Another week, another roundup on the supply chain issues plaguing America and the world.
The supply chain problem is one of the big reasons economic growth dropped to an anemic 2% in Q3. The Trump boom/post-Flu Manchu recovery has ended, and the Biden economy has kicked in.
1. Starting with the 24/7 gates. The terminal has not even discussed them with the crews. There is no plan in place to launch them. 2. For all of second shift they are seeing >50 trucks most nights. None are coming in after midnights. They have had nights with zero trucks… 2/
A ship they would normally work with 4-6 cranes they have 2 on. Those still do 30+ containers an hour per crane. 5. They are loading empties out. That isn’t a restriction. But with only 2 cranes they run out of time and have to cut the ship loose. …4/
8. There are chassis. The problem though is as they issue them out, and they break, there is no way to fix them. 9. Those chassis are mostly for an on-wheels premium service but they can’t put the containers onto the chassis because they have nowhere to stage them. 6/
11. They are not intentionally slow working. COVID is not an issue. There is no intentional labor slowdown. They want more shifts. They are bored and want to work. 8/
Again. This is one team, from one shift's perspective at one hard-working terminal. But we MUST go and listen to them and every other piece of this puzzle to really get an idea of where we must make improvements.
One more point! Important to note that they blame no one. Really, they don't. They find it all very interesting but at the end of the day they clock in, do their jobs, and go home to their families. They truly love the work and are proud of what they are doing.
But remember: There’s no problem a government “solution” can’t make worse: “Biden hopes fines on lingering cargo containers ease congestion at major U.S. ports.” “The twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach will charge carriers $100 per day for each container lingering past a given timeline starting Nov. 1.” Yeah, that’s going to magically conjure trucks and drivers out of thin air.
Another problem is the change in containers, and the requirements for matching truck chassis types, has added still another point of failure (from 2015):
Ten years ago, the largest container vessels that entered the ports carried 8,500 twenty-foot containers, or TEUs. Each shipping company operated their own cargo ships. The containers inside were generally all the same, and they were loaded systematically for efficient unloading at each dock.
Now, the ships are much larger, carrying 14,000 TEUs, said Philip Sanfield, a spokesman for the Port of Los Angeles, adding that the ships are only getting bigger, and soon ships carrying 16,000 TEUs will enter the seas. The companies have begun forming alliances with one another to share these larger ships. Each company’s cargo containers are different – so it takes longer for dock workers to sort and unload them. It saves the shipping companies money, but makes for longer hours for dock workers and truckers.
“That’s an inefficiency in the system that is driven by an efficiency: the move toward larger vessels,” says Thomas O’Brien of the Center for International Trade and Transportation at Cal State Long Beach. “But the impact is felt on the dock side.”
One example of how this plays out: a truck driver spends hours waiting at the docks for the container he or she has been assigned to haul, which has to be moved from the bottom of a tall stack of other containers.
But even before waiting for a cargo container, the driver must be matched with a chassis – the trailer that the container sits on top of. That process also involves a lot of waiting, and often some hunting. Drivers have to find one that will match the cargo container that he or she has been assigned to haul.
In the past, this matching process was relatively simple because the shipping companies also owned their own chassis fleets and managed them from their shipyards.
But during the recession, the shippers got out of the chassis business, turning them over to third-party companies to lease and maintain. The transition has created scattered mix of chassis on various terminals, and ultimately, a chassis shortage at a time when bigger ships are showing up with more cargo. Truckers told KPCC it’s difficult for them to know where they can find a chassis that will match the container they are assigned to haul, and often find themselves on what amounts to a wild goose chase.
“There were times, when we would have 10 to 15 guys looking for one particular chassis, and we just had to wait,” said Danny Lima, the employee truck driver. “I heard stories that there are no chassis at one certain terminal because they were all at another terminal. “
“I’m praying that there is going to be a chassis,” says Rafael, the independent trucker. “Because I can spend an hour driving around the terminal looking for chassis.”
California had some of the most stringent COVID-19 limitations of any state in 2020 when the horrendous backlog began. There was a need for more workers as demand for imported goods was skyrocketing, but California had far fewer available due to drastic government restrictions.
In addition, overly generous government unemployment payouts reduced the need or incentive for people to work, reducing the available supply of willing truckers or longshoremen.
When the supply chain is pinched like this, inflation rears its ugly head.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has blamed recent inflation on supply chain bottlenecks. When these bottlenecks occur, consumers and businesses soon experience shortages of basic commodities and goods like new and used cars, washing machines, or medical supplies. Inflation soon follows.
Unfortunately, many bottlenecks in supply chains occur because of government meddling.
Politicians’ recent alarm over the Port of Los Angeles should be focused on how government officials forced docks and logistics companies, and everyone else, to follow everchanging, arbitrary COVID-19 restrictions, which worsened repeated green and labor mandates that have gummed up supply chains for years.
A trade group for air cargo giants like UPS and FedEx is sounding the alarm over an impending Dec. 8 vaccine deadline imposed by President Joe Biden, complaining it threatens to wreak havoc at the busiest time of the year — and add yet another kink to the supply chain.
“We have significant concerns with the employer mandates announced on Sept. 9, 2021, and the ability of industry members to implement the required employee vaccinations by Dec. 8, 2021,” Stephen Alterman, president of the Cargo Airline Association, wrote in a letter sent to the Biden administration and obtained by POLITICO.
The letter, sent to the Office of Management and Budget , asks the administration to postpone the deadline until “the first half of 2022.” At issue is the requirement by the Biden administration that federal workers be fully vaccinated by Dec. 8. Unlike private businesses, companies that act as federal contractors cannot opt out by instead submitting their workforces to frequent Covid testing.
Our vulnerability to supply chain disruption clearly predates the Biden Administration, forged by the abandonment of the production economy over the past 50 years by American business and government, encouraged and applauded by the clerisy of business consultants. The result has been massive trade deficits that now extend to high-tech products, and even components for military goods, many of which are now produced in China. When companies move production abroad, they often follow up by shifting research and development as well. All we are left with is advertising the products, and ringing up the sales, assuming they arrive.
Unable to stock shelves, procure parts, power your home, or even protect your own country without waiting for your ship to come in, Americans are now unusually vulnerable to shipping rates shooting up to ten times higher than before the pandemic. Not surprisingly, pessimism about America’s direction, after a brief improvement Biden’s election, has risen by 20 points. The shipping crisis is now projected to last through 2023.
Not everyone loses here. For years the American establishment saw China as more of an opportunity than a danger. High-tech firms, entertainment companies, and investment banks profit, or hope to, from our dependency, becoming in essence the new “China lobby.” Behind the scenes these representatives of enlightened capital often work to prevent condemnation for the Middle Kingdom’s mercantilist policy, and its joint repression of democracy and ethnic minorities.
After all, the pain is not felt in elite coastal enclaves, but in Youngstown, south Los Angeles, and myriad other decaying locales. Meanwhile, by enabling China’s focus on production, and the conquest of technologies related to making goods, we have devastated large parts of our country. This shift has cost us 3.7 million jobs since 2000. Throughout the period between 2004 and 2017, the U.S. share of world manufacturing shrank from 15 to 10 percent, while our reliance on Chinese inputs doubled, even as our dependence on Japan and Germany shrank.
Snip.
