West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin held a press conference moments ago to say he’s done with the insufferable chicanery within the legislative social spending bill, also called the “human infrastructure bill” or Biden’s “build back better” bill, or the “reconciliation bill”.

Nancy Pelosi has been sitting on the previously passed $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill that was passed by the House and Senate {Go Deep} but has refused to allow a vote until a bigger social spending bill -constructed using the reconciliation process to radically change the U.S. by the AOC radical communists in congress- can be attached.  For months the debate over how far the communists can push the social spending package has been argued and debated, today Joe Manchin tapped out.

Manchin has done today what he was always likely to do, and two issues triggered today as his moment.  The cherry in his construct is Biden’s current location. WATCH:

Now, let’s get to the politics of why Manchin is making his move….

It is not coincidental that Manchin makes this statement today, as the NBC poll showing massive drops in support for Joe Biden is being discussed widely.  Manchin knows he is sitting in a spotlight of an inflection point; Manchin is politically astute and cunning to the ways of politics.  Manchin comes across as meek and mild-tempered, a man of reasonable disposition… but that doesn’t accurately portray his cunning.  This is his chance to make a big move.

Senator Joe Manchin also knows that Democrats are going to implode as the Obama allied communist puppet masters behind Biden have a one term agenda to exploit their control over the dementia patient currently occupying the White House.  Manchin knows the collapse of the Democrat Party is his opportunity; he also knows THE REALITY behind the released Marist Poll [data here] showing a majority of non-communist Democrats want nothing to do with the senile occupant of the White House.

(more…)

Earlier today Florida Governor Ron DeSantis delivered remarks on the Florida economy and took questions from the media.  The press conference was held in North Venice, Florida, with Department of Transportation Secretary Kevin Thibault and VISIT Florida President & CEO Dana Young to highlight job growth and the expanding economy.

During the press questioning, the Florida governor was asked about his state’s response to COVID-19 and criticism from the Joe Biden administration.  DeSantis took the opportunity to point out how political the National Institute of Health has become, and also noted the disgusting research funded by taxpayer money.

…”You cannot have mad scientists running around playing God like this … including cruel experiments on puppies”…

WATCH:

.

Full remarks and press conference below:

(more…)

In a rare act of journalism, NBC actually followed up on the October 13th grand proclamation of Joe Biden to speed up California ports.  What they found is exactly what everyone suspected, the grand prose from the White House was a political pantomime – absolutely nothing has changed.  WATCH:

As noted, and as previously outlined, the issues with the backlog of the California ports have absolutely nothing to do with rapid unloading of ships and container vessels.  The issue is the inability of California truckers to move those containers.  The problem is a shortage of CA emission compliant internal transportation trucks to move the containers out of the port and into the U.S. mainland.

As a result… the politically expedient goal to get rid of the optical problem (the ships) by offloading containers into a California port system, that is already overwhelmed with tens-of-thousands of containers, is only making the original issue exponentially worse.  More people are now starting to understand the internal issue that has been created by recent California laws, rules and regulations.

Daniel Greenfield at Front Page Magazine has a solid outline of the emission compliance issues and the problem of independent truckers not being able to work in California:

(more…)

If it helps to simplify the problem….

…. Carry on.

(more…)

This is a follow-up to the original explanation of the epicenter of the supply chain backlog issue, ie “The Clog“. {GO DEEP}   You need to review the years-long and building background issue to understand the fubar that Joe Biden has just made worse.

From the White House perspective, the problem at the California ports, specifically the Port of Los Angeles (POLA) and the Port of Long Beach (POLB), was visible due to hundreds of container ships sitting in a queue off the coast of Los Angeles awaiting their opportunity to offload their cargo.  The media was reporting on the backlog of ships and Joe Biden was under fire.

The team behind Joe Biden wanted the optics removed asap.  Hence, the White House meeting with the heads of the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, Gene Seroka and Mario Cordero, respectively.

The continuing supply chain crisis of empty store shelves, missing parts and component goods that are backlogged at the California ports may be politically represented by the optic of those floating vessels.  However, that’s not the problem.

The problem is a shortage of CA emission compliant internal transportation trucks to move the containers out of the port and into the U.S. mainland.

As a result… the politically expedient goal to get rid of the optical problem (the ships) by offloading containers into a California port system, that is already overwhelmed with tens-of-thousands of containers, is only making the original issue exponentially worse.

