immense</h2>Larry Heine doesn't think the cost savings were worth it."There was this shift in power for laborers," he said. "Deregulation got a hold of the nation to drive down the cost of everything. The cost didn't go down much — the money just shifted from labor to the top 10%."The prominent labor economist Lawrence Mischel has said deregulation was never meant to help truckers."This was a conscious decision to make the trucking industry a dog-eat-dog industry," Mishel, a fellow at the Economic Policy Institute, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/truck-driver-salary-decrease-pay-cut-2018-9">previously told Business Insider</a>. "The prices of trucking got cheaper, but the ability to make a living evaporated."The data supports Heine's and Mishel's arguments. Between 2000 and 2018, the lowest-earning one-tenth of Americans saw their wages rise by 3%, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/">the Pew Research Center found</a>. The wealthiest one-tenth enjoyed a 15.7% surge.<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/23/how-much-housing-prices-have-risen-since-1940.html">Housing</a> and <a href="https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2020/04/why-are-americans-paying-more-for-healthcare">healthcare</a> costs have consistently outpaced wage growth. What Americans need to live has gotten costlier, but mass-produced goodies — the <a href="https://theoutline.com/post/8421/smart-tv-cheap-roku?zd=1&amp;zi=v56e47yb47yb">TVs</a>, <a href="https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/chart-of-the-day-the-cpi-for-clothing-has-fallen-by-3-3-over-the-last-20-years-while-overall-prices-increased-by-63-5/">clothes</a>, and <a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUSR0000SERE01">toys</a> made overseas and moved around the US on a truck — are cheaper than ever.<div type="image" title="truck driver" height="3309" width="4412" msid="77169567" hostid="261"></div>It's part of what the journalist Amanda Mull <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/04/its-all-so-premiocre/606775/">dubbed "premiocre," or "premium mediocre," in The Atlantic</a>. Mull describes a consumer economy in which Millennials, robbed of a future with steady income and a pension, assuage themselves with "mid-priced bed linens" and Trader Joe's snacks doused in truffle oil.Many American laborers unhappy with this state of affairs can blame technology. Others point to outsourcing as the villain. America's truck drivers say they're the victims of their own government.

You Searched For "muffler man" and got 8 results

US Marshals offer $10,000 reward in manhunt for Maryland man suspected of gunning down judge who was overseeing his divorce proceedings

Kenneth Niemeyer,Michelle Mark

Delhi Assembly Polls: PM Modi congratulates ‘muffler man’ Kejriwal on AAP's success

Saba Haider

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal⁠— the man with a knack for Carpe Diem

Preeti

Sriram

The killing of a Maryland judge is part of a growing trend that's putting the judiciary at risk, a former US Marshal says

Grace Eliza Goodwin,Michelle …

8 American Housing Markets Where Landlords Are Making A Killing On Rent

Elena Holodny

Republic Day: President Pranab Hosts The Show, Kejriwal Steals It

Himanshi Dhawan

Naval Officials Investigated In Alleged Plot To Charge Government $1.6 Million For $8,000 In Silencers

Brian Jones

How a little-known 1980 law slashed pay for millions of truck drivers and created big-box retail as we know it

Rachel Premack

Popular Keywords

Buying Guides