Some businesses are catching the drift. McKinsey and Company surveyed supply chain executives last year and found that nearly all respondents agree that their supply chains are too vulnerable. According to March 2020’s Thomas Industrial Survey, COVID-19 supply chain disruptions accelerated the search for locally-sourced materials and services. Up to 70 percent of firms surveyed said they were “likely” or “extremely likely” to re-shore in the coming years.
The exodus from China also includes Asian and other foreign firms. UBS projects 20 to 30 percent of all Chinese capacity moving, which on $2.5 trillion of Chinese exports would imply $500 billion to $750 billion shifting elsewhere, notably to the big market of North America. Last year, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, the world’s leading chip foundry, decided to build a $12 billion new plant in Arizona, and Samsung, a huge Korean chipmaker, is also shopping in the United States for a $17 billion plant. This would remove one of the most devastating causes of supply chain problems, which has dramatically slowed auto production.
Some major American companies, including Black and Decker, Whirlpool, General Electric, Apple, Caterpillar, Goodyear, General Motors, Little Tykes, and Polaris have begun to reshore some production. They are not alone. In 2019, for the first time in a decade, the percentage of United States manufacturing goods that were imported dropped, notes a recent Kearny study, with much of the shift coming from east Asia.
The “Made in China” label is ubiquitous in the United States, stamped on everything from industrial machinery to a pair of flip flops. But risks — from rising costs, to a trade war, to a pandemic — have prompted companies to rethink their relationships with suppliers and China.
“We’ve realized that we put too much power in a single country,” said Dawn Tiura, CEO of Sourcing Industry Group.
Snip.
The same risk factors that drove supply chains to diversify also drove them to think about reshoring to the U.S. Proximity allows shorter transit times, lower emissions and the ability to tout a “Made in USA” label. Import duties are no longer a concern. Total cost of ownership is often lower.
A Thomas study that polled respondents in March found 83% of manufacturers are likely, very likely or extremely likely to reshore, up from 54% in March 2020. But reestablishing manufacturing bases in the U.S. could prove challenging, after decades of standing them up in Asia and Latin America.
“It is extremely difficult to reverse the 30+ year trend of outsourcing and offshoring manufacturing to emerging market countries,” a chemical manufacturer in the Thomas survey said. “We no longer have the talent and expertise nor capital equipment to effectively manufacture key critical components of major products and assemblies.”
“Ace Hardware Shelves Go Bare While Supply Chain Crisis Rages.” “We order twice a week. Normally it just takes two or three days to get back in stock on something…But during the pandemic and then with a certain category being out of stock, we’ve been out of certain products for three or four months.”
More on part supply shortages:
Just wait until these "lower your expectations" people have their heaters go down in December and find out the parts are 3-4 months out.
Hey Jen, we’re also running out of iv catheters, iv tubing, syringes, etc. for sick babies due to the supply chain crisis. Is that funny too? https://t.co/mN7cXPb8at
As far as local conditions in Texas, I can say that I’m only seeing small disruptions in the grocery store supply chain at my local HEB. Luncheon meat was very short there on a recent visit, but I didn’t notice any other particular absence. A few weeks ago, the big Member’s Mark store brand toilet paper at Sam’s was completely out, but it had been completely refilled a week later.
Reminder:
Just a reminder that Biden already spent $2 trillion on the American Rescue Act and all we have to show for it as an economic crisis, an inflation crisis, and a supply chain crisis.
Here’s a piece that says lazy crane operators are to blame, according to some truck drivers. “The crane operators take their time, like three to four hours to get just one container.” Eh, something about this doesn’t ring true. Maybe they had to wait three or four hours for the operator to get their container off the stack.
Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo may have accidentally leaked the cause of America’s supply chain issues.
“The reality is the only way we’re going to get to a place where we work through this transition is if everyone in America and everyone around the world gets vaccinated,” Adeyemo admitted in an interview with ABC News.
Starve them out, let the dissenters suffer, and those who bought into this agenda will turn against them.
Adeyemo said that the Biden Administration has already provided “the resources the American people need to make it to the other side.”
Basically, everyone should give into the vaccine mandate or face the consequences. They are masking authoritarianism as utilitarianism. The vaccine has not been mandated at the federal level in the US, yet, but it is apparent that the government plans to make life as difficult as possible for those who do not obey.
Echoing the Fed, Adeyemo said that inflation is “transitory,” and “as part of the transition we are seeing higher pieces for some of the things people have to buy… That’s exactly why the president was focused in the American Rescue Plan in ensuring on getting stimulus into the hands of the American people, so they’d be able to buy the products they need.”
Yes, the government expects us, the Great Unwashed, to be thankful for their measly handouts to purchase unavailable products at an all-time high. There is a reason people have recently nicknamed the president “bare shelves Biden,” with the hashtags #BareShelvesBiden and #EmptyShelvesJoe becoming a viral sensation.
Although the Biden Administration met with the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, which handles 40% of the nation’s goods, the promise of a 24/7 operation has not yet occurred. There is no ETA for when the ports will begin 24/7 operations either. Some ships are allegedly waiting 12 days at anchor before reaching the dock, and over 60 vessels are idled in the San Pedro Bay at the moment. With one of the nation’s busiest shopping holidays approaching (Black Friday) followed by ongoing seasonal shopping, this matter is likely to turn ugly.
Other voices of the same opinion
The reason the Biden Administration has not solved the supply chain crisis is because they don’t want it solved.
House the homeless in a literal shithole (with visible feces in one picture of the place), and
By an amazing coincidence, is run by a non-profit founded by Andrew Cuomo and now run by his sister Maria Cuomo Cole.
(I think that this is the news story he reads from at some point.)
“The top executives of Help USA earn $200,000 to $375,000 a year, and many of them have contributed heavily to NY Gov. Cuomo’s campaigns.”
“Board members associated with various homeless shelters have gifted the governor $322,972.50, while donors associated with Help USA, a shelter service provider founded by the governor and chaired by his sister, Maria Cuomo Cole, have ponied up $451,285 in donations.”
Thirty five hundred to four thousand dollars per month per individual for people to stay in shitholes like this. This is being done so that the people who run these charities can pay themselves insane amounts of money and get away with it. And the reason that it continues to happen is because of the incestuous relationship that exists between many of the people who run this not-for-profit, and the people that run the state and city government.
“This is an incestuous and disgusting relationship.”
He proposes a voucher system instead that, while it would be an improvement, A.) Is inferior to actually letting the free market build free housing, something New York (city and state) actively implements legislation to prevent, and B.) Would never be passed, because government homeless programs exist to transfer money from taxpayers to Democrats. That, not helping the homeless, is their primary purpose.
I have a big bucket of Social Justice Warrior links I’ve been meaning to herd into a roundup for a ridiculously long time now. Within that bucket, there’s a smaller (still large) bucket of links on fighting Critical Race Theory in education. Finally, I’ve whittled it down to just links relevant to just fighting critical race theory in Texas. Yes, it’s here, and yes, it needs to be fought tooth and nail.
The Cultural Competence Action Plan (CCAP) and parental rights are front and center as Carroll Independent School District (CISD) residents go to the polls again for a special election to fill a vacancy left by the resignation of Dave Almand from the school board in July.
The election will be held on November 2 with early voting beginning on October 18.
Two candidates have filed to fill the position: Stephanie Williams and Andrew Yeager.
