More recalls from China made goods - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

pan6467 · 08-03-2007, 08:46 AM

First they poison our pets now our kids..... and the masses don't seem to care. Just give us those goods cheap and fuck the consequences.

Hey Mattel was that cheap labor really worth the $30 million and horrid publicity??? Of course because you are the only game in town. There's Hasbro but they are just thanking China that it wasn't them also.

Why the fuck are we sending jobs overseas, importing food and anything for that matter from countries that want to see us dead? That hate our country and all that it once stood for? Why are we allowing our country to become more like them and giving them our jobs than standing tall and showing what freedom and the true US stands for?

I know it's all about the money and the idiot middle classers who believe the bullshit fed to them that sending jobs over for cheaper labor will actually make them richer.... got news for ya, how much money do you think Mattel is making right now?

link: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070802...QsqGhH_r7Za7gF

Quote:

Chinese-made toy recall heightens US uproar over job losses

by Claire GallenThu Aug 2, 1:53 PM ET

A Fisher-Price recall of nearly one million Chinese-made toys, the latest in a series of similar scandals, is ratcheting up already high American resentment against the offshoring of jobs.

Mattel's Fisher-Price announced late Wednesday it was recalling 967,000 toys made in China that are suspected of containing paint tainted with illegally high levels of toxic lead.

The recall includes around 80 items, including popular Sesame Street and Dora the Explorer toys, sold in US stores between May and August this year.

It was the latest of a slew of cases involving shoddily made and dangerous products imported from China.

In June US toy importer RC2 Corp. recalled 1.5 million wooden "Thomas the Train" figures that had lead-based paint.

Americans also have reeled under the scandal of tainted pet food that killed thousands of dogs and cats, reports of toothpaste containing antifreeze and shrimp contaminated with banned drugs.

On Thursday, China's commerce minister, Bo Xilai, said that "more than 99 percent of the products China exports are of good quality and are safe."

But indignation is rising in the United States.

"The Chinese, for the very last penny, will endanger people at levels that are fully irresponsible," said Peter Morici, an economics professor at the University of Maryland.

The economist, a sharp critic of Chinese trade policies, said that Americans so far have not revolted against Chinese products for one simple reason: "We haven't had any children dying."

"Unfortunately, we have to have a tragedy, and that said, the evidence is plain: Don't buy anything from China that you put in your mouth, or that you put in the hands of children."

That sentiment is spreading, but avoiding products made in China, where low-cost labor makes them cheap in the United States, may not be as easy as it sounds.

In "A year without 'Made in China,'" an opinion piece in The Christian Science Monitor, journalist Sara Bongiorni described how she and her family decided to live for one year without buying any Chinese-made items.

Recalling fruitless shopping trips and athletic shoes that were too expensive, the writer concluded: "After a year without China I can tell you this: You can still live without it, but it's getting trickier and costlier by the day.

"And a decade from now I may not be brave enough to try it again."

Americans heavily depend on Chinese-made products, an appetite that pushed the trade gap with China to a massive 233 billion dollars in 2006.

That dependency has been accompanied by Americans' growing complaint in recent years that China is behind the loss of US industrial jobs to overseas markets.

On Thursday the calls for action mounted.

"It is urgent that Congress adopts a comprehensive policy response to combat China's unfair, mercantilist trading practices," said Auggie Tantillo, executive director of the American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition.

But it is difficult to have leverage with the Chinese giant, as US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson again experienced this week in China, winding up almost empty-handed Wednesday after seeking a reevaluation of the yuan.

Democratic lawmakers accuse the Republican administration of President George W. Bush of inertia on the subject, particularly in stopping short of officially accusing China of deliberately manipulating its currency to maintain an unfair trade advantage.

The Democrats are vying to passing a law that would force the Treasury to take a tougher line with China. The measure was approved Wednesday by the Senate Banking Committee, and according to experts has a good chance of being passed by Congress.

