Kyle Rittenhouse found innocent, vaccine mandates are halted, Kamala is sinking, and the media continues stinking. Plus two scoops of Joe Rogan. It’s the Friday #LinkSwarm!
If you got your facts about the Rittenhouse case from the mainstream media, then just about everything you know is a lie.
Here is what I thought was true about Kyle Rittenhouse during the last days of August 2020 based on mainstream media accounts: The 17-year-old was a racist vigilante. I thought he drove across state lines, to Kenosha, Wisc., with an illegally acquired semi-automatic rifle to a town to which he had no connection. I thought he went there because he knew there were Black Lives Matter protests and he wanted to start a fight. And I thought that by the end of the evening of August 25, 2020, he had done just that, killing two peaceful protestors and injuring a third.
It turns out that account was mostly wrong.
Unless you’re a regular reader of independent reporting — Jacob Siegel of Tablet Magazine and Jesse Singal stand out for being ahead of the pack (and pilloried, like clockwork, for not going along with the herd) — you would have been served a pack of lies about what happened during those terrible days in Kenosha. And you would have been shocked over the past two weeks as the trial unfolded in Wisconsin as every core claim was undermined by the evidence of what actually happened that night.
This wasn’t a disinformation campaign waged by Reddit trolls or anonymous Twitter accounts. It was one pushed by the mainstream media and sitting members of Congress for the sake of an expedient political narrative—a narrative that asked people to believe, among other unrealities, that blocks of burning buildings somehow constituted peaceful protests.
CNN and Rep. Ayanna Pressley examples snipped.
But just as in the cases of Covington Catholic’s Nick Sandmann or Jussie Smollet or the “Russia-collusion” narrative, almost none of the details holding up that politically convenient position (boys in MAGA hats are bigoted; racism is as much a blight as it has always been; Trump conspired with Putin) were true.
Take each in turn:
First, the idea that Kyle Rittenhouse was a white supremacist.
There was zero evidence that Rittenhouse was connected to white supremacist groups at the time of the shooting. He was a Trump supporter, yes, though he wasn’t old enough to vote. He was an admirer of police and firefighters, also true. He was a lifeguard. He’d been part of a “police explorer” program, and was also a firefighter/EMT cadet with the fire department in Antioch, Illinois, where he lived with his mom and two sisters.
That Rittenhouse had no connection to Kenosha.
In addition to having a job in Kenosha, Rittenhouse testified that much of his family lived there: his father, his grandma, his aunt and uncle, and his cousins. He also testified that on the morning of the shootings, he went downtown with his sister and friends to see the damage done by rioting the night before, and spent about two hours cleaning graffiti off of the local high school.
That Rittenhouse drove across state lines with a gun that night to oppose the protests.
This was a line that we heard constantly—never mind that Antioch, Illinois, is about 20 miles from Kenosha, Wisconsin. As the trial has shown, Kyle Rittenhouse did not travel to Kenosha to oppose protesters. He testified under oath that he had traveled to Kenosha for his job the night before the shootings, and was staying at a friend’s house.
So what about the gun?
Rittenhouse didn’t bring the gun to Kenosha. The gun was purchased for Rittenhouse months earlier by a friend and stored in Kenosha at the home of that friend’s stepfather, as then-17-year-old Rittenhouse was too young to purchase it.
But it was illegal for him to even have the gun given that he wasn’t yet 18 years old, right?
That is not true. Under Wisconsin law, 17-year-olds are prohibited from carrying rifles only if they are short-barreled. The weapon Rittenhouse was carrying was not short-barreled. Which is why, during closing arguments, the court threw out the charge.
He was out there looking for a fight, and he got one: He killed two people and severely wounded a third.
Unless there’s evidence we haven’t seen, there’s no clear indication that Rittenhouse sought to kill anyone. What we know is that he showed up with a first aid kit and an AR-15-style rifle. Video evidence, and Rittenhouse’s own testimony, indicates that he offered medical assistance to protestors and ran with a fire extinguisher to try to put out fires—and that later, after being pursued, he killed two people, Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber, and severely wounded a third. Both video evidence and the only living person that Rittenhouse shot that night, Gaige Grosskreutz, undermined the idea that Rittenhouse was simply an aggressor looking for a fight. During cross examination Grosskreutz acknowledged that Rittenhouse shot him only after Grosskreutz had pointed his own gun at Rittenhouse. Here’s how it went down:
Defense attorney: When you were standing three to five feet from him with your arms up in the air, he never fired, right?
Grosskreutz: Correct.
Defense attorney: It wasn’t until you pointed your gun at him, advanced on him with your gun—now your hand’s down pointed at him—that he fired, right?
The Court ordered that “Enforcement of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s ‘COVID-19 Vaccination and Testing; Emergency Temporary Standard’ remain[] stayed pending adequate judicial review of the petitioners’ underlying motions for a permanent injunction.” It further ordered that “OSHA take no steps to implement or enforce the Mandate until further court order.”
Behind this language lies a forceful critique of the Biden mandate. The opinion is here.
One of the factors a court considers in deciding whether to issue a stay is the likelihood that the party seeking it will prevail on the merits. The petitioner must make a strong showing of likelihood of success.
The Fifth Circuit found that the petitioners in this case made that showing. This finding means that the Biden administration almost surely will lose in the Fifth Circuit when the court makes its definitive ruling on the merits.
The court cited a “multitude of reasons” why those challenging the mandate will likely succeed on the merits. The first one, which it described as “obvious,” is this:
The Occupational Safety and Health Act, which created OSHA, was enacted by Congress to assure Americans “safe and healthful working conditions and to preserve our human resources.” See 29 U.S.C. § 651 (statement of findings and declaration of purpose and policy). It was not—and likely could not be, under the Commerce Clause and nondelegation doctrine—intended to authorize a workplace safety administration in the deep recesses of the federal bureaucracy to make sweeping pronouncements on matters of public health affecting every member of society in the profoundest of ways.