Williams is a member of Dignity for all Texas Students (DATS) that is committed to passing the controversial CCAP in CISD as a diversity and inclusion plan that will “provide a safe environment where students can take risks, make mistakes, and grow from experience.” She has spoken at school board meetings in favor of CCAP, saying, “Critical race theory is not in CCAP.” She has also declared that “CRT is not taught in CISD and will not be taught in our district.”
However, Southlake Families, a political action committee that has endorsed Yeager, opposes CCAP because they believe it creates more problems than it claims to solve. They say its sections relating to microaggressions are especially problematic, where students are “permanently penaliz[ed]…for unintentional verbal or nonverbal actions.” The group also opposes critical race theory and its outgrowth from being promoted in CISD.
Critical race theory has its roots in Marxist philosophy and examines society with race and racial hierarchy as the primary concern for societal ills. It then seeks to deconstruct cultural institutions it defines as racist.
Although the theory itself may not be taught in local school districts, its critics say it lays the foundation for divisive identity politics that group people as either victims or oppressors. Language that grows out of CRT can often be found in curricula and training materials related to diversity, equity, and inclusion, like CCAP, or social and emotional learning concepts.
Yeager says on his website that “I will also work to ensure our primary focus is on education, not indoctrination. Students should be taught ‘how to think,’ not ‘what to think.’”
The tide is turning in the fight against Critical Race Theory (CRT). Following the exposure in 2020 of CRT training in agencies throughout American government, the Trump Administration issued a ban on CRT at the federal level. President Biden overturned that ban on his first day in office, but the war has gone on—and it’s turning in the direction of reason, common sense, and the American tradition of equality before the law. State legislatures from Texas to Florida have put forward bans on critical race theory. Meanwhile, local activists and parents have taken the fight to their local school boards.
On May 1, two school board candidates in Southlake, Texas converted these media, administrative, and legislative advances into a political win. In a high turnout election marked by intense media coverage, the two anti-CRT candidates for the Carroll ISD School Board won in a landslide—by a 40-point margin. The Southlake victory provides a blueprint for conservatives elsewhere to emulate as they fight to win elections against CRT in school boards across America.
Carroll ISD’s Five-Year Plan
In the fall of 2018, a video of several teenagers singing along to a rap song went viral; the song’s lyrics included a racial slur. The video was filmed at a private post-Homecoming party in Southlake, a largely conservative suburb of Fort Worth and Dallas. The teens were students at Carroll ISD, the prestigious public high school that consistently ranks among the top school districts in Texas. Progressive activists wasted no time in seizing the opportunity to implement (CRT) in Carroll ISD.
The district formulated a “Cultural Competence Action Plan” (CCAP), which set forth ambitious goals, first of which would entail hiring a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) officer to oversee implementation of the Plan. Students and their teachers would be pressed to discover their racial bias and confess their white privilege. Anonymous tip lines would be set up to report alleged “microaggressions” and to impose punishment. “Focus groups” of radicalized students would be organized to report directly to the DEI administration. External auditors would be hired to reshape every District policy, organization, and curriculum in the name of advancing racial equity.
The CCAP adopted all of the quasi-Marxist aims and methods characteristic of CRT. It was even described by its own proponents, unironically, as a “Five Year Plan.”
In some school districts, faculty would have toed the line, parents would have bowed to the wisdom of Progress and Equity, and students would have let it all pass them by. But this is Texas—and Carroll ISD’s mascot is the Dragons.
Beginning in 2020, Southlake conservative families formed a political action committee; they filed a barrage of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests; they showed up in record numbers to speak at school board meetings; they educated the community about the evils of CRT; and they recruited winning school board candidates. Hannah Smith and Cameron “Cam” Bryan campaigned for almost 4 months, meeting with community members in 70 meet-and-greets all over Southlake and shared their positive vision for the future of Carroll ISD. Their campaign volunteers went block by block and door by door across Southlake to tell voters the truth about CCAP.
On May 1, Smith and Bryan won with supermajorities of the vote (69 percent and 68 percent, respectively). Local voter turnout for a municipal election broke records, with over 10,000 votes were cast, up more than 150 percent from the previous high.
More than twice as many Republicans voted in the 2021 Carroll ISD election than had voted in any previous May election. In fact, more GOP voters turned out to vote than had turned out in the last two Republican primary elections for President and U.S. Senate!
But massive turnout among independent voters was key to the victory over CRT. In Texas, political affiliation is determined by participation in party primaries, not by party registration, and almost all of the voters who participate in the May elections for school board are also regular primary voters. In Carroll ISD, independents normally make up about 17 percent of the May electorate—an average of less than 500 votes. But this May, independent turnout surged to over 3,500 raw votes and the independent share of the electorate doubled to 35 percent.
There are four lessons to learn from the Southlake victory:
Use Freedom of Information Act requests to get the real story
Recruit qualified candidates who reflect the community’s values
Start early to build a real grassroots base
Run a professional political campaign
Another school district where parents are fighting Critical race Theory: Cypress Fairbanks.
Controversy over a trustee’s social media posts and allegations of critical race theory (CRT) elements in school curricula have drawn multiple challengers for three incumbents on the Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District (CFISD) Board of Trustees this year.
Parents in the state’s third-largest public school district have been asking questions about curriculum since the board adopted a “Resolution Condemning Racism” in September of 2020.
Written by trustees John Ogletree, Julie Hinaman, and Gilber Sarabia, the resolution states that the district will “lead through policy and practice to eliminate racism, systemic racism, discrimination, injustice, and inequality in any and all its forms,” and commits to hiring a third party to conduct an “equity audit” in order to develop equity policies.
According to documents obtained by The Texan, CFISD has contracted with Millennium Learning Concepts (MLC) for an estimated $75,000 to conduct an equity analysis and to “provide recommendations on how to alleviate the policies and practices that are contributing to inequitable experiences and outcomes for students.”
President and owner of MLC, Roger Cleveland, is a professor of education who frequently presents to schools and districts on implicit bias and using equity to ensure that “equality is the outcome.”
Since then, parents have voiced opposition to plans to show a video on “implicit bias,” a Black Lives Matter protest video shown to third graders, and materials from controversial professor Tyrone Howard used in teacher training materials. Trustees have vehemently denied that the district uses any curriculum under the CRT label, but parents say ideas derived from CRT are presented to students under the guise of anti-bullying and anti-racism materials.
Critical Race Theory has roots in Marxist philosophy and examines society with race and racial hierarchy as the primary concern for societal ills. Drawing on Marxist philosopher of education Paolo Freire’s theories asserting that teaching is never neutral but always political, materials containing elements of CRT seek to use education to deconstruct institutions and culture deemed racist.
Ogletree has also come under community scrutiny for a slew of social media posts that invoke racial conflict. In one case Ogletree posted a Washington Post opinion piece comparing police officers to the Ku Klux Klan. In other instances, he shared a racially tinged comment about GOP congressional candidate Wesley Hunt who is black, and a comment reading, “This country was built on bad theology with white men holding Bibles.”
Critical Race Theory has been embedded in Austin ISD for almost half a decade under the guise of “ethnic studies.” “Administrators said teachers will cover everything from critical race theory, immigration versus colonization versus slavery to sexual orientation.” In other words: Hard left indoctrination.
There’s a battle over Critical Race Theory brewing in Eanes ISD in Travis County. “The Eanes DEI [Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, all CRT buzzwords] consultant, Mark Gooden, has said that he wants to develop people into racial activists. He has stated that he wants to help people “develop their racial awareness with a hope of transferring that into action that they will then use to transform the organization.'”
