Amish transportation. Most Amish will not buy, or drive, automobiles. Since they live in rural areas, they often pay their non-Amish neighbors to take them places.
That has outraged the State of Pennsylvania. “Every driver who takes a person anyplace for hire has to specially licensed, and each one must pay us almost four hundred dollars a year. Many who drive the Amish to stores and hospitals don’t pay our fees. So, we’re going to arrest any driver who doesn’t give us four hundred dollars a year.”
The reason? Metropolitan transportation “authorities”. Big city bus drivers are in powerful unions. They do not want to compete with jitney drivers who are mostly black, poor, and otherwise unemployed. These heroic citizens provide safe, door-to-door transportation in some of metropolitan Pennsylvania’s most dangerous neighborhoods. To stop that, the State has instituted fees and regulations to make it impossible for most jitney drivers to compete with “public” transportation.
And, those same unions would like to operate in rural areas to increase the number of dues-paying members.
So, the Pennsylvania Utility Commission is sending undercover officers around to spy on those who drive the Amish where they want to go, bring them and their purchases home again, and charge them a few dollars.
When these drivers are found, they are arrested and heavily fined. In Pennsylvania, this is called “justice”.
To date, no one is known to have been killed or injured while riding in an “Amish jitney”. Thousands have had their lives made better by them.
All the more reason for the state to put them out of business.
