Jim Ulvog

Seems like most industries have a tangled supply chain. The entire transportation system is sorely distressed.

The elitists in federal and state governments have a staggering level of hubris. They think waving their hands, clicking away on their laptops, and issuing press releases will make the entire economy bend to their will. What they accomplish is willfully causing disruption in your life and in my life.

Here are merely a few of the recent articles describing the tangled impact of Covid dictats and sundry government policies:

• Lots of cargo ships are waiting to unload off the California coast.
• Large port operator expects disruptions to last into 2023.
• Workers in transportation sector warn of possible system collapse.
• Chip shortage for carmakers will last into late 2022.

Looks like it might take another 15 or 18 months to untangle the worldwide supply chain.

Wall Street Journal – 8/17/21 – Cargo Ships Are Again Idling Off Jammed Southern California Ports – Back in the middle of August the tally of cargo ships sitting off to coast of California was 37.

A tweet I saw this morning (10/9/21) from someone flying out of Long Beach indicated the individual counted 50 ships waiting to unload.

At around 10,000 containers per ship that is somewhere around 370,000 containers waiting to be unloaded back in the middle of August and is now currently somewhere in the range of half a million containers sitting off the coast.

Article says a few months ago it was only nine. Normally it is zero.

Those little Covid critters are really, reeeeeally smart.

How smart are they?, I hear you ask.

They are so smart that they accessed, read, and comprehended correspondence from the Los Angeles County Department of Health that all those people sitting shoulder to shoulder at the Emmys were perfectly safe without wearing any masks.

Thus, those little bugs obediently obeyed.

The list just keeps growing of politicians, rule makers, and other assorted self-appointed elitists who show they don’t have to obey the rules they demand we follow.

Illustrations from the last few weeks:

• Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, her new husband, and Kansas congresswoman Sharice Davids ignore mask rules at wedding.
• Bunches of elitists at $30,000 per person gala event blow off masks while all the server staff are covered.
• S.F. Mayor London Breed blows off masks at a nightclub and blows off the requirement to wear masks which she imposed.
• Not one person at the Emmys, which was held in an enclose space, located in Los Angeles County, sitting eight to a table when not crowded on stage, is wearing a mask.

8/30/21 – Washington Free Beacon – Photos: Elizabeth Warren Partied Maskless With Actual Native Americans at Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s Wedding – The New Mexico governor ordered a mandate to wear masks at any indoor activity. The order was issued on August 17, effective August 20, to remain in effect until at least September 15.

On Saturday, August 28, 2021, the order was widely ignored at the wedding.

For example, multiple protests have taking place all across France for the last 10 weekends or so.

Over the last several months protests have developed in multiple countries. Seems that people are fed up with being told they can’t move around, go to restaurants, or enjoy entertainment without getting government permission to do so.

Here are some of the articles describing people who are fed up:

7/31 – Wall Street Journal – Covid-19 Vaccine Health Pass Feeds French Protest – Photos of protests in France show massive crowds. Estimates are 204,000 people gathered in many cities across the country to protest the so-called Health Pass, which is needed to get into restaurants or movies or museums. There were 14,000 people protesting in Paris at four different locations with 3,000 police officers mobilized to control the crowds.

This is the third weekend in a row with massive protests. Last week there were 161,000 across the country with 11,000 in Paris alone.

7/31/21 – The Local – In Pictures: over 200,000 people protest against health Pass in France – Ministry of the Interior reports there were protests at 184 locations.

Lots of pictures of big crowds in the article.

8/2/21 – The Guardian – Hundreds arrested in Berlin protests against Covid restrictions – The government of Germany does not allow protests against Covid restrictions, according to the article. Regardless, there were 13 protests around Berlin on 8/1.

Police used pepper spray, truncheons, water cannon, and armored vehicle to break up crowds. Over 600 people were arrested.

Over five million bucks.

That is how much money state and county officials have taken from California taxpayers. Why did they need to take that much money out of our pockets?

Because they can’t read the constitution and thus decided that churches and religious faith are not essential. Due to their lack of reading comprehension they ordered all churches in the state to close their doors.

The Supreme Court found said reading failure to be a flagrant violation of the free exercise clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Thus the state and various counties are starting to reimburse churches for their legal costs.

How much?

Turns out there are even more settlements for religious freedom civil rights violations in California than I have yet covered.

Current tally is over $5 million reimbursement for legal fees in 11 settlements, 8 of which are for repressing free expression of religion. One settlement did not have any dollars attached.

In addition, the state has spent $9.5 million in an effort to defend its willful violation of civil rights.

We taxpayers are starting to see how much it will cost us for our state and county officials’ efforts to suppress religion by trying to negate the free exercise clause of the First Amendment.

Two more settlements with local churches were announced this week, Grace Community Church will receive $800,000 for their legal fees and another $500,000 to Cross Culture Christian Center and Cornerstone Church for their legal fees.

Grace Community Church

8/31/21 – The Roys Report – California & LA County to Pay $400K Each in Settlement with John MacArthur’s Church – Taxpayers in the County of Los Angeles will chip in $400,000 and all of us taxpayers in the State of California will hand over another $400,000 to settle lawsuit filed by Grace Community Church against the county over efforts to remove the church’s First Amendment rights to worship. The church has been involved in a long-running legal fight with the county over the county’s efforts to shut down worship, or in the alternative to impose restrictions so severe as to be impossible to worship.

The overlords in Australia, the ruling caste, has gone nuts.

Here’s the long explanation to support that one sentence summary of what’s happening in the country:

They are serious about ‘your papers please.”

8/23/21 – American Thinker – Australia has gone stark, raving mad – New South Wales state which includes Sydney, the largest city in the country, has had a mere 12,588 cases since this past February. For population of 5,200,000 that is a mere 237 cases per 100,000 since February.

In contrast, the United States has had 2,948 cases per 100,000 and California has expienced 1,814 cases per 100K since the end of February.

Because of that horrendous, catastrophic outbreak of Covid-19, the state has imposed a near martial law lockdown. People may only leave their home to go directly to work, grocery shopping, or get medical treatment. I have read elsewhere that if you engage in window shopping on the way to pick up groceries, you will be cited and fined.

In Canberra, the capital, the goal of the lockdown is to completely eliminate the virus. When there are zero infections people be allowed out of lockdown. Zero infections.

It doesn’t stop there.

Two years ago it would have been stupid, preposterous, outlandish, tin-foil-hat-wearing, coocoo-bird-crazy to even suggest we could get to the place of needing internal passports in the United States.

Your papers please.

• German: Bitte deine Papiere.
• Russian: vashi dokumenty, pozhaluysta
• English: Your papers please.

On the off chance you missed the implications, the phrase “your papers please” was used in Nazi Germany and communist Soviet Union by those dictatorial governments to check whether people were allowed to be where they were.

Internal passports were needed to move around the country.

Official papers had to be produced upon demand, at any time, even in your own neighborhood.

Sliding down the slippery slope to “your papers please.”