As a high school debate coach, I’ve watched critical race theory crush the souls of students for years. When it began to creep into the honored and honorable academic pursuit of policy (CX) debate, it lowered standards, created division and sundered relationships.
Let me explain how. Policy debate pits two two-person teams against each other. The Affirmative team (Aff) presents a plan that falls within this year’s topic; the Negative team (Neg) argues against that plan. This requires immense research and study; if the year’s topic is, say, the oceans, teams must be prepared to argue against plans ranging from the Law of the Seas Treaty to plastics to overfishing.
But some years ago, a new tactic emerged. Why argue that the Aff plan is terrible, when you can simply argue that the United States is terrible? Or worse, that the Aff team is terrible?
This kind of argument is called a kritik—debate jargon for employing critical theory (including, and especially, critical race theory) to undermine not the plan you’re supposed to be refuting, but the very legitimacy of liberal society, Western history and even debate itself.
Writing in an article called “The Corrosion of High School Debate—And How It Mirrors American Politics,” one former debater recalled how “Some debaters even began refusing to debate the resolutions altogether, formulating elaborate theoretical and critical arguments that were, at best, tenuously linked to the topic they had been given.”
The language of critical race theory is new to most Americans, but debaters have been parsing these words and phrases for years. “Equity” is in; fairness is out. Black bodies, colonialism, “words are violence,” ontological death—these concepts are tossed around in classrooms and tournaments throughout Texas.
Here’s what I saw first-hand. One of my teams, two Senior girls, went into a round as the Affirmative team. I don’t recall the topic that year (a decade ago), but I do remember them emerging from the round in tears. They lost—and were told they lost—because the Negative team argued they should lose. As two white, privileged students from a private school, Neg claimed, the Affirmative team embodied everything wrong with America.
I thought there had to be some mistake. But when I saw the ballot a couple of hours later, it was true. The judge wrote that in the interest of social justice, he handed the win to the Negative team—even though Neg offered not a single argument against the Aff plan.
In another round, one of my teams was a little confused when a member of the opposing team got up and left just as the round started. The judge didn’t object, so my guys went on as usual—making their speeches, organizing their thoughts and crafting their arguments. In the penultimate speech (Second Negative Rebuttal), the absent Neg team member returned, holding a can full of coins. He argued that Neg should win because instead of wasting time in the round, he was out collecting money for a climate change charity—real-world action should trump ineffectual speech, he said (mind you, at a speech tournament). Neg won that round.
What does one kritik-dependent team do when it comes up against another kritik-dependent team? I’ve watched those rounds devolved into a morass of intersectionality. “You may be female, but I’m Hispanic.” You may be Hispanic, but I have a learning disability.” “Your school spends more per-student than mine.”
How can debaters respond to critical race theory and similar arguments? They can’t; CRT is non-falsifiable, and to take any position against it is to display “white fragility”—an argument I’ve seen used against non-white students.
In the course of discussing the crises of tent cities with drug addicts infesting just about every blue city in America, Peachy Keenan (I suspect a pseudonym) talks about how homelessness is a major profit center for Democrats:
The homeless crisis is fake. By fake I mean, it’s an engineered social dysfunction created on purpose to ensure a steady flow of suitcases stuffed with unmarked nonconsecutive bills to City Halls around the country. It is a racket. A money laundering operation, just like the Department of Defense budget, and almost at the same astronomical scale.
Just like the open border, Covid, and inflation, fake crises are never allowed to go to waste.
Los Angeles voted itself $1.2 billion to “address homelessness” in 2019. The number of homeless people, naturally, shot up from 40,000 to close to 70,000 now. Meanwhile, Governor Newsom pledged $4.8 billion to “address” and “confront” homelessness in the state, where over 150,000 homeless live.
But wait, there’s more! As the recall pressed in on him, he announced an additional $12 billion to “confront” homelessness.
He’s addressing it, you guys! He’s confronting it!
Liberal politicians understand that homelessness works. Homelessness is good. The more tents the better. The more lunatics who threaten and harass you with their pants around their ankles, the more likely you are to vote for new taxes and more spending.
You see a filth-encrusted hobo nodding out on a curb, urine running down the sidewalk—our leadership class sees cash.
You see a machete-wielding degenerate with stained pants terrorizing tourists on the Hollywood Walk of Fame—a greasy LA city official sees a new tax, a new program, a big pay raise for himself.
There is a reason that LA’s infamous Skid Row has been allowed to fester and grow for almost 40 years. It now spans dozens of blocks in the downtown shopping district of America’s second largest city. It is mile after mile, block after block, of wasted zomboids shuffling past heaps of putrid trash, drug dealers, and pop-up brothels in Porta-Potties.
It’s a perfect grift, and they don’t care if you know it.
Thanks to the tsunami of money, in 2020 there was a 12.7 percent rise in homelessness, “despite an increase in the number of people rehoused.”
I have no clue what “rehoused” means, but I’m guessing it’s a portmanteau of “deloused” and “re-hosed.”
Meanwhile, Los Angeles mayoral candidates like Kevin De Leon continue to double down on the clown world policy of Housing First.
Placing meth and heroin addicts in shiny new apartments with kitchens to clean, dishwashers to load and unload, beds to make, and trash to take out—what could go wrong?
San Francisco just announced it’s building micro-homes for some lucky addicts.
They had to remove the Port-a-Potties from LA’s skid row a few years ago because they were being used as brothels. Prayers to the poor city employee who has to clean out each micro house when the resident ODs.
Solving homelessness “requires us to center solutions in racial equity so that we can dismantle the legacy of racism that still shapes our region’s vast inequalities of income, wealth, and opportunity,” says Jacqueline Waggoner, who chairs the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority’s “Ad Hoc Committee on Black People Experiencing Homelessness.”
If homelessness is caused by racism, what’s with all the sunburned white beggars at every freeway exit in California?
I wasn’t able to find Waggoner’s salary, but Heidi Marston, Executive Director of LAHSA, earned $260,000 in 2019. The mob has to pay its accountants well to keep the schemes going, after all. Marston was also on the Biden-Harris transition team. She must be a good person because she has a sign hanging in her office that says, “You Are On Tongva Land.” (The Tongva are the closest Los Angeles has to indigenous people).
I’m sure Marston reminded the veterans overdosing on fentanyl on Hollywood Boulevard that their tents are on stolen Tongva land.
The cities and states in Blue America have been using homelessness as an excuse to drain America of its wealth for too long.
I believe that early on (say, around the New Deal), liberal Democrats pushed for welfare state programs in the sincere belief that they would improve the the lives of the poor and downtrodden. Today, however, as per the universal law, every new welfare state program is born as a racket, designed to siphon money off the taxpayer and into leftwing pockets.
I know that headline is more than a little ambiguous, as Google has probably broken multiple laws, if only because they’re so big and there are so many laws. But “Did Google break the law using sneaky, underhanded means to carry out anti-competitive trade practices to kill off an alternative ad allocating system called ‘header bidding’ because it threatened to damage one of its biggest revenue streams” is way too long for a blog post title.
As a prelude, here’s a brief description of header bidding and how it differs from Google’s “Waterfall” system:
Header bidding is an advanced programmatic advertising technique that serves as an alternative to the Google “waterfall” method. Header bidding is also sometimes referred to as advance bidding or pre-bidding, and offers publishers a way to simultaneously offer ad space out to numerous SSPs or Ad Exchanges at once.
