OLD AND BUSTED: Partying Like It’s 1999.
The New Hotness? Partying Like It’s 2020! People are panic-buying toilet paper because of the port strike. There is no need for that.
Toilet paper shortages in stores across America are giving folks nightmarish reminders of the pandemic era. But the lack of toilet paper isn’t a direct result of a major port strike Tuesday. It’s because of panic buying.
Reports of shortages filled social media Tuesday, showing empty shelves where toilet paper and, to a lesser extent, paper towels were supposed to be.
“They cleaned out the toilet paper at my local Walmart in Virginia. Toilet paper hoarding 2.0!,” wrote one person in a post on X, along with a photo of empty shelves.
“Shelves at Costco & Target running low or out of paper towels in Monmouth County NJ,” posted another X user. “Seeing people buying TP & water too in reax to port strike. Costco employee told me they were sold out of TP/paper towels this am.”
But the strike at ports from Maine to Texas will have absolutely zero impact on the supply of these products.
The overwhelming majority — more than 90% by some estimates — of U.S. toilet paper consumption comes from domestic factories. Most of the rest comes from Canada and Mexico, which means it most likely arrives by rail or truck, not ship.
Jim Geraghty calls the longshoremen strike the “Self-Inflicted Dagger to America’s Economic Heart:”
In about as vivid an example of the “MacGuffinization of American Politics” as you’re ever likely to find, this morning the New York Times writes, “Scenes of striking workers, hurricane devastation in the Southeast and missiles over Israel represent a rare moment of turbulence for Kamala Harris.”
Yes, but this is also a “moment of turbulence” for everyone else, and perhaps a lot longer than a moment. For Harris, the International Longshoremen’s Association strike that has shut down every port on the East and Gulf Coasts is a political headache to overcome. The Democratic candidate has to finesse the reflexive, unthinking pro-union stance of Joe Biden and the ludicrous demands — a 77 percent raise for workers and zero automation — coming from Harold Daggett, the ILA boss. The guy who enjoys a $900,000 salary and drives a Bentley boasted that his strike would “cripple” the economy. (More on him below.)
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The irony is that the dockworkers’ strike is just about the best friend Donald Trump could ask for right now and, as the Times suggested, a major headache for the Harris campaign. If everybody’s frustrated by higher prices and empty shelves in the coming weeks, does that make voters feel happier or less happy with the incumbent party? The strike is terrible for the hurricane victims, terrible for the economy, and terrible for the country as a whole. But as if that wasn’t bad enough, it’s terrible for the Democrats.
Why can’t the almost-82-year-old president see the logic of this? What’s it going to take to slap some sense into him?
Heh, indeed. Read the whole thing, if only for Daggett’s views on the E-ZPass automated toll collection system, which explains much about his Luddite worldview.