Today's guest post is by Jon Zerolnick of the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, co-author of "Foreclosure on Wheels."

Well, Long Beach went ahead and signed its predatory truck lending deal with Daimler, despite scathing criticism that extended well beyond this powerful local coalition of environmentalists, community, labor and public health advocates. The Consumer Federation of California and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People were among the prominent state and national organizations that refused to remain silent, with NAACP Chairman Julian Bond likening the plight of port drivers under this scheme to "Sharecropping on Wheels."

The Road's sources recently confirmed that as of last week, a mere 189 drivers had submitted applications.[1]

That's just a smidgen over 1% of drivers in a workforce universe of 16,800, which shows the vast majority of port drivers aren't falling for an unjust lease-to-own scheme that puts the mandate of cleaner commerce into the wrong - and riskiest - hands. But it's still 189 drivers too many.

As the recent NAACP-coalition report that my organization, the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy co-authored entitled "Foreclosure on Wheels: Long Beach's Truck Program Puts Drivers at High Risk for Default," noted:

"Currently, most 'San Pedro Bay' port drivers (80%) have no truck payment; this additional fixed monthly cost, even absent the additional challenges outlined in this report, is itself a significant financial strain." That 80% figure comes from the Gateway Cities Council of Governments March 2007 report.

In other words, low-wage workers lured into becoming indentured servants of the port industry who pay zero dollars a month for their truck now will suddenly have to come up with $600-650 every 30 days, averaged over the lifetime of the seven-year loan. Imagine that new unavoidable expense, as an independent hauler who earns $11-12 an hour (an outdated figure derived when the economy was stronger and fuel costs were far lower).

Tomorrow, I will go into more detail about how this scheme will kill a family budget and drive Long Beach families into bankruptcies, not to mention fail to sustain desired clean-up efforts. Something tells me Warren Buffett won't step in to bail these workers out like he did for Goldman Sachs in a more localized example of government policy-making gone awry, for business and working families alike. Like recent news of the national economy, the full impact seems unfathomable.

[1] Public Records Act Request to Port of Long Beach from Jon Zerolnick, senior policy and research analyst at the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, dated September 9, 2008. Information released on September 18, 2008, exactly ten days later. (The state PRA allows for up to ten days to comply with request. See California Government Code § 6250 et seq.)