Railing By Larry And Rhett

These two topics are along the "philosophize" lines mentioned in my blog title.

I’ve Had It With China’s Tainted Products

I rarely get in my soapbox, but this issue has been on my mind for a while and now, enough is enough for me. There was baby formula with chemicals, dangerous toy paint, sheetrock that ran you out of your house, many others I’ve forgotten and now children’s jewelry with dangerous metals in them. I’ve believed for years that the Chinese elite care nothing for the lesser in their society and history bears this out – old and recent. They obviously have no regard for the dangers their products present to others and will seemly do anything from using dangerous materials to running child labor sweat shops to make a profit. While I realize there are people like this everywhere, at least we have some semblance of checks in the USA to provide a measure of security. The Chinese seem to provide little more than lip service and our government is unwilling to act for fear of alienating the largest potential group of buyers of our goods on the planet. I understand this, but I can still take a personal one-man stand.

I’ve had enough and no more of my money will go to China if I can help it and I know this may be an impossible dream as some components may come from China even though it’s a made-in-the-USA product. From now on the first thing I’m going to check before buying is where it was made – I know this will make shopping more difficult and may make it impossible to buy anything from discount stores, but if so, oh well. If I can determine that any part of a product came from China, I will not buy it.

This is not a sales pitch to convince you to do likewise – I may not even be able to convince Bev - but is rather just a statement of the behavior I plan to embrace. If the powers of China will do nothing on their own, I’m willing to bet that having their markets dry up will do it and I’m starting today. As an added bonus, this may help create a piece of an American job.

Leadership Integrity

I’m a medium college sports fan. A big fan is someone who is in front of the TV when there is a game on regardless of who’s playing - my cousin is this person. A small fan is a person who only watches their alma mater play. I’m just above this in that I watch my alma mater – West Virginia, my adopted Tennessee and a few other select teams and games. I went to bed during the national championship football game for example, so I don’t get too bent out of shape over sports. If you are a sports fan you know that after one year in the job and lots of promises for the future, Tennessee’s football coach, Lane Kiffin, just left to go to USC at the worst possible time for UT. As a medium sports fan I have virtually no emotion invested in the situation and this is not really about the sports issue but rather about our son's response when I sent him an email to be sure he got the news. He's in the Army stationed in Korea and a UT grad. Here is his reply, which I thought was pretty powerful.

“I saw the news. If the military operated like the civilian world we would be speaking Russian now. I am always amazed at the value system of senior leaders in the civilian world. The ability to make an honorable deal with a handshake is long since past with the WWII Generation. The leaders of sports teams, corporations and our government continue to trade loyalty, duty, respect, honor and integrity for money and self benefit. It is shameful.”

Thanks for listening to our venting and I'll post about Wednesday BBQ cook in a little while.

Larry