Posts Tagged ‘HEB’

Supply Chain Update, #BareShelvesBiden and Regional Differences

Tuesday, January 11th, 2022

Here’s a supply chain post that covers a few related topics and a little local reportage.

First, those long waits for port berths at LA/Long Beach are at an all-time high:

As of Friday, there were 105 ships waiting for berths at Los Angeles and Long Beach. That’s the highest number ever, according to FreightWaves.

Back in November, the port authorities in southern California adopted a new queuing system for ships that allows them to wait anywhere in the world without losing their spots in line. They did this because the exhaust from all the ships idling near the ports was harming the air quality. For a few weeks, this change made it appear as though the number of ships waiting had declined because they were no longer clogging up the harbor. But the Marine Exchange of Southern California adjusted its counting method soon after.

Only 16 of the 105 ships waiting are within 40 miles of the ports, FreightWaves says. The other 89 are scattered all over the world, with many congregating off the Baja peninsula.

Here’s some perspective from the story on what this congestion means relative to other times:

There are now more than three times as many container ships waiting for LA/LB berths as there were at this time last year, 11.6 times more than on June 24 (the low point for last year), and 31% more than on Oct. 24, when online searches for the term “supply chain” peaked and the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach announced a new Biden administration-backed congestion fee plan.

FreightWaves also notes that the total amount of cargo waiting offshore is 815,958 TEU (20-foot equivalent units). That’s more than the combined amount of imports for Los Angeles and Long Beach for the entire month of November, the story says.

Second, #BareShelvesBiden has been trending on Twitter as people report largely bare shelves at their local supermarkets.

Indeed, it seems to be happening across the country:

When you add up all of these reports, it seems like a lot of genuine and glaring problems for the White House chief of staff to dismiss as just “an overhyped narrative”!

It’s not hard to find Biden defenders who insist that the Twitter hashtag “#BareShelvesBiden” is “artificially amplified by far-right users to manipulate the trending section.” Fine, maybe they are, but consumers and local news affiliates aren’t hallucinating these empty shelves, and businesses aren’t imagining this inability to get the supplies and parts they need.

I guarantee you that when this newsletter is shared on Twitter, some ninny will respond that he just went to Safeway or Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods and didn’t see any shortages — as if the complaint about the supply chain was a contention that every shelf on every store in every community was bare. No, the problem is that an unpredictable mix of goods are suddenly unavailable, with little sense of when new shipments will arrive. Sometimes this problem has minor consequences — getting straight fries instead of curly fries — and sometimes there are huge consequences, such as oncologists who are struggling to get more medications and other medical supplies.

As with the border, inflation, the Afghanistan withdrawal, Covid-19, and the shortage of tests, we have to waste time convincing the administration that the country’s problems are actually real problems; the Biden team’s reflexive instinct is that any reports of problems are just right-wing propaganda. (Or perhaps someone like Klain will tell us to be appreciative because we have “high class problems.”)

I’m fortunate that here in Central Texas, we seem mostly unaffected. There are spot shortages of a few things at HEB (the only places I see really big holes are in luncheon meat; cuts of beef, chicken and pork in unprocessed form seem reasonably plentiful), and they’ve been out of V05 Extra Body conditioner for weeks. Sam’s also seems to be getting plentiful supplies of things, and last week they had Dog Pill Pockets (which they had been out of for several weeks before).

The nation’s supply chains may be poised to take another hit soon as Canadian vaccine mandates for truckers going into effect January 15.

Art Laffer has a recipe for fixing the problem: Get Biden Administration policies out of the way.

In an interview with “Varney & Co.” Tuesday, former Reagan economist Art Laffer called on the Biden administration to get out of the way of the supply chain crisis, arguing the administration’s economic policies are causing the problem instead of solving it.

ART LAFFER: I’d follow Reagan’s advice: Don’t just stand there, undo something. Get them out. Stop paying people not to work. Get the government out of the process and that thing will clear up very quickly. That’s exactly what needs to be done. It’s the government that is causing the supply chain problem. It’s not the solution, it’s the cause. And the same thing with rapid testing and all the other things. The one thing that Trump knew how to do was get production to work correctly. And when he put through that operation to get it – Warp Speed, to get it, it worked because he worked with the markets — not against them.

Will Biden take Laffer’s advice?

Will Jackass Forever take home the 2023 Oscar for Best Picture?

Austin Winter Storm Update for February 18, 2021: What’s Open?

