Food shortages overturn societies. They bring down empires. If you’ve got food shortages, you’ve got a serious and potentially destabilizing problem. https://t.co/VMQGzVuZyJ pic.twitter.com/RUiSBA8CY1
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) May 14, 2022
News that I missed, courtesy of The Babylon Bee:
WASHINGTON, D.C.—President Biden today announced his plan to address the baby formula crisis, asking each illegal immigrant to please bring one can of formula to drop off when they cross the border.
“If all 300,000 people coming over the Rio this month drop off a can of Similac, we’ll have this thing fixed lickety-split,” said President Biden. “In the meantime, Hunter always carries little bags of formula powder with him. I’m sure we can use that to get by!”
Biden has directed the Border Patrol to set up donation boxes at popular crossing points all across the southern border. The President promises that any immigrant who drops off a can before entry will not be thrown into one of his cages. As an added incentive, those who bring a can of the high-dollar Similac Pro will receive a guarantee to not be shipped to New York or D.C.
While most Democrats praised the plan, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez argued that people complaining about formula shortages was just silly as her grocery store still had plenty of Nesquik. Elizabeth Warren also voiced opposition, stating that Planned Parenthood was well equipped to simply eliminate the demand for baby formula if the Supreme Court would only let them.
Go here to read the rest. Dealing with a flu variant, around the globe for the past two years economies have been treated like mechanisms that can be turned on and off by government fiat. Hubris always comes with a high price tag, and too often it is the innocent who pay it.
After our twins were born my Bride attempted to breastfeed them but the supply of milk was insufficient. We went through a large amount of baby formula each week. This is is no joke and is a real crisis. Baby formula of a sorts can be made at home, but requires careful preparation.
I sympathise with the situation in the US.
Australia had a similar situation for a number of years. Except it was Chinese people living in Australia buying cart loads of formula- stripping shelves bare.
They were sending them to China. The Chinese don’t trust their government, because China had its own infant formula plant contamination which resulted in dead infants. They wanted the Aussie stuff. The Chinese hustlers put together a tidy little racket in Australia and used international students living in Australia as well as Chinese Australians to help their little hustle. At the expense of ordinary Australian children. I could say something really racist about the whole situation….but this is a Catholic website.
I’m surprised Pete Buttigieg as the Secretary of Transportation and.. a new mom.. dropped the ball on this.
(No I’m not and now I’m feeling ill.)
Michael Regan, the EPA administrator and Buttigieg were responsible for the non-response to the supply chain problems. Buttigieg cutting off work for two months (with no public announcement) was a strong indication that he’s a figurehead at the Department of Transportation. In this case, the responsible parties appear to be the FDA commissioner (a man named Califf) and Xavier Becerra the cabinet secretary to whom he reports. Becerra is a lawyer / politician wholly inappropriate for the position he holds. (The department itself is a mishmash of agencies and should have been broken up decades ago).
I have a daughter who was weaning our grandson off breast milk after 6 months. Now starts the scramble to find formula. Her husband recently bought a Tesla. He received a bill from the Sec of State of Michigan for $120. Seems he needs to still pay a “road use” tax. Screwups like this will make LIFETIME conservatives. Don’t mess with a new mom and surprise an electric car buyer with an additional expense. Blow up the Swamp.
At my local grocery the shelves are nearly empty. Ditto my pharmacy. I assume the others in town are the same.
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My social worker friend works at my doctor’s office. It seems the referals for formula are starting to come in as moms and dads do what the MSM/Jen Psaki told them to do–call their peditrician if they cannot find formula. Uh, no, the doctors and peditricians don’t have that much of a supply (and by now, the samples are likely gone). The doctors/pediatricians don’t know what to do, so they pass the request to the office social workers, who also don’t know what to do. I assume they cannot reccomend any time of homemade formula due to liability issues. There are a number of recipes going around–all with evaporated milk and Karo syrup. I imagine those items will be stripped from the shelves in the coming weeks.
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There was some rather small variation in formula supply– enough to be hard to get the specific brand you usually use, but no place being out– right up until the news started saying there was a shortage.
I strongly suspect there are a lot of donations of baby formula at food banks right now, kind of like how they turned a minor toilet paper shortage into months-long total outages.
Re: Toilet Paper, I’ll still never forget seeing how the local news manufactured a toilet paper crisis long after the original one was over. The story was told in the headlines, which went something like this:
-Could another toilet paper shortage be on the horizon?
-Experts say supply chain issues will continue, what does this mean about toilet paper?
-Locals express concerns about the possibility of a toilet paper shortage.
-Local stores say that demand for toilet paper has skyrocketed.
-Toilet Paper Shelves Empty
The kicker was that after this happened they had a story where another expert said that the only reason that there was a temporary shortage (it only lasted a week or so) was that people panic bought, but that it was “unclear” where people got the idea that toilet paper might run out in the first place.