Supply chain woes worsen following Biden’s intervention
Daily Digest |  |
- Supply chain woes worsen following Biden’s intervention
- How Desperate Is the McAuliffe Campaign?
- Covid Vaccines Don’t Work Well Enough to be Mandated
- China’s “Sputnik moment”
- Not reconciled: An update
Supply chain woes worsen following Biden’s intervention Posted: 29 Oct 2021 04:29 PM PDT (Paul Mirengoff) Two weeks ago, Joe Biden announced with fanfare that he was taking steps towards having our main port facilities operate around the clock to alleviate the supply chain snags that are causing so much disruption. Since then, according to the Washington Post, the backlog of ships anchored off the coast of Southern California has increased. For example, as of Monday, 73 container ships were anchored in San Pedro Bay. That exceeded the number present when Biden announced his initiative. According to Goldman Sachs, more than 30 million tons of cargo now sit aboard vessels idling outside of U.S. ports. It predicts that port congestion will not ease until the second half of next year. The gridlock is fueling inflation and eating into corporate profits. It’s one reason why estimated third quarter growth in our economy is so disappointing As for Biden’s remedial plan, in almost all cases West Coast ports aren’t open around the clock, and certainly not seven days a week. And even when ports are open for business 24 hours, they don’t really operate full-time. A port can be open at 2:00 a.m. in the morning. That doesn’t mean truck drivers will show up to handle loads, especially if the warehouses to which the loads are headed lack the capacity to handle more goods or don’t open until much later in the morning. Having failed thus far to improve the situation, Team Biden is now resorting to punitive measures. Ports will bill carriers $100 per day for each container that remains on the dock for more than three days if slated to move by rail, or nine days if by truck. Punishing carriers for bottlenecks in the supply chain seems unfair and ineffective. Stephen Lamar, president of the American Apparel and Footwear Association, said:
The National Retail Federation, representing companies such as Walmart, Target and Macy’s, said:
Matt Schrap, CEO of the Harbor Trucking Association, complained that the new fees will do nothing about the “tens of thousands of containers” sitting empty on chassis, either at the port or at area warehouses that are too full to unload them. Until those chassis can be unloaded and returned to the port to collect fresh loads, the backlog will linger, he added. Some say the supply chain crisis is an argument for infrastructure spending. If so, Biden should explain why less than 10 percent of his $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill is devoted to fortifying core infrastructure such as roads, bridges and ports. The elephant in the room is a workforce that, to an unprecedented degree, would rather not work and has been incentivized not to by unprecedented unemployment benefits. The shortage of truck drivers contributes significantly to the supply chain crisis. That shortage will be exacerbated when truck drivers are fired for refusing the Wuhan coronavirus vaccine. It’s also the case that our ports have been overregulated into inefficiency. According to Mario Loyola:
I doubt there is any short-term answer to the supply chain crisis, so it’s not surprising that Biden is flailing, much as Trump flailed in responding to the pandemic to which there was also no short-term answer. The public, though, is not accustomed to being unable to obtain pretty much anything it wants and can afford to buy. Thus, it’s likely to hold the difficulties associated with the supply chain crisis against Biden. That’s more bad news for a president whose approval rating seems to tumble on almost a daily basis.     |
How Desperate Is the McAuliffe Campaign? Posted: 29 Oct 2021 04:14 PM PDT (John Hinderaker) This desperate: earlier today a group of Democrats lined up in front of a Glenn Youngkin bus holding tikis, as part of an effort to tie Youngkin to Donald Trump/Charlottesville/white supremacy: Terry McAuliffe’s Communications Director said the men’s presence was “disgusting and disqualifying.” But no one was fooled, and she later deleted the tweet.
