Congress has passed a proposal to require the federal government to purchase only flags that have been completely manufactured in the U.S.
Soon, Old Glory will have to be born in the land of the free and not merely flying over it.
Congress has passed a proposal to require the federal government to purchase only American flags that have been completely manufactured in the U.S. The U.S. imports millions of American flags from overseas, mostly from China, and the sponsors of the proposal said it’s time for American flags to originate in the country they represent.
Supporters of the proposal, led by Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, said the change is more than just symbolic — they believe it will support American jobs and manufacturers while preserving the nation’s most recognized banner.
Hello young person, do you know why you should care about the government? Me neither. JFC can we address something that actually matters you fucking empty uniforms. Sorry. Great share, and thanks!
No. Don't celebrate performative bullshit. Especially if it's wrapped in nationalism. Because then all you'll ever get is performative bullshit wrapped in nationalism. You take this, put it in your pocket, say thanks, and pick the pitch fork right back up.
I remember all the cheap Chinese bumper stickers that people were slapping on their cars....an American flag with the words "THESE COLORS DON'T RUN"
Within a couple months most of the flag color had faded. It was so funny seeing a light pink and blue American flag with that contradictory phrase over it.
To be fair, it is extremely weird to imagine the U.S. government buying U.S. flags from China. Like, I'm not some patriot flag-code respecting type, but it does feel like a powerful metaphor to be importing our symbol of freedom from abroad. It's some severely bad optics at a minimum.
How about we just fly fewer flags. I live in the center of the US and don't need to be reminded by every public building, car lot, and bigot's house of what country I live in.
Official federal and state buildings, those are fine.
Oh my gosh, could you imagine? This problem is especially bad during early July. I just thank God they put reminders up. Otherwise I might forget and think I'm a communist or something!
I remember the vacation road trips of my youth, when our family would drive from Canada down into the US to go camping. We'd make a game of counting the American flags we saw. Occasionally there'd be some "game over" property with more flags festooning it than we could actually count before we drove past. It'd be a boring game to count Canadian flags in a similar way. There'd be one or two per day of travel.
If memory serves, I believe GOP Senator Susan Collins was the one who exercised great skill in brow furrowing - and nothing further - when expressing disapproval over felon Drink Bleach's reckless behavior.
Senator Brown is a great senator and literally the only statewide Democrat we have other than a few state Supreme Court justices (who will be out soon now that Republicans added party affiliation to the court ballot). He will be far better for America than Bernie Moreno.
It's like they know that one of our major problems is that capitalists have destroyed all our manufacturing and sent all of our production jobs overseas thus weakening our economy our society and our National Defense. Yet instead of doing anything about it they just do this thumb their nose bill that does nothing. Kind of like a fuck you to the entire country.
I'd really like to see who drafted this bill and a who the share holders in the company that will be making these flags are. My gut says they are the same people.
This was passed by bipartisan support and the person who would be getting paid would be an American with American workers and raw material suppliers who are american...
So yeah I guess the tax payers who are paying the bill are the same people here sooo... Win?
I don't get why people are tilted about this. The government should always buy US made unless the item literally cannot be found from a US manufacturer.
Tax payer money should stay in the country when possible. Yeah it's a small issue but I doubt much time was spent on this
You mean the end of outsourced labor and production of local goods? (For this product and potential work towards more happy now?) A key issue for may people on both sides of the aisle as seen by the bipartisan support?
Yeah I guess it is good then.
Edit: I was being as exaggerated as everyone else saying a flag will enrich a single person in here but now people want to be pedantic when pointing out this is a thing to support being worked towards. Of course. Misery loves company right?
Harris was referring to the visit she made to the Central California Women’s Facility in July, a visit on which I tagged along. It was a surreal experience to watch dozens of women, mostly women of color, at work stations inside of the country’s largest prison for women, laying out and printing fabric and then dyeing it royal blue. It was just as surreal, if not more so, to hear prison officials point out that these flags would one day fly atop every state and federal building in California, describing this with something almost adjacent to pride.
