What I Don’t Like About Hillary

I was reading through the news today and I came across a picture of Hillary and Bill Clinton. It was at that moment that it struck me, I don’t like her. I have never met this woman and my dislike does not go to the personal level, it is to the level that we as Americans share with our public figures. For some strange reason we recognize someone from the media, no matter how minor a personality and we feel like we know them or we make generalizations about them. Now I truly believe that Hillary is a nice person and firmly believes in her convictions. I believe that she is more principled than her husband, Bill whom I like. But there was something in the picture that just didn’t seem right; I can’t place my finger on it.

This feeling has been building for a couple of years, when it was obvious that she would make a run at the Presidency. It’s weird because I was one of those who believed that when her husband was president that she would make a better president than he would. However, since that time something has changed. I don’t know if it is me, the country, or Hillary; but something is different. It’s like when you go away to college and come home to your old room. It looks the same, but something is different about it. I get a similar feeling with Hillary, she looks the same but there’s something different about her.

For some reason and it may just be me, she seems too desperate for this. She’s like the guy at the end of the night at the bar who has struck out with almost every girl there, but he wants just one more chance to redeem himself, his honor. That guy will do and say anything it takes to accomplish his mission. Hillary has been preparing for this for a long time, I suspect from when she was in college she has had this dream. I believe that since marrying Bill she has been positioning herself for this run. That is a long time to always say the right the thing, look the right way. Don’t get me wrong there is nothing wrong with wanting to pursue a dream and doing those things to make it happen. I admire tenacity in people and I admire the struggles Hillary has had to deal with. God knows to have your marriage disintegrate in front of a whole nation and you having to hold it together publically. The Right-Wing personal attacks that she has had to endure, it is one thing to attack someone politics, it is another to attack them personally. Truth be told, after we wipe away all the facades all we have is ourselves.

I think for me, my concern is that when you pursue a singleness of purpose for so long, it begins to shape you and mold you into what it will take to accomplish it. At some point leaving behind the person you once were and becoming that persona. It’s never drastic. Always honing you a little bit at a time until you are no longer the once principled believer, but now the polished and scripted politician. No longer the maverick willing to take chances, you become unwilling to take any risk. You speak only the well-crafted lines written for you. It’s like when I was a kid, I wanted to be the best basketball player I could be, I would practice all day long trying to hone my skills. On the surface this seems like a worthy goal with no harm to others or myself, except there were consequences. You see I had a friend who I loved and I would spend a lot of time with her, but as I tried to achieve my goal she became less important. I didn’t wake up one day and decide to stop spending time with her; it just started happening a little each day. Finally, we hardly saw any of each other, I was achieving my dream, but at what cost. Because of this pursuit I was changed, my beliefs were changed. I stopped being me and I became my dream.

I guess what I am trying to say is that pursuing our dreams does not make us good people or bad people, but that in the pursuit we are changed. Is Hillary the same person she was before this pursuit? I doubt it, but has she changed so much that she will forget the person before? This is the question that is giving me so much trouble. Do I think Hillary would make a better president than George Bush? Without a doubt, but I think that just about anyone can meet that standard. Is she the best that we can do to stand up for the principles that have been trampled down the last 7 years, to unify this nation and heal this nation? Hillary is a divisive figure. Many people see her and they either love her or they hate her, there isn’t a lot of middle ground. We are going to be dealing with the aftermath of these current clowns for years to come both domestically and internationally and I don’t know if such a polarizing figure will add to the healing process.

I would support Senator Obama, if I thought he had a snowballs chance in hell of winning. He is a unifying figure and I believe that he could go a long way to healing this nation not only of these recent debacles but previous ones as well, but this is a different story.

Hillary reminds me of that girl in school, who just tried too hard to be popular. You know the one, she was nice enough, but after awhile she started getting on your nerves. You just hoped that she would just stop trying so hard and just be herself. You knew people would like her if she only gave them a chance. Hillary is suffering from the fallout of her years in the White House as the right wing poster girl for liberal politics. They have affected her psyche; she has a chip on her shoulder. After these guys, do we really want someone coming in with a chip on their shoulder? It is hard for women, minorities, and progressive thinkers not to look at Hillary and want to see their aspirations for this country played out through her campaign and possible election, but frothy emotional appeals will not correct the many things that are wrong today. There are no moral victories in politics, either you win or you go home. Hillary cannot be all things to all people. She should stick to who she is, if she can remember and present that.