Normally, when a publisher is trying to sell advertising space on its site, the process for filling inventory goes something like this:
First, your site reaches out to your ad server. In general, direct-sold inventory takes precedence over any programmatically sold options. Next, available inventory is served through the site’s ad server, such as Google DoubleClick in a waterfall sequence, meaning unsold inventory is offered first to the top-ranked ad exchange, and then whatever is still unsold is passed along to the second ad exchange, and so on. These rankings are usually determined by size, but the biggest ones aren’t necessarily the ones willing to pay the highest price. (For publishers, this means lower overall revenue if the inventory isn’t automatically going to the highest bidder.)
To further complicate the process, sites using Google’s DFP for Publishers has a setting that enables them to outbid the highest bidder by a penny using Google Ad Exchange (AdX). And since AdX gets the last bid, they are generally in a position to win most of these auctions.
Publishers end up feeling like they aren’t making quite as much money as they would without Google meddling in the bids.
How Does Header Bidding Help Publishers?
Header bidding is a way for publishers to have a simultaneous auction from all the bidders, rather than the sequential strategy that Google uses. By placing some javascript on their website, when a particular page is loaded, it reaches out to all supported SSPs or ad exchanges for bids before its ad server’s own direct-sold inventory is called. Publishers can even choose to allow the winning bid to compete with pricing from the direct sales.
Got that? Here, as best I can understand, is a summary example:
Say Joe Blow’s Ad Agency and Attack Lawyer Collective wants to be the top bidder for serving ads up for the keyword “mesothelioma” (which, at one time, was the priciest keyword you could buy for digital ads), and it is willing to pay, say, $100 per 1,000 impressions. Under Google’s waterfall method, they would never get to bid if Big Madison Avenue Ad Agency was in the top tier of bidders even though BMAAA only offered $50 per 1,000 impressions, because Google would sell those ad slots only to the highest bidder in the top tier, and would never get down to Joe Blow in the third tier. (This is all greatly oversimplified, and feel free to correct/amend this example in the comments.)
Well, due to the big antitrust lawsuit filed against Google by some 38 (last time I looked) state attorney generals (including Texas), lots of dirty secrets and memos have come to light as part of discovery. Many of the most serious bits were redacted, but that was just changed by judge’s orders:
It's pretty amazing to see the actual quotes from discovery. For instance the express purpose to "kill HB." That's short for "header bidding" which was a significant threat to Google's business. /2 pic.twitter.com/S2kiBat0pB
We now have internal email which explains the game which header bidding also risks disrupting – giving priority to Google's AdX despite it meaning less revenues for the publishers. Hello, SEC. One company can't participate all sides of market at this dominance. /4 pic.twitter.com/VdJn8sJpZ9
According to these allegations, Google's initial way for this executive to achieve this goal involved just stopping competition, innovation and investment. "forestall major industry investment in FB…" /6 pic.twitter.com/l2wWk3ODQ3
We hadn't seen Facebook's own internal messages showing it was blatantly obvious why Google wanted this alleged quid pro quo with Facebook so they would exit the market. "They want to kill header bidding." Yeah, that's clear. /8 pic.twitter.com/y9DaEEaXaM
It also involved providing a bunch of help in identifying users, allegations compare some of the methods to "inside trading" in that Facebook was uniquely win certain terms to block inside info. Congrats, Dan. /10 pic.twitter.com/C4aZzpIHGz
Two corporate behemoths getting together to strike insider deals with each other that freeze out competitors is pretty much textbook anti-competitive practices 101 stuff.
As you think about way real-time markets work, it's not only about pricing, too. It's about access to that data and even the effects of terms around time guarantees and thresholds. Facebook got longer time, again likely due to its market size and Google wanting to "Kill HB." /12 pic.twitter.com/Ca7L8LWTnV
Here is (just some of) the previously language in the Facebook and Google allegedly illegal market rigging deal. Do you think this drew any red flags for the executives reviewing the deal? /14 pic.twitter.com/IBJG8GVqFv
Holy shit! Google and Facebook are agreeing not to cooperate with any antitrust action by the federal government to bring action against the other. That’s not a red flag, that’s the Nostromo‘s flashing lights and screaming self-destruct klaxon in the original Alien.
During this intermission, here is a link to my December thread on the case that was widely read. It's also here so I can go back and compare my notes. /16 https://t.co/5LVy05wpvl
It's interesting how Google execs repeat themselves on internal messages, "for clarity," while knowing this was entirely unclear to their users. ps delete WhatsApp, it's owned by Facebook. /18 pic.twitter.com/T9AYqx3vjW
Interesting Google wanted to keep what is in yellow hidden from the public record. This "value" is as determined by Google's design influence over digital advertising. I've written about this but in a world of direct response, micro-targeted audiences, yeah, this is true. /20 pic.twitter.com/kHc6KNEkUb
when the monopolist fully acknowledges their business is able to collect rents only because it's a monopoly. Unbelievable. Thank you for unsealing the quotes in yellow this morning! /22 pic.twitter.com/YpWJAGB3ir
so a publisher has to pay 10% of gross revenues for any impressions they want to route outside of Google's monopoly supply chain. that 10% is A LOT of newsroom jobs. /26 pic.twitter.com/HGbp24OLiw
If yellow now unsealed is in Google's own writing, it seems like pretty clear foreclosure of the market by tying together with its marketplace dominance. /30 pic.twitter.com/qPwAUbu7h2
We're not at the "Project Bernanke" part of the program. We learned about this in Google's response when they screwed up their redactions but it's interesting to see the full complaint. Nice Google included the photo in this ill-advised project name. /32 pic.twitter.com/B1XnIlFF4N
So according to these documents, Google is not only a monopoly, it is a coercive monopoly that uses illegal anti-competitive trade practices to stifle competition.
And since the lawsuit was brought by a bipartisan coalition of state attorney generals, Google can’t just buy a few tens of millions of dollars worth of Hunter Biden painting to make the entire thing go away…
So how San Francisco become the homeless, crime, drug and feces-plagued wonderland that it is today? Michael Shellenberger (an author and journalists who has argued for technological solutions to environmental problems) discusses with Joe Rogan how it came to its current state.
Some takeaways:
San Francisco has always been friendly to illegal drugs, and in the 1800s it was the last city to shut down opium dens.
The movement (well-intention) to treat pain with opioids.
When that was restricted in 2010, a lot of opioid addicts switched to heroin.
After that came fentanyl, which is much easier to overdose on than heroin.
Meth was (is?) a separate epidemic.
Occupy brought a lot of tents into the homeless community in 2011. “The activists just gave the tends to the homeless.”
“Women are rapped in those camps, mentally ill people are taken advantage of, people overdose and die, people are killed when you can’t make payments on their drugs, drug dealers stabs you with a machete. These are really violent, dangerous, terrible places. You get hepatitis from all the feces.”
“Progressives have badly misled people into thinking this is a problem of high rents.”
“The idea that all black people are victims is a racist idea.”
Greetings, and welcome to the Friday LinkSwarm! Manchin stands firm, Psaki drips with contempt, #NeverTrump and #BlackLivesMatter share a sugar daddy, and “Let’s Go Brandon” pops up everywhere.
It’s suddenly beginning to dawn on Democrats that Manchin means it.