People for the love of our children and the future of this country, start caring, start doing something before we can't, before we have no choice, before our children curse us for the world we left them.

snowy · 08-03-2007, 09:29 AM

I really try to avoid buying any food with ingredients made outside of the United States--with the exceptions of food from Italy, Greece, or France (usually those are specialty food items, like olives/olive oil). It's hard to do, but it can be done--buying organic packaged foods helps (when packaged foods need to be bought), but since the tainted toothpaste I've been checking everything we buy, and trying to buy more local, fresh food. We go to Saturday Market every week in order to get fresh fruits and vegetables (I'm really paranoid about fruit from Mexico) that are locally grown. We have a food co-op here that marks everything produced within 6 counties around ours. The food co-op is even working to find a local wheat crop so that they can produce bread that fits within that designation.

I did the not buying things made in China for about three years when I was a teenager. It has gotten a lot more expensive since then to not buy things from China.

In another thread, I posted an article from the New York Times that details exactly which countries have shipped unsafe food to the United States: http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=120936 It's not just China. It's India, Mexico, the Dominican Republic--and even Denmark. Just more reason to eat locally!

MSD · 08-03-2007, 11:45 AM

All you have to do is look at crash tests of Chinese cars to understand that the attitude in their manufacturing business is that one hunk of grey metal is as good as another, and the better one is the cheaper one. From that, it's safe to conclude that the only concern is cost in other areas of industry. If lead paint saves a tenth of a cent per children's toy? That's $10,000 saved when you make ten million of them. Test for mercury in fish? Nah, that would just mean you have to throw some out.

ziadel · 08-03-2007, 01:18 PM

and to think that I loathed the chineese before this clusterfuck happened....

whats the word for the way I feel about them now?

It's a viscous cycle we've gotten ourselves into, offshoring jobs because things cost too much, but now because of that offshoring the price of raw materials is skyrocketing.

sad.

ngdawg · 08-03-2007, 01:30 PM

My question is, where are the American quality control officers in the first place? If I can make something that might have a little 'illegalness' to it to cut my own costs and no one gives a crap enough to inspect it, hell, I'm gonna go right ahead and do what I'm doing. But, if you tell me "keep this to these standards or you're out" and they back it up, I'm not gonna risk my livelihood that much....
I totally blame the greediness of corporate America and feel very satisfied when something like this happens because it gets them in their most sensitive area-their bank accounts.

hunnychile · 08-03-2007, 01:58 PM

[QUOTE=ziadel]

whats the word for the way I feel about them now?
QUOTE]

Umm, how about "fucked"??

It's time to stop buying ANY of their experts. Period.

Plan9 · 08-03-2007, 02:05 PM

All our trade are belong to China.

blade02 · 08-03-2007, 02:06 PM

I like how the media is acting like this is a shocker or something.

abaya · 08-03-2007, 02:38 PM

Viscous cycle... why yes, the cycle is indeed slow and thick. Now, how to make it thinner, that's the question...

Stop buying Chinese experts? Why should we do that? It's good to be an expert in Chinese, so we can figure out what they're talking about, right?

Now, all our trade are belong to China, I can get behind that.

SEGA!!

But seriously, I agree with ngdawg...

Quote:

I totally blame the greediness of corporate America and feel very satisfied when something like this happens because it gets them in their most sensitive area-their bank accounts.

Blame capitalism, if you want to blame something. Increase the profit margin, increase production, decrease quality... it's not about being Chinese, it's about getting the most for the least amount of money. And that doesn't have any ethnic boundaries.

flat5 · 08-03-2007, 03:07 PM

ziadel · 08-03-2007, 03:23 PM

Ya know, between what those goddamn commies are doing to Tibet, and now this. I'm just in a rage.

The_Jazz · 08-03-2007, 03:55 PM

As unpopular as this may be, not all Chinese goods are bad. Millions of types of items (not the individual ones) are imported from there. By no means are all of them inferior, cheap, bad, or whatever slur you want to hurl at them.

Were I to be able to channel roachboy and convince him/us to travel in my Wayback machine with Mr. Peabody and his Boy Sherman to the 1950's, this conversation would be about the Japanese. Were I to turn it back another 50 years, the 3.4 of us (Mr. Peabody, Sherman and the melded roachboy/The_Jazz) would be able to listen to the folks talking about the dangerous and substand goods coming out of the good ol' US of A.

Upton Sinclair used factual evidence, as disgusting as that may be.

The Chinese businessmen don't hate us any more than our businessmen hate them. They want our money. We want theirs. China is no more of a Communist country than France is today.

