EDITOR:

Everyone knows about the supply chain problems. If you don’t, then go back to your Tik Tok or Instagram or You Tube. Just today, it was announced that the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are going to work 24 hours a day. I thought that the reason they were giving for the backlog of ships was that there was a worker shortage and they couldn’t get enough people to unload. If there was a worker shortage then who is going to handle the job 24 hours a day? So, it leads to question what the truth is, or was.

So, today there are some 50 container ships off-shore in Long Beach. According to NBC, it takes about two days to unload one ship. Do the math. Another three and a half months with more coming daily.

Why did anyone allow this to happen. There were ways to avert this problem. The simplest would have been to open it up to 24 hours a day a long, long time ago. But, they didn’t have enough workers? Then they should have activated the military. The National Guard is qualified to do just about everything a longshoreman can do. The Navy is trained in dealing with, wait for it, ships. The Army has healthy, able-bodied troops that could have assisted in any other way.

Problem 2, truck drivers. Again, the military was there. There are how many military installations in that area? The truck drivers would have no problem if another couple of hundred drivers showed up.

Somebody dropped the ball here. Quite a few balls were dropped. I first heard about this problem back in early summer when there were only 30 ships off-shore.

I am reminded of the gas “shortages” back in the 1970s. We had to shut our gas station down when we reached our daily allocation. At the same time, 60 Minutes was doing a story about the dozens of tankers off-shore that were unable to unload their crude oil. Its too bad that the generation of 60 Minutes from the 70s doesn’t exist today. I can’t help but wonder if there are people behind the scenes that are orchestrating this backlog of ships.

At least we still make toilet paper in the U.S. For now!

Thomas Grant

Escanaba