Other stuff

Evaporating freedom, Australia edition. A good, but not yet final, solution.

Australia has a special camp for forced quarantines. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

A year ago you would have been considered crazy, cuckoo, one of those tin foil-hat-wearing-nut-jobs if you had been so irresponsible as to suggest what is described in the next two articles could ever, ever happen.

A year after such predictions would have been laughed at, the Australian government is sending out the military to forcibly relocate people into a “quarantine camp” with fences and barbed wire.

The untried, unconvicted, and unsentenced crime? Testing positive for Covid.

The military is also forcibly relocating anyone who is in “close contact” with someone who tested positive for Covid.

Yeah, that is really happening.

Quarantine camps. Forcible relocation.

(Side note – I should have posted this yesterday, before the we’re-all-gonna’-die Omicron variant generated closing of borders and shutting of air travel. Had best post it before Monday morning because by then we might learn the loss of freedom in Australia is old news.)

Zero hedge – 11/23/21 – Australian Army Begins Transferring Covid-Positive Cases, Contacts to Quarantine Camps – The Army has started forcibly transporting people from the Northern Territories to a quarantine camp which the government has built in Darwin.

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Jim Ulvog

More bad news on the health front.

Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

The bad news just keeps rolling in regarding the Covid pandemic, or perhaps we should now refer to it as endemic. It’s beginning to look like there’s not a whole lot we can do to stop or even slow the pandemic. We continue to see reports showing horrible side effects of the economic and social shutdown.

For your consideration:

  • There have now been more deaths coded to a Covid cause in 2021 than in 2020. Keep in mind this is with widespread vaccinations.
  • An actual scientist with experience developing vaccines points out that it is almost expected that we will see situations like in Gibraltar there there is an extraordinarily high vaccination rate and simultaneously an extraordinarily high infection rate.
  • The number of deaths from drug overdoses has skyrocketed since early 2020. Hmm.  What could have caused that? Is there something that happened in, oh, say March 2020 that might have led increasing number of people to abuse drugs?

There have now been more Covid deaths in 2021 with widespread vaccination than in 2020 without any vaccinations. 

On 11/22/22 the John Hopkins database reports 771,118 deaths from coronavirus.

On 11/22/21 the CDC reports the following death tally of “all deaths involving Covid-19.” This category is defined as “Deaths with confirmed or presumed Covid 19, coded to ICD-10 code U07.1.” Their account:

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Jim Ulvog

More flaming hypocrisy from our ruling caste. More protests around the world.

Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

The list of high visibility public officials who do not feel the need to lower themselves to follow the rules mandatory for you and me just keeps growing.

For yet another weekend, protests were taking place around the world against mandatory vaccinations, useless lockdowns, and the Bitte Deine Papier (your papers please) vaccination passports.

News reports for today:

  • President of American Federation of Teachers blows off mask requirement during panel discussion. Oh, Sen. Schumer boogies the night away sans mask even though legal diktat requires it.
  • Two reports on protests across Europe.

The Epoch Times – 11/7/21 – Teacher’s Union Head Apologizes for Note Wearing Mask Indoors, Says People Has a “Hard Time Hearing” – The president of the American Federation of Teachers Randi Weingarten spoke at a conference in Puerto Rico without a mask. Other speakers were are also maskless.

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Jim Ulvog

Supply chain disruptions not getting better anytime soon.

Cargo container on chassis pulled by big rig truck. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

String of articles are pointing at disruptions in the supply chain continuing well into 2022 or possibly 2023.

A few of said articles discussed below:

  • Tally of ships off the Long Beach and Los Angeles ports rises to record of 111.
  • Experienced truck driver describes how every step of the trucking part of the supply chain is tangled up, from extra wait getting into the port all the way to several hours waiting to drop cargo at warehouses.
  • Disruption of chip supply expected to last until sometime in 2023.

Do please keep in mind this is due to the hubris of government officials thinking an economy can be turned off and on light a light switch and also flooding the economy with several trillion dollars without any corresponding increase in output.

