OK, somebody want to explain to me what the hell is going on in this story from the New York Daily News?

George Gianforcaro, owner of Indutex USA, told the New York Daily News the Federal Emergency Management Agency confiscated 400,000 masks in two imported shipments meant for his U.S. customers. He said the masks, which arrived in separate shipments April 6 and April 19, are being held at John F. Kennedy International Airport, apparently in limbo as federal officials work out where they should go next.

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“The product is just sitting on a loading dock at JFK. They want to charge me $3,000 a day to store it there. I said, ‘I’ll just come pick it up then.’ They said, ‘No, it’s not released.’ It’s un-American. It’s horrible,” Gianforcaro told The News.

“I’m frustrated. I’m shocked. I’m angry. It’s really, really upsetting,” he said in a phone interview Tuesday evening. “Here I’m trying to help. I talked to FEMA and offered to be their logistics arm. I said, ‘If you call and say Mount Sinai need masks, and you give me an order by 3 p.m., I’ll ship it by 5 p.m. I’m volunteering my time as an American. But it’s just sitting there. God knows what’s happening.”



Oh, some more corporeal beings know what’s happening, too, I reckon. Gianforcaro got stonewalled by FEMA until he got himself a lawyer, which at least got him some answers to his questions, not that they were very good answers.



Once he got a lawyer involved, FEMA finally sent him something in writing, explaining his equipment was being held under the authority of the Defense Production Act. He said his customers include nursing facilities, police departments and the state of Michigan.



That sound you heard was the penny dropping. Gretchen Whitmer, the Democratic governor of Michigan, is not the administrator’s favorite governor. The “re-open” AstroTurfers consider her Target A, and the president* has pronounced her a big meanie who is insufficiently grateful to him for thus far keeping the death toll in this country out of six figures. The evidence that the administration* is playing patronage games with life-saving medical supplies is growing by the day.

Meanwhile, in an radio interview with Hugh Hewitt, inexcusable Senate Majority Leader and alleged human being Mitch McConnell has decided that he’s fed up with those freeloading states in general.

“I would certainly be in favor of allowing states to use the bankruptcy route. It’s saved some cities, and there’s no good reason for it not to be available...My guess is their first choice would be for the federal government to borrow money from future generations to send it down to them now so they don’t have to do that. That’s not something I’m going to be in favor of.”



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Extortion seems to be contagious as well.

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