Thursday, February 18th, 2021

Update: I ventured out to the HEB at McNeil & 183 and the major roads are passable. HEB closes at 5, and the meat section was picked almost clean, but there was a lot of edible food available in various departments if you’re flexible.

Things are slowly warming up, and the power situation seems to be improving:

The Governor discussed the current power situation in Texas and what the state is doing to get more Texans back online. There still remains about 10,000 megawatts (MW) that are off the power grid in Texas. About 6,000 MW have been added to the Texas grid over the past day, which is equivalent to power for about 1.2 million households. In addition to the 6,000 MW restored to the grid, additional power generation from coal and other sources will continue to come online throughout tomorrow. Small natural gas generators should sporadically add megawatts over the next 24 hours to help bring electricity to thousands of Texans. There are still challenges with all sources of generation, resulting from mechanical difficulties, gas supply issues, and the effects of extreme winter weather conditions.

Here’s the power outage map. Things seem to change very slowly on it…

Those on City of Austin water are also on a boil notice, and some parts of the city evidently have no water.

I thought I would focus on what’s open and what’s not:

  • First up HEB. There are reports of HEB shelves being picked clean, and the stores that are open are only open 12-5 PM. HEB will update the list of stores closed for the day at 10 AM.

    Update: Here’s the Austin-area HEB store closed list for today:

    #236 A7 – Wells Branch & 1825
    #045 A8 – Congress & Oltorf
    #225 A10 – Hwy 71 & 290
    #265 A14 – FM 1431 & 183
    #659 A16 – Hwy 183 & Lakeline
    #388 A20 – Parmer & McNeil
    #451 A24 – 620 & 2222
    #476 A25 – Parmer & I35
    #029 A29 – Bee Cave & 360
    #091 A12 – Riverside & S. Pleasant
    #183 A15 – Lamar & Rundberg
    Kyle
    Luling
    Leander
    Kingsland
    Elgin

    Very similar to yesterday’s list. Also, the Westgate Central Market is closed, but the North Lamar location is open from 10 AM to 6 PM.

  • Next up: Walmart. The situation here seems to have improved a bit. The Sam’s at 183 and Lakeline Mall Drive is open, as is the Walmart at Northcross, and the Sam’s at 290 West and Mopac, plus the Walmarts in Manor, Elgin and Buda. All other locations appear to be closed.(The Round Rock locations of both Walmart and Sam’s showed open yesterday, but closed today.)

    Update: The 183/Lakeline Mall and 290 West/Mopac Sam’s appears to be closed, but the ones at 183 at 360 and on South I-35 now appear to be open. The Palm Valley Walmart in Round Rock also appears to be open.

  • Supposedly Randall’s and Fiesta are open.
  • I heard reports that Dollar General is open, but can’t verify it.
  • A couple of lists of open Austin restaurants.
  • Update: A crowdsource list of what’s open or closed and what they have.
  • Update: The Big Lots at McNeil at 183 was open and had a pretty good selection of snacks, plus some staples and canned goods.
  • Friday it’s supposed to get into the 40s.

    Update: Good news!

    It’s a Freaking Winter Wonderland in Austin This Morning

    Monday, February 15th, 2021

    7°F and a good four inches of snow on the ground (which probably feels like a foot to us).

    There’s an official disaster declaration and the city has pretty much shut down:

    The University of Texas at Austin is closed through 8 a.m. Wednesday.

    Austin Energy is performing rolling blackouts to conserve power. The electricity provider, which has more than 500,000 customers, instituted the measure as a “last resort to preserve the reliability of the electric system as a whole,” the city said in a statement. The outages typically last 10 to 40 minutes but were lasting longer than expected as of early morning Dec. 15, Austin Energy tweeted. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas has asked utilities around the state to use rotating outages to lessen the strain on the state’s power grid.

    Many flights are canceled. Austin-Bergstrom International Airport officials urged travelers to confirm their flight status if flying in the next 48 hours. The airport also announced that Security Checkpoint 1 is closed and all passengers will be screened through Security Checkpoint 2. According to FlightAware, 138 flights into or out of ABIA had been canceled as of 8 a.m. Feb. 15. In addition, many roads around the airport have been closed because of ice.

    The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which manages the Texas Interconnect Grid, reports that the grid is near capacity and rolling blackouts may last some time. My power hasn’t gone out here since it was restored Friday morning.

    You don’t even need to tell Austin drivers to stay out of this stuff. If you look at the traffic cams, the roads are empty.