Washington Free Beacon – 11/10/21 – Record Number of Ships Stranded Outside California Ports – Article sites Business Insider as saying there are 111 ships waiting to unload at Los Angeles and Long Beach ports as of 11/9/21. This backlog is new high from previous record of 108 ships on 10/21/21.

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Jim Ulvog

More reports on the devastation caused by the social and economic shutdown.

Illustration of what happened to average earnings of working poor because of the economic lockdowns. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

Reports keep rolling in on the destruction caused by governmental orders to shut down the economy, our educational system, and large portions of society.

My prediction is we will continue to these reports for the next five or 10 years,

Merely two of recent articles:

  • Excess deaths are identifiable for people who had mental health struggles.
  • Harvard study shows lockdowns seriously hurt earnings of poor folk while rich folk were earning more money.

Lockdowns killed people with mental health struggles.

Medical Express – 10/8/21 – Excess deaths in people with mental health conditions increased during the Covid-19 pandemic– The lockdowns and other actions taken during the pandemic killed a significant number of people with mental health trouble.

Let me say it again – The shutdowns killed people who were already struggling with mental health problems.

A concept we all need to learn about is something called “excess deaths.”

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Jim Ulvog

Growing resistance to involuntary vaccinations.

Burning building in thick smoke. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

There is growing resistance to forced, involuntary vaccinations.  The most noticable part of the vaccine hesitancy is amongst people who are otherwise happy to receive vaccinations.

We need to be careful on how we proceed.  There is danger ahead.

This post continues the discussion of intentional government policies which have the unintended consequence of creating further strain on the economy and the entire supply chain.

Two more of many recent articles pointing to the risks:

  • Only 55% of firetrucks in New York City were available for dispatch last week,
  • Protestors against force vaccinations tell of willingly getting fired, loosing annual bonuses, or waiting to get fired in next few days.
  • Large number of parents in California kept their children at home on 10/18/21 to protest mandatory vaccination of little children.
  • Large protest in Los Angeles against city requirement for all city employees to be vaccinated.

One has to wonder why so many health care workers are refusing the vaccination.

We as a country are willfully headed for a disaster.

The Epoch Times – 11/5/21 – NYC Firetruck Availability Down to 55 Percent, Manpower Shortages Due to Vaccine Mandate: NY Firefighters – Couple weeks ago or so I read a report that 20% of the fire stations in New York City were closed because of a shortage of firefighters.

Last week, only 55% of firetrucks were available for dispatch because of staffing shortages.

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Jim Ulvog

Just how much money has the Federal Reserve created out of thin air and injected into the economy?

Got to wondering how much money the Fed has created out of thin air and then pumped into the economy.  The answer is a vague “bunches and bunches.”

How do I know that? Because of my reading over the last few years. I pay attention to such stories (yeah, yeah, I know – I’m weird – pray for me as you feel led). I also am aware the Fed pumped a lot of money into the economy when the pandemic started.

There have been lots of news reports commenting they have been pumping something in the range of $100 billion a month into the economy after their initial round.

As I was thinking about things the federal, state, and local government have been doing to harm the economy, got to wondering just exactly how much fiat money the Fed has been creating, out of thin air of course. Yeah, I wonder about such things.

Answer is again bunches and bunches, and is measured in trillions of dollars.

Graph above shows the amount of total assets on the Federal Reserves balance sheet since around 2003.

Wow.

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Jim Ulvog

About that new vaccination mandate for the private sector…

Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

The promised vaccine mandate for private companies with 100 or more employees were published on 11/4/21.

The federal diktat applies to private-sector employers with 100 or more employees. Companies have to verify employees have been fully vaccinated or require a weekly negative test. In addition anyone not vaccinated will have to wear a mask at work.

The vaccinate-or-test requirement goes into effect 1/4/22, two months from now.