With hundreds more containers being offloaded hourly, the port infrastructure needed to load trucks long-sitting in the queue to pick up containers that arrived weeks ago is collapsing.

Truckers are waiting for over 8 hours to pick up their freight because the yards are swamped with containers.  As each hour passes, more containers are offloaded into the port that can no longer deal with the scale of the problem.  Each individual container is now buried in an avalanche of more containers, and that is making the limited compliant trucking resources even more problematic….. “containergeddon“.

(more…)

Hundreds of requests for details on the specifics of the container shipping backlog.  So, I spent 3 days calling sources, digging for details and gathering information on the substantive issue at hand.  The epicenter of the problem is not what is being outlined by financial media, corporate media and politicians who have a specific interest in distracting from the issues at hand.  This has nothing to do with COVID-19.

The issues being discussed today relate to events that happened a long time ago.  As a matter of fact, it was so predictable that Amazon, Walmart, UPS, FedEx, Samsung, The Home Depot and Target all had taken actions years ago -long before COVID- because they knew this day would come.  It was not accidental that those companies showed up at the White House to discuss the issue, because there’s now a full court press to hide it.

There is one very specific regional issue driving the problem.  Read on:

The trucking issue with California LA ports, ie the Port of Los Angeles (POLA) and the Port of Long Beach (POLB), is that all semi tractors have to be current with new California emissions standards.  As a consequence, that mean trucks cannot be older than 3 years if they are to pick up or deliver containers at those ports.  This issue wipes out approximately half of the fleet trucks used to move containers in/out of the port.  Operating the port 24/7 will not cure the issue, because all it does is pile up more containers that sit idle as they await a limited number of trucks to pick them up.  THIS is the central issue.

On October 16, 2020, the EPA reached a settlement agreement [DATA HERE] with California Air Resource Board (CARB) to shut down semi tractor rigs that were non-compliant with new California emission standards:

2020 SAN FRANCISCO – “Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced settlements with three interstate trucking companies imposing $417,000 in penalties for violating the California Air Resources Board’s federally enforceable Truck and Bus Regulation, Drayage Truck Regulation and Transport Refrigeration Unit Regulation.

“As trucks are one of the largest sources of air pollution in California, EPA will continue to ensure these heavy-duty vehicles have the needed pollution-control equipment and operate in compliance with the rules,” said EPA Pacific Southwest Regional Administrator John Busterud. “These companies have agreed to bring their trucks into compliance and operate more cleanly in all communities they serve.”

(more…)

With Joe Biden in the White House you can expect to hear the name “Blackrock” in the headlines connected to a variety of issues from real estate purchasing to green energy projects with massive domestic and international investments.

BlackRock, Inc. (together with its subsidiaries) is a massive publicly traded multinational investment firm with over $8.68 trillion in assets under management [December 31, 2020 financial statement] in more than 100 countries across the globe.  To say that Blackrock is invested in globalism, climate change and leftist politics, would be a severe understatement {See Here}.  Larry Fink is the CEO and people like Cheryl Mills, Hillary Clinton’s attorney of record, are on the board.

Inside BlackRock there is a division called the BlackRock Investment Institute (BII) {See Here}.

Essentially the role of the BII is to tell BlackRock what is going to happen around the globe, and be the tip-of-the-spear in directing BlackRock where to invest money by predicting political events.

The Chairman of the BlackRock Investment Institute is Tom Donilon, President Obama’s former National Security Advisor (before Susan Rice), and a key advisor to Joe Biden throughout his career in politics.

You cannot get more deeply connected in the swamp financial schemes than Tom Donilon.

Donilon has been in/around government for 35+ years, deeply connected.  Before joining the Obama administration Donilon was a registered lobbyist from 1999 through 2005 for O’Melvney & Myers. {Bio Here} Tom’s sole client was Fannie Mae.  Fannie Mae is a government-backed private corporation that sells mortgages to investors.

Donilon took the lobbying gig because he was previously Executive Vice President for Law and Policy at Fannie Mae where he was responsible for Fannie Mae’s legal, regulatory, government affairs, and public policy issues.  Tom Donilon’s BlackRock Biography reads like a who’s-who of connections to the swamp {READ HERE}

Here’s where it really gets interesting.

(more…)

Every economic policy of the JoeBama administration benefits other nations at the cost of the U.S. middle class.  If you look at the Biden policy from a position of America’s interests they get everything wrong.  However, if you look at Biden economic policy from a goal to weaken the U.S. and benefit other nations, they get everything right.