Read more!

Taking It to the Streets

WASHINGTON, July 5 — Support among Republicans for President Bush’s Iraq policy eroded further on Thursday as another senior lawmaker, Senator Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico, broke with the White House just as Congressional Democrats prepared to renew their challenge to the war.

“We cannot continue asking our troops to sacrifice indefinitely while the Iraqi government is not making measurable progress,” said Mr. Domenici, a six-term senator who has been a steadfast supporter of the president.

Thus Mr. Domenici joined a growing number of Republican voices in opposition to the war just as Senate Democratic leaders are readying plans to put the political and policy focus back on Iraq next week.[1]

What is it going to take to for us to get fed up enough to take this government back? I’m not talking about the fed up of sitting behind these screens and complaining and analyzing as this country is sent crashing in flames. As this piece illustrates even those who know this war is wrong and know that it is a no-win situation still want to continue the death march.

It is obvious that these guys (Democrats & Republicans) are not going to stop this. It is no longer about elections, we had an election. Anybody remember that? Where the majority of Americans voted to end this war; yet it continues. While we wait on the wheels of politics to turn; more and more Americans and Iraqis are dying and for what purpose? Is our presence in Iraq making it a safer place or a better place? Who can continue to back this argument with the overwhelming evidence that we are not doing either.

No my friends, it is time to take action to organize and to put pressure on these politicians. It is time to say enough is enough. How can the vast majority of people in a democracy be against something and yet it continues to fester. This thing is festering like an infected sore on the soul of America and the more we pick at it the more infected it becomes. It is time for direct civil action against the war-mongers and war profiteers that continue to feed the war machine with bodies of our sons and daughters, the bodies of Iraqis. It is time to shut down this government that has refused to listen to and follow the will of the people. It is time to make it plain in no uncertain terms that we have had enough of the lies and deceit.

We need to start putting together city by city, state by state, the mechanisms to carry this message to the street. We can no longer be content with the small rallies staged in individual cities and towns; we must go directly to Washington. We must go with the strength that cannot be ignored. As long as we silently stand by and watch the carnage we will continue to be ignored.

I have to give it to these guys they have gotten smarter at this; we no longer have the daily pictures beamed to our homes of the violence that is Iraq. We no longer have the daily visions of the maiming and injury that we had for Vietnam. They learned not only from Vietnam, but also from the civil rights movement. When those pictures of Black people being hosed, beaten, and attacked by dogs were sent into the homes across America, the outrage could not be contained. I guarantee you will never see pictures like that again on television. These guys know that those images had power; they motivated a nation to stand up and say enough. It was the same with the war pictures from Vietnam. Now what do we see these nice little “smart bomb” video game images of precision killing. We no longer see the real visions of war and you know what we are ok with that. It makes American Idol and Desperate Housewives go down easier. Gone from our senses are the visions of little Asians kids running down the street with napalm burning their skin off or G.I.s getting limbs blown off. Yes sir, gone are the good ole days of real war footage, the kind that would make you lose your appetite for dinner. The kind that would make you want to put down the remote, the mouse, the cell phone and do something. These images that kept us awake at night, they did because we knew that the violence was being carried out in our name.

Let’s have a good old fashion peace concert in Washington on the mall. It’s time we showed these clowns who’s really in charge and these kids how changing the world is done. Let’s leave no doubt in anybody’s mind that we are fed up and we aren’t going to take it anymore. We are not only tired of the violence in Iraq, but the violence right here on our streets in America. Where are you people who say you want your government back? It will never happen without direct action from us. Begging for it won’t get it, obviously voting for it won’t get it, and praying for it won’t get it. I’m waiting to see who is willing to unbuckle their seatbelt and stand up on the plane that is about to crash and burn…

---

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/06/washington/06cong.html

Read more!

Could This Happen Here?

COLOGNE, Germany — In a city with the greatest Gothic cathedral in Germany and no fewer than a dozen Romanesque churches, adding a pair of slender fluted minarets would scarcely alter the skyline. Yet plans for a new mosque are rattling this ancient city to its foundations.