Oh yeah, that mask requirement for the unvaccinated goes into effect 12/5/21, a month from now.

Separate federal diktats applied to federal employees, any company with a federal contract (think airlines, trucking companies, defense contractors), and any health facility with billings to either Medicare or Medicaid program.

Newest rules catch another 84 million people the mandatory vaccinate-or-else requirement.

News flash:  The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a temporary injunction against the rules on 11/6/21.This circuit covers Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Utah. The ruling cited “grave statutory and constitutional issues.”  Brief coverage from Investing on 11/6/21:  U.S. federal appeals court freezes Biden’s vaccine rule for companies.

Background on the rules and then the beginning points of issues with the requirements.

Wall Street Journal – 11/5/21 – OSHA Covid-19 Vaccine Mandate: What to Know –

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Jim Ulvog

Deliberate policies which compound supply chain issues.

Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

This is start of what will be a series of posts describing steps taken by federal, state, and local officials to compound the supply chain problem we are experiencing. Other policies, deliberately imposed, have the foreseeable consequence of being a drag on the economy. There are lots of recent articles pointing out policies, intentional policies by supposedly intelligent bureaucrats, which have the effect of making it more difficult to get things done.

A few policies that come to mind:

  • Tax on every container not pulled by a zero-emission truck.
  • Only a fraction of the trucks in the country allowed to pick up a container in California.
  • Owner/operators not allowed at the ports.
  • Fines on shipping companies who can’t get their containers out of the port because of congestion in the supply chain.

Additional tax on non-zero-emission trucks picking up cargo

Port Technology – 11/5/21 – Port of Los Angeles accelerates zero-emissions truck efforts – The Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissions approved a requirement for trucks picking up cargo at either Long Beach or Los Angeles ports to be zero emission starting 4/1/22. Or else.

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Jim Ulvog

Harsh enforcement of Covid rules against restaurants has begun. And of course, the rules don’t apply to the elites. Protests are underway around the world.

Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

Three topics in this post:

  • The ‘papers please’ enforcement efforts are getting serious. The first restaurants are now getting shuttered in California.
  • Another group of elitist ruling overlords ignoring the rules.
  • Protests are running across the planet against restrictions which prohibit living your life.

One restaurant refuses to become law enforcement enforcers

Before you read my description of this article, consider a comment I read the other day from someone who had visited New York recently. There is a mandatory requirement that all restaurants provide police-level enforcement of the vaccination requirement by checking vaccination and ID of every customer before they enter a restaurant.

This person observed that the staff assign responsibility for screening took a brief glance at whatever was presented to them and waved people in. This means enforcement is light. Restaurants there cannot afford to turn away customers (other, several report their income is down 50% to 60%) and cannot take the time to do a serious check of every single customer that ever enters the restaurant. Essentially the enforcement is quite lax, based on this person’s observations.

The Highwire – 10/18/21 – San Francisco closes In-and-out Burger After Defying City’s Vaxxing Rule – Because In-N-Out Burger allegedly would not check vaccination documents and compare them to photo ID and physically bar entrance by anyone who is not completely vaccinated at one particular restaurant in San Francisco, the county Department of Health issued an order to close the restaurant.

In a published comment, the Chief Legal & Business Officer of the restaurants chain defiantly said:

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Jim Ulvog

Labor shortage about to get worse for hospitals, police and fire departments. Also any company with over 100 employees.

Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

As you read the following articles, keep in mind the LA County Sheriff and the Riverside County Sheriff have both said they will not enforce any vaccination mandate for their staff. In addition, the Chicago police union is in court trying to get and order to prohibit the vaccination dictat.  Officers who are not in full compliance have been pulled off patrol.

Imminent problems:

  • There are widespread firings on near-term horizon for police officers, firefighters, and hospital workers.
  • 90% of companies with over 100 employees expect to lose staff from their already understaffed organizations because of vaccination mandates.