Furthermore, the “sweeping pronouncements” implicit in OSHA’s order are badly flawed. For example, the court noted that the mandate is both over-inclusive and under-inclusive. On one hand, it covers employees in nearly every industry regardless of their risk of exposure (there is “little attempt to account for the obvious differences between the risks facing, say, a security guard on a lonely night
shift, and a meatpacker working shoulder to shoulder in a cramped warehouse”) and “doesn’t exempt those with natural immunity.” On the other hand, it arbitrarily excludes employers with fewer than 100 workers.
Fatally to the mandate, the court found that its promulgation “grossly exceeds OSHA’s authority.” It noted that OSHA’s statutory authority to establish emergency temporary standards “is an ‘extraordinary power’ that is to be ‘delicately exercised’ in only certain ‘limited situations.’”
And, miracle of miracles, OSHA announced that they will actually heed the court’s opinion and suspend vaccine mandate enforcement. A federal agency heeding a rational federal court decision shouldn’t be a surprise, yet here we are.
How unpopular is Kamala Harris? Democratic Media Complex house organ CNN published a scathing hit piece on her.
Worn out by what they see as entrenched dysfunction and lack of focus, key West Wing aides have largely thrown up their hands at Vice President Kamala Harris and her staff — deciding there simply isn’t time to deal with them right now, especially at a moment when President Joe Biden faces quickly multiplying legislative and political concerns.
The exasperation runs both ways. Interviews with nearly three dozen former and current Harris aides, administration officials, Democratic operatives, donors and outside advisers — who spoke extensively to CNN — reveal a complex reality inside the White House. Many in the vice president’s circle fume that she’s not being adequately prepared or positioned, and instead is being sidelined. The vice president herself has told several confidants she feels constrained in what she’s able to do politically.
Wait, the warm bucket of spit feels “constrained”? Do tell…
And those around her remain wary of even hinting at future political ambitions, with Biden’s team highly attuned to signs of disloyalty, particularly from the vice president.
Worn out by what they see as entrenched dysfunction and lack of focus, key West Wing aides have largely thrown up their hands at Vice President Kamala Harris and her staff — deciding there simply isn’t time to deal with them right now, especially at a moment when President Joe Biden faces quickly multiplying legislative and political concerns.
The exasperation runs both ways. Interviews with nearly three dozen former and current Harris aides, administration officials, Democratic operatives, donors and outside advisers — who spoke extensively to CNN — reveal a complex reality inside the White House. Many in the vice president’s circle fume that she’s not being adequately prepared or positioned, and instead is being sidelined. The vice president herself has told several confidants she feels constrained in what she’s able to do politically. And those around her remain wary of even hinting at future political ambitions, with Biden’s team highly attuned to signs of disloyalty, particularly from the vice president.
Social justice “first woman of color” blather snipped. But lets skip down to where Team Harris gets all snippy over a potential rival:
Last month, White House aides leapt to the defense of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who was being hammered with outrage by Fox News host Tucker Carlson and like-minded online pundits for taking paternity leave after the adoption of his twins in September. Harris loyalists tell CNN they see in that yet another example of an unfair standard at play, wondering why she didn’t get similar cover any of the times she’s been attacked by the right.
“It’s hard to miss the specific energy that the White House brings to defend a White man, knowing that Kamala Harris has spent almost a year taking a lot of the hits that the West Wing didn’t want to take themselves,” said a former Harris aide, reflecting conversations last month among several former aides and current allies.
(Imagine there’s an animated hissing cat gif here.)
Anyway, it’s worth reading the whole thing to read how incompetent she and her staff seem at just about everything, and to tote up all the petty slights to Harris, who was only there to bring in black votes in (and didn’t do a great job of that), and now she’s completely disposable.
Despite ending her lackluster campaign for president with a mere 3 percent support among the Democratic electorate, Harris was nevertheless the most obvious pick within the narrow bucket to which Biden had been confined. (Never mind that the apex of her support during the primary campaign came when she savagely attacked Biden on the debate stage, essentially calling him a racist for opposing busing during his time in the Senate, and that she repeatedly said she believed women who had accused Biden of sexual misconduct.)
The simple fact is that Harris is not a good national politician. She is ineffective and unlikeable at best, and, at worst, so unpopular that she’s actively damaging to the administration, likely why Psaki has had to turn to absurdities in an effort to defend her. (Democrats have developed a nasty habit of responding to voters who don’t like them by accusing said voters of racism.)
In Harris’s case, these excuses are because the truth hurts. She has little to no sway with key votes in Congress. She has next to no relevant policy or diplomatic expertise. These facts shouldn’t come as a surprise, seeing that she holds her office not because of her popularity or any relevant skillset but primarily because of her identity.
Had she not been picked as Biden’s running mate, she would’ve remained in a far more advantageous position, keeping a comfortable position in the Senate that would be nearly impossible for her to lose. She was already a media darling, popular among progressives for her supposed ability to “own” conservative nominees during hearings. Rather than winding up in a position with little chance to showboat or collect media accolades, she might’ve remained right there, where her lack of popularity with the national electorate was essentially irrelevant.
In a backwards way, Harris finds herself holding a position in which she’s ill-equipped to succeed precisely because of identity politics, which motivated Biden to pick a running mate so ill-suited to the job.
How unpopular? 28% approval. Usual poll caveats apply. So her numbers might not even be that high!
That America’s voters disdain Harris as much as they obviously do gives me an extraordinary amount of hope for our future. In December of 2019, I celebrated Harris’s departure from the presidential primary with a “good riddance” that turned out to be woefully premature: “May Harris’s failed attempt,” I hoped, serve to “destroy her career and sully her reputation for all time.” Alas, the first part did not happen; on the contrary, Harris was springboarded up to within a heartbeat of the most potent office in the land. But the second part? Well, I got that in abundance. We are now ten months into this baleful presidency, and already Harris is the most unpopular vice president in history. And they say Christmas doesn’t come early!