Considering this only covers US Government purchased flags, this IS the invisible hand of the market. It’s a consumer choosing where they want to purchase products.
And it is t nationalizing the industry. They still will be privately produced. And individual Americans can still by Chinese flags.
The particular industry that’s being nationalised is American flags produced for US government consumption. (The nationalisation part)
They’ve decided to legislate because they don’t like the optics of some foreign made products. (This isn’t an invisible hand; it’s opaque)
How is that justified in a supposedly capitalist society when China can produce flags of the same quality but at a cheaper price?
Edit: maybe protectionism is a better word than nationalise, end effect is the same; The government of a capitalist country is directly interfering with the market.
On its surface that's not a horrible position for a government to take.
It's not unreasonable for the national government (in any country) to give some level of local preference to all procurement, not only something symbolic like flags. That would actually incentivize companies to onshore more of their manufacturing - or at least slow down their offshoring.
Yeah honestly national symbol items being made locally just makes sense for so many reasons if possible and this is definitely possible. Especially since it should be the purpose of the national government to support internal functions and business before external whenever possible right?
With of course like allowments for maybe raw materials or specialized things if it's not possible. I would get this feeling silly for a country like Vanuatu but the US has resources aplenty.
Plus in times of broken down supply lines it provides at least one manufacturing plant to rely on. This is also true of the military already for those reasons.
You know what, for context for anyone late to the discourse.
All of this is about a bill passing through the Senate for the manufacturer of the government bought flags to go from 50% American manufactured materials to 100%.
We have the highest preventable death rate in the developed world. That's diseases and deaths that were preventable with correct medical treatment or diet.
I feel like all this is going to do is raise government costs and line the pockets of selected contractors. We aren't always going to be the relative best producers in cost/quality balance for every product and service.
If we're going to subsidize any industry, it should be done directly and explicitly. Otherwise, it becomes another example of "inefficient" government that should be privatized.
Protectionism. The word you're looking for where we just mandate domestic manufacturing is protectionism. And there's a lot written about how bad it is.
Actually logistical costs and transportation is one of the highest expenses and some groups have already found that buying from local suppliers who get local raw materials (such as Climate Town's merch Tees) can have competitive costs even when adjusting for higher labor costs just from the manufacturer being located near the farms that grow the cotton and shipping locally within the nation.
Granted the government purchased flags will likely be expensive but that's mostly because of a quality requirement from the fact they need to be flown outdoors for some time without fading or damaging in any way. And that's probably true currently since the flag needs to be made 50% in the country already.
Seriously look at the brownie recipe of the US military for how strict government funds are spent for specific quality requirements and you get why it's slightly more costly than the imported flour with lead or insects in it.
It's not about cost/quality being the best match but a good use of the funds and locally supporting business in an age when that matters is more important. Globalization and long distance transportation can not always be the answer.
Great, and where local is the best choice they should do that. But nobody can seriously argue that reducing the ability of government to shop around for the best cost/quality balance is a good thing. It's not like the only options are buy everything American or everything from China. I'd like qualified experts making that decision, not legislators.
You create bad incentives if you artificially reduce competition like this. Not every good or service will have tons of American choices, so you end up with a handful of companies who know the government has no other choice.
God I fucking hate fellow leftists. This is good and it wasn't your help that did it and it makes it easier to shit on.
We want manufacturing moved back into the country. A simple bill to move a point of national pride back to local manufacturing l, that while not a sweeping fix is a nice gesture to help make sure local companies can offer their services and employ Americans.
Ewww... Bullshit person with a cotton mill is gonna make money.
Booo! Why would anyone care about local manufacturing we need more local manufacturing
I just like to dog pile on things to complain about it to get my dopamine.
Seriously, be fucking happy for 30 seconds maybe? Then work on taking the next step forward? Instead of complaining how we took a nap for the last 4 decades we just get back in the race?
I hope local manufacturers use the income to be able to start more clothing production with quality cotton and we see an end to maybe fast fashion with moves like this. That'd be nice.