From Politico
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/trucker-protest-beltway-98194.html?hp=r5 Trucker protest a bust
By: Kevin Robillard
October 11, 2013 02:33 PM EDT
A hoax, no. A bust, yes.
A trucker protest aiming to snarl traffic on the Capital Beltway and inspire a nationwide general strike drew about 30 trucks Friday, causing little noticeable impact on the already slogging, rain-slicked morning commute, Virginia state police said.
The truckers left a truck stop in Prince William County, Va., headed north toward the Beltway and crossed into Maryland on I-495 at about 8 a.m., police said. They sported U.S. flags and the hashtag “#T2SDA” — “Truckers To Shutdown America — painted on their rigs.
But the only thing resembling a shutdown occurred at 8:50 a.m., police said, when four trucks began driving side-by-side on the northbound lanes of the Beltway’s inner loop and slowed traffic to 15 mph. Officers stopped the trucks and warned them not to impede traffic. They did not issue a ticket.
Organizers of the protest didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, but the results so far have been a far cry from the predictions of Pete Santilli, the online radio host who helped organize the convoy to demand the resignation of President Barack Obama, among other causes. He told POLITICO on Tuesday that he hoped 3,000 truckers could inspire a general strike of “100 million people [to] get out on the street, get out on the roads and demand that our legislature follow the Constitution.”
The protest drew widespread media attention starting Monday, when U.S. News & World Report reported the plan to clog the Beltway and said the truckers hoped to arrest congressmen. Protest organizers quickly disavowed Earl Conlon, the Georgia trucker who announced those plans. On Tuesday, The Washington Post took Conlon’s word when he said the whole thing was a hoax.
While Santilli told the media not to treat Conlon as a spokesman, Conlon continued acting like one on Twitter, blasting out messages like: “those people listening to the scum bag reporters let me make it clear this Protest is going to be PEACEFUL, !!!”
Supporters were all over Twitter on Friday, although one photo of a truck-jammed highway that made the rounds was actually from a Make-a-Wish Foundation charity event last spring in Lancaster, Pa. The sunny weather in the photo offered a hint that it wasn’t from Friday in D.C.
Meanwhile, mainstream trucking organizations distanced themselves from the protest, whose organizers have questioned President Barack Obama’s birthplace and employed other far-right rhetoric.
Santilli and other organizers have said the protest is supposed to last for three days and lead to the shutdown of commerce throughout the country, depriving the government of tax revenue and forcing Congress to make changes.