    Yesterday HEB reported that it was running out of items and closing early, and even if it’s open today, it’s on a reduced schedule. The local HEB phone number just rings, so I wouldn’t count on any of them being open.

    I imagine that almost all restaurants are closed (here’s an outdated list). No answer at the Jim’s and Denny’s locations I called. I even tried calling all three local Waffle Houses to see if any were open, and all three calls went to voicemail.

    Truly the end times are upon us.

    I’ll give you more first hand info when I walk the dogs later.

    Stay warm…

    Update: There are reportedly almost 2 million people without power across Texas this morning.

    Update 2: A whole lot of power outages all across Austin. This isn’t an outage map, it’s a bad Picasso painting:

    Update 3: Firefighters close East Parmer at Dessau due to too many stuck vehicles. (Hat tip: johnnyk20001.)

    Update 4: No Capital metro today.

    Update 5: It’s not just Austin. Houston-area households are suffering from a huge number of power outages.

    Update 6: A commenter asked about Dallas, so here’s Oncor’s outage map. But it’s even less useful than the Houston or Austin maps…

    Update 7: 4.4 million without power?

    Update 8: Pflugerville is under a boil water notice:

    Update 9: Lists of which Austin restaurants are open or closed.

    Dispatches from the Texas Lockdown

    Tuesday, March 31st, 2020

    It seems forever since Texas went into full lockdown mode over the Wuhan coronavirus, but it’s only been a week. Since I was already working from home full-time, I’m doing fine, but I can understand how more social people might be climbing the walls by now. Here’s a quick roundup of notable Texas coronavirus news.

  • Total statewide coronavirus cases top 2,900.
  • Texas Counties with the highest number of coronavirus cases as of this morning are:
    1. Harris: 563
    2. Dallas 549
    3. Tarrant 238
    4. Travis 206
    5. Denton 191
    6. Bexar 168
    7. Collin 160
    8. Fort Bend 138

    (The “per county” cases can be found on the “Admin2” tab on the lower left.) For those unfamiliar with Texas geography, Denton and Collin are both Metroplex suburban counties, while Fort Bend is directly southwest of Harris.

  • Texas Governor Greg Abbott has ordered enforcement of the quarantine order at the Louisiana border.

    Gov. Greg Abbott on Sunday tightened travel to Texas by ordering some motorists from Louisiana to self-quarantine for two weeks.

    The new restrictions, effective noon Monday, came as President Donald Trump extended social distancing guidelines through April 30, preventing all nonessential travel in the country.

    Louisiana’s status as a hot spot for the novel coronavirus grew Sunday to more than 3,500 positive cases statewide. Under the new rules, drivers with commercial, medical, emergency response, military or critical infrastructure purposes for entering Texas would be exempted.

    A spokesman for the Department of Public Safety said Sunday the agency was not prepared to comment on the details of the new measures.

  • Both Governor Abbott and Travis County doctors are looking for specific hospitals to isolate coronavirus patients in.
  • In Houston, they’re looking to reopen at least one closed hospital, and in Dallas they’re looking at the Kay Bailey Hutchinson Convention Center as an overflow facility.
  • Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has issued an opinion prohibiting counties and municipalities from banning firearms sales during the emergency.
  • Houston Methodist hospital is the first to treat coronavirus patients with recovered patient blood.
  • If the local HEB is any measure, the worst of the panic buying appears to be over, though there are still hole in the shelves. Meat was abundant, I was able to find olive oil (missing last week), and everything except toilet paper seemed obtainable.
  • All in all, we seem to be doing a lot better than New York and California. Which is usually the case in non-emergency times as well…

    LinkSwarm for September 8, 2017

    Friday, September 8th, 2017

    It would be swell if I could stop leading the LinkSwarm off with hurricane-related news, but Irma is now a class five hurricane headed straight at Florida. If you’re in any evacuation zones, heed authorities, as this does not look like a storm you want to ride out in place unless you have to. Hsoi’s preparedness checklist is also a good thing to go over earlier rather than later.

  • One reason President Donald Trump had to act on DACA: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and nine other states were threatening to sue to end Obama unconstitutional backdoor amnesty program.
  • “¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Obama lawyer who worked on DACA admits it’s probably unconstitutional.” And yes, the ASCII Shrugging Emoji is actually in the headline, so it just wouldn’t have felt honest to leave it out…
  • “Trump’s Crackdown on Illegal Aliens is Driving Wage-Growth in US Construction Industry by up to 30%.” In other news: Basic economics have not been repealed by liberal talking points. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
  • Congress passes hurricane relief bill and debt ceiling hike. Both John Cornyn and Ted Cruz voted in favor of the bill. I haven’t read the bill, but I’m hoping it’s less stuffed with pork than the Sandy bill.
  • J.J. Watt’s Hurricane Harvey flood relief fundraiser hits $29 million.
  • What it takes to keep HEB stores up and running after a hurricane.

