Author: Kim du Toit

Leaving Us Alone

Business, Gummint

With all the crisis talk and “We’re all gonna diiiieeeee!”  and “Gummint must do something!”  nonsense, there’s still more proof (as if we needed it) that most of America made the right choice back in 2016 by electing God-Emperor Trump.  Here’s why:

President Donald Trump did something difficult and remarkable during the White House press briefing on Sunday: he stood up for the free market in a moment of crisis, when at least half the country is pushing him to abandon it.
A reporter asked the president why he was not using the Defense Production Act to nationalize industries to take control of companies and force them to produce needed health care equipment for treating coronavirus patients.
Trump’s answer was that the United States does not believe in nationalization, and does not need it, either.

…and he goes on to give examples.

You know, I have always preferred that our presidents have executive political experience — e.g. a state governorship (despite Jimmeh Carduh) — but of late I’m starting to revise that opinion.

I realize that Trump is quite an aberration — he’s something of an iconoclast, and not all businessmen are in his mold — but I have to tell you that I’m starting to think that we need to elect, or at least give serious consideration to presidential candidates who have made their way in successful businesses.  (I’m not talking about CEOs of corporations, necessarily, because they’re often no better than the stultified politician type.)

Can anyone imagine where we as a nation would be now had we elected Her Filthiness as POTUS instead of DJT?  There’d be a Virus Czar, a Nationalization Czar, a Facemask Czar and countless other “czars”, all equally incompetent and ineffective — and you’d better believe that we would now be in the death-grip [sic] of a UK/EU-style NHS (which, from all accounts, is proving absolutely incompetent to handle this current emergency).

We dodged a bullet back then, folks;  and we now need to do two things:

  • re-elect Trump in 2020, and
  • make sure that his successor in 2024 is of the same steel and beliefs, so that all his good work is not undone by some Hillary/Biden/Bernie clone in the future.

Otherwise:

Not to mention at least one  other charming situation:

Doing The Right Thing

Business

This from the CEO of Kroger Co. to his embattled employees:

“This is a situation none of us have ever been in, and at a time when our customers and our country truly need us, you are there every step of the way. None of this would be possible without each and every one of you, working together as one. It’s so inspiring. I can’t thank you enough for your dedication to our customers and each other. You inspire me, it is so impressive.”

And then to add real appreciation to his words, he’s awarded bonuses to all of them.

Bravo.

As an aside:  Daughter’s future hubby is a store manager for another grocery chain, and over the past month all store employees have been told, “Don’t worry about the hours;  you come to work, work as long as you can, and we’ll pay the overtime, regardless.”

Poor guy has had about six hours’ sleep ever since.  Daughter is a stern task master.

Flashback

Business, Disaster

Britain starts to panic:

A food policy expert has warned a food disaster could be imminent unless the Government implements rationing. Tim Lang, professor of food policy at City University in London, has written a letter to Boris Johnson asking him to ‘initiate a health-based food rationing scheme to see the country through this crisis’.
He wrote to the Prime Minister ‘out of immediate concern about the emerging food crisis’ and in the letter described public messaging about food supply as ‘weak and unconvincing’.
His warning comes after shoppers across the country have been met with empty shelves as panic-buying takes hold.

Back when I was running a now-defunct supermarket chain’s loyalty program in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and New Hampshire (Grand Union, if anyone out there remembers them), we had a common problem with “hot” items.

Often, our buyers got such good deals from manufacturers from bulk orders that our shelf retail prices were better than the wholesale price offered by distributors to local grocery stores and bodegas.  So the small-store owners would descend on our supermarkets and buy up all the sale items, to resell them in their own stores.  Nothing wrong with that, of course — except that it took stock away from our “regular” loyal customers, who typically accounted for 70% of total sales and close to 90% of gross profit.

So I put an end to all that.  Whenever the buyers told me about their hot price discounts (which they had to, as I was also in charge of Advertising), I would do two things:  make the low price available to loyalty card holders only, and then limit the number of items at that price to two or three per day per card.  Result:  we sold the same amount of product, only it was spread across a larger number of customers.

And I designed a sub-system for item purchase limits that automatically instituted the policy whenever the daily sales rate started accelerating past a certain velocity.  So if there were storm warnings and people started to stock up on, say, batteries, the in-store stock was quite- or nearly sufficient and would-be profiteers couldn’t play their reindeer games.

I did all this, by the way, back in the mid-1990s, so it’s not like it’s a new situation.

As I look now at the panic-buying of toilet paper and hand sanitizers, and the resulting empty shelves thereof, I can’t help wondering why all grocery stores haven’t been doing that now.  I know that not all chains (Wal-Mart especially) have loyalty programs, but most of the big ones do.  Doesn’t say much for their planning, does it?

And by the way, there’s also an answer for chains who don’t  have loyalty programs:  just institute price escalation (instead of -reduction) for multiple purchases:  first two items, $1.99 each, third or more items, $8.99 each.  With today’s technology, the software change should take about an hour to implement.

Food logistics is not something government should get involved in, despite the frantic appeals of “food policy” professors.

