As Doug French reports for The Mises Institute, Yellow, one of America’s biggest trucking companies, has shut down.
The news is troubling, sad, and seems to open a window onto other considerations that run the important gamut from economic, to ethical, to constitutional.
French notes:
“After ninety-nine years in business, Yellow, one of the nation’s biggest trucking companies, shut down. The company has more than twelve thousand trucks and employed thirty thousand, with twenty-two thousand of those jobs held by Teamsters.
If you are a taxpayer, you know all this, your government being a 29.6 percent shareholder of Yellow and all. The Trump administration’s Coronavirus, Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act dished out $500 billion to businesses, states and municipalities as a result of the coronavirus. Yellow Corporation received $700 million of the $735.9 million set aside for national security loans.”
So, now each of us gets to decide which facet of this insanity is most angering.
Is it the fact that the unjustified, unconstitutional lockdowns harmed this trucking company to such a degree (perhaps some of its problems also being self-generated, but how much, one cannot be certain) that they needed an infusion of cash? Is it the fact that the feds also broke their Constitution by handing out the tax cash? Perhaps it’s the fact that the purported "threat" of the "viral pandemic" was overblown to a pathological degree, or the fact that the vast amounts of our tax cash that the feds subsequently gave to Yellow did not keep it afloat?
Take any option, or all, and the final thought might just be: the political acts here – at every stage -- all have been immoral.
Oh, but it gets even better. The details of the bailout begin to show us not even the foundational immorality of the “Presidential declaration of emergency” (there is no such thing under the US Constitution), the lockdowns, the lies that collectivists spread about the virus, the jabs, the masks, and so many other federally incentivized or federally mandated falsehoods and acts of tyranny, the details indicate the shady inner-workings of the money-spreading schemes.
French writes:
“’Since the CARES Act did not define the term ‘business critical to maintaining national security,’ the Treasury had virtually unfettered discretion to define this term,’ says a special report of the Congressional Oversight Commission that investigated the loan.
Back in 2020, the Defense Department figured other trucking companies could replace Yellow’s government work should the company go out of business, so the department was going to recommend a no to issuing the loan. But ‘one day after Defense Department officials notified the Treasury that the Defense Department would likely not certify Yellow as critical to maintaining national security, the Treasury requested an urgent call with Secretary Esper, which took place on June 26, 2020.’ After Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin called the defense secretary, ‘Esper certified Yellow as critical to maintaining national security the same day as the call, June 26, 2020, and the Treasury finalized the loan to Yellow on July 7, 2020.’”
Warms the heart, doesn’t it…?
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French adds:
“According to the Wall Street Journal, ‘Esper declined to comment. He has previously said he made the certification at the recommendation of Pentagon staff.’”
And, certainly, if you ever wonder if Yellow and, possibly, union, power, had anything to do with the corporation getting the cash, well, again, you are welcome to this additional information…
“According to the special report, Yellow spent $570,000 on lobbying in 2020 but nothing the year before. The company had been in close touch with the White House and ‘had discussed how the company employs 24,000 drivers who are part of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (Teamsters) union.’
Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa allegedly ‘had reached out to the Trump administration and . . . was seeking a meeting with the Secretary of Defense to advocate for Yellow’s national security loan application.’”
Ahh, the added insult to the injury of cynical “emergency” pronouncements, cynical “jab rollouts” of improperly vetted gene-transvector agents – even as therapeutics are pooh-poohed -- cynical lockdown edicts, cynical “essential and non-essential” designations for OUR livelihoods, cynical censorship of real, valid information, cynical subsidies of medical facilities to pump up false “diagnoses” of the virus, and on and on. Now, we get to see that the unconstitutional money handouts included what we expected: the strong stench of lobbying and clamoring for cash – at our expense.
And the final insult. As it is with Jennifer Granholm’s pals at the Proterra electric vehicle corporation – a company that not only got millions of federal bucks going back to the close of the Obama Admin, but which put former MI Governor Granholm on its board and gave her more than $1.5 million in stock prior to her adopting the fatuous fakery of US “Energy Secretary” – it is with Yellow.
They curry favor, and eat off our sweat and toil, without a moment’s notice to the lives they trample and the US Constitution they use as a doormat.
Is it any wonder why some folks might not be too broken up about Yellow going belly-up?
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