Was the Lincoln Project really responsible for this fiasco? Donald Trump, Jr. thinks they took the fall for the McAuliffe campaign, which is certainly consistent with McAuliffe’s Communications Director trying to make hay out of the photo:
It only remains for the voters of Virginia to register their disgust on Tuesday.   |
Covid Vaccines Don’t Work Well Enough to be Mandated Posted: 29 Oct 2021 02:11 PM PDT (John Hinderaker) I have never understood the theory on which covid-vaccinated people are angry at unvaccinated people. If the vaccines work, why do they care? They are protected. But it is actually worse than that: it has become clear that the vaccines offer much less than complete protection. In fact, vaccinated people can easily both catch covid and spread it. This study has just appeared in the Lancet. It addresses household transmission of the delta variant of covid, the most common means by which the disease is spread. It finds that vaccinated people are less likely than unvaccinated people to spread the disease to others, but not by much:
Covid vaccines have been shown to reduce the severity of infection in most people, so they are a good idea for the majority, especially those in higher risk categories. But that is all about protecting oneself. Given that vaccinated people can spread covid nearly as readily as the unvaccinated, treating unvaccinated people as pariahs is wholly inappropriate. And the rationale for vaccine mandates evaporates.   |
Posted: 29 Oct 2021 11:56 AM PDT (Paul Mirengoff) China is developing a hypersonic missile designed to evade American nuclear defenses. This summer, it conducted two tests of that missile. The U.S. knew about the tests, but our military officials were silent on the subject until last week. After the Financial Times reported the Chinese tests, presumably based on a leak, our government finally discussed this development. Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley called it “very close” to a “Sputnik moment” for the United States. For our younger readers, Sputnik was the artificial satellite launched by the Soviet Union in 1957. The successful launch signaled that the Soviets were ahead of the U.S. in penetrating outer space, and helped trigger the space race. Milley said the Chinese tests of the hypersonic missile surprised our experts. He added that the tests were a “very significant technological event” and that the event “has our [full] attention.” Fareed Zakaria argues that the Chinese tests are nothing like Sputnik, that the technology in question is nothing new, and that Milley is feeding cold war paranoia. However, this discussion by the New York Times indicates otherwise:
The Asia Times discusses how what China is doing with hypersonic technology differs from what others, like the Soviet Union, have done. It also points out that because the Chinese missiles are launched from a spacecraft in orbit, China is violating the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. If the hyepersonic technology is such a game-changer, you would think the U.S. is also working assiduously to develop it. However, it’s not clear that we are. Wood says that we have “held back” from pursuing its military uses to avoid stoking a new kind of arms race. On the other hand, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby claims that the United States is competing with China on this technology. He stated that “our own pursuit of hypersonic capabilities is real, it’s tangible, and we are absolutely working towards being able to develop that capability.” Maybe. But when Gen. Milley calls the Chinese tests a “Sputnik moment” it tells me that China is well ahead of us. China has no desire to launch missiles at the U.S. Its plans for gaining world dominance don’t include starting a war with America. But China desires to conquer Taiwan. Developing a missile that can penetrate our defenses would likely deter the U.S. from coming to Taiwan’s defense or at least reduce China’s fears that we will. The signs of China’s intentions towards Taiwan are unmistakable. The Times points to the Pentagon’s concern that China is flying sorties inside Taiwan’s air identification zone, digging hundreds of new silos for long-range nuclear missiles, building an arsenal of antisatellite weapons, and routinely firing more rockets into space than any other country. I agree with the Asia Times that “the U.S. will have to come up with an answer to China’s new [technological] threat.”   |
Posted: 29 Oct 2021 06:03 AM PDT (Scott Johnson) Yesterday morning the White House posted a summary of its so-called Framework of a Spendapalooza bill to be jammed through Congress by Democrats via the reconciliation process. The White House posted the summary just before President Biden went up to Capitol Hill to meet with the House Democratic caucus. Biden followed up with one of those 20-minute White House speeches in which he stares vacantly into the teleprompter while he struggles to read the text served up to him. The White House has posted the text of his remarks here. I have posted the video below. The falsity of the remarks lies somewhere between painful and outrageous. Listening to Biden recite the text is tortuous. If ordered by a court as punishment for a crime, it might violate the Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment. Not a single congressional Republican supports the Spendapalooza in any form, yet this is Biden’s line:
“That’s consensus” requires translation. It means Democrats agree. Otherwise, not so much. And this is at the top of the speech. It rolls downhill slowly from there. Every element of the big bang deserves close scrutiny — the kind of scrutiny Carrie Lukas gives to the proposed daycare/preschool gravy train in the Federalist column “Inside Democrats’ Plan To Indoctrinate Your Toddlers In Preschool.” I bet you didn’t know you were going to be paying for electric vehicles coming and going. You could feel the excitement coming through in his confusion:
Is there any sentient voter who isn’t tired of this:
It’s getting old! And I think Biden had trouble reading his script when he came to another golden oldie: “For much too long, the working people of this nation and the middle class of this country have been dealt out of the American deal, and it’s time to deal them back in.” The American deal? I think he meant “dream,” but deal me out! You would never know that Biden was recently vice president of the United States for eight years. He sounds like a maverick outsider fighting against the man. I would love to see the live time reaction of likely voters to Biden’s recitation on the dials used by political consultants. In his remarks Biden invoked his popular vote in the 2020 election as indicative of support for his Spendapalooza. Something tells me that this is not to be taken at face value. The proceedings yesterday had as their sole purpose pressuring Democrats to pass the infrastructure bill before Biden took off for Rome, yet it failed. The Democrats’ socialist contingent resisted. Nancy Pelosi called off the vote she had hoped to hold last night. Reading the insider reports by Axios (“President Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi huffed and puffed Thursday, but it was progressives who threatened to blow the whole House down if their demands weren’t met”), Politico (“Biden already won”), and Punchbowl News (“[Biden] was unable to crack the progressives’ opposition”), I am unclear whether this was a defeat for Biden. They seem to disagree. However, the Biden/Pelosi deadline was an artifact of political theater. They will get it — whatever it is — done some time later. And what they will get done is going to be monumentally bad in ways that we will have to live with for a long time.   |
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