Friday, November 20, 2015

Friday--

Leigh at 5 Acres and a Dream has a rant on the planned obsolescence that is the base of our economy. Things seem designed to fail and quickly. And all cost more to fix than buying new ones unless you are very handy and can find the parts. And, yes, the largest component is plastic.

We started looking for salmon labeled "wild caught" and "Alaskan." This provides another reason to continue and to insist on accurate labels. Unfortunately, the agribusiness industry is trying very hard to eliminate labeling. Their interest is in profits which means they need to sell their product however they can do it. Health and environmental costs are no consideration because someone else will pay them.

So, BP was largely responsible for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill but has tried to get courts to reduce the penalties and damages they had to pay. Now they may be able to claim a large part of those costs as "business expenses" and get a huge write off on their taxes. That is nauseating and just proves that what they had to pay in recompense for their short sighted fixation on profits negligence is simply a "cost of doing business." Yeah, it is good to be the king a big business.

As our politicians bluster about allowing Syrian refugees into the country because they might be terrorists this little fact is totally ignored. Europe hasn't been kind to its Muslim residents who often are third, fourth, or even fifth generation citizens--a legacy of the colonial past. And here is another bit of conveniently forgotten truth--most of our terrorists in this country are white males. Why aren't they called terrorists?

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