There are over a hundred ships full of containers waiting to get into the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. There are trains backed up 35 miles into Chicago. Truckers with empty containers and nowhere to put them are dumping the containers on streets in Wilmington - even blocking driveways.
Tied into this is that Dollar Tree and 99 Cents Only Stores can no longer stick to their nothing- over- a -dollar price policy; sadly this is also effecting the pricing of food that they started selling when they got sensitized to the fact that millions of Americans rely on some form of food money from the U.S. government.
Yesterday a woman told me that at her son's school each child has been given a card with a $300 food benefit. No questions asked. No income verification needed.
When I took my dog for a walk this morning we went past a school and saw that some children had dumped their plastic bags full of food onto the street. These contained yogurt, sliced apples, a tiny burger, chips, and a couple other snaky items. As children they do not have to earn the money to buy these things and neither do their parents who cannot afford to feed them. We the People are trying - some of us anyway - to take care of our own.
I think those ships waiting to come to port are full of junk and mostly plastically easily breakable throw-away junk that will be in our land fills for hundreds of years, crap that people do not need, but I know they are also containing food. Canned food, including cat and dog food which does not have to bear the place of origin on the can, is also coming from China.
On my way home from work I stopped in at these stores looking for some inexpensive canned vegetables and there was none. But I noticed there was meat and fish - protein - at Dollar Tree while the shelves had not one can of beans.
I have to admit I never much thought about one of the nations largest ports being in Los Angeles County or how that factored into the economy here. It's still a mystery to me. I know this, however, all that incoming means that the American economy is depending on factory production elsewhere and those manufacturing jobs were exported too and that is the fault of both Democratic and Republican administrations.
I met a Longshoreman recently. He has spent his life, it seems, driving vehicles off ships, but he owns a house because of it. He can barely stand to do the last few months before he retires and keeps stalling them out, not sure what is next for him.
At Vons, a local grocer not known for the lowest prices, I couldn't believe it when I saw some ground turkey for $6.99 a pound. I skipped the produce section entirely.
The woman with the son who got a $300 food benefit card at school tells me she just spent near $300 sending a box of things to her mother-in-law in Guatemala - including dried beans. They don't have beans in Guatemala? I suspect she is married to an "illegal" and there is some form of fraud going on there but I don't really know that.
Meanwhile, I follow what's happening with President Joe Biden, who is under attack because he is trying to do the right thing. Yes, his age is showing, but then, so was Ronald Reagan's. Not the constant crisis, the constant self promotion of Trump, who got us used to daily doses of anxiety and flash, Biden seems dull, but he has gumption and morality. Remember that? Remember the Real Gospel - the feed, cloth, and shelter Gospel - rather than the "Prosperity Gospel?"
You have to have a fortune in the bank not to feel what has happened in our economy due to the Covid-19 shut downs. In recent years I've met more people who not only believe the End Times are coming but cannot wait to be raptured.
C 2021 Christine Trzyna