Chronicles Magazine – 10/18/21 – The Impending Mass Firing of America’s Unvaccinated – In the midst of an existing shortage of workers and a labor force participation rate that has come close to recovering from the government-imposed recession, there is soon to be another major problem hit the economy: the pending firing of large numbers of people who refuse to get vaccinated or for whom employers refuse to provide any exemptions.

The massive hit to employment is likely to hit police, firefighters, doctors, and nurses particularly hard. The resulting, fully expected consequence will be deterioration in public services.

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Jim Ulvog

You cannot turn an economy off, then turn it back on. Here are the results when hubris makes you think you found the magic switch. Part 3.

Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

The supply chain for so many of the things we buy is messed up at every step of the logistics system. Former CEO of Walmart pointed out the steps in the supply chain that are tangled up:

  • Loading ships at ports in Asia.
  • Ships are stuck in the water waiting to unload.
  • Unloading at ports in the US is another chokepoint.
  • There are not enough truck drivers.
  • Not enough labor and the various points in the distribution system inside the United States.
  • Shortage of people to put stuff on the shelves.

Essentially every stage of the distribution channel is tangled up. Biggest thing that could be done to get things moving normally would be more people to work at every step of the distribution system. Labor shortages, in other words.

This post discusses two articles:

  • California has imposed restrictions on trucking which has drastically reduced the number of trucks which can be operated in the state.
  • One article provides us a survey of a dozen other articles, each of which describes a different aspect of the supply chain disaster.

Part one of this series can be read here. Part two here.

The Last Refuge – 10/14/21 – The California Version of The Green New Deal and an October 16, 2020, EPA Settlement With Transportation is What’s Creating The Container Shipping Backlog – Working CA Ports 24/7 Will Not Help, Here’s Why – Author spent three days researching reasons for the backlog of containers here in California. Checking resources, researching details, and other research showed some surprising things.

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Jim Ulvog

This week’s round of flaming hypocrisy from public officials.

Image courtesy of Adobe Stock?

Without even trying to find such news reports, examples keep jumping out which show senior politicians, health officials, and sundry members of the elite caste ignoring the rules you and I must follow. The examples just don’t stop.

The most recent illustrations from the California governor, New Jersey governor, and New Jersey Attorney General are discussed below.

Following is a list of my previous discussions on the ever-expanding list of senior officials who don’t bother to follow the rules they imposed.

Another post published a moment ago asks the question whether these officials really believe the rules they dictate are even required.

California Governor

Yahoo! News – 10/9/21 – Gavin Newsom’s daughter not yet vaccinated as implement sweeping mandate – California has now imposed a mandatory requirement that all students in public and private schools be vaccinated against Covid-19. The diktat was announced for children 12 through 15 as soon as the FDA gave approval for the Pfizer medicine.

The governor has not had his daughter, who turned 12 recently, vaccinated yet. Does he lead by example? Does he comply with the requirement? Not yet.

The second reason is that she has

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Jim Ulvog

Instead of being just flaming hypocrites, perhaps our “leaders” don’t really believe Covid restrictions are needed.

Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

Let’s picture a situation where politicians and public health officials believe eating seedless grapes is dangerous, will make a tremendously large number of people horribly sick, and will inevitably kill lots of people.

Let’s pretend that grape-sickness is so dangerous that even inhaling trace amounts of grape-breath from other people will make you terribly sick, with a frightening chance grape-breath will kill you.

Let’s picture said politicians and public health officials banning seedless grapes and insisting that none of us ever eat them again because they are so terribly dangerous.

Now let’s picture dozens of those politicians and public health officials being photographed and video recorded eating seedless grapes.

And breathing on each other.

In public.

With cameras rolling.

Knowing they are being recorded.

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Jim Ulvog

You cannot turn an economy off, then turn it back on. Here are the results when hubris makes you think you found the magic switch. Part 2.

Modern Cargo container ship giving an idea of the amount of cargo that can be carried. Each of those containers is one semi-load on the freeway. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

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.

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Jim Ulvog