When Joe Biden first appointed his former Democratic primary rival, Pete Buttigieg, to the job of Secretary of Transportation, he praised him copiously as someone who reminded him of his late son Beau.

Well, that doesn't sound like much of a compliment -- to Beau, at least -- given supposedly smart Pete Buttigieg's performance.

The ports are backed up, with the mess in Los Angeles and Long Beach particularly acute, what with half a million containers in ships anchored off the coast waiting for an unload. There are port staffing shortages due to the vaccine mandate, as well as the federal and state phenomenon of paying people more not to work than to work. There are trucker shortages based on California's blue-state legislature banning independent truckers from operating at all. There's also a problem of the SoCal port not operating like their global rivals such as Dubai, Singapore, and Rotterdam which unload and upload cargo from all over 24/7, something Biden touted yesterday as something he'd gotten fixed. Port experts, speaking to the Washington Post, say it's not a fix, given that truckers have no warehouses open at the wee hours to take their container shipments to, even if they can find truckers. There is also the Federal Reserve's encouragement of consumer demand through its money-printing, which is contributing to the crisis.

It's making the news now because it's so bad, and because the Christmas season is coming on with little relief in sight, and because an oil spill hitting the shores of Huntington Beach has now been blamed on a ship anchor dragging and ripping open an oil pipeline about a year ago. Private retailers, such as Costco, Target, and Walmart, are starting to commission their own ships and flights from abroad into the country to escape the port backlog -- at a cost to be passed on to the consumer, which spells more inflation in the pipeline

That's far from the only problem Biden's transport secretary has not been dealing with in any intelligent way. There's also the airline shutdown over vaccine mandates, which saw hundreds of flights canceled and thousands of passengers stranded just from Southwest Airlines alone. Other labor forces in other airlines are said to be thinking about taking similar action. Where's Pete in this crisis? Nobody home.

Joe Concha, in his column at The Hill, explains what Buttigieg has actually been focusing on in that transportation secretary's job:

So, to what level of accountability are the media holding the Transportation secretary? 

A quick Google check of "Pete Buttigieg,” when using the "News" search option, reveals the following headlines in this exact order as of Monday afternoon. 

"Pete Buttigieg Calls Parenting Twins 'Most Demanding Thing': 'Yet I Catch Myself Grinning Half the Time’ ” - People Magazine

"Pete Buttigieg calls parenting twins 'the most demanding thing I think I've ever done’ ” - USA Today, under the "Celebrities" section 

"Buttigieg quiet on growing port congestion as shipping concerns build ahead of holidays" - Fox News 

"Buttigieg on parenthood: 'Most demanding thing' I’ve ever done" - NBC News

"Pete Buttigieg Dishes on His Future As a Presidential Candidate" - Business Insider

As you can see, almost all outlets are focusing on Buttigieg's foray into fatherhood and not on the one major issue he's in charge of fixing, or at least getting under some semblance of control, as cargo ships continue to pile up off the coast of America’s port cities.  

Buttigieg was finally asked about this issue in an interview with Bloomberg News last week, during which he warned that the "challenges" will continue, possibly for years, before pitching President Biden's stalled $3.5 infrastructure plan, which surely will make everything all better. 

Can you imagine that this moron was once the frontrunner for the Democrat party's nomination for president, until Biden, aided by Democrat machine pols in the South, eventually took over? Or that he was originally offered by Biden the position as that of the U.S. ambassador to China? Imagine the incompetence there! But to our bad luck, Buttigieg turned that down in favor of the transport job, not a prestigious cabinet position actually, but one that's very close to the action and the cash flung around in Washington. The supposedly smart Rhodes scholar must have thought it would be a nothingburger job and an easy platform to pursue what he's really interested in, which is advancing himself in politics. 

Buttigieg, when he's not taking baby pictures with his partner, has otherwise focused on the green agenda, and metering every American's auto mileage, the better to monitor and tax them because Global Warming.

Now he's brought us the port mess -- something that has been festering for months. Recall that Kamala Harris on her trip to Singapore in June cackled that Americans need to buy their Christmas presents early.  What Buttigieg hasn't been doing is focusing on the festering backup at America's ports and air transit systems. Open borders but jammed ports.

Here's another problem, now that I'm speaking of open borders: Mexico's Pacific ports, which have been upgraded to world-class standards, and have historically taken America's overflow, have a problem with cartels taking over, at least at its most important Pacific port, Manzanillo. Why do cartels suddenly have a lot of cash to take over such critical infrastructure in Mexico, which serves the U.S. as well? Well, maybe it's open borders. Smuggling fees and the ease of getting illegal drugs across for big profits is very likely a contributor. No backstop or Plan B for America there. 

And no surprise, Joe Biden had to appoint a special envoy for ports, one John D. Porcari, who hasn't made much headway, either. His move to get SoCal ports up to global 24/7 standards was constructive but as the WaPo notes, it's "window dressing" given the other problems involved in the supply chain disruptions. "Helluva job," he's doing, Biden announced, sounding like George Bush during 2005's Hurricane Katrina. Was that because Buttigieg was so incompetent he wasn't up to the job? Seems like it, given that so much has been festering badly on the transport front without any serious effort to counter it.

Where was Buttigieg when someone needed to be speaking up about the matter of workers not coming back to work due to Biden's vaccine mandates, as well the Democrats' big payments for non-workers? Where was Pete when the California state legislature banned independent truckers? Where was Pete when the Fed was printing up a storm to make Joe Biden happy?  Everything Buttigieg's done has been either rooted in idleness, vanity, or idiocy. But asking those questions and speaking up for the supply chain and the smooth operation of U.S. transport systems is actually his job. He doesn't do it.

It's a good thing voters are getting a whiff of this amateur-hour fool early, given the mess he's made now. If Biden had any sense, he'd get rid of this guy. But he doesn't because Buttigieg is doing exactly what he wants and all the problems that have come of it are dismissed as Biden either issues fake praise and tries to gaslight the public into thinking all is well or else simply blames President Trump.

Won't work this time, this is bad consumer pocketbook stuff from a guy who knows as much about economics as supposedly smart Jimmy Carter. Politically, Pete is toast.

Image: Gage Skidmore, via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 3.0   

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