Cologne’s Muslim population, largely Turkish, is pushing for approval to build what would be one of Germany’s largest mosques, in a working-class district across town from the cathedral’s mighty spires.[1]

As I was reading this story, I was troubled by the underlying message from the people who were opposed to the mosque. I am still amazed that many people have the false belief that democracy cannot withstand the integration of Islam. All over the world there appears to be this undercurrent of fear and mistrust of the Islamic faith. I would be the first to admit that there have been zealots who have committed many atrocities in the name of Islam, but have there not also been Christians and Jews who have done likewise. The idea that only Muslims are capable of misusing religion is preposterous and foolhardy. It is this simplistic view of the world that continues to feed the radicals with fuel to espouse their teachings of a religious war against the Muslims.

I wonder what would be the sentiments if Muslims attempted to build a similar structure here in the states. Is our religious tolerance only for those religions we like? Those religions that mimic our own are tolerable, but those we don’t understand are not? With the 4^th of July just passed I wonder what is really being celebrated on Independence Day. Is it democracy and freedom or is it majority privilege? Unless we are willing to extend these freedoms to everyone then they are false freedoms. The problem with the founding fathers of this nation is that they didn’t have the strength of their convictions to make democracy real for all. Freedom was only offered to a select few and to this day we are struggling with the aftermath of their fateful decisions. This thing called freedom and democracy is not some static event housed in some musty museum, it is living and breathing like the people it is suppose to include and whenever through our short-sightedness, as humans are prone to be, we find it does not include some, we need to amend it so it does. The problem is amending a document is a lot easier than amending hearts and minds. It’s funny, but whoever gets to an event first automatically believes that they are the only ones worthy of the event. That whoever comes later is not as entitled to be there as they are. There is an ancient story about it here.

Mr. Giordano, a Holocaust survivor, has been sharply criticized, by fellow Jews, among others, and has even received death threats. But others say he is giving voice to Germans, who for reasons of their past, are reluctant to express misgivings about the rise of Islam in their midst.

Germany’s “false tolerance,” he said, enabled the Sept. 11 hijackers to use Hamburg as a haven in which to hatch their terrorist plot. Cologne, too, has struggled with radical Islamic figures, most notably Metin Kaplan, a militant Turkish cleric known as the caliph of Cologne.

“I don’t want to see women on the street wearing burqas,” said Mr. Giordano, a nattily dressed man with the flowing white hair of an 18th-century German romantic. “I’m insulted by that — not by the women themselves, but by the people who turned them into human penguins.”

Such blunt language troubles other German Jews, who say a victim of religious persecution should not take a swipe at another religious minority. Henryk M. Broder, a Jewish journalist who is a friend of Mr. Giordano’s, said he should have avoided the phrase “human penguins.”

But Mr. Broder said that his underlying message was valid, and that his stature as a writer gave him the standing to say it. “A mosque is more than a church or a synagogue,” he said. “It is a political statement.”

For Mr. Alboga, though, the line between frank debate and racist demagoguery is not so clear. “This is like thinking from the Middle Ages,” he said, “and it is sending the racists to the barricades.”[2]

Centuries later we see how that ancient story plays out in that a witness to some of the worse persecution of one man to another is willing to persecute others who are different. Mr. Giordano is supposed to have survived the Nazi persecution by hiding in a cellar, but it appears more like he survived it by collaborating with them. If we believe in religious freedom it must be extended to all. Democracy does not survive because of us; it survives in spite of us. The more we try to limit its scope, the more we limit ourselves and our world. There is a growing trend to reverse many of the gains to this document that we hold reverently, to go back to the “good ole” days. Those days were only good if you were white and a male, instead of reversing our direction we need to be blazing new directions in human tolerance and understanding.

Jesus wasn’t surrounded by the politically connected or the religious leaders; he was surrounded by those that were considered less than others. He was surrounded by those that needed understanding and tolerance. I don’t have to agree with someone to offer comfort and love; I just need to recognize that they like me are just human.

---

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/05/world/europe/05cologne.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[2] Ibid.

Read more!

Who’s Minding Trough?

Martindale, 43, is among a group of procurement officers struggling to keep pace with increasing demands to oversee billions of dollars in spending by the Pentagon and civilian agencies. Although she and her colleagues play pivotal roles in the government's operation, their plight has received little attention even as the government continues to expand its reliance on private companies and embarks on increasingly complicated programs .