Harris’s apologists like to insist that she is as unpopular as she is because she’s a non-white woman. But this explanation gets the cause of the disapproval backwards. Kamala Harris isn’t disliked because she’s a non-white woman; Kamala Harris was chosen as vice president because she’s a non-white woman, and she’s disliked because she has nothing to recommend her beyond those facts. In the highest of high dudgeon, her defenders will propose that this is Joe Biden’s fault, for not “using” Harris correctly in her role. But this too is unjust. In truth, there is no good way to “use” Kamala Harris, because Kamala Harris is a talentless mediocrity whose only political flair is for making things worse than they were before she arrived.
And her staff knows it. “Kamala Harris’s communications director Ashley Etienne is leaving the vice president’s office after reports staff are in-fighting and her boss is being sidelined.”
want to thank the Democrats for giving me, a trial lawyer living in Los Angeles, exactly what I need – a big, heaping tax cut. In their reconciliation bill, there are plenty of giveaways for lay-abouts, losers, and grifters, but also for us living by the beach getting hit with huge state taxes rendered un-deductible by that evil Donald Trump, notorious friend to the rich who he…shafted. Anyway, the Dems are going to wrong this right and fix this manifest justice, though – they are going to make essentially all the money I hand over to the socialist clique that runs the formerly Golden State (and it is a lot) deductible once again.
Cool. Well, for me and other lawyers and similar blue state swells.
People often ask me why I stay in California, to which I reply, “I don’t explain myself to people – buzz off.” But if I were to explain myself to people, I would point out that despite being awash with Californians, California has beautiful weather, my family is nearby, and here I get to be part of the feudal aristocracy sucking the life from working people to fuel my extravagant lifestyle.
See, California was designed for lawyers and similar high-status low-lifes, and the beachside communities where the petty royals dwell do not experience a fraction of the hellish nightmare you see on TV. Oh, what you see is real, just not for those in the Birkenstock nobility. You see videos of hordes of hobos leaving their junkie spoor on the sidewalks and that happens, just not to the people that Prince Gavin of Newsom cares about. I don’t think he cares about me personally mind you, but he cares a lot about my ZIP code.
You can drive ten minutes from my castle and be worried about someone stealing your hubcaps. Once you start heading east over the 405 (That’s I-405 to people who don’t live in LA) real life comes and bites you hard, and the farther east you go, the harder it bites. The roads are trash – gee, I sure expect the infrastructure bill will totally make them nice again – and the schools are cesspits of violence and commie indoctrination, but the peasants just need to accept their lot in life and not complain. Their bitching would ruin our wine tasting.
Of course, I might have more sympathy for these poor devils if they had not lobbied so hard for the role of “Serf #3” in California’s production of “Game of Bums.” They voted for this. They got this. It’s all theirs.
“It’s Not Just White People: Democrats Are Losing Normal Voters of All Races.” Results from a focus group of Virginia voters “who voted Democrat, Democrat, Republican in the last three elections.”
When asked which party had better policy proposals, the group members overwhelmingly said Democrats. But when asked which party had cultural values closer to theirs, they cited Republicans.
The biggest disconnect came on education. Barefoot found that school closures were likely a big part of their votes for Youngkin and that frustration at school leadership over those closures bled into the controversy, pushed by Republicans, around the injection of “critical race theory” into the public school setting, along with the question of what say parents should have in schools. One Latina woman talked about how remote school foisted so much work on parents, yet later Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic nominee and former governor, would insist that parents should have no input in their children’s education. (That’s not exactly what he said, but that’s how it played.) As she put it: “They asked us to do all this work for months and then he says it’s none of our business now.”
The anger they felt at Democrats for the commonwealth’s Covid-19 school closure policy became further evidence of a cultural gap between these working people and Democratic elites, who broadly supported prolonged school closures while enjoying the opportunity to work remotely. Those with means decamped: Enrollment in Fairfax County schools dropped 5 percent, and fell by 3.9 percent and 3.4 percent in Arlington and Loudoun counties, respectively. Those who were left behind organized parent groups to pressure the schools to reopen. Though the groups tended to be nonpartisan or bipartisan at the start, Republican donors and conservative groups poured money and manpower into them, converting them into potent political weapons that blended anger at the closures with complaints about Democratic board members prioritizing trendy social justice issues — all of it aimed at the November elections.
“They keep saying ‘a strong return to school,’ but there’s no details,” said Saundra Davis on Fox News over the summer, co-founder of one large group, called the Open Fairfax Public Schools Coalition. “Their attention is on other things, like their pet projects and social justice issues, and the kids have been left to flounder and there’s still no plan for fall.”
“You’ll be surprised to know I’m a Democrat,” she said. “I’ve tried to warn them that there’s a bipartisan tidal wave coming their way. They don’t look us in the eye, they don’t write us back. If we can’t recall them one by one, there’s an election in November.”
Ignore the parts where the writer regurgitates Democratic Party talking points (“for the portion of the Republican base heavily predisposed to racial prejudice,” “Few people read the full 1619 Project put out by the New York Times in 2019, which is a rich tapestry of thoughtful essays and reporting about the role of slavery in the development of the United States.”) and pay attention to what the focus group members of all races are saying. “The Democratic problem with working-class voters goes far beyond white people.”
Evidently one American sport is willing to stand up to China: Women’s tennis.
The head of the Women’s Tennis Association Steve Simon has said he is willing to lose hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business in China if tennis player Peng Shuai’s safety is not fully accounted for and her allegations are not properly investigated.
“We’re definitely willing to pull our business and deal with all the complications that come with it,” Simon said in an interview Thursday with CNN. “Because this is certainly, this is bigger than the business,” added Simon.
“Women need to be respected and not censored,” said Simon.
Peng, who is one of China’s most recognizable sports stars, has not been seen in public since she accused former Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli of coercing her into sex at his home, according to screenshots of a since-deleted social media post dated November 2.
