Life in Centrifugal USA

Life in Centrifugal USA By Clarice Feldman for American Thinker

I may be more distraught than usual as I’m dealing with the illness of a beloved pet, but I think even if I were not I’d have to acknowledge that in the absence of any rational leadership things quickly are spinning apart here.

Even in the best, most efficient emergency room in the capital wait times to be seen — something that rarely took more than half an hour — now stretch to five hours. The stress of long hours and the vaccine mandate have caused many experienced nurses and technicians to quit and newer replacements take time to train, especially in the absence of more senior staff to do this.  Veterinary hospitals as well are overwhelmed and understaffed. It’s not just here. I’m getting reports of medical care bottlenecks around the country — at least in big cities or nearby adjoining areas, and the reports blame staffing shortages — shortages largely due to vaccine mandates and job stress.

Grocery shelves are often empty in many parts of the country. We’re back to limits at some shops on essentials like water and paper goods, and building supply deliveries are unpredictable and delayed. Container ships line up at our ports with no means to unload and transport the goods where they are wanted. (I keep having daydreams of General Patton unclogging a similar wartime bottleneck by standing in the middle of the road and personally directing movement.) There are various explanations for the shipping snafus, and I don’t feel qualified to decide which of these is responsible. I have heard that the operators of the equipment are highly skilled and highly paid workers and are not easily replaced by, for example, military or National Guard troops. An engineer familiar with such things, says that is not true. The Wall Street Journal tweeted that “A pilot program offering 24-hour container operations at the Port of Long Beach hasn’t attracted any truckers more than two weeks since the extended hours began.”  But a trucker there reported to a friend that the drivers aren’t coming because they do not get paid for loiter time and because the ports are not operating efficiently. Drivers may have to wait 12 hours to pick up a load. To make it even more complicated, many of the containers are reportedly “intermodal” which means the transfers need to be coordinated not only with the pickup but as well with the delivery at the other end. With truck drivers limited by federal standards to 11-hour workdays and a shortage of drivers, the problem — which impacts almost everything — seems to be getting worse. What matters to me is that there appears to be no federal office or officer with the capacity or will to help straighten out this logistical mess, a mess that to me does not seem utterly unsolvable with competent leadership.

Are port authorities angling for a match to the $11 billion bailout the Gulf ports got for their hurricanes?

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