The Defense Department's civilian acquisition workforce has shrunk by about 40 percent since the early 1990s and now has about 270,000 employees, according to Pentagon statistics and Government Accountability Office reports. Yet defense spending on service contracts increased 78 percent, to $151 billion, from 1996 to 2006, the reports said.

There are 7.5 million federal contractors, 1.5 million more than in 2002, without a corresponding increase in government officials to oversee them, said Paul C. Light, a public service professor at New York University.

"The acquisition workforce couldn't be in any more distress right now, and I know they are frustrated that they can't oversee the contracts that they have," Light said. "They are looking at the hunks of money flowing out but don't have the bodies to keep up."

The shortfall, which the government has relied largely on private contractors to fill, has contributed to cost overruns and delays, according to government reports and audits.

In the midst of the decline, the Army launched a modernization project but had "insufficient resources to staff, manage, and synchronize" the program, which includes a complex system for networking soldiers with each other, planes and tanks, the GAO found recently. The Army hired Boeing to manage the project, which has nearly doubled in cost to $163 billion.

This year, after a ship being built by Lockheed Martin went more than 50 percent over budget, the Navy acknowledged that it hadn't provided enough oversight and pledged to more than double the number of technical experts at the shipyard where the work is being done.[1]

Remember when the “Cold War” ended and all those generals were talking about peace dividends and lowering the cost of the military budget. We now know of course that this administration has spent not only the peace dividend, but also any other dividend they could find in the public coffers. As the acquisition part of the military industrial complex has grown to astronomical proportions those hired to oversee them has not. If I were a cynic I would say that this was intentional. The reason is simple any project that does not have the proper oversight has massive design issues and cost-overruns which goes straight into the contractor’s pockets. What we are seeing is the contractors policing themselves due to a lack of Pentagon overseers. History has shown that when this is the case we end up with projects like the B-1 bomber, $800 toilet seats, and the “Star Wars” initiative. As part of their lobbying efforts could those big defense contractors be trying to keep the government payroll down to keep their payrolls up? Think about it, if every project or product you bid has a 50% increase built in you could make that bottom line look pretty sweet. These guys may not be big fans of “big government”, but they don’t seem to have problem with big government contracts. Also, with more than a third of current projects being manned by the same contractors that are building the projects, can anyone be surprised that they are over-budget and have major design flaws?

How much money do we have to pour down this black hole before we realize the fruitlessness of it? The past few wars should demonstrate to us that the modern battle is not about technology. In each case we have had superior fire-power and in each case we have been defeated by a determined enemy with low tech weaponry. In the mean time, we continue to spend trillions of dollars figuring out a better way to kill our fellow humans. In a protracted urban guerrilla struggle all those nice little toys can’t carry the day. The days of lining up forces opposed to each other and going at it are over. It is time to trim down this bloated military budget and put the money into ways to break our dependency on oil, poverty eradication, and global warming. Now, I realize in the midst of an unpopular and so far badly managed war that this suggestion will seem radical and very unpopular, but as long as we continue to build this crap we will continue to have to create wars to use it. It’s like a viscous cycle and it doesn’t matter who is in office, you don’t spend trillions of dollars on this stuff and not use it.

Instead of talking about increasing the size of the military, maybe we should try increasing the size of our leader’s brains and their courage. Not the false courage that is willing to send kids to do a job they weren’t willing to do as youth; no the courage to back us away from the brink of self destruction. The more we try to hang on to this empire, the closer we get to our decline as a society. These examples of letting the foxes guard the hen house are just further proof that the end is near. The thing about greed is that there is never enough to satisfy the appetite of the avaricious.

---

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/04/AR2007070401424.html?hpid=moreheadlines

Read more!

Are Second Chances Mandatory?

The United States now has more than two million people behind bars, a number that has been rising steadily for decades. But state lawmakers who once would have rushed to build new prisons have begun to see that prison-building is not the best or most cost-effective way to fight crime or protect the public’s safety.

Several states have instead begun to focus on developing community-based programs that deal with low-level, nonviolent offenders without locking them up. And they have begun to look at ways to control recidivism with programs that help newly released people find jobs, housing, drug treatment and mental health care — essential services if they are to live viable lives in a society that has historically shunned them.[1]

As our prison population continues to rise and there doesn’t seem to be any slowdown in sight, we are soon going to have to make show difficult choices. Will we continue to lock people up; forcing states to allocate more resources for prison building, supervision, and support services. We will begin to recognize that the majority of offenders are non-violent and primarily low level drug defendants and change our antiquated drug laws. Or, we will begin to recognize that a large majority of the prison population are offenders who were on probation or parole and have violated some technical stipulation of their release.