Her post on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform, was deleted within 30 minutes of publication, with Chinese censors moving swiftly to wipe out any mention of the accusation online. Her Weibo account, which has more than half a million followers, is still blocked from searchers on the platform.
The mother of a Virginia girl who was raped by a classmate inside a school bathroom reportedly said that she and her husband had been pressured to keep quiet about the incident — and had no clue the 15-year-old boy was then transferred to another school until last month.
“We were silenced for many months,” Jessica Smith told the Daily Mail in her first interview since her daughter was raped at Stone Bridge High School in Loudoun County in May. “We were told not to say a word that could jeopardize our daughter’s case.”
The boy was found guilty last month of the sexual attack, which sparked a heated confrontation between the victim’s father and school board members.
There seem to be no crimes the left wing won’t condone in their quest to impose “Social Justice” on resisting Americans.
While talking with Joe Rogan, Dr. Peter Attia tells a story about woke ideology in a medical school Urology lecture. It’s remarkable. pic.twitter.com/mftjjNZww1
“A Virginia university has placed an assistant professor on administrative leave after the educator sparked heated backlash for saying it isn’t necessarily immoral for adults to be sexually attracted to children.” Allyn Walker, step right up, you’re the next contestant on The Perv is Wrong!
This week marked the 50th anniversary of the world’s first microprocessor, the Intel 4004. There have been a lot of milestones on the road to the high tech world we live in today, but that was one of the biggest.
The rare good kind of irony: A team of firefighters was practicing water rescue when a car drove into the water and they had to perform a real water rescue.
The Associated Press reports that, unchastised by Tuesday night’s rout, Nancy Pelosi plans to ready the House of Representatives for a “debate and vote on a revised draft of President Joe Biden’s now-$1.85 trillion domestic policy package.” The decision, the AP suggests, is intended to “show voters the party can deliver on its priorities.”
That’s one way of putting it, certainly. Another might be: Nancy Pelosi hopes to appease the progressive wing of her caucus by sending her most vulnerable members unarmed into the Somme.
Substantively, what Pelosi is proposing is bonkers. For a start, there is no “Build Back Better” bill. It remains what it has always been: a slogan, in search of a topline, in search of an agenda. There is only one thing on which the Democratic Party is agreed, and that is that the United States should spend at least two trillion more dollars over the next decade than it had planned to before Joe Biden won. On what? Well, that depends. Some want tax cuts for the rich. Some want to send checks to Americans who have kids. Some want a bunch of new permanent programs. Some want climate-change-mitigation measures. Some want to a second New Deal. At various points during the last few months, all of these things have been in the bill in one form or another, and, at various points, they’ve been taken out again. There is a reason that we have not had a “national debate” over the “Biden agenda,” and that reason is that, beyond its cost, there is nothing concrete to debate.
The result has been the creation of a protean piece of vaporware that nobody in Congress seems much to like, and that the American people seem increasingly to loathe. Since Tuesday’s elections, the institutional Democratic Party has rallied stupidly around the idea that, in order to stave off further electoral losses, it must show voters that it can “get things done” — as if the average American citizen favors action for its own sake. But, of course, it must do no such thing. Reflecting upon this fallacy, Abigail Spanberger, a moderate Democrat from Virginia, noted yesterday that “nobody elected [Biden] to be F.D.R., they elected him to be normal and stop the chaos,” while Representative Kathleen Rice, her colleague from New York, seemed baffled by the whole thing. “I don’t understand some of my more progressive colleagues saying [that Tuesday] night now shows us that what we need to do is get both of these bills done and shove even more progressive stuff in,” Rice said.
Rice is correct. And yet, inexplicably, “shove even more progressive stuff in” is precisely what Nancy Pelosi has chosen to do in response.
“Do the will of the Party, comrade, and know that when we step on your corpse, we’re climbing to a glorious future!”
Budget Gimmicks Pour Gasoline on Inflationary Fire
The main number mentioned about the bill is the claimed cost of $1.75 trillion in spending and tax credits. For starters, this is only an educated guess on the part of Democrats, since official congressional scorekeepers have not had a chance to weigh in yet.
More importantly, that stated cost (which is not zero) is only possible as a result of deliberate budgetary gimmicks. Many key programs expire after a few years rather than the usual 10 years, and in some cases expire after a single year.
Amazingly, the bill’s cost would more than double without the gimmicking.
This would still be a problem even if all of the programs are allowed to expire. That’s because the bill front-loads the spending while spreading tax hikes across the decade, meaning it would increase deficit spending significantly in the first few years, especially the first year.
In turn, that deficit spending would mean artificially injecting billions of dollars into the economy. This would only serve to worsen the biggest wave of inflation in decades.
Causing hardworking families to pay more for essentials is no way to “build back better.”
Using Taxpayer Dollars as a Back Door to Mass Amnesty of Illegal Immigrants
Providing amnesty to illegal immigrants has been a top priority of the left for decades. While the spending package is supposed to be just that—a spending package, not a new immigration law—Democrats are attempting to sneak amnesty through the back door.
Because the bill is written to fit within strict budgetary rules, there are limits to what it can contain. The Senate parliamentarian has ruled against the inappropriate amnesty provision twice already, with the second decision relating to the language that’s in the revised bill.
Democrats have said that the current immigration text is a “placeholder” while they make a third attempt to convince the parliamentarian to give them what they want. The fact that they’re including text that has already been ruled out of order demonstrates how little regard they have for the rules.
Plus handouts for the wealthy, more social justice indoctrination, and $2.5 billion for “tree equity.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
A point Manchin made about the use of “budget gimmicks” by fellow Democrats [could] doom the Biden agenda.
Manchin reiterated his concerns about “exploding inflation,” the debt, the potential for rising interest rates, and the creation of new social spending programs. “How can I in good conscience vote for a bill that proposes massive expansions of social programs when vital programs like Social Security and Medicare face insolvency and benefits could start being reduced as soon as 2026 in Medicare and 2033 in Social Security?” he asked rhetorically. “How does that make sense? I don’t think it does.”
