Suddenly, Bascom Family Farms syrup will become 10 per cent more expensive for Canadians to import. Which means its Canadian customers may decide to look elsewhere, Bascom said, unless he takes a hit to keep them happy.
“They can buy Canadian and save the 10 per cent tariff, or they can buy American, which is what they have been doing, and pay more. So I suspect we’re going to have to compromise and lower our prices,” said Bascom, 68, a fifth-generation maple syrup producer. “It’s going to cost us quite a bit of money.”
Trudeau is intending to create such pain.
Bascom’s 75-employee company is located in New Hampshire, a swing state in presidential elections. Canada’s list of tariffs has been designed to damage American businesses in politically important and Republican-leaning parts of the country, theoretically creating pressure on Trump to drop his own tariffs.
“The only way to get the Trump administration to yield is to make it painful enough for middle-class Americans, and thus the politicians that represent middle-class Americans, to force them to do something,” said Eric Miller, president of the Rideau Potomac Strategy Group, a U.S.-Canada consultancy.
Many of today’s “red” states have historically had strong trade union
movements – think of Michigan, Missouri and Wisconsin – but after
Citizens United opened the floodgates to dark money from the super-rich
in state politics, the states saw their legislatures fill up with
ideologue Republicans who passed anti-union laws designed to weaken
labor and allow employers to pay their workers less, cut their benefits,
fire them more easily, and subject them to less safe, less dignified
working conditions.
Missouri’s anti-union “right to work” law was signed into law last year by the state’s disgraced, loathsome (now ex-)governor,
Eric Greitens. At the time, it seemed the fix was in: between voter
suppression campaigns and gerrymandering, the Missouri legislature was
effectively insulated from the will of the people it governed, able to
secure re-election by doing the dirty work of the state’s wealthy elite
to the detriment of the state’s majority of (disenfranchised) working
people.
But Missourians fought back. The state’s trade unions canvassed for
signatures to put the right to work law on the ballot during the August
special election. The law was so unpopular that the AFL-CIO was able to
get more than 300,000 signatures on direct ballot petition (they only
needed 100,000), and when Missourians went to the polls this week, they
easily carried the day – and the law is dead, with 65% of Missourians
voting to kill it.
Missouri organizers say that the 1% have awakened a “sleeping giant”:
that working people have woken up to the risk posed by the concentration
of money into fewer and fewer hands, the hoarding of America’s
prosperity, the distorting of its policies, and they are not going to
take it anymore.
The special election was also a litmus test for Missouri politicians:
many of the politicians who campaigned to keep unions down during this
race are up for re-election in November, and the triumphant labor
activists who scored this victory will make sure voters are reminded of
their representatives’ positions when those campaigns kick off.
And now I’m mad that nobody told us we were given cows. Cause that’s really f*cking nice and nobody mentioned it at all.
American media tends to disregard that anyone donates to the US. And then Amurricans complain about money going abroad because “nobody helped the US in our disasters.”
>.>
Also, do you know how much a cow costs? O.O
It isn’t just a matter of how much a cow costs, its a matter of considering that Masai life is based around their cattle. Its their wealth, their food, and a significant part of their religion. Here’s a quote from Wikipedia:
“Traditional Maasai lifestyle centres around their cattle which constitute their primary source of food. The measure of a man’s wealth is in terms of cattle and children. A herd of 50 cattle is respectable, and the more children the better. A man who has plenty of one but not the other is considered to be poor.[37] A Maasai religious belief relates that God gave them all the cattle on earth, leading to the belief that rustling cattle from other tribes is a matter of taking back what is rightfully theirs, a practice that has become much less common.[38]”
So its not just “they gave us 14 cows”, its that they gave us something that is very important and significant to them, it is more than just a kind gesture that definitely deserves to be known and its a genuine shame that more people don’t know about it.
Wait, you guys DON’T KNOW that we offer help to the US when you have disasters???????
Shit, down here in Brazil we not only offered to send tracking units and doctors to help in 9/11 but we wanted to send a whole lot of donations to help with Katrina (we have experience with floods down here so we knew what kind of medicine to send to prevent outbreaks).
We alone had like 2 army airplanes full of medicine and non-perishables like baby formula, diapers, bottled water, mosquito nets and other stuff that’s needed to fight opportunistic diseases that hit flooded areas, enough to assist a good few thousand people at least, ready to go the day after it hit, but your government refused the donations.
The same thing happened to the Canadians and Europeans who offered help, the US embassies around the world told us all to give money to Red Cross.
And so we did, we all gave hundreds of millions of dollars to them, and then this happened:
So please, don’t you go spreading misinformation and prejudice against the rest of the world, WE DID OFFER HELP AND ORGANIZED IT EVEN FASTER THAN BUSH DID, BUT Y’ALL REFUSED IT.
Oh wow I had no idea this happened it’s really not talked about in media at all wow this is something good to know about wow
I’m so angry.
I didn’t know that other countries tried to help after 9/11 or Katrina. Like, that’s something we, the people, should hear about and we don’t.
Please don’t blame us for the shitty decisions our government makes. We don’t have as much control over our government as we would like to think and they keep a lot from us.
