http://schumer.senate.gov/Newsroom/record.cfm?id=334664
Here’s a release from the office US Senator Schumer suggesting juice manufacturers start purchasing New York (U.S.) grown apples instead of those grown in china. The release notes
"the rampant use of toxic additives and chemicals, including inorganic arsenic, in their (china's) food supply".
He is absolutely right ... even though it will mean increased cost to the consumer.
We are not going to change Chinese policy. And the Chinese do NOT give a rat’s a** as to whether the products they sell us are safe *except* when they might lose our business over the issue.
We are fools for blindly buying Chinese products without applying any standards as to whether they are safe.
(Oh yeah, lets do away with the FDA! ... THERE’S a good f***kin idea. Don’t even get me started on this sh*t.)
The fact that it is cheaper for companies to import apple juice from half-way around the world, rather than use U.S. produced juice (or apples) illustrates just how totally behind the 8-ball we are on competing with dirt-cheap cost of overseas labor.
Jobs we have lost to that cheap labor are not ... repeat NOT coming back.
Once upon a time we were losing jobs to Mexico. Now all of us including Mexico are losing those jobs to China.
A few months back I was eating a snack made by Pringles ... these were small wheat sticks that look a bit like pretzel rods. As I’m eating them I was reading the little foil pack they came in, and there it was ... clearly written on the package ... searing itself into my eyeballs ... “made in Viet Nam”.
It is cheaper to manufacture those little wheat stix in godamned vietnam and transport them by shipping container half-way around the world than it is to make them here!!
And it was possibly with our wheat that was shipped over there first and then manufactured into little snack stix and then shipped back, at that. How cheap is that "cheap overseas labor"??... THAT'S how cheap it is.
What is even more incredible is when you consider that shipping containers are charged freight passage based on volume, *not* on weight! Do you have any idea how light those wheat snacks are? ... and it is STILL cheaper to make em in viet nam ?!?!
The size of the economic, trade and manufacturing paradigm shift that our nation must undergo in order to re-orient itself in the face of the competition from cheap worldwide labor is extraordinary. It is an economic re-orientation on all fronts including manufacturing, labor, health care, energy, distribution etc ... and in all arenas governmental, public and private ... and on the basis of how we define a high standard and good quality of life. This is the only way to accomplish the change, and it has to all be done, relatively, at the same approximate time in order to keep the ship afloat while we are doing it ... and we are soooooooo far away from even whispering about it amongst ourselves right now. Our tiny-minded, backwoods, pointy-headed, unknowledgeable discourse has made us the sad laughing-stock of the world. And meanwhile "Rome burns".
The tools we rely upon to fix things are broken ... the political process ... the supreme court ... an honest and watchful media. I have NO faith in our Country to cut the ideological bullcrap and start making the changes. We are screwed.
Never mind “drinking the kool-aid” ... in the meantime we’ll just continue drinking the apple juice.
Lemmings being lead to the sea.