Initially it seemed as though he was just demanding the need for a CBO score when he talked about the need for more transparency about the bill’s fiscal impact. That alone would be consistent with a strategy of wanting delay legislation that he would ultimately vote for. And there are a myriad of ways for Democrats to game the intricacies of the CBO process to get an acceptable enough score for Manchin to vote for.
But then Manchin took things a step further.
He said, “As more of the real details outlined in the basic framework are released, what I see are shell games — budget gimmicks that make the real cost of the so-called $1.75 trillion bill estimated to be almost twice that amount if the full time is run out. If you extended it permanently. And that we haven’t even spoken about.”
“I’m not going to vote to overrule the parliamentarian,” Manchin added. “I’m not going to do that; they all know that.”
Because Democrats are trying to bypass Senate Republicans on President Biden’s spending plan, they have to comply with the rules governing reconciliation, an arcane budget process that lets them avoid the filibuster.
The Senate parliamentarian provides guidance to senators about if policies meet the Byrd rule, named after the late Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), that restricts what can be included in a reconciliation bill.
If it doesn’t comply with the rule, it will be stripped out of the bill — or Democrats could try to overrule the parliamentarian. But that would take total unity from the 50-member Senate Democratic caucus, meaning they would need Manchin’s support.
In addition to Manchin’s opposition, members of Senate Democratic leadership have previously signaled that they don’t believe they have the votes for such a move.
But the parliamentarian has frustrated activists this year, first by ruling against including a $15 per hour minimum wage in a coronavirus relief bill. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) tried to put it back in the bill as an amendment, which required 60 votes because it didn’t meet the budget rules, but lost several Democratic senators in addition to Republicans.
On September 9, President Biden announced a directive to the Labor Department to develop a temporary emergency rule for businesses with 100 or more employees that would require workers to be fully vaccinated or be tested at least once a week. Biden declared that, “We’re going to protect vaccinated workers from unvaccinated co-workers. We’re going to reduce the spread of COVID-19 by increasing the share of the workforce that is vaccinated in businesses all across America.”
This morning, the Occupational Safety and Hazard Administration announced that starting on January 4 — sixty days from today’s publication — new vaccination-or-test requirements for businesses with more than 100 workers will go into effect, as well as a vaccine mandate for health care workers at facilities participating in Medicare and Medicaid.
OSHA is issuing the vaccine mandate under an “emergency temporary standard,” which means the regular public comment period was skipped. Emergency temporary standards are applied when “workers are in grave danger due to exposure to toxic substances or agents determined to be toxic or physically harmful or to new hazards and that an emergency standard is needed to protect them.”
We’re f–ked. We are going to toast like marshmallows,” retired electrician Vinny Agro, 63, told the Post. “It’s another sad day for New York City.”
Across the Rockies, Los Angeles Country Sheriff Alex Villanueva has warned of an “imminent threat to public safety” caused by a “mass exodus” of thousands of deputies and civilian personnel who refuse to take the jab.
“I could potentially lose 44% of my workforce in one day,” he wrote in a Thursday open letter to the Board of Supervisors, adding that he can’t enforce “reckless mandates that put public safety at risk.”
This seems to be the desired outcome. Ordinary people who voted for Democrats might start to ask why.
Within hours of the Biden administration unveiling a Jan. 4 deadline for 100 million workers to get vaccinated, a small business advocacy group announced it is filing a lawsuit seeking to block the measure.
“The Biden administration’s vaccine mandate is clearly illegal and will have a devastating impact on our small business community and our entire economy,” said Alfredo Ortiz, the CEO of the Job Creators Network.
CN is suing the administration on the grounds that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration doesn’t have authority to impose the mandate and that, in any case, there is neither the grave danger nor necessity to issue it.
It’s just one of many court battles set to ensue over the rules, many coming from Republican leaders accusing the federal government of overreach into personal medical decisions.
At least 19 states have filed three separate lawsuits aimed at stopping the previously announced mandate for federal contractors, and the rules are being challenged by most of the Republican caucus in the Senate.
The head of the Los Angeles teachers union said “there is no such thing as learning loss,” despite evidence of massive educational declines due to a year of remote learning.
Cecily Myart-Cruz, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, told LA Magazine that “It’s OK that our babies may not have learned all their times tables. They learned resilience. They learned survival. They learned critical-thinking skills. They know the difference between a riot and a protest. They know the words insurrection and coup.”
Anyone know what it takes to decertify a union?
Yes, they are teaching Critical Race Theory:
As an admin for the largest school district in Indiana, here's what we mean when we tell you that we aren't "teaching" Critical Race Theory: pic.twitter.com/f6RLghcw2R
Legal Insurrection has been all over covering the Kyle Rittenhouse trial. Here’s day 2. So far everything argues for legal self-defense, even the prosecution witnesses. “I’ve yet to see any compelling evidence that seems capable of meeting their burden to disprove self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt. And I’m beginning to wonder if we ever will.”
“The main issue was rights,” Durr said, via phone. “People talk about how New Jersey has the highest taxes, and we’re the worst state for business, with high debt, and so on, but bottom line is rights. It’s family.
“When somebody’s messing with your family, you’ll do anything,” he said. “The governor was messing with people’s families. When you mess with somebody’s job, their livelihood, their home, their children — people just won’t take that.”
Durr said that New Jersey’s harsh coronavirus policies had helped create a “perfect storm” that made his victory possible.
“It was the combination of a governor who acts like a king, and a senate president who acts like a court jester, and does nothing. That made it very easy to convince people they were not being paid attention to. And when they got ignored, they got angry.”
But Durr, 58, did more than just get lucky. And he spent more than the $153 that has been highlighted in media reports.
“That’s the amount I spent prior to the primary,” he explained, somewhat exasperated by the inaccurate reporting.
He estimates that he spent about $8,000 to $9,000 in total, mostly on campaign literature, yard signs, and a now-viral video.