Spread this shit.
After Katrina, Cuba donated several hundred blankets. Think about that. A country that is suffering economically due directly to the US embargo offered to help us when we needed it by sending what they could. And once again, it was refused. We have a government that is so self-righteous that we refuse to accept disaster aid in order to maintain this facade that we are the most generous nation on earth.
Okay, Katrina thing.
Only Texans really knows this? and even then it’s not wide spread. Mexico sent their army. They sent their army for relief efforts. Didn’t call ahead, they drove all the way to San Antonio with doctors and food and all sorts of supplies.
When people actually got a call from them saying “Hey, we’re sending people up.” The people who answered said “What? We can’t…” “Too late, already there.” This was while the government was turning down help.
So yeah, other countries send relief.
Forest fires up in Washington last year? Firefighters from Australia came up to assist.
Like… we don’t hear about this shit. At all.
I can second the above with the fires.
Most the time, when people say “oh FEMA or something sent people right?” re: fires, its actually people from other countries showing up and kinda ignoring the government telling them to fuck off and staying on behalf of local departments because we REALLY need them.
If there’s a huge ass disaster, and the government is sitting there with a thumb up it’s ass, help is offered and most the time– shit, it gets there! But then the feds do something really fucking dirty. They insist they were the help, if it’s talked about at all.
They insist those people putting out fires were federal people, because to most people a fireman’s a fireman. The people handing out water and food, a relief worker is a relief worker. So on and so forth.
We had people come up when the fires were so bad a while ago– not the Australians, but i think there was like a German group of like 3 guys that flew themselves over? They came out of sheer “this is horrible and we’re helping” and my dad [local fire chief] had them working with our guys and the feds lost no time telling every news outlet that it was THEIR people doing all the fire knockdowns and structure work when these guys were running into buildings and grabbing people, pets, and people’s important documents because they knew papers were a pain in the ass to replace.
What you gotta understand is that our government is very intent on selling us and the rest of the world [as much as possible] the idea of a powerful and self reliant country. All our reporting on disasters, starts with the scaremongering and then moves to “but our people can handle it because we’re the best at handling things” and then they move on before the idea it’s out of control comes to mind. The average person outside of the disaster has no idea, if they have never been around such an event or met someone who regularly deals with these things, they will kinda probably nod along with that. Because we have no real scope on the scale and impact– by design. Our media intake is very controlled to slant everything to the “eh, we can handle it and everyone else out there– they need our help because they’re not so good at handling disasters like we are.” People who know better, reading international news, interacting with international social groups, looking outside their sphere of community– we know better but that kinda slant is really hard to break from because of that grip American media has on information. So, taking that knowledge, we further have restricted reporting on certain disasters because they’re considered unimportant. Hurricanes are considered important, earthquakes are only considered important if it wrecks something the government cares about or somewhere a couple million people live that they’ll upset the national money flow/they can throw money at someone to make the news care, floods are only important if it’s in a similar manner to earthquakes but since they occur annually they’re rarely reported on nationally, mudslides that kill people or leave hundreds homeless aren’t important to the government even through they happen constantly, wildfires that consume most of the nation/continent each year generally are unimportant until they consume a town or threaten a government interest/money flow location. Terrorist attacks are always important because people will talk about them.
So, when we do get help for any of the above, it’s possible that most people may have no idea about what’s happened, let alone that help’s been sent. Or if people know something happened, the details are vague– the news don’t care to give the nitty gritty. You’ll know something happened and people are suffering and “gee, isn’t it good you’re not them” and then now the weather.
So, yeah, basically no one really knows we get help.
We got HELLA help, but nobody really talks about it
American Media really fails regularly
Hurricane Sandy, Quebec sends power line crews down to assist in restoring power. California gets rid of water bombers due to budget cuts, Canada sends theirs down to help fight wild fires. Amazing what living on the border and having outside TV News does to your information flow.
After Katrina, Denmark offered to donate water purification units so people wouldn’t get sick from drinking contaminated water, but the offer was declined.
A private Danish company built a mobile satellite phone booth and drove it around the poor neighbourhoods in Mississippi and Louisiana so people could call their families and insurance companies for free (apparently there was a deadline for reporting damages but people couldn’t call in because their mobile phones were dead and landlines were down).
American propaganda is not a thing of the past, nor is it a new thing. It has been around forever, telling stories of exceptionalism and self-reliance while our government tries its hardest to refuse the help of others and offer its own to them, to try and force other nations onto their back foot and remain aggressively benevolent in international matters, so that it can lord that shit over them in negotiations and the media in general.
I guarantee you America would have a less jingoistic, less xenophobic populace overall if this sort of information were actually reported to us. If we weren’t always fed the lie of helping the world without any gratitude or help in return. If the media didn’t present us as world police and instead as a part of the community, as other countries try hard to include us as, then maybe Americans would actually act like they’re part of a fucking community.
But global citizens are hard to monger fear and distrust and xenophobia and nationalism with. They’re hard to control with propaganda and hate. They’re hard to keep ignorant and docile and saying “this is fine” while the empire burns.