Unnecessary Protection

Elections, The Gun Thing

I see that despite his support for MOAR Gun Control, Doddering Joe Biden has decided to surround himself with armed Secret Service agents, exactly like his erstwhile boss did:

Now that’s all very well, but unless there are a few disgruntled Bernie Bros around, I cannot see any danger whatsoever coming in Biden’s direction — certainly not from the Usual Suspects (e.g. the Beer ‘n Treason Crowd, which meets informally in country bars and gun shops all over the U.S.), and certainly not from any other conservatives in this  election season.

I know that there’s considerable irony — not to mention hypocrisy — in arming your bodyguards with all the guns you want to ban from private ownership, but having no social conscience to speak of, socialists are largely immune from guilt or indeed irony.

What I think should happen is that Biden should limit his security detail to carrying only the type of guns the old fart once suggested are  okay — double-barreled shotguns — just as a token gesture on his part.

Don’t hold your breath.

Timely Warning

Disaster

From a buddy:

On a related note, I see that pharmacies are reporting that as more and more people are self-isolating, sales of hair dye are going through the roof:  proof that some among us have their priorities perfectly straight.  (Question:  if you’re immured in your house, who the fuck is going to see you anyway?)  Some people are too stupid, or vain, to exist.

In other news, I await with interest the headlines which will finally attest to the fact that public schools are not educational institutions but really just State-provided daycare:

Suburban mothers go batshit crazy at having to look after the kiddies 24/7;  start drinking Bloody Marys nonstop from 6.30am 

or

Mother stabs teenage son to death after 45th time in a week that he leaves the toilet seat up

or

Mother tells kids to “do whatever the fuck you want” after trying to homeschool them for four whole days

Your suggestions in Comments.

Eucalyptus Now

Bad News, Gummint

I often disagree with columnist Peter Hitchens (brother of the late Christopher), but I have to say that his latest column does resonate with me, because he points out what I often say:  that Gummint often uses apocalyptic messages to clamp down on our freedoms.  And he does it using facts and history (always the most difficult argument to refute).  Here’s an example:

The former editor of The Times, Sir Simon Jenkins, recently listed these unfulfilled scares: bird flu did not kill the predicted millions in 1997. In 1999 it was Mad Cow Disease and its human variant, vCJD, which was predicted to kill half a million. Fewer than 200 in fact died from it in the UK.
The first Sars outbreak of 2003 was reported as having ‘a 25 per cent chance of killing tens of millions’ and being ‘worse than Aids’. In 2006, another bout of bird flu was declared ‘the first pandemic of the 21st Century’.
There were similar warnings in 2009, that swine flu could kill 65,000. It did not. The Council of Europe described the hyping of the 2009 pandemic as ‘one of the great medical scandals of the century’.

And Hitchens’ devastating take:

In only one place – aboard the cruise ship Diamond Princess – has an entire closed community been available for study. And the death rate there – just one per cent – is distorted because so many of those aboard were elderly. The real rate, adjusted for a wide age range, could be as low as 0.05 per cent and as high as one per cent.
…
About 1,600 people die every day in the UK for one reason or another. A similar figure applies in Italy and a much larger one in China. The coronavirus deaths, while distressing and shocking, are not so numerous as to require the civilised world to shut down transport and commerce, nor to surrender centuries-old liberties in an afternoon.

Fortunately, our government in the US is not as quite as panic-stricken as the BritGov, and while we’re being warned to be careful and take healthy precautions, we’re nowhere close to facing the governmental excesses that the Brits are.

This latest Wuhan-virus pandemic may be as terrible as we’re being told;  but I agree with the above conclusions that it probably won’t be — and all our well-meaning precautions may end up costing us more than necessary:  a lot more than necessary.

This means that we should continue to be vigilant — not just against disease, but against the loss of our freedoms — and Hitchens’ article serves as a very timely warning why we should always be on our guard against the doomsayers because very often, their motives are not altruistic.

For a much, much longer examination of the thing, go here.  While the article is long, it’s definitely not too long to read — and its conclusion is even better than that of Hitchens (with my emphasis in red):

The COVID-19 hysteria is pushing aside our protections as individual citizens and permanently harming our free, tolerant, open civil society. Data is data. Facts are facts. We should be focused on resolving COVID-19 with continued testing, measuring, and be vigilant about protecting those with underlying conditions and the elderly from exposure. We are blessed in one way, there is an election in November. Never forget what happened and vote.

You may ask yourself. Who is this guy? Who is this author? I’m a nobody. That is also the point. The average American feels utterly powerless right now. I’m an individual American who sees his community and loved ones being decimated without given a choice, without empathy, and while the media cheers on with high ratings.

When this is all over, look for massive confirmation bias and pyrrhic celebration by elites. There will be vain cheering in the halls of power as Main Street sits in pieces. Expect no apology, that would be political suicide. Rather, expect to be given a Jedi mind trick of “I’m the government and I helped.”

The health of the State will be even stronger with more Americans dependent on welfare, another trillion stimulus filled with pork for powerful friends, and a bailout for companies that charged us $200 change fees for nearly a decade.  Washington DC will be fine. New York will still have all of the money in the world. Our communities will be left with nothing but a shadow of the longest bull market in the history of our country.