He also worked hard, walking door-to-door to speak to voters. Having left long-haul trucking for a job working a local route close to home, he was able to use afternoons and evenings to campaign in the district, together with several volunteers.
“I walked three to four hours on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Saturdays and Sundays, I walked six to eight hours. We usually had half a dozen volunteers. One time we went out and we had twelve to thirteen go out with us,” he recalled proudly.
“Trust me, plenty days I did not feel like walking. It was too hot, my ankles and my feet hurt — I’m not a young man anymore, and I have gout, and plantar fasciitis — it was a hard thing.
“But it was well worth it, because it allowed me the opportunity to talk to every person I could possibly talk to, and understand what they were feeling, and get the pulse.”
Joe Rogan 1, “Journalists” 0. “So far, there isn’t a lot of evidence that ivermectin is a good anti-covid therapy, and federal agencies have warned people who hear about the drug not to consume a paste intended for livestock. But that doesn’t mean Rogan ate horse dewormer. You don’t fight disinformation with disinformation. Not if you’re a good reporter.”
The primary researcher behind the Steele Dossier, a collection of unsubstantiated opposition research linking the 2016 Trump campaign to the Kremlin, was arrested by federal authorities Thursday.
Russia analyst Igor Danchenko’s indictment stems from the federal probe led by John Durham, the special counsel tapped by the Trump administration to audit the Russia investigation for malfeasance, anonymous individuals with direct knowledge of the matter told the New York Times.
Syukuro Manabe has been a pioneer in the development of so-called general circulation climate models (GCMs) and more comprehensive Earth System Models (ESMs). According to the Committee, Manabe was awarded the prize “For the physical modelling of the earth’s climate, quantifying variability, and reliably predicting global warming.”
Snip.
Every six years or so, the U.S. Department of Energy collects all of these models, aggregating them into what they call Coupled Model Intercomparison Projects (CMIPs). These serve as the bases for the various “scientific assessments” of climate change produced by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) or the U.S. “National Assessments” of climate.
In 2017, University of Alabama’s John Christy, along with Richard McNider, published a paper that, among other things, examined the 25 applicable families of CMIP-5 models, comparing their performance to what’s been observed in the three-dimensional global tropics. Take a close look at Figure 3 from the paper, in the Asia-Pacific Journal of Atmospheric Sciences, and you’ll see that the model GFDL-CM3 is so bad that it is literally off the scale of the graph.
At its worst, the GFDL model is predicting approximately five times as much warming as has been observed since the upper-atmospheric data became comprehensive in 1979. This is the most evolved version of the model that won Manabe the Nobel.
In the CMIP-5 model suite, there is one, and only one, that works. It is the model INM-CM4 from the Russian Institute for Numerical Modelling, and the lead author is Evgeny Volodin. It seems that Volodin would be much more deserving of the Nobel for, in the words of the committee “reliably predicting global warming.”
Might this have something to do with the fact that INM-CM4 and its successor models have less predicted warming than all of the other models?
Zillow shuts down its home-flipping business. Louis Rossman says good riddance. Maybe you shouldn’t have kept tweaking your algorithm until you were paying way above market rates for housing…
Greetings, and welcome to a Saturday LinkSwarm! To get this out, even a day late, I’ve tossed all the Virginia Governor’s race/Louden County news into a separate post, hopefully on tap for tomorrow.
One of President Biden’s first acts on immigration is to suspend investigations, arrests, and deportations of most criminal aliens for the next 100 days. In a memo titled “Review of and Interim Revision to Civil Immigration Enforcement and Removal Policies and Procedures”, sent on Wednesday to all immigration agency heads, Acting DHS Secretary David Pekoske announced the deportation freeze and new enforcement priorities that go into effect now. The memo imposes restrictions on immigration enforcement actions that are even tighter than those adopted (with disastrous results) by the Obama administration, and make the country a sanctuary not only for criminal aliens, but all who are here in defiance of our laws.
According to the memo, virtually all removals will stop for 100 days. In addition, only the following categories of illegal aliens will be subject to removal as of February 1, 2020:
National security threats — those who have been involved in or are suspected of involvement in terrorism, or who are otherwise deemed a threat;
Recent illegal border crossers — those who have arrived illegally after November 1, 2020; and
Aggravated felons — those who are currently incarcerated for an aggravated felony conviction and who are determined to be a threat to public safety.
If you’re any other kind of illegal alien felon, Democrats evidently want you here, victimizing Americans.
In practice, this means that ICE must release criminal aliens and others in custody who are not covered in these definitions. This will include aliens convicted of domestic violence, sex offenses, drunk driving, theft causing loss of less than $10,000, vehicular homicide, an infinite number of misdemeanor crimes, and much more. It means that when USCIS refuses green cards or other benefits because the applications were fraudulent, that unqualified applicant will be able to stay anyway. It means that in the next 100 days, if a local police officer arrests a previously deported gang member, even one with a serious criminal history, for a new crime that is not an aggravated felony, ICE will not be able to take action to remove that gang member again.
“Joe Biden to Ban Cash Bail for Violent Criminals — in the Interest of ‘Equity.'” There’s no end to the number of other people’s dead bodies social justice warriors are willing to step over on their way to utopia…
San Francisco prosecutors quit, and District Attorney Chesa Boudin faces a second recall effort over failure to prosecute crimes.
Walgreens closed 22 stores in San Francisco where thefts under $950 are effectively decriminalized.
A couple of readers asked “Why just San Francisco?” if it was California Proposition 47 that put the $950 limit on nonviolent misdemeanors.
The answer is total lack of enforcement in San Francisco.
Please note San Francisco DA faces second recall effort as residents ‘fed up’ with progressive ‘zero consequence’ policies.
A second recall effort launched against San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin demonstrates how residents are “fed up” with his progressive policies, as his push to reduce jail funding and refusal to prosecute repeat offenders ensures the streets remain marred with open-air drug dealing and violent crime now stretching into the suburbs, a leader of the prominent local police union tells Fox News.
