A couple weeks ago, Kevin Drum at Mother Jones heard complaints about the Obama Administration intending to require farmers to have commercial driver's licenses to operate farm equipment. Sensing that there was something not right about that story, he investigated and wrote up his findings:
[H]ere's what seems to have happened. The FMCSA [Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration] has long had rules that defined most grain haulage as interstate commerce and designated farmers hauling shared crops as commercial operators. This was never a big deal because they had never enforced those rules and neither had anyone else. But then Illinois decided to start enforcing the letter of the law and Illinois farmers were unhappy. So now FMCSA is asking whether these regulations ever made sense in the first place. Ditto for implements of husbandry, where they say that "a narrowly literal reading would mean applying the rules in circumstances where they would be impractical and produce no discernible safety benefits." So they want to make sure that the rules are more practical. [emphasis added]
In short, the rumor is not true. Nuf said. Right?
Don't go away ...
This week Kevin reports receiving an e-mail from a reader demonstrating, as Kevin puts it:
[E]very once in a while something you write makes a teensy tiny bit of difference.
The reader reports that yesterday he heard Rick Perry pass on this same rumor as fact in Iowa. Because he had read Kevin's blog, the reader confidently shouted "That's not true!" And then the reader contacted the political editor of the Des Moines Register and suggested a fact-check.
The result is
Federal agency: Texas Gov. Perry wrong in comments about new license rules for farmers
which can be read here.
Kevin's conclusion is a modest
OK, it's not a lot. But in the fight against dumb right-wing urban legends, every little bit counts.
I tend to disagree. It seems like a LOT to me.