KF6ZPL
Recreation Advocate
Reged: 02/15/00
Posts: 3949
Loc: Lakeside, CA
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The below story poses an interesting dilemma...
As the US Olympic Committee receives NO tax $$$s from the Congress, why do congressmen feel they have a right to complain about where private donations to a private corporation (US Olympic Committee) are spent???
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/...rc=nl_headlines
Berets? Not ballcaps or cowboy hats? Ralph Lauren seemed poised to incite style wars when he chose to dress U.S. Olympians for the Opening Ceremonies in headwear that evokes French intellectualism more than American athletic prowess or even our frontier history.
On Wednesday, the debate careened to China — an economically more threatening rival than fashion-conscious France — after ABC’s “World News” announced that U.S. Olympians, the torchbearers of American athleticism, would wear navy blazers produced in China.
Now, an American label, Hickey Freeman, has recognized opportunity in the fray and offered to make the uniforms right here in the good ol’ United States — and in just two weeks flat. That would please Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and her Democratic Senate colleagues from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Ohio, who introduced a bill late Friday that requires the U.S. Olympic Committee to outfit Olympic athletes in ceremonial uniforms “sewn or assembled in the United States.”
The fashion to’s and fro’s have hit a range of nerves: from uncertainties about our national identity in a country with no national dress to economic worries and basic patriotism. It’s true: Our athletes can’t parade in furry ushankas as the U.S.S.R did in 1980 or wear grass skirts and leis as the Marshall Islands did in 2008. But shouldn’t the men and women representing these 50 states showcase clothes made by somebody somewhere here?
Maybe Levi’s? (No, sadly, Levi’s closed its last U.S. plant in 2003.)
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John Stewart
Editor - 4x4Wire.com
4x4Voice
Board Member BlueRibbon Coalition
CA4WDC Resources Consultant
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engnbldr
Roll Me Over
Reged: 06/16/03
Posts: 3564
Loc: 1800 acre island at the Oregon...
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>>>*In theory, in a perfect and balanced world economy, there is nothing at all wrong with goods that are well made, being sourced in some foreign Nation.
The result of course creates jobs, everything from ocean and air transport, marketing, warehousing and distribution to sales in local area stores.
USA made does add the valuable manufacturing, which contributes to local area employment and the local tax bases.
The problem lies in the balance, when more and more USA manufacturing is lost to overseas, the local area tax bases fail, this results in less jobs in the very same system with goods going the other way.
Current government policies seem to be steadily forcing the value of our currency downward in relation to other Nations, this makes our good less costly overseas and should encourage investments and production here.
What really happens is we then find everything more costly because of the base cost of everything which is energy then goes upwards.
Increasing government employment by adding regulations and agencies to oversee them helps short term by adding retaxed dollars into the system, until we reach that tipping point which is when about 50% completely support the other 50%.
Add in entitlements, which we see now with the massive increase of citizens on disability, handouts in the form of government checks for no other reason than to "stimulate" sales of goods and services.....?
It all adds up to be a bit like flying an airplane, the engine quits. Might as well jump out, even that is not a problem at all. Eventually, however.....?
*FAR better to have repaired the airplane's engine, isn't it?
Will this administration take the correct steps to repair our system? The answer is NOT in government "creating" jobs, government never has done that and cannot with any efficiency, well proven.
The answer is in allowing opportunity, those mover and shakers that are willing to take the chance of business, of being on their own trying to succeed are now stifled by government.
We drive down the street and see the storefronts closed, nearly every city in this nation demonstrates evidence which is so easy to see. THAT is the foundation, and I see it failing.
Thus uniforms from China? Just a symptom, and a minor one at that of the underlying problem.
Just MHO......*EB
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*Beats the he** outa me!....*LOL**...
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