A lot of Americans wonder why our country is seen as a worldwide bully. Shit like that, my friends. Shit like that. Its hubris is seemingly limitless.
C O M M E N T A R Y
The rest of the world was so devastated and furious to watch how everything played out in the aftermath of Katrina, cause we all sent help and it was mostly refused, and meanwhile your government was all “oh noes. They’re dying down there. It’s just so sad. If only we could help them.”
just bc i’ve seen this sentiment expressed by a lot of ppl who want to support the amazon worker’s strike but don’t know how:
buying from amazon during the period of the strike does nothing to benefit the striking workers. the purpose of the strike is not to “show amazon how crucial its workers are,” and placing more orders is not going to somehow “overwhelm” amazon’s warehouses. the purpose of the strike is to inhibit amazon’s ability to draw in profit. the workers are striking so that the facilities in which they work will no longer be able to function. this is part of a strategy of disrupting amazon’s logistics so that ultimately their profit margins fall and amazon execs will be forced to acknowledge the workers’ complaints and negotiate with them.
if you purchase from amazon during the strike, your money is still going into the same pockets as it would any other time. if you purchase during the strike, the labor necessary to handle your order is going to be passed onto someone else regardless—whether it’s a facility in another region, workers who aren’t striking, or workers who were brought in to replace the strikers. if you purchase during the strike, you are actively funding amazon’s strikebreaking ability. yes, maybe they won’t be able to ship your package on time, or it will never be shipped, and you’ll be refunded (or not!), but that in no way constitutes as a win for the strikers. purchasing something from amazon, regardless of the circumstances, serves only to benefit the corporation, not the workers who fulfill the orders from start to finish—that’s the point of why they’re striking in the first place.
on the other hand, by boycotting amazon in solidarity with the striking workers, you will be limiting amazon’s ability to draw a profit during a large sale event—companies like amazon rely on business tactics such as sales to extract as much profit as they can from their workers. boycotting prevents them from being able to do so.
if you’re interested in following the events of this strike, as well as other resistance efforts against amazon: https://amazonenlucha.wordpress.com/ is the website run by the organizers of the strike.
not giving your money to a business that’s currently striking is literally an essential part of a strike.
Amazon brings in over 34 BILLION dollars every day. Even a one-day boycott could mean massive leverage for the strikers – especially if the boycott coincided with one of the most profitable days Amazon expected to have all year, as this one does.
Do not visit Amazon.com on 10 July 2018 (or July 15-16 in the US)!
While we’re talking about effective boycotting, boycotting Amazon means more than boycotting Amazon, because Amazon has subsidiaries that also help it make money. If you’re going to boycott Amazon, you also need to boycott the following subsidiaries:
AWS Elemental
AbeBooks
Alexa Internet
Audible
Blink Home
Brilliance Audio
ComiXology
CreateSpace
Diapers.com
Double Helix Games
Evi
Fabric.com
GoodReads
IMDb
Junglee
Mobipocket
Ring
Shelfari
Shopbop
Souq.com
TenMarks Education, Inc.
Twitch
Whole Foods Market
Woot
Zappos
A boycott is not effective unless you attack it on all fronts. This is why boycotting things like McDonalds or Coca Cola are so ineffective– they have so many subsidiaries and supporting businesses that they can afford a frontal hit and still make money from its “family” companies.
If you truly want to help this boycott, make sure to boycott Amazon and its subsidiaries.
happy independence day let’s impeach the president
The only 4th of july post i care about
I can top it: yesterday, NPR made a series of tweets that Trump supporters called “propaganda” and “trash words” to insult Trump and push NPR’s agenda.
NPR was tweeting the Declaration of Independence.
And that, folks, describes about 75% of Trump’s voter base.
Some exammples of the Trump followers vs NPR thing
So they are admitting Trump is a dictator?
Some Trump supporters thought NPR tweeted ‘propaganda.’ It was the Declaration of Independence.
In June, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services quietly announced a new task force that will investigate “bad” naturalization cases, wherein the agency will hire dozens of lawyers and immigration officers “to find U.S. citizens they say should not have been naturalized, to revoke their citizenship, and then eventually deport them,” according to The Takeaway, from WNYC and Public Radio International.
It reinforces the idea that he is a king and not an executive bound by the rule of law. We are meant to understand that his natural masculine brutality may be tempered by the soft, merciful instincts of his women but not by public pressure or coequal branches of government or legal argument or normal moral standards. This is also why he loves the pardon power – it is a remnant of the traditional prerogative of English kings and can be exercised independently of the machinery of democratic governance. He wants everything that has happened to be perceived as an exciting emotional story of twists and turns with himself as hero, a story which takes place outside the institutional structures that would normally constrain presidential behavior. In this case he is obviously retreating to some extent, although the practical consequences of this afternoon’s EO are unclear. However, staging that retreat as a gracious personal gesture toward a woman pleading for mercy displaces his personal defeat onto her–-she is the one who is weak, not him. Thus he consolidates his masculinity while reminding us that his power allows him to save or destroy lives on a whim.
Cheloneuniverse 