I always enjoy writing about this issue, because it gives the law and order crowd a chance to rant about some probation or parole who slaughtered a family in Iowa and how we need to get tough on these godless hordes. The truth of the matter is that there are millions of men and women who are on parole and probation in this country that you never hear about. They try to the best of their ability to live within the guidelines of their release. Even though many of them are struggling under the stigma of being a felon or ex-con, they are trying to uphold the law and make a living. While no one wants to coddle criminals and talking tough on crime is a politician’s best friend, I think we need to take time out and look at who the majority of people we are incarcerating are. The majority of our prison and jail populations are not murderers, rapists, or robbers. Nearly half of these people locked up are a direct result of our current drug policy.[2] This post is not however about those laws; this post is about what we do with these people after they are released from jail and prison.

For those who are unenlightened to probation and parole rules, they are designed for failure. They require the individuals to try to lead a life no adult in the United States could lead. The rules of parole/probation vary from state to state, but most have the same basic concepts. The rules restrict the movement of the individual, so that the individual must report and request permission for any movement outside of the jurisdiction they are in. If the person works in an adjoining state he must receive daily permission to travel to work. The person must agree to have his home and/or person searched at any time by the parole officer. The person must submit to drug testing at anytime and the person cannot drink alcohol or be in a place that serves alcoholic beverages. The person must pay a fee for being on parole, even though he may not be employed. I find it particularly interesting that we want the poor to pay for their own incarceration and release. We now have the poorest of people, many of them incarcerated because they are poor, paying for their own release services. If the fees are not paid they are subject to have their parole revoked. These state legislatures sure know an easy target when they see one; they can pass legislation against the same people who do not have the right to vote against it. I can hardly wait for them to mandate prison industries for inmates to fully compensate the state for their incarceration and maybe allow the state to make a few bucks on the side.

Increasing rate of revocations. There is some evidence that both the number and rate of revocations have increased and these have had a significant impact on prison and jail populations (Parent et al.). For example, in 1988 more than 60 percent of Oregon's prison admissions were due to probation or parole revocations. Furthermore, two-thirds of the prison admissions in Texas in 1989, and 60 percent of California's prison admissions, were violators (Parent et al.).

Parent and colleagues note that while the increase in probation/parole populations alone might account for the increase in revocations, interviews with practitioners reveal that in some states the rate of revocations has increased as well. Increased rates of revocations have been attributed to many factors including: (1) the shift toward control-oriented practices of community supervision; (2) the law-enforcement background of new probation/parole officers (as opposed to the social work background of the past); (3) an increase in the number of conditions of probation; (4) improvement in the methods of monitoring violations; (5) the more serious offender placed on community supervision caseloads; and (6) an increase in probation and parole caseloads (Parent et al.).

Empirical data on technical violations. While data collected over time is not readily available, the largest follow-up study of felony probationers in the United States revealed that a substantial proportion of probationers fail to successfully complete their sentence (Langan and Cunnif). For example, within a three-year follow-up period, 62 percent of a sample of 79,000 felony probationers had been either arrested for another felony or had violated a condition of probation resulting in a disciplinary hearing (Langan and Cunnif). Thirty percent of those had both been arrested and had a disciplinary hearing, 13 percent had only been arrested, and 19 percent had only a disciplinary hearing. Furthermore, 46 percent of the sample were ultimately incarcerated. Of those probationers who were incarcerated, 35 percent were incarcerated for committing only a technical violation (Langan and Cunnif).

In contrast, however, Clear and colleagues' evaluation of 7,501 felony and misdemeanant probationers terminated from six probation agencies revealed that approximately one quarter of the probationers committed violations, half of which were violations of technical conditions of supervision. Further, they found that most violators misbehaved only once. Therefore, the majority of probationers successfully completed their sentence without incident. In short, their study seemed to refute the assumption that due to early release and diversion from prison, the probation population has become increasingly dangerous.[3]

It is time for us to begin to recognize who the majority of our incarcerated are and begin to tailor programs to match that reality. It is time for the politics of fear to end not only in the international arena, but at home as well. Do not get me wrong there a number of dangerous people in our prisons and they should remain there, but the numbers do not support the system we currently have in place. We need to tailor release programs that match the offenders and the crimes. Should we hold the person arrested for a simple drug possession to the same strict standards as the armed robber? Is our goal to rehabilitate these people back into society or to treat them as pariah? If it is the latter, then we will not be able to build enough prisons to keep pace with expansion.

