Archive for Politics
How Fair is Fair Trade? You Might Be Surprised!
Posted by: | CommentsThe “fair trade” label used on many products is supposed to help poor merchants get more for their products by cutting out the middleman.
The whole idea of “fair trade” is to pay farmers, craftsmen and small business people in undeveloped nations a fair wage for their time and effort. In addition, a portion of the price is supposed to go toward improving living conditions and infrastructure in the small villages and communities designated as “fair trade” locales.
Unfortunately “fair trade” just doesn’t work out that way much of the time. Most people who shop “fair trade” don’t really know how much of their money makes it to the people they hope to help. Money actually does trickle down to the producer of the goods, but huge amounts of mark up still go to middlemen and “fair trade” retailers
TransFair is an organization that promotes “fair trade” practices. The fair trade organization takes on the role of the middlemen by itself. The results are the same, the mark-up exists, and the “fair trade” organization and retailer are making huge profits by tugging on the heartstrings of consumers who feel they need to help out the poor third world farmer.
Fair Trade labels don’t tell you how much is paid to farmers, but hanks to the internet that amount can be determined. TransFair itself will tell you that a cocoa farmer gets 0.03 cents of the $3.49 spent on a 3.5-ounce chocolate bar labeled
“organic fair trade” and sold at Target stores. Whole Foods, a “fair trade” grocer pays farmers about 0.26 cents for a one pound bag of sugar that it sells for $3.59.
Just because you pay a premium for a product that is labeled “fair trade” doesn’t mean the farmer, craftsmen or small business person isn’t being exploited, many times it means the retailer is just taking advantage of another uneducated consumer.
What’s Wrong With Us?
No Joke! How Many Times Can an Illegal Alien Be Arrested Before Being Deported?
Posted by: | CommentsRecently, Prince William County police arrested Carlos A. Martinelly Montano, a 23 year old illegal alien. He was arrested and charged with Driving Under the Influence and Involuntary Manslaughter after the car he was driving was involved in a head on collision that claimed the life of Sister Denise Mosier, a Benedictine Nun.
The fact that Montano was driving a vehicle in this country is absolutely unbelievable; you see Montano has been in trouble before. He was actually free on bond waiting to be deported. You see, this is the third time in the last five years that Montano has been arrested for Driving Under the Influence, each time in the same county. He has been cited previously for DUI, speeding, public drunkenness, and of course for being in our country illegally. Montano was driving with a suspended license that he was able to obtain through the local Motor Vehicle Authority.
As if all of this is not enough! Mr. Montano has also been in the custody of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency on two separate occasions. Each time he was in custody, he was released, because our representatives in Washington D.C. refuse to fund the deportation of illegal aliens in our country!
What’s Wrong With Us?
Politicians Are a Lot Like Diapers
Posted by: | Comments“Politicians are a lot like diapers – they should be changed frequently and for the same reason”
Let’s look at a recent Cleveland Ohio event that had Governor Ted Strickland, US Senator Sherrod Brown and US Representative Dennis Kucinich all slapping each other on the back and lauding their victory in keeping jobs in Ohio and Cleveland.
What were the jobs? These were factory jobs at the only site in the US that produces suits for Hugo Boss. The suits sell for around $800 dollars each, and Hugo Boss wanted to move production out of the US where they could get cheaper labor, maybe Bangladesh where the average factory worker makes $43 a MONTH! In order to keep the jobs here in the US, the workers had to agree to cut their own wages from an average of $13 an hour to $10 an hour. Average salary after the jobs were saved is $20,800 per year. That’s only $1250 less than the 2009 federal poverty level for a family of 4, and for this we get State and Federal politicians congratulating each other.
Instead of slapping each other on the back, maybe these guys ought to get back to Washington and tell Hugo Boss that if they want to move production out of the US, that’s fine, but now if you want to sell suits in the US there will be a tariff of $250 per suit imported into our country.
We have to stop exporting everything we do to other countries and foreign companies that really don’t like us anyway!
What’s Wrong With Us?
Sound Bytes are Sensational, But are they Believable?
Posted by: | CommentsSound bytes are usually sensational, rarely believable, seldom news worthy, yet they seem to shape our daily world!
Let’s look at the recentforced resignation of Shirley Sherrod on July 19, 2010. This resignation came after conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart posted video and sound bytes of Sherrod’s address at a March 2010 NAACP event on his website. Within 24 hours of this posting of out of context sound bytes, the NAACP had condemned Sherrod, the Obama White House had called for her resignation and our country was sent into another racially fueled controversy over nothing more than Sound Bytes!
Mr. Breitbart chose just the right bytes from Ms Sherrod’s speech to have the exact impact that he wanted them to have. He used sound bytes to create an air of sensationalism, he used sound bytes to promote himself and his website and he brought undeserved criticism to the conservative movement in this country.
What’s Wrong With Us?