Last week, the first Republican-backed recall effort fell just 1,714 signatures short of the 51,325 required to trigger a special election to bring the question of ousting Boudin before voters. Now a second recall effort is being organized, which Boudin brushed off Monday night as proof that his so-called successes in reducing incarceration has “angered the billionaire class.”
But it’s his progressive approach that’s actually hurting average San Franciscans, San Francisco Police Officers Association President Tony Montoya tells Fox News, as Boudin’s “swiftest revolving door in criminal justice” sends the message to offenders that there are no consequences for their actions.
Snip.
Prosecutors Brooke Jenkins and Don Du Bain told KNTV they have stepped down from their posts in San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin’s office due to his lack of commitment to prosecuting crimes.
“Chesa has a radical approach that involves not charging crime in the first place and simply releasing individuals with no rehabilitation and putting them in positions where they are simply more likely to re-offend,” Jenkins said in the interview. “Being an African American and Latino woman, I would wholeheartedly agree that the criminal justice system needs a lot of work, but when you are a district attorney, your job is to have balance.”
Du Bain added that he believed Boudin “disregards the laws that he doesn’t like, and he disregards the court decisions that he doesn’t like to impose his own version of what he believes is just – and that’s not the job of the district attorney.”
The Chinese private equity fund in which John Kerry holds a $1 million stake is not only invested in a tech company blacklisted for human rights abuses but is also a major shareholder in a solar panel company linked to labor abuses of the Uyghurs.
Last December, that private equity fund, Hillhouse China Value Fund L.P., purchased a 6 percent stake in LONGi Green Energy, a Chinese solar panel manufacturer, making it the company’s second largest shareholder.
LONGi has come under fire from human rights groups and U.S. lawmakers for sourcing many of its raw materials from companies suspected of using forced labor in Xinjiang, a region in northwest China where the government has cracked down on the Uyghur population and other ethnic minorities.
Hillhouse is also a major funder of a tech company tied to the Chinese government’s surveillance of the Uyghurs, as first reported by the Washington Free Beacon last week. News of that investment led Republican senators to call on Biden to fire Kerry over ethics concerns. Further insight into Hillhouse’s holdings is likely to increase scrutiny of Kerry’s finances and raise questions about whether he is using his role as climate envoy to block regulations on Chinese solar panel imports. While Kerry has acknowledged that many solar panels are produced with forced labor in Xinjiang, he has also indicated resistance to additional financial restrictions or penalties on these goods.
So Kerry is working the China grift and the green grift at the same time. No wonder he couldn’t resist…
Speaking of which: China produces more CO2 than the U.S., India, Russia and Japan combined. “China’s emissions are so vast that its biggest companies, few of which are household names, create more pollution than entire nations. China Baowu, the world’s top steelmaker, put more CO2 into the atmosphere last year than Pakistan.”
Manchin and Sinema continue to terrorize democrats by daring to doing what their constituents want rather than doing the Holy Will Of The Party.
Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) are the gruesome twosome. They may have different reasons behind their opposition to the $3.5 trillion spending package, dubbed human infrastructure, that Democrats want to pass via the reconciliation process, but the results are the same. The far-left can’t get everything they want—which has infuriated them to no end. They don’t like the price tag. They don’t like the ethos behind it. They don’t like the tax structures. The tax on billionaires is out due to Manchin’s opposition. Sinema isn’t moving on hiking corporate taxes. Now, paid family leave has been nixed and most of the climate change provisions are gone too. Manchin and Sinema are the angels of death for the far-Left. It’s not hard to figure out why. These two will do what they think is best for the constituents of their respective states. Period. This has been known about Manchin for years, and he’s not afraid to lose re-election. If that’s the case, he will happily take his houseboat and go home. Sinema is the same with regards to Arizona. She’s there to serve them. Not Chuck Schumer, not the liberal media, not the hordes of illegal alien activists who harass her in the bathroom. And polling shows that voters in West Virginia and Arizona aren’t too keen on the $3.5 trillion bill
If you haven’t been following the situation on Capitol Hill — and it’s in so much flux that it’s almost impossible to stay completely up to date — I’ll give you a brief rundown before we get to that odor.
“Build Back Better” is Biden’s slogan for a massive expansion of welfare, spending, regulation, the likes of which we haven’t seen since LBJ’s Not-So-Great Society. Massive change on slender majorities is not a good idea, either politically or for the nation’s social fabric, but Dems gotta Dem.
BBB comes in two parts.
The first is a $1.2 trillion-with-a-T “infrastructure” bill that doesn’t contain much actual infrastructure spending, but is nonetheless supported by enough Republicans to almost guarantee its passage. (We’ll get back to the “almost” momentarily, so stick a pin in that.)
The second is another, even larger bill so absurd that its contents fall under comic sci-fi writer Douglas Adams’ “bistromathics.” There have been several versions of this bill, ranging in price from the current “compromise” bill costing $1.8 trillion (so they say) to the original Bernie Sanders (CPUSA-Vermont Oblast) version weighing in at $3.5 trillion (but actually $5 trillion).
No one knows what any version would actually cost. My friend and colleague Stephen Kruiser heard from a Senate aide on Thursday that the current bill is 2,500 pages, has no table of contents, and we probably won’t know what’s in it even if it does pass.
This brings us to a defining concept of bistromathics, recipriversexclusion, a number whose existence can only be defined as being anything other than itself. So if Democrats claim the bill costs precisely $1,790,238,032,455, then you can be sure it costs some figure exactly not that (but higher).
But they can’t get any version passed, because the hard left keeps demanding more and more radical proposals Democratic leadership can’t deliver.
