Posted on 01/20/2023 6:55:57 AM PST by Red Badger
Task Force was a 'cynical attempt to signal engagement' while 'doing little or nothing,' watchdog says
President Joe Biden tapped Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack to co-chair a team tasked with fixing a supply chain crisis that left grocery shelves empty. The secretary never even showed up to a meeting, records show.
In June 2021, as supply chains were being crippled by the effects of pandemic-era restrictions and Biden’s rampant spending, Vilsack pledged to participate in meetings with the newly formed Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force, an initiative Biden said would solve the budding crisis with a whole-of-government approach.
But those promised meetings never occurred. There are no records showing that Vilsack or his designees participated in any meetings with the task force after its launch, according to the Department of Agriculture’s response to a Freedom of Information Act request submitted by the Functional Government Institute.
Instead, Vilsack focused his efforts on accusing the meat industry of using the pandemic as an excuse to reap unfair profits. And he wasn’t the only absentee member of the supply chain initiative. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, another task force co-chair, quietly went on paternity leave in August 2021. Two months passed before anybody noticed Buttigieg’s absence.
The Department of Agriculture produced just 19 pages of records responsive to the Functional Government Initiative’s request, which asked for all of Vilsack’s memos, meeting minutes, calendar entries, and calendar invitations for task force meetings from the date of its creation through July 28, 2022. The records contained 14 pages of public statements from the department and the White House. The remaining five pages were briefing materials for the task force’s launch event where Vilsack pledged to participate in the initiative.
According to Functional Government Initiative spokesman Peter McGinnis, Vilsack’s task force "might be more aptly called a ‘hole in government’ approach."
"Secretary Vilsack’s failure to convene a single meeting with his fellow leaders, while dedicating federal resources to investigate and blame the private sector, shows that the Task Force was little more than a cynical attempt to signal engagement on supply chain disruptions while, in fact, doing little or nothing," McGinnis said.
The United States is still reeling from supply chain issues in the food industry, the lingering effects of which have caused egg prices to spike by 60 percent since the end of 2021.
Vilsack was present at a publicly televised, virtual task force meeting with Biden and a group of private sector CEOs on Dec. 22, 2021. The secretary didn’t say a word during the event. In February 2022, the Department of Agriculture claimed in a press release that Vilsack was intimately involved with the task force.
The Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force’s only apparent accomplishment was its creation, according to a May 2022 report from the Congressional Research Service. The report said Biden tasked the initiative with alleviating bottlenecks and supply constraints in a wide array of industries, and that it was directed to increase data sharing among agencies. But the report did not identify what, if anything, the task force did to fulfill its mandate.
The Department of Agriculture did not return a request for comment.
Honestly, probably better that way.
So the "whole-of-government" sat around with their thumbs up their butts doing nothing at all all the while collecting their fat salaries.
"We get the government we deserve."
On the bright side, it would have been a LOT worse if they had done something. Paying these worthless layabouts to do nothing is probably the best use of our money.
We should pay them ALL to stay home.........................🤷♂️
This administration is little more than a circus headed for a train wreck. From Vilsack’s lack of concern, to Buttigieg as the head of Transportation, and most in between, they have no qualifications to be where they are. My feelings: Buttigieg was given the Secretary position as a promise if he agreed to drop out of the primaries in 2020. Hell, he couldn’t run South Bend as Mayor, but Biden thought he could tuck him away and no one would notice his incompetency. As I said, Biden has surrounded himself with clowns (Rachel Lavine) in a promise of diversity, but the chickens are coming home to roost.
I’d prefer they just be fired and put someone in there who would actually DO THEIR JOB!
These people hate us.
There’s no other rational explanation.
L
Liberals define laziness, they do not want to work.
They are lazy grifters.....................
He’s been that way since Iowa...
“Might be more aptly called a ‘hole in government’ approach.”
Biden knows all about holes he dug his all away to China.
What did you expect when Biden’s Czar for the border crisis has been a 100% no show in words or deeds. For Biden these appointments are all for show and not meant to be substantive.
Kamala “Heels Up” Harris set the example as the “Border Czar”...She never went to the border..
ONCE MORE:
The egg prices are due to the AVIAN FLU which caused over 58 million egg producing hens to be destroyed.
It takes time for new chicks to get to egg laying status.
Well he is a Democrat so what is your point?
Yes, it takes time. I have to wonder, though, once those chicks become egg-laying hens, will the prices come back down? Once people have acquiesced to paying the higher prices, eggs being “on sale” for $5 will seem like a bargain. I doubt they will ever go back to being $3 for a dozen eggs.
A saying from my working daze...
“Meetings are where minutes are kept, and hours are lost.”
#7 They are crazy people.
John Kerry at Davos this week: When you stop and think about it, it’s pretty extraordinary that we — select group of human beings because of whatever touched us at some point in our lives — are able to sit in a room and come together and actually talk about saving the planet.
“I mean, it’s so almost extraterrestrial to think about ‘saving the planet.’” Kerry said in a self-congratulating tone, “If you said that to most people, most people they think you’re just a crazy tree-hugging lefty liberal, you know, do-gooder, or whatever, and there’s no relationship. But really, that’s where we are.”
#16 There will be another flu to keep prices up.
When was the last time we ever had prices like these?
I do not recall any but we have had many shortages since the democrats stole the election.
Joe Biden took our job!!
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