This is the exact same big picture dynamic that was present during the Obama era.  The Chicago crew of policy advisors simply hate America and everything she/we stand for.  That element of Obama’s network hates ‘colonialism’, despises the industrial revolution, and abhors free market capitalism.

When Obama said “share the wealth” he wasn’t speaking exclusively toward domestic socioeconomic policy; he was also pointing out that America needed to share wealth with other nations.  This is the ideological alignment between Barack Obama and Osama Bin Laden.  Above all other issues Osama Bin Laden despised the wealth the U.S. carried as a result of the dollar being the international trade currency.  Thus the 9/11 attack was directed at the World Trade Center first, then DC second.

If you accept Biden is an avatar for Obama’s third term, then everything in the economic policy makes sense.   Including this:

“U.S. President Joe Biden will rely on ally countries to supply the bulk of the metals needed to build electric vehicles and focus on processing them domestically into battery parts, part of a strategy designed to placate environmentalists, two administration officials with direct knowledge told Reuters.” (link)

Beyond the hypocrisy of ‘global’ climate change being irrelevant to where the mining takes place (duh), what the administration is doing is letting our mining operations close while importing the same product. This is a continuation of what policies created the “rust belt”.  Then there’s the pesky problem of the cars actually being built in Mexico, not the U.S…. but we need to ignore that part.

(more…)

Angela Merkel is essentially the de-facto global head of modern political liberalism. The central tenet, almost religious-based in its importance, is the lunacy within “climate change”. However, as most reasonable people have concluded, the ‘climate discussions’ are more about controlled global economics than any actual concerns about planetary climatology. Bottom line, it’s the economics that really matter beyond all else.

CTH has pointed out for several years that Germany’s Angela Merkel, a beloved leader amid the political left, was never going to put her economy in a position of weakness just to appease the environmental lobby.   Chancellor Merkel is a nationalist at heart and within that outlook progressive causes can be advocated but only to the extent that Germany can retain a superior economic condition.

Despite her being heralded by the progressive movement in the U.S, it is all a farce.  Angela Merkel is a political case study in what leftists refuse to admit and even more leftists deny; that is the reality behind the hypocrisy.  The narrative fraud was evident when President Trump pulled out of the Paris climate treaty and immediately Merkel said Germany would also not comply with the treaty demands. From Merkel’s position Germany must always retain a superior position within the EU, no matter what.

The most recent example of this comes from Merkel rejecting carbon emission reduction requirements from her own government.  Merkel knows the environmental wing is full of moonbat policy that runs counter to the economic need of her nation.  Despite the ‘greens’ gaining legislative seats, she will not support carbon dictates that are against the interests of manufacturing and multinational corporations in Germany:

(Via Reuters) German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Saturday rejected demands to bring forward an exit date for ending coal generation in Germany, currently set at 2038. {SEE HERE}

“Those affected need some reliability on the path to climate neutrality,” Merkel said. “I don’t want to unravel this again after one year.”

(more…)

This is a specific example that needs to be drilled down quickly so that people with only a cursory interest in politics can understand how it impacts them.  Biden’s $1400 stimulus checks are useless, literally wiped-out, when compared with the increase in gasoline prices already in place as part of the Biden energy policy.

Gas prices have already jumped $1/gal in most areas as a result of Biden killing the oil production energy sector.  Factor in the increased transportation costs for goods and services, including the costs associated with deliveries of home meals, Uber rides, products delivered, airline charges; and the gas price increase hits the family checkbook far beyond the $1400 provided for stimulus.

Add to that charge and the increases in electricity prices, together with the increase in product costs that are based on petroleum (rubber, plastics, containers etc), and you can see how the increased cost of Biden’s ridiculous energy policy hits families even harder.  But wait…. it gets worse…. If that were already not enough of a problem, Biden is now proposing a mileage tax on top of a gasoline tax increase that will hit the middle class much harder. [SEE Video at 01:30]

The middle-class commutes to work much more than all other sectors.  Any increase in gas prices, gasoline taxes or mileage taxes hits the blue-collar worker at a disproportionate rate.  A proposal to install a mileage tax does nothing but add another cost onto the American middle-class.

This is an issue of leftist policy, as the far-left now move to push their climate change agenda and simultaneously push federal infrastructure spending.  Of course, in order to keep advancing their severe leftist agenda, the democrats have to pretend not to know things.

(more…)