Joe Manchin means what he says. Democrats and the media may not grasp this as it happens so rarely in Washington, and neither group has included that in its calculations. However, that reality keeps getting clearer and clearer, and the Punchbowl crew warn Democrats to figure it out — fast:
Manchin has been remarkably consistent, and all the major media outlets have reported it time and time again. If you’re surprised by what Manchin is saying now, maybe you’ve been really busy, tied up on other endeavors and haven’t listened to or read what he’s said. That’s understandable. Life moves pretty fast.
But if you have listened to Manchin and you’re still surprised by or enraged at his positions, that may be because you’re irrationally hopeful he will change his beliefs, or you’re engaging in wishful and likely unrealistic thinking. Maybe you’re just listening to what you want to hear. But don’t worry, you aren’t alone. Half of official Washington has decided that they’re going to ignore what Manchin says and believe he has a secret set of beliefs he’s waiting to unveil.
Here’s what you have to understand about Manchin: He says what he means. When he gets heavy pressure from the left, it helps him back home.
Here’s the reality: Joe Manchin is a filibuster-supporting conservative Democrat who is also an ardent supporter of coal, skeptical of big government and massive spending packages. He never pretends otherwise. Let’s all stop acting surprised when he says the same thing for the umpteenth time.
No kidding. That’s always been the reality, right along with the reality of an evenly split Senate. One would think that Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer would have put those two realities together and realize that launching a massive progressive-agenda reconciliation bill would have been a no-sale from the very beginning. Up to now, Democrats seem to have talked themselves into a fantasy that Manchin was just looking for a deal, or that they could pressure him into folding.
Now that neither approach has worked — so far, anyway — The Hill reports that Democrats have begun to panic:
Democrats are facing growing headaches over their sweeping social spending bill as they struggle to show momentum ahead of an end-of-the-month deadline.
President Biden will meet with groups of moderates and progressives on Tuesday, and he’s facing pressure from some in his party to take a tighter rein on the talks.
Instead of narrowing their differences, Democrats are dealing with a near constant whack-a-mole of new problems in recent days ranging from climate provisions and child care to increasingly intense infighting between moderates and progressives.
The “whack-a-mole” is also a product of Democratic fantasy. They larded up the reconciliation bill with the entire progressive wish-list agenda, and as those items get attention, they also draw opposition. This omnibus approach to the hobby-horse list from the Bernie Sanders wing might have worked if Democrats had a clear and significant majority in each chamber of Congress, or if they had worked out the details with Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema beforehand. Biden doesn’t have the former and didn’t do any work on the latter, which is why Democrats are playing “whack-a-mole” now.
Now, as The Hill reports separately, Manchin’s entirely predictable opposition to Green New Deal-esque legislation threatens to torpedo Biden’s entire agenda:
The hard left is so used to the MSM pandering to their delusions of popularity that cold, hard reality always comes as something of a shock to them. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Unsurprisingly, some influential Senate Democrats are getting cold feet about the prospect of President Biden nominating Saule Omarova to lead the OCC. The Cornell law professor educated in the USSR who has proposed that the Fed take over most retail banking activities from the private sector (which a Fedcoin – or ZuckCoin – just might help it to do) while wholeheartedly supporting the progressives’ “Green New Deal” agenda.
This has, understandably, made many in both Congress, and the industry she is about to regulate, uncomfortable.
Various Omarova commie policy proposals we’ve previously covered snipped.
According to CNBC’s main source (who remains anonymous) is that these Senators have already shared their misgivings with President Biden.
Her selection, coupled with her views on how to overhaul the US banking system, prompted several Senate Democrats or their staff to complain to the White House and suggest that the president’s choice will be tough to support on Capitol Hill, according to a person familiar with the matter.
This person declined to be named in order to speak openly about private discussions between the White House and Senate offices.
Others surrounding the OCC nomination process said a handful of moderate Democrats harbor reservations about Omarova and her aspirations to “end banking as we know it,” as she suggested in a Vanderbilt Law Review article.
Those people cautioned that skeptical senators likely haven’t made a final decision yet but are leaning against her candidacy.
Why UK coronavirus death statistics can’t be trusted:
'Member when it came out that the PCR test at +40 cycles gave over 90% false positives? Yeah, about those numbers… pic.twitter.com/5SeD77TWsP
It’s not just the vexation you get when a lot of people are crammed into one place, though. It’s imposed, by dint of not doing anything about the disorderly elements. We will not police the streets so you will step over needles. We will not clear out the encampment so you will have an inert RV fill the neighborhood with smoke when it burns. We will not do something about petty theft, so you will have to wait for the clerk to get a key. We will not confine the mentally ill, so you will be trailed for a block by someone scrabbling a hand in his pants.
When you complain, you will be told you’re lucky not to be in the situation of the people who are causing the problems.You should be grateful you don’t have to steal Tide. You should be grateful you can afford to replace your broken stove, even though the replacement won’t come for 8 months. (It’ll be 9 next month.) I suppose that’s true, but it’s setting the bar rather low, and making the disorderly uncivil elements the baseline. Anything above that, it’s gravy.
Revanchist running-dog lackey of the plutocratic hegemony that I am, I am suspicious when the state determintes your needs and justifies their construction. You don’t need the treadmill is you don’t need 14 varities of ice cream is you don’t need that car is you don’t need that hamburger when there’s bug protein is you don’t need fast access to unprotected detergent is you don’t need to go to that wedding is you don’t need . . . this. That. The other thing. And it is churlish of you to think you need this when (insert aching never-solved non-analogous problem that still exists despite decades of expenditures here).
Ever seen the old Soviet ads? They’re lovely. They didn’t have 15 different brands. They just had a nice ad for marmalade, in general. No confusion. Yes, but did they actually produce any marmalade? Of course! But if there wasn’t any marmalade, because the wreckers and kulaks had prevented the fufillment of the Five-Year Fruit Spread Goals, everyone shared the experience. There was Marmalade Equity. And Comrade Brezhnev had his toast dry? He may have had some at diplomatic occasions, where it was expected.
What you might take away from the exchange above is this: the press secretary has access to a treadmill, and it works, and if it doesn’t, there are ten others in a row just like it. And membership in the fitness club comes with the job.
And never forget that she, and the mandarins she represents, hate you.
This is what Trump’s critics meant when they said we needed to restore “civility” to the White House: they meant we need the right kind of disdain for the right kinds of people, expressed in the right kinds of ways. Gone are the mean tweets, the off-color jokes, the rough pugilism. Now instead we have Jen Psaki, sneering avatar of an aristocracy that regards working Americans as less than dirt. People are straining to put food on the table and gas in their cars; they increasingly fail to see the point in going to work at all. Psaki’s response is that of the anointed class she represents: shut up and take it.
We are ruled over by a cabal of solipsists who feel outraged that the regressive pigs in flyover country express any opinions at all—about the fruits of their labor, about the security of their nation, about the health of their bodies. Their response is that we should “lower expectations” for affordable food, “welcome competition” from a rapidly arming China, and “follow the advice of health experts” on pain of unemployment.
Who can forget the treacly grin with which Psaki invited us to “stay tuned” for Biden’s forthcoming vaccine decree? She delights in her role, which is to act out the revenge fantasies of all who felt wounded in 2016 by the mere suggestion that their virtue is less than immaculate. We have to reckon with the fact that Psaki, loathsome though she may be, is doing her job exactly as intended. Her affronts are outrageous only to the people who already hate her: from her target audience they elicit shouts of “YAS Kween” and “drag him!” She is not slipping up when she insults your intelligence and riles up your countrymen against you, when she lies unblinkingly out in the open and defies you to do anything about it. That is her job, and she is good at it. She is doing exactly what she was put there to do.