Authorities in Denver have ordered the arrest of Steve Bachar, a longtime Clinton operative and “socially responsible” investor who has been charged with felony theft and securities fraud. The former co-chair of the Clinton Global Initiative is also under investigation for unrelated allegations that he mishandled millions of dollars allocated for personal protective equipment at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Bachar is accused of stealing as much as $1 million and lying to an investor “in connection with the offer, sale or purchase of a security,” according to the criminal complaint filed by the Denver district attorney’s office. The crimes are alleged to have occurred between October 2017 and August 2018. The former Clinton operative told the Denver Post the criminal charges were “outrageous, unfounded, and false,” and he looks forward to letting “the facts come to light.”
Bachar, who served as White House advance lead and in the Treasury Department under former president Bill Clinton before joining the Clinton Global Initiative, also served on the national finance committee for Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential campaign in 2016 and as an adviser to former governor John Hickenlooper (D., Colo.). His private sector career as a corporate attorney and cofounder of Empowerment Capital Management was focused on “socially responsible investing.”
This is not the first time the socially responsible investor has been accused of serious wrongdoing. In 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Bachar allegedly pocketed nearly $2 million from health care companies that believed they were purchasing life-saving personal protective equipment such as masks and gowns.
According to a lawsuit filed by a Denver-based health care company, Bachar agreed to sell them 4,200 cases of N95 masks for $2.4 million in April 2020 but never delivered the masks and did not return their initial payment of $604,000. Over the summer, Bachar was ordered to pay nearly $4.5 million to the companies he allegedly defrauded but has yet to comply with the civil judgments against him.
Speaking of corrupt Democratic crime families, former New York Governor has been charged charged with sex cri-cri-cri-crime.
With the obligatory Eurythmics video
(I actually own their 1984 soundtrack, but “Sexcrime” isn’t nearly as good as “Doubleplusgood.”)
While the administration begs overseas adversaries to ramp up oil production with jobs and development to the benefit of foreign citizens, Americans remain handicapped by Democrats’ zealous animosity towards fossil fuel extraction on domestic land.
Underneath the tundra surface of Alaska’s North Slope sits an estimated 4.3 t0 11.8 billion barrels of untouched recoverable oil located within the flat wetland boundary of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Then-President Donald Trump opened ANWR’s 1.6 million acres of the 19.6 million-acre refuge for drilling in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, with leases approved since then now in jeopardy under the new administration.
Biden has been yanking permits and demanding new environmental assessments in an effort to cancel projects altogether. Last week, the Interior Department tossed out the analysis completed under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), long held as the gold standard of assessing environmental impacts, and ordered a new supplemental review for leases in the Arctic refuge two months after they were suspended.
Racine County Sheriff’s Department investigators have presented evidence that the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) committed felony election fraud by telling nursing home staffers to violate state law and fill out ballots on behalf of nursing home residents who were unable to themselves.
During a news conference Thursday, Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling said WEC commissioners and staff who prohibited legally-required special voting deputies from entering nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic and instead told nursing home staff members to assist residents in voting committed a Class I felony, which is punishable by a maximum sentence of three years, six months in prison and $10,000 in fines.
I missed this for my Texas Critical Race Theory fight roundup: “Keller ISD’s Timber Creek High School is Brewing Division.” “Over the last year, teachers and staff at a North Texas school have been going against the district and teaching racist propaganda, creating division among students, parents, and staff. Under the supervision of teachers, students are leading the charge in this growing division Keller ISD’s Timber Creek High School has been experiencing since the previous school year.”
Portugal’s six-year experiment with leftwing “anti-austerity” government will end this week in a political crisis leading to early elections unless António Costa, the socialist prime minister, can strike a last-minute budget deal with the radical left.
The anti-capitalist Left Bloc (BE) and old-guard Communist party (PCP) have vowed to withhold crucial support in a budget vote on Wednesday unless the minority Socialist party (PS) government makes further concessions in a bill already seen as the most leftwing in recent history.
“They are asking the impossible and I can’t see the PS giving way,” said Francisco Seixas da Costa, a political commentator and former secretary of state for European affairs. “The pact has exhausted its possibilities and the BE and PCP can see no further advantage in co-operating with the government.”
Costa has offered a €40 increase in the national minimum wage to €705 a month and a €700m increase in investment in the national health service, alongside higher old-age pensions and public sector wages. The BE and PCP are pushing for bigger increases in these areas as well as labour reforms that the government fears would clash with EU rules.
After offering hope to struggling centre-left parties across Europe and inspiring neighbouring Spain’s mainstream socialists to follow a similar path, Portugal’s broad left pact is foundering over the smaller parties’ dissatisfaction with their peripheral role, and the limits of EU policy.
If the budget is defeated, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, Portugal’s centre-right president, has said he will immediately dissolve parliament and call a general election two years ahead of schedule. Costa, meanwhile, has stated he would remain in office at the head of a caretaker government until the ballot was held, probably in January.
This has been all over everywhere this week, but it still angries up my blood: Fauci Funded ‘Cruel’ Puppy Experiments Where Sand Flies ‘Eat Them Alive’; Vocal Cords Severed.”
No less than four versions of “Let’s Go Brandon” are in the iTunes top 10.
Iran has announced that the country’s energy infrastructure was hit by a massive cyberattack on Tuesday, which left state subsidized gas stations across the country out of commission, resulting in very long lines of cars observed waiting to fill up in many towns and cities.
The timing is interesting given it happened near the two year anniversary mark of deadly nationwide protests following serious gas shortages and price hikes in the fall of 2019. The ‘activist’ nature of the hack is further revealed in that Iranian media is reporting that a message showed up in national computer systems that were hacked that addressed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei with the words, “where is the gas?”
By nearly every measure Americans are more generous with their money and time than anyone — including Europeans.
Indeed, American charitable giving exceeds the entire GDP of most European countries.
According to the Almanac of American Philanthropy, Americans donate around seven times as much as continental Europeans to charitable causes per capita. Per person, even after adjusting for differences in household income, Americans donate twice as much of their income as the Dutch, three times as much as the French, five times as much as Germans, and ten times that of Italians.
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.