---

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/02/opinion/02mon1.html

[2] http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/drrc.pdf

[3] http://law.jrank.org/pages/1821/Probation-Parole-History-Goals-Decision-Making-Recent-trends.html

Read more!

The Sky Is Falling, But I Don’t Want To Know

All this is not to say that it's not getting warmer and that curbing our profligate environmental ways is not a commendable and necessary goal. But perhaps this movement is sowing the seeds of its own destruction -- even as it believes the human species has sown its own. There must be a limit to how many calamitous films, books and television shows we, and our children, can absorb.

It doesn't seem sustainable to expect people to remain terrified by such a disinterested, often benign -- it was so nice eating out on the patio! -- and even unpredictable enemy. (I understand we're the enemy, but the executioner is the weather.) Recall that the experts told us last year would be a record-setting hurricane season, but the series of Katrinas never materialized.[1]

This quote was taken from an Op-Ed piece in the Washington Post by a writer, Emily Yoffe. I was stuck not by the fact that the author doesn’ t believe that we are facing global warming issues, but by the fact that we shouldn’t be harping on it. So what if the whole planet is going to pot, I just want to play my fiddle. While I agree that too much fear can make people desensitized to the threat, (ie. War on Terror Alerts) but I hardly think we have reached that stage of awareness concerning global warming. There are many people who still don’t have a clue that global warming is even occurring, (George Bush, Dick Cheney, etc.) so it may be a little premature to want to call it day on sounding the warning bell.

The author’s main issue was with the children being frightened about global warming prior to making decisions about college. News Flash – if we don’t do something about the state of this world what you majored in college I think won’t really matter. Ms. Yoffe seems to be a global warming denier and doesn’t want anyone to spoil her bliss. So what if the temperature is a little warmer, the better to work on her tan. I know we are suppose to make lemonade from the lemons of life, but if we can avoid a few of those lemons; shouldn’t we? Our children need to be concerned about his issue, because if they aren’t raised with an awareness of the importance of this, they will continue down the rosy path to annihilation that the author seems to be content to follow.

The author makes a valid point that no one really knows what the weather will be like in the future, heck the truth is they can’t even forecast tomorrow’s weather. I can’t guarantee that if we do the things being proposed that we still won’t have problems, but I can guarantee that if we don’t do anything we will have some major problems. You don’t have to be a genius to see the writing is on the wall, it is as simple as cause and effect. Are we so naïve to believe that we can pollute the planet and there not be any consequences? This is not naiveté it is foolishness and dangerous. I make no claim to understand the inner workings of the planet and only God knows what the future will hold, but I do know that as part of being a resident of this planet and a steward of it I should leave as little of a footprint as possible.

For too long we have continued to live as if there were no tomorrow, passing our problems from one generation to the next hoping that they would be smart enough to figure it out. We should stop living as if the world just belongs to us, with no concern for those who will come after us. How can we on the one hand claim to love our kids and grand kids and want the best for them and yet we strap them with a crushing debt, a polluted planet, and a broken legacy. The time for selfish indulgence has to come to an end for the sake of our children. This me attitude will in the end condemn our children to a gloomy and possibly horrific future. We need to educate our children about this issue; we need to explain to them the mistakes we have made. There must be a fundamental change in our attitudes as Americans and as global citizens. I think this is what frightens and bothers the “bury your head” crowd is that it will require a change in the attitudes of what it means to be an American. Some would rather continue to live in the past with no consideration of the future, as long as their selfish wants are being met. If you won’t do it for yourself, do it for your children and your grand children…

---

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/24/AR2007062401374.html

Read more!

Made In China

I remember when I was a kid we were poor, we use to have to shop in the discount stores before Wal-Mart. Usually they were mom and pop dime stores as they were called back then. Nothing ever cost a dime, but the name let you know that the merchandise was cheap and usually not very good. Most of the merchandise was made overseas in places like Korea, Japan, and China and at the time they seemed like exotic and mysterious places. We use to buy our toys there and they wouldn’t last very long, sometimes they would break as soon as you unpacked them. But again they were cheap and as a child it was always the getting that was important.

