A Shit Year and The Law of Unintended Consequences.

What a fucked up year!

We started the year with a worldwide pandemic courtesy of China. I normally spend my birthday, March 1, in Modoc county killing ground squirrels. This year I went up for my birthday weekend by myself. Susan was working, teaching school at a local charter school. the weather was bad and I came home on March 1. Sunday night, I began to get sick with a respiratory infection of some kind. It lasted a couple of weeks. By the time I was feeling like going back, COVID-19 had caused us to have to “shelter in place” Susan’s school closed up and the finished the term trying to remotely teach using the internet. I was able to continue most everything I was doing, as I mostly work by myself. The one big casualty was the loss of all of my golf cart rentals for the entire year. No shows or festivals are allowed. Also, no bars, no restaurants, no fun for anybody!

Up until the state government’s COVID response virtually destroyed the most robust US economy in history, I was confident that President Trump would get another term, and we would not have to hand this country back to an even more socialist democrat party in November. Now, with the main stream media blatantly biased against everything Trump, I am not so sure anymore. The left lies about everything and the media swears to it and covers no dissenting opinions. Unless you pay some attention to Fox News, you don't get anything except “Orange Man Bad”, America Bad, and only black lives matter. The riots we see on tv are “peaceful protests”. Just pissing on our legs and telling us it is raining.

Today we are hearing the quotes from their convention. Nothing about their vision for a hurting country, except they want Trump out and they don’t care what they have to do to that end. Nothing they say has to be true, it just has to hurt Trump. That has been their sole objective for four years. The media repeats it all and they will not cover the conservative response. I still hold out hope that the whole world has not gone crazy, and there are still enough right thinking Americans to defeat this democrat insanity. We have to get every conservative out to vote in November. We have to do it because it is probably the most important vote in our lifetimes.

Piled on top of COVID and the Democrat party waging a civil war, we have a terribly damaged economy. Many Americans are un or under employed because of draconian measures designed to save us from a two week bout with a flu-like disease that we are probably going to get anyway. In fact many of us may have already had it before we knew what it was. Much of the damage Is being done by liberal governors who know the longer they can keep the economy in Shambles, the more damage they and the media can inflict on Trump by blaming him for the problems with no regard for the truth.

Now, the new school term has started. Our governor says no schools can open. Just distance learning. What the fuck is that? Kids stay home, log in to a virtual classroom and sit there for 4 hours? Does anyone think that will work without a teacher or parent in the room? So working parents are left with the choice of quitting work, or taking their kids to work with them, so they can manage their kids and their ridiculous little chromebooks. How efficient can businesses operate when their workers are running back and forth to the broom closet to help their first grader operate their shiny new chromebook for 4 hours a day.

Remember the “law of unintended consequences”? Many business like mine depend on high speed internet to function. At eight every morning, thousands if kids are firing up their chromebooks and logging on to the internet. Did anybody consider whether there would be band width left for business? I think not. My Internet connections are almost unworkable from 8 until noon. So kids are stuck at home, keeping parents from working, and sucking up all of the internet band width the rest of us need. What a great idea!

My business depends on band width, warehouses, and delivery companies. My partner warehouses have been strapped with state orders that restrict the number of employees that can be in the facilities. Some have had to reduce staff to 10% of what they had pre COVID. That means that if we have bandwidth to place the order, it is taking 6 to 8 days for the warehouse to pull the parts, pack them, and get them to the shippers. The packages go into trucks that have to travel on our highway system. COVID restrictions don’t allow truck stops to serve meals, or offer necessary services like showers. COVID, electronic logbooks and lack of services for our truckers are slowing everything down.

Closure of non-essential businesses have resulted in internet retailers like Walmart and Amazon to prosper, while non-essential retailers are dropping like flies. This change In behavior has caused shipping companies to be overloaded. Our current shipping cycle time is way up. No bandwidth to order it, no workers to pack the boxes, and not enough trucks and delivery vans to get orders delivered on time. I am an Amazon Prime member. They have found ways to perform better than any of my warehouse partners, but it is becoming less and less common to get Prime shipments the next day like we did pre COVID.

Now, this week it is hotter than hell, and the fucking state is on fire. At least nobody is blaming that on Trump. Not yet anyway.