No one with a spine should take instruction on “civility” from such a feckless cretin or anyone who enjoys her act. If we are to re-learn civic excellence, it will not be from a movement whose moral framework consists of slander and self-satisfaction. Remember that in 2022 and 2024 when they call you a fascist or a bigot or a domestic terrorist or whatever: these are people who think Jen Psaki is a good person. Their opinion about your morals literally doesn’t matter at all.
The press releases went out on schedule and the media rewrote them into news stories. A group of “principled” Republicans was going to fundraise to support Democrat congressmen.
The stories rolled out on schedule from different media outlets while appearing nearly identical. And the real story, as usual, was not what was on the page, but what had been deliberately left out. Reuters described the Renew America Movement as a group of Never Trump Republicans “whose leadership includes former Republican Governors Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey and Bill Weld of Massachusetts.” Hardly a single story mentioned the actual leaders.
The Renew America Movement was co-founded by Evan McMullin (pictured above) and his running mate Mindy Finn. Its national political director, Joel Searby, who is quoted in the media’s writeups, was the chief strategist for the McMullin campaign. Donations to RAM go through Stand Up Republic, which is the anti-Trump group that McMullin and Finn originally set up. The press release for the new pro-Democrat campaign even came from Stand Up Republic. The media actually had to work not to mention McMullin or Stand Up Republic in its stories about the RAM campaign.
And the media did a fine job of lying by omission to the public in order to elect Democrats.
Snip.
Stand Up Republic had scored $800,000 from Pierre Omidyar’s Democracy Fund Voice and $750,000 from the Hewlett Foundation. Omidyar, a Franco-Persian billionaire, is the richest man in Hawaii and the digital version of George Soros. His projects include the pro-terror site, The Intercept, and a plan to “Reimagine Capitalism”. Hewlett is a more conventional leftist setup.
The “principled” Never Trumper network championing “moderates” to “heal our country” is actually backed by the same money as Black Lives Matter radicals and racists.
The Hewlett Foundation is one of the backers of the Democracy Frontlines Fund which poured tens of millions into a variety of black nationalist groups including the Movement for Black Lives.
The Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) is a BLM umbrella group which is backed by billion-dollar leftist foundations like the Ford Foundation. Considering its wealthy anti-Israel backers, it’s unsurprising that M4BL has embraced the antisemitic BDS movement, falsely accused Israel of genocide, and tried to oust any Jewish groups that wouldn’t join them in destroying Israel.
The Omidyar Network promised last year that it was committing $500,000 to “racial justice” and focusing on 5 groups including the Movement for Black Lives. It also couldn’t let the anniversary of September 11 pass without announcing a joint initiative with Soros, the Ford Foundation, and other leftists to pour money into Islamic groups fighting against America’s counterterrorism.
Omidyar is also the sugar daddy of the Never Trumpers, funding The Bulwark together with the Hewlett Foundation. Omidyar’s Democracy Fund has provided $1.6 million to Bill Kristol’s Defending Democracy Together. It’s all just Democrats funding Democrats… together.
I honestly feel sorry for the livers of Biden's handlers tonight.
The townhall was an incredible disaster that saw Joe forget names, pose like a discount Cornholio, wander aimlessly about the stage, drift of topic, and just generally showcase his incompetence.#LetsGoBrandonpic.twitter.com/g3jUhmyT6I
Yeah. Okay, the commies got a plan. That is sort of their one and only given strength. They plan, they organize, they work towards the world’s stupidest things, but they do it TOGETHER. (Eh, mostly.)
But to believe it’s working you’d have to forget everything from the collapse of the Soviet Union (THEY surely try to forget it) to the repeated smacks on the nose they have got in America, to the fact many of you don’t seem to know that the only reason that the Soviet Union survived that long was because we FED THEM. (Seriously. We should give all those who lost relatives to the Soviet Union and its depredations, including the poor bastards in Africa destroyed by Russia’s Cuban mercenaries a chance to disinter FDR’s corpse and kick it around. It’s no more than a very mild form of justice.)
Communism is in fact an idea so stupid that only intellectuals can believe it and try to apply it. Fortunately for them they do attract most intellectuals with the siren song of “because you’re smarter than other people, you see this.”
Snip.
Orwell was a believer, even if a heretic. As an adult, read the damn thing and tell me it’s in the least likely.
Not only would it fall apart within years — if not weeks — because no one can manage a large economy well enough for it to survive that long (yeah, China. Sure buddy. If you think China is working out that well, you haven’t looked closely), but it could never extend to the whole world, or everyone would starve and die out.
The other thing is that it’s 1940s tech extended indefinitely. This might work — eh, sort of — under really tightly controlled regimes, but sooner or letter a clever monkey (ape, d*amn it. We’re apes) throws a wrench in. The internet is a big wrench, and their attempts to put the genie back in the bottle have been markedly unsuccessful. But it doesn’t take the internet. The Soviet Union was brought down by typewriters and copiers.
Alec Baldwin kills a cast member of the movie he’s shooting. It may not have been his fault.
The Washington Postwants us to invade Haiti. Remember when it was Republicans that were accused of being the warmongers?
Fauci flops, but the industry tries to hide it. ” IMDB just got caught with its pants down. Social media is noticing that they changed the Fauci film 1.6 audience score to 5.8, but they neglected to change the demographic data or the raw distribution, so it looks like they just faked the top-line number.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
“DC assistant chief: I was told “have an abortion or be fired.” “D.C. Assistant Police Chief Chanel Dickerson…said when she became pregnant as a young police cadet, she was told she had to have an abortion to keep her job.”
New evidence suggests the Norse were in Newfoundland in 1021.
Remember all the fawning coverage that former Democratic congresswoman Katie “Naked Bong Hits” Hill received despite banging a staffer? Yeah, it turns out that one of the journalists giving her that fawning coverage, Alex Thomas, was banging her too. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
Here’s a chance to buy the very earliest Apple Macintosh prototype ever offered at auction, this one with the unreliable, abandoned 5 1/4″ “Twiggy” drive, only a few prototypes of which exist.
Did you hear that some Netflix employees staged a walkout over the latest Dave Chappelle comedy special over the comedian daring to joke about transexuals rather than treating them with the holy reverence they have declared as their unquestioned due? It was all over the news, Twitter, etc.
How many walked out? Initial reports said “hundreds,” but the actual number appears to be “dozens.”
Why is such a tiny protest accorded mainstream media coverage? Because it furthers the victimhood identity politics gaslighting narrative that “transsexual rights,” a fringe concern of a tiny minority of deeply confused people, is a broad and popular movement thanks to the magic of “intersectionaity.” As the newest addition to the Victimhood Identity Politics pantheon, transsexuals automatically became the most sacred, pushing aside blacks, women, etc.
The overwhelming majority of the American people still understand that you cannot magically change your sex by using hormone therapy and plastic surgery to alter your outer appearance. If you have XX chromosomes you’re female, and if you have XY chromosomes you’re male. Everything else is genetic abnormality or sophistry.
No number of protests, government dictates, or gaslighting media coverage is going to change that fact.