As I grew up those exotic names were replaced by others like Indonesia, Honduras, and the Philippines. The names changed, but the quality of the merchandise didn’t. Fortunately, my economic status improved to the point where I didn’t have to buy those items any longer and I could afford a little better quality merchandise. As the world has grown to embrace the global economy and the corporate pariah continue their race to the bottom, it appears that China is becoming the epicenter of the free trade showdown. In the past few months we had story after story and multiple investigations into how the Chinese do business. In their effort to secure access to the billion consumer market that is China, many businesses and governments have allowed themselves to be seduced into ignoring basic safety and inspection practices. The results of course have been a series of poisonings, deaths, and slave labor reports, not just here in America but the world as well. How is it possible that we can be exposed to these dangers in this century? Where are the safeguards that should be in place to protect us from exposure to these hazards? Eating food from another country should not carry with it a possible death sentence.

The answer lies in a large part to our globalization and free trade policies. It also lies in our desire to save money and enlarge corporate profits. Our trade deficit with China last year alone was 232,588.60[1]. That’s right; that is two hundred million dollars more we are receiving than we are sending out. Because we are importing so much from China there is no way to inspect it and defend ourselves once it arrives here. This means we have to do our due diligence prior to it getting here, but of course this is not being done.

China manufactured every one of 24 kinds of toys recalled for safety reasons in United States this year, including popular Thomas & Friends wooden train sets; consumer advocates, parents and regulators are alarmed at fact that over all, number of products made in China that are being recalled in US by Consumer Product Safety Commission has doubled in last five years, driving total number of recalls in country to 467 last year, an annual record; this makes China responsible for 60 percent of all product recalls, compared with 36 percent in 2000; this may reflect fact that toys made in China now make up 70 to 80 percent of toys sold in country; string of toy recalls has inspired new demands for stepped-up enforcement of safety by US regulators and importers, as well as by government and industry in China; Thomas & Friends trains are made for RC2 Corp of Oak Brook, Ill, at plants it oversees in China; RC2 declines to comment on safety control measures at its company plants in China, as does Toy Industry Assn; consumer advocates say staff of consumer product commission has been cut by more than 10 percent in Bush administration, leaving fewer regulators to monitor safety of growing flood of imports.[2]

The level of products entering our ports from China is too massive and our inspection is too lax to not expect a brewing catastrophe. Yesterday it was Fido; tomorrow it could be our children. Our business and government leaders must take a more active role in insuring our protection from Chinese imports. It is irresponsible to expect a country like China to police itself; their focus is to maintain their cheap labor force and high exports. China has shown over and over again that it will act only in its national interest and will resist any efforts to change how they do business. It is up to our government to do a better job through legislation and policy changes to make the Chinese aware that protecting our citizens is important. Instead what we have is once again placing profits over people; the WTO and other trade organizations have little or no method of combating the problems lax local inspections and policies.

Western companies have been so anxious to transfer manufacturing to China’s cheap factories that they have been happy to close their eyes to what else goes on over there — just as Google or Yahoo were happy to assist in repressing information to get a toe into the Chinese market, or as Washington and other Western capitals compete in trying to please visiting Chinese leaders. The ultimate source of China’s failings is a Communist Party that has jettisoned worn-out Marxist economic theories but clings to its authoritarian rule on all other fronts, creating a dangerously unbalanced behemoth.

This is not an argument against trading with or investing in China. Globalization can be a potent force for democratization. But human rights violations cannot be relegated to untouchable internal affairs. Just as the world has not hesitated, rightly, to lambaste the United States over issues like Guantánamo Bay, it should not be shy about systematic and widespread violations of human rights in China.[3]

The things that are being uncovered are just the tip of the iceberg; if we are to participate in these trade agreements and organizations we must do so with more emphasis on people and less on profits. We can no longer remain silent to these abuses to save a few cents at Wal-Mart, what are the lives of our children worth? Free trade is only as good as our trading partners and any partners that do not take safety first are not good partners. It appears the tag “Made in China” hasn’t changed much since I was child, have we?

---

[1] http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html#2007

[2] http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F70D13FF385B0C7A8DDDAF0894DF404482

[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/22/opinion/22fri3.html

Read more!