    One of my stores, we had 300 employees; 140 of them were displaced by the flooding. So how do you put your store back together quickly? We asked for volunteers in the rest of the company. We brought over 2,000 partners from Austin, San Antonio, the Rio Grande Valley. They hopped into cars and they just drove to Houston. They said, we’re here to help. It’s shitty work. For 18 hours a day, they’re going to help us restock and then they’ll go sleep on the couch at somebody’s house.

  • The bribery trial for New jersey Democratic Senator Robert Menendez gets under way.
  • “It Appears That Out-of-State Voters Changed the Outcome of the New Hampshire U.S. Senate Race.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Why Israel had to bomb Syria’s chemical weapons complex. For one thing, it looks like Iran, Assad and Hezbollah will all emerge strengthened from the Syrian civil war…
  • Speaking of Iran, they’re amassing new weaponry. “While all eyes are on North Korea, Iran is advancing its weapons technology. The country recently tested and announced the success of their new Bavar 373 long range, mobile, anti-missile defense system. Everything in the system is manufactured in Iran; it requires no support from outside sources.” However, since Iran has (to my knowledge) no wafer fabrication plants to produce integrated circuits, this statement is almost certainly false, at least as far as electronics goes. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • “Bulgaria is projected to have the fastest-shrinking population in the world.” I suspect this is a combination of communism (and its aftermath) sucking, of it wrecking disproportionately more damage on backward, mostly rural countries, and of the general trend in Europe toward a modern, unchurched, welfare state society, with its attendant population decline.
  • Betty DeVos vows to dismantle the Obama-era campus kangaroo rape courts. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Twitter Bans Activist Mommy for Tweeting Her Dislike of Teen Vogue’s Anal Sex Guide.” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • This is disappointing.
  • Texans handled Harvey better than Louisianans handled Katrina because both their governments and societies are more functional.
  • Another day, another fake hate crime. (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
  • The American Railway union was founded on segregation. “George Pullman famously hired African Americans to work for him. Eugene Debs infamously did not allow African Americans to join his union striking against Pullman’s company.”
  • Al Gore’s new book being outsold by scientist’s book debunking Al Gore.
  • I laughed.
  • Happy Open Carry Day!

    Friday, January 1st, 2016

    Happy New Year! Today the open carry law went into effect, meaning that if you have a Concealed Handgun License, you may now openly carry a handgun in most (but not all) locations where it was legal to conceal carry before. (It was already legal to openly carry rifles and shotguns without a CHL, and the open carry law didn’t change that.)

    The Houston Chronicle has some pointers on open carry, though annoyingly, they are in slideshow form. Some highlights:

  • Open carry of handguns is only allowed for those who already hold a valid CHL.
  • You need a belt or shoulder holster to open carry, even in your car. Your gun must be holstered while driving or otherwise hidden.
  • Primary and secondary schools, hospitals, sporting events, and nursing homes are still “gun-free zones.”
  • Handguns cannot be taken into amusement parks, churches, hospitals and bars and public meetings if they post notice it’s a gun-free zone.
  • CHL holders can open carry unless it’s been prohibited by the private property owner. (I am given to understand that HEB is allowing concealed carry, but not open carry.)
  • “If you do not leave you could be charged with criminal trespass and/or unlawful carry. You will also most likely lose your rights to carry a handgun too.”
  • A 30.06 sign means no concealed carry on premises but open carry is allowed.

  • A 30.07 sign ONLY means no open carry on premises but conceal carry is allowed.

  • And you still can’t carry (open or concealed) in an establishment that derrives 51% or more of its income from the sale of alcohol:

  • You can’t open or conceal carry beyond the security checkpoint in an airport (duh).
  • Reciprocity still applies, so if you’re licensed to conceal carry by another state, you’re licensed to open carry in Texas.
  • The separate campus carry law which allows CHL holders to conceal carry in most buildings at most public universities does not go into effect January 1, but rather August 1, but you still won’t be able to open carry on campus then. Private colleges and universities may opt out, and junior colleges do not need to comply until August 2017.
  • I think the touches all the highlights. If you think I missed something important, let me know in the comments.