Big, meddlesome government: is there ANYTHING it can’t fuck up?
On the surface, the supply chain crisis that’s left ships off both U.S. coasts facing a month of waiting before they’re unloaded is caused by bottlenecks following a post-COVID retail flush, rising shipping costs, and a lack of truckers available to unload containers waiting offshore (Redstate covered that angle here). That’s what labor unions told the Daily Mail, anyway, no doubt with the intent to remind everyone of their importance.
But scratch the surface, and supply chain problems are revealed to be much more complicated, driven by bureaucratic intrusion, and effectively look like a mini-war between shippers and carriers, one that the Biden administration and the Democrat-led House of Representatives aren’t interested in working on until at least November, making the problems we’re seeing today extend into the Christmas season.
Oh, those problems are going to be extending a whole lot longer than that, I’m afraid. As I said from the very start of the Covid clusterfuck: you can’t just shut an entire national economy down, as if the action was no more complex or potentially destructive than flipping a light switch off—for fifteen days to flatten the curve a year and a half to consolidate a tyranny and train a Sheeple—then nonchalantly flip the switch back to the “On” position, emboldened by a level of confidence only the truly witless ever get to experience, that things will just pick up and carry on as before with no lasting disruption and/or damage. Their monstrously inflated egos and delusions of omnipotence notwithstanding, the idiot ProPols badly overestimated their own smarts, competence, and capabilities—exactly as they always have—and now every damned man Jack of us is going to have to pay a severe price for allowing them to do it—exactly as we always have.
Part of the problem lies with the Biden administration’s “Executive Order on America’s Supply Chains,” issued on Feb. 24, 2021, which set up a “‘sectoral supply chain assessment‘ of six industrial sectors, including transportation. It requires the secretary of transportation, consulting with the heads of the department’s modal agencies, to submit a report to the president within one year of the executive order that assesses ‘the role of transportation systems in supporting existing supply chains and risks associated with those transportation systems.’”
See what I mean? My God, the EGOS on these little tin gods, daring to imagine that diddling around in affairs that are much too big for pygmies like themselves could ever lead to anything other than disaster, widespread human misery, and societal chaos. Any genuinely intelligent, sane person would have known better. Clearly, the professional politicians…don’t. Does that suggest anything about the advisability of restricting government at all levels to no more than the merest minimum of authority and power? Why, it seems so NO DUH! obvious, so self-evident and beyond argument, that I’m shocked that nobody ever thought of such a thing before now, nor attempted to codify, explicitly and in writing, how a government strictly and sturdily fenced by such restrictions might possibly be established. A real head-scratcher, that one is. Oh well, maybe someday.
While over 150 companies and trade associations have written a letter to encourage Congress to work on the bill, there’s some concern within the industry that the legislation would only create tension between shippers and regulators and carriers.
OH yeah, by all means let’s get Congress involved too! Having them waddle their fat asses on up and thrust their snouts into the slop trough will SURELY straighten this whole mess out with a quickness. Won’t it?
In short, government involving itself and imposing new regulations while also refusing to update existing regulations have played a familiar role in the slow down of a market that is trying to bounce back after COVID stopped the machine.
Update existing regulations, my baggy white ass. The one and only treatment for what ails us that stands a ghost of a chance of curing the affliction is to take a broadaxe and start chopping as many as can be reached into little, tiny pieces.
Apropos of not a whole lot, the Red State companion-piece mentioned in the first excerpted ‘graph is worth a read in its own right.
Cargo ships anchored off California and New York, and in rail yards and on trucking routes, shipping consumer goods are incredibly backlogged due to a lack of manpower and pandemic restrictions to unload the goods. And now, there are warnings that the supply chain may be on the brink of collapse.
Shipping ports which normally only had one or two ships in dock waiting to be unloaded prior to the pandemic now have dozens lined up, waiting to be unloaded for up to four weeks, slowing the whole chain. In Los Angeles and Long Beach, as many as 73 vessels were waiting to be unloaded last month. The bottlenecks at the ports are also impacting railways and trucking. In Chicago — that has one of the largest rail yards — it was at one point backed up for 25 miles.
This is a disaster about to blow up.
If you were trying to do-in the country, I’m not sure what you would do that the Biden team hasn’t been doing.
Hey, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck…
It makes for some pretty grim reading, all the moreso since there really is no way the Great Chaos Engine our damned fool politicians cranked up and set in motion can be stopped at this late stage. All any of us can do now is brace for the impact of the imminent crash. Hopefully, the survivors can come up with some way to repay them for all the wonderful things they’ve done for us.

















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