Oops! Only American products please!

How much do the people in charge of purchasing make in salaries? Take it out of their pay, they’re the ones costing taxpayers $100,000 right?

I don’t want to sound like an isolationist or something, but I think that having a policy requiring that only American made products be sold at the Capitol Visitors Center is reasonable and so is the refusal to compromise regardless of our current financial situation. If we produced and consumed more of our own goods, and made high quality American made goods available to our Capitol’s visitors, both foreign and domestic, we would at least be taking small steps away from the dependence on foreign goods that have helped to get us in this mess to begin with.

Let that stuff sit in storage, or recycle it. $100,000 is chicken feed when you consider the scope of the mess we’re in.

If the Capitol Visitors Center is supposed to represent America, let it also represent American industry (such as it is).

I’m just sayin’.

or sell them as us capitol mystery boxes! i’m a sucker for mystery boxes

What a beautiful display of xenophobia.

So, we’re selling cheap tat that’s only going to end up slowly rotting in a landfill (or decomposing on the shelf of a thrift shop) and we’re being picky over who made it? If you want to get something meaningful to remind you of your trip to a particular place – check out what local artisans are making.

Frankly people – I can’t believe you are all being so imperialistic about this. Buy American because Americans need the jobs – so, people in other countries don’t need jobs? You don’t mind the fact that slave labor produces pretty much everything else in your lives – but a bit of nasty meaningless trash is a matter of national pride?

I agree, Zombie.
If an American company can profit more by making their products outside the USA, then what’s wrong with that? Would people rather the American company go out of business because their workforce here is too expensive, thereby making the product too expensive that no one would be willing to buy it? If an American company ultimately made the profit from the sales of these products, then what’s wrong with that? Would a Japanese person not buy a Toyota because it was manufactured in their plant in the USA? It’s a global economy. Politicians are just doing what they do best: play politics. Aren’t these the same people who renamed french fries to “Freedom Fries”. Come on, they’re obviously pandering to their ignorant, nationalistic, protectionist constituents and veiling it under the banner of patriotism.

Remember, in Soviet Russia Grave is spinning you!!!

@SparkS

WTF?? Communist in the White House? Not in my country there isn’t. I am proud and tremendously hopeful now that President Obama is in the White House. For the first time in as long as I can remember (and I am old enough to have a fairly long memory) I truly feel that our President is a representative of the diversity of the United States. Calling the President a Communist is ignorant and malicious. Having a political opinion is not the same thing as irresponsible misrepresentation.

While I think that America needs to produce much more of what we consume right here at home, I am by no means suggesting that we build physical (or ideological) walls around the country and pull out of the world economy.

I was only saying the the Capitol Visitor’s Center represents the U.S. Capitol, and that it seems reasonable to me that the cheesy trinkets that they foist off on the souvenir-buying public represent the best American-made cheesy trinkets that we can offer.

Oh Carbonfish, you and your shades of grey. Don’t you know the world’s only black and white? And full of commies and heathens dedicated to squashing your ideals? Get with the program.

@violet

^_^