The real issue behind supply-chain problems

Grannie Annie and this old guy ventured to Omaha this past weekend. We went to visit our daughter which is always a joy. Checked on our son-in-law’s installation of a new knee and he is doing well. The miracle of modern medicine.

As per usual a good part of the trip was on Interstate 80 with quite a little traffic. We noted that the road was dominated by semi-trucks both coming and going. Trucks with a myriad of logos on their sides our supply chain in action. A fair number of the trucks were carrying only one of the steel cargo containers carrying unknowable amounts of goods.

Then on TV we see large numbers of huge ships, forty or more, off the west coast waiting to offload their shipping containers. Incidentally, President Biden and his progressive advisors evidently have been catching a bit of heat due to the numbers of ships waiting to unload. In response, they made a new rule that the spacing between ships waiting to unload must be greatly increased which puts a large number of those waiting out of sight. Problem solved even though those waiting recently numbered eighty of more but only forty were in sight.

Several months ago consumers noted the increasing expanses of vacant shelves in stores. Your president then decreed that the Long Beach and San Diego terminals go on 24-hour shifts. The Longshoreman’s Unions out there did make a change. They went to two 10-hour shifts with only four hours dead time in-between instead of the prior eight hours off. Not much increase in production.

Democrats, like President Biden, have long had a love affair with the unions. After all the unions send huge amounts of money to get Democrats elected and reelected and payback is only reasonable. The port terminals have long been in need of modernization and automation to make them more efficient. Guess what? The Longshoreman Unions fight such modernization tooth and nail plus insist on work rules that hamper efficient operation while insisting on ever higher wages for their members. Our whole country suffers from their inefficiency but that is a small matter when they have the Democrats in their back pockets and their union members reportedly receive the highest wages in the country.

That thought brings me back to the traffic on the interstate. Truckers are an independent lot the majority of which are non-union. Hence we get the goods hauled cross country but we just can’t get them promptly unloaded at our ports.

Then one can ask why is it that such a large percentage of our consumer goods are manufactured overseas and shipped back to the U.S. of A? It probably doesn’t have anything to do with union wages being so high that it is cheaper to use low-wage foreign workers and ship the raw materials overseas and import the manufactured goods back to the consumers in America.

Coming and going from here to Omaha the interstate roughly parallels the BNSF railway. On our trip east and back west we only saw one train loaded with containers vastly outnumbering the semi-trucks that we encountered. One train can carry hundreds of containers while most trucks only carry one. Very few trainmen are required to move a lot of container cargo but then the vast majority of rail workers are union also and so many of the union rules are not designed for efficiency. Hmmm.

Today is the anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor the act that got us into WWII. In my military career I landed at Hickam AFB many times. Well actually one lands and takes off from the runway at Honolulu International Airport and then taxis over to the ramp at Hickam. Under the palm trees in shirtsleeve temperatures, I always marveled at the beautiful place that is now our 50th state.

At the Academy, my first roommate told me that his father was stationed at Hickam when the Japanese Navy did their raid and that Walt was there living on base with his mom and sister. Mrs. Sweeney, along with a housekeeper, took her children out into a nearby pineapple field and made them lie down out of sight. Walt being only four years old and in love with airplanes kept poking his head up to watch the airplanes making their bombing and strafing runs on the base and nearby Pearl Harbor. Walt told me that his dad, a Lieutenant Colonel, was only a few hundred miles away inbound to the Island leading a flight of B-17s coming from the States. When we were roommates Walt’s dad was a three-star general and Commander of the Strategic Air Command.

I note that Senator Bob Dole from Kansas died a couple of days ago, age 98 and a veteran of WWII. There aren’t many left but we owe them all a huge debt of gratitude for winning that global war and the many years of peace that followed. Global peace allowing our country to flourish and become the greatest country in the world. The torch has been passed to our military today and may God continue to give us his blessing.

That is how I saw it.

Dick Trail