Gutspread Panic
“I will cripple you” hits right between the eyes—er, thighs.
Good jobs for good pay: Ain’t Life Grand. The stevedores have come to terms with the longshoremen and both will be back at the docks today. I, for one, am in quite a celebratory mood, not because my livelihood revolves around loading and unloading ships, but because the Great Toilet Paper Rush is now suspended until after the election.
The unionized dockworkers were out less than a week, with their (rumored to be mob-connected) chief negotiator coming out with just the right message, one you’d expect from the late Tony Soprano: “I will cripple you.” Four words, right to the point. Harold Daggett has been president of the International Longshoremen’s Association (a name that itself sounds like it came right from the Outfit) since 2011. He makes $728,000—give or take—which works out to $350 per hour. That’s about the hourly rate for a senior auditor or a middlin’ EEOC case lawyer (the really good ones charge $500-plus).
Daggett has earned every dime of his salary. He got his workers a 62 percent raise—in excess of the 50 percent everyone was choking on, because everyone on the Internet has become a labor expert in the past week. And…he got the port companies to delay his little strike to January 15th, after the election, and before whoever wins that festival of democracy is installed in the White House. (Then again, if Kamala Harris wins on the first Tuesday in November, I’d expect President Joe Biden to have moved out by Friday, yielding to his courtier and queen-in-waiting.)
Though the work fate of dockworkers is now secure for another two-plus months, that’s only incidental to what I want to talk about. It’s much more interesting to me to observe the raw panic the public exhibited, both from Daggett’s “cripple” threat, and from the government’s laissez-faire answer.
First: toilet paper. Geez, people. I asked ChatGPT the question of where Americans get our toilet paper, knowing the answer. I generally ask AIs questions to which I know—or strongly suspect—the answer because they are frequently wrong. (I asked ChatGPT this morning who won the Falcons-Bucs game last night because the Bucs were leading by 3 when I went to bed in the third quarter; it gave me last year’s score. The Falcons won by 6 in overtime, I found out when I scolded the AI for being stupid.)
ME: New question. How much toilet paper sold in America is imported from overseas?
ChatGPT (I call it “Mike”): Approximately 95% of the toilet paper used in the United States is manufactured domestically, meaning only about 5% is imported from overseas. The primary import sources include Canada, Mexico, and China, with Canada being the largest supplier. While the U.S. does import some of the raw materials, such as eucalyptus and bamboo fibers, for toilet paper production, most of the finished product is produced within the country
People, if you’re going to hoard in the grocery store aisle, please do yourself the favor of hoarding something that’s actually in danger of being scarce. Otherwise, you’re just being stupid herds of panicked lemmings. If you’re going to hoard, hoard air conditioner parts, or vacuum tubes (I know someone who owns a vast collection of them, and that’s good because mostly you can only get them in Russia these days).
But “I will cripple you” hits right between the eyes—er, thighs. People freeze in panic when they believe they won’t be able to get things they need. In Georgia, this is always the same items: eggs, milk, bread, and toilet paper. If it’s about to snow, you’ll see those things evaporate from the aisles like dry ice in the sun. It’s almost reflexive, like Republicans stocking up on ammunition and high-capacity magazines when a Democrat is about to get elected to the White House. It’s good that Kamala Harris has said if you break into her house, you’ll be shot. At least one Democrat (and Tim Walz, too) has the sense to keep guns around and know how to use them.
As presidents go, I don’t know how many were proficient with firearms. It would be a good question for someone like Mr. Beat. I am certain Joe Biden is not a gun guy. I am also certain Donald Trump is similarly someone who couldn’t fulfill the “shoot someone on Fifth Avenue” meme he concocted because he wouldn’t know how to disengage the safety, or properly load a revolver, or aim one, or hit anything he was aiming at. So we’re safe from those two old men. I can sleep better at night.
Trump is still a convict.
Where was I? It’s an awesome negotiating strategy to invoke panic upon people who most care about the thing you are negotiating to do on your part. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it’s stupid: like threatening the cop who pulls you over for speeding by telling him you’ll have his badge and flashing the mayor’s contact in your phone in his face. Try it sometime and see where you end up.
As for not panicking, I have to give kudos to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for his response to the dockworkers strike. DeSantis ordered the National Guard to keep the ports open, since his state was in an emergency following Hurricane Helene. Good move, Florida Man. If only California Gov. Gavin Newsom had picked up the phone when DeSantis called to give him a clue. But Newsom didn’t panic either, he simply did nothing, because doing anything could potentially hurt the Harris campaign.
I don’t have any statistics on this—and I don’t have time to put in the work unless you pay me $350 an hour—but I believe the ILA gives generally to Democrats. I also believe many of the ILA’s members give to Donald Trump, who wants to charge giant tariffs to keep their jobs from being taken by cat-eating Haitians. It’s a conflict that someone like Harold Daggett would rather avoid, and the port executives are also happy to kick down the road.
The fact is, most dockworkers do not make as much—let alone more—than doctors. The average doctor who has completed residency makes in excess of $200,000 a year. The average dockworker, outside of Long Beach, makes around $25 per hour, which is $52,000 a year before overtime and benefits. Over a number of years, the dockworkers who are left after the coming layoffs (“those jobs are not coming back”) will end up making around $84,000, but that will require technical skills and years in the industry (called “seniority”).
Our ports will eventually have to introduce more automation. That in itself isn’t great news, since many of the automation equipment comes from—you guessed it—China. And some of it has “backdoor” access by the CCP. Isn’t that comforting? The workers who are about to lose their jobs will be replaced by computers and software that can allow the Chinese communists to conduct surveillance on our ports. Maybe we’re better off with Daggett’s “cripple” threat than Chinese port efficiency? You be the judge.
I was going to talk about Jack Smith’s unsealing of the most unsurprising October revelation—that Trump “turned to crime”—but I have run out of time this morning. In a nutshell, my thoughts are that Smith & Crew might think they need to put this out there because they’re not confident Trump will lose in November. Or they might think it will move the needle ever so slightly. But nothing in that “stunning” new evidence is stunning, or new. I read Liz Cheney’s book. It’s pretty much all in there. The fact that aides heard Trump say “so what” when informed that Mike Pence was moved to a secure location is not in any way surprising. If you are surprised by it, you’re a rare bird.
Perhaps, there are so few voters left to motivate, that Trump’s campaign, and Elon Musk, will mine the mental health inpatient clinics and 4Chan to sway people who think the Jew-run weather-control space lasers are being trained on innocent American pets, before they’re eaten by Haitian witch-doctors. Then again, the Harris campaign, frozen in panic, might get to them first, substituting hook-nosed Israeli oppressors for the Haitians.
In any case, Trump is still a felon, and he very well might be the first felon in the White House. If Harris wins, her husband certainly won’t be the first woman-abuser in that house—if the allegations are true, or even credible.
As David Thornton, or any instructor pilot, will tell you: never panic. Panic kills. But if you’re a dockworker, widespread panic and a run on toilet paper is your best friend today.
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After reading the above column, one might suggest the writer has become a cynic or perhaps even captured and replaced by AI.
Notes to whomever wrote the above:
- The West Coast longshoreman have a different union which signed a new contract in 2022. The ports on the West Coast weren't under a strike threat.
- it was Judge Chutkan that unsealed the filing, not Jack Smith.