When we last checked in on the Austin Police Department, it was plagued by staffing issues due to the City of Austin defunding the police and cancelling two cadet classes, as well as Travis County DA Jose Garza’s refusing to prosecute numerous felonies, thus putting numerous criminal back on the streets to commit more crimes.
The Austin Police Department (APD) is bleeding 15 to 22 officers per month as those departing join other departments or leave law enforcement entirely. With them goes decades of irreplaceable experience and left over is a void the City of Austin aims to fill with green recruits and a “reimagined” approach to public safety.
Political upheaval in Austin is not unlike any other situation in big cities across the country. Mass protests swept Austin as they did the nation last year after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, preceded by months of societal discord caused by the pandemic and related government shutdowns.
Currently, APD has 200 vacancies and 104 officers on leave on top of the 150 positions eliminated during the 2020 budget cut and redirection. The department’s average response time ballooned from seven minutes to nearly 10 minutes since the summer of 2020. Specialized units are being disbanded and the officers who stay are being redeployed to street patrol to fill the gaps.
Snip.
Michele Aparicio first joined APD in 1997. She lasted 23 years with the department before retiring in 2020 a few months into the pandemic.
Aparicio, a Hispanic, told The Texan that morale has long been a problem within APD and pointed to leadership and its internal decisions as its cause. “Surely seniority and experience had always played a role in promotions, but it got to the point where demographics took precedence over all else,” Aparicio said.
This, Aparicio said, had plagued the department’s morale and devolved into poisonous interactions with its leadership.
“There was a point where we had a meeting with Chief Manley and I asked him what he was going to do for morale, and he just put it back on me as a supervisor,” Aparicio said, adding that she was later approached by one of her superiors who informed her Manley didn’t approve of the interaction.
“I had a lot of respect for Acevedo, he had his flaws, but he was not scared to speak up for what he believed and for all the officers of APD,” said Kyle Sargent, a former APD officer of 15 years.
Contrasting Acevedo with Manley, Sargent added that he felt the latter began falling more in line and catering his decisions with the city council in mind — then beginning to lurch even further left than it already had been. Officer morale, Sargent said, took a hit with that transition and as Manley’s tenure unfolded, but nothing sped up the trend like what’s unfolded since.
Snip.
One contributing factor Aparicio identified was the racial sensitivity trainings officers were put through. “They were literally calling us racist and homophobic officers — a whole class designed to make it seem like we were guilty of being racist, of being homophobic, and that we treated other people differently,” Aparicio said.
“It wasn’t presented as something like ‘Hey, this is what the nation is going through.’ No, it was presented as APD needs this because y’all are a bunch of racists.”
“So, the morale was already s— to begin with and then this was forced upon us,” Aparicio emphasized. During those classes, she added, the presenters faced some serious pushback from the APD rank and file and so they “were toned down a little bit.”
But it didn’t end there.
Continuing that trend, this year the Austin City Council entered a contract with a consulting firm to provide racial sensitivity training for its police heavily imbued with critical race theory teachings. The city is paying the consultant $10,000 per day.
A change in that buying forward rate is coming early next year. Sargent told The Texan he’s heard as many as 150 to 200 officers could leave in January next year before the change starts in February.
That would be over 13 percent of the current APD employment leaving in the blink of an eye.
When officers leave, they are often able to purchase their gun and badge as mementos of their career. But when Sargent resigned, this courtesy was denied to him per a new policy from interim Chief Chacon.
“It was just vindictive — I felt like he was just trying to punish us for leaving and it sort of put an exclamation point on my decision,” Sargent said. “It’s a small thing but it’s that kind of stuff that just brings morale from low to even lower.”
Other APD tidbits:
Speaking of low staffing:
Yesterday, 99.97% of the patrol shifts worked with below authorized staffing. Only one shift at authorized level because they were able to fill vacant spots with partial shift overtime. #PropA is a staffing plan. We have not seen @MayorAdler's staffing or cadet hiring plan. https://t.co/pq50j0iE5X
Just got off the phone w/the officer handling my case. Apparently there are only 3 detectives who are assigned to deal w/auto-theft in the ENTIRE CITY OF AUSTIN!!! Absolutely insane.
Making it worse: cadets that contract Flu Manchu are being told to quit…or be terminated:
Police Department proposes new changes after APA speaks out on behalf of cadet employees forced to resign under the threat of termination due to testing positive for COVID-19. pic.twitter.com/vQdCetwH5T
After spending 2020 calling police “systematically racist” and trying to get them defunded (mainly so they could get their fingers on that money, suddenly it’s 2021 and Democrat-run cities and counties suddenly need police to be their vaccine enforcers. And police aren’t having any of it.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has foolishly put herself—and the safety of the people of Chicago—in a game of chicken, with at least half the police force ready to defy her vaccine mandate and be sent home from work by City Hall without pay, rather than comply.
“She wants to play a game of chicken. Well, we’re in a semi. And she’s in a Smart Car. And she wants to play chicken?” said Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara told me on Thursday. “That’s her decision.”
I figure Chicago’s little Napoleon in pants suits caves by Friday. As I type this on Thursday evening, Chicago aldermen are calling, saying she’s already blinking on her threats of “no vaccine, you’ll be sent home without pay.”
FRIDAY MORNING UPDATE: She blinked. She did cave. After her repeated threats, she won’t withhold their pay and send them home if they don’t comply with her vaccine mandate. Lori, that’s no way to play chicken or poker. Her chicken little game has come home to roost. Cops have had enough. Now she’s pouting, driving up the ramp of the chicken coop in her little clown car.
If she didn’t cave, victims of weekend violence would blame Lightfoot because she put her ego ahead of public safety. The smart play was to cave and call it something else. Her media friends can spin it. She can even call it victory, if she wants. But she caved. And that weakens her even more.
Across Allegheny County, public employees are fighting vaccine mandates but none as hard as those in law enforcement, which has suffered some of the highest losses from the disease.
The unions representing the county police and the corrections officers have gone to court to block the county’s order that all employees be vaccinated or be fired.
According to the National Fraternal Order of Police, 743 police officers have reportedly died of COVID-19, but while the FOP is encouraging officers to get vaccinated, the union opposes mandates, calling vaccines a personal health decision.
The leader of the Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG), which represents over 1,300 officers of the Seattle Police Department (SPD), is calling the COVID-19 vaccine mandate the latest in a long list of betrayals by the city of Seattle.
SPOG President Mike Solan said city leaders could accommodate officers who don’t want the shot and keep the city safe, but they are choosing not to do that. With just days until the mandate takes effect, Solan said now is not the time to force a vaccine on officers as the police department already faces a staffing crisis.
“Crime is surging in this city. Our community is demanding more police officers to answer the 911 calls, and the fact we’ve already lost close to 350 police officers because of the politicians’ political betrayal,” said Solan.
Solan said that before George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police officers in May 2020, city officials called SPD a “model department” when it came to police reform. But he said the tables turned after Floyd’s death with some city leaders demanding massive cuts to the department.
Now, Solan wants Mayor Jenny Durkan to do what some other cities have done and allow officers who don’t want to get the shot the option to wear masks, get tested regularly for COVID-19, and not have their assignments changed.
“For some reason, this mayor is refusing that, which I think is unreasonable and is void of common sense,” said Solan.
It’s only illogical if you haven’t been paying attention. Every knee must bend to the holy demands of the Party and the State. Heresy against the narrative cannot be tolerated.