Siege · 08-03-2007, 03:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ziadel

and to think that I loathed the chineese before this clusterfuck happened....

I'm chinese

In other news, I don't eat anything made in China.

Charlatan · 08-03-2007, 04:11 PM

Jazz has it right.

...and for all of you looking for revenge look no further than The Party. They executed the guy in charge of their food and agriculture for corruption around the last food scandal. You can be guaranteed that they don't want anything like corruption messing with their American rice bowl. More heads will roll before this is over.

ziadel · 08-03-2007, 04:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by The_Jazz

China is no more of a Communist country than France is today.

Bad example man. Communist/socialist.

Makes little difference to me. It's really this simple for me. If a countrys citizens are not free to speak their mind, then I dont like that country. China is doing a lot of really heinous things nowadays, religious intolerance by the state is another one.

Gah, I'm in a mood today, not exactly sure why.

ngdawg · 08-03-2007, 04:36 PM

Mood or not, these incidents have absolutely nothing to do with any isms. It's corporate greed, plain as can be.
The store I worked in sold all those things recalled. Last year, we had boys' tshirts with silly sayings on the front. One was (sic) "the monkey's ate my homework". Uh...why is that apostrophe there? Because the shirts, made and printed in China, were not inspected by the manufacturer and the corporation had thousands of these shirts(yea, they sold, slowly and probably to parents that can't read english well anyway)...pay someone to actually check how things are going??? Absurd....

highthief · 08-03-2007, 05:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MrSelfDestruct

All you have to do is look at crash tests of Chinese cars to understand that the attitude in their manufacturing business is that one hunk of grey metal is as good as another, and the better one is the cheaper one. From that, it's safe to conclude that the only concern is cost in other areas of industry.

Yeah, Detroit never put out shit cars, dammit!!!

(Wait a minute ...)

As I just reach for the products here at my desk, my remote for the TV is made in Mexico, the baby monitor is made in China, the battery charger is made in China, the Canon digital camera is made in Malaysia, and the newer Sony camera is made in Japan and the flashlight was made in China. Not sure where the desktop was made.

No problems with any of them.

The_Jazz · 08-03-2007, 05:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ziadel

Bad example man. Communist/socialist.

Makes little difference to me. It's really this simple for me. If a countrys citizens are not free to speak their mind, then I dont like that country. China is doing a lot of really heinous things nowadays, religious intolerance by the state is another one.

Gah, I'm in a mood today, not exactly sure why.

I actually picked France for good reason. My other choice was going to be some of the former Soviet republics, but I doubt many people know much about the Moldovan economy these days.

I've got a bunch of items manufactured in France in my home office that aren't wine or cheese. A picture frame. A lamp. Several books. The reason I singled the French out is that they are socialist and not communist. Ziadel, I hope you know that there's a vast difference between the two.

If we want to start limiting our trading partners based on tolerance, we're going to have a hell of a time when we cut off the Japanese, the Indians and the Taiwanese.

08-03-2007, 09:29 AM	#2 (permalink)
snowy Kick Ass Kunoichi Location: Oregon	I really try to avoid buying any food with ingredients made outside of the United States--with the exceptions of food from Italy, Greece, or France (usually those are specialty food items, like olives/olive oil). It's hard to do, but it can be done--buying organic packaged foods helps (when packaged foods need to be bought), but since the tainted toothpaste I've been checking everything we buy, and trying to buy more local, fresh food. We go to Saturday Market every week in order to get fresh fruits and vegetables (I'm really paranoid about fruit from Mexico) that are locally grown. We have a food co-op here that marks everything produced within 6 counties around ours. The food co-op is even working to find a local wheat crop so that they can produce bread that fits within that designation. I did the not buying things made in China for about three years when I was a teenager. It has gotten a lot more expensive since then to not buy things from China. In another thread, I posted an article from the New York Times that details exactly which countries have shipped unsafe food to the United States: http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=120936 It's not just China. It's India, Mexico, the Dominican Republic--and even Denmark. Just more reason to eat locally! __________________ If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau

08-03-2007, 01:18 PM	#4 (permalink)
ziadel Myrmidon Location: In the twilight and mist.	and to think that I loathed the chineese before this clusterfuck happened.... whats the word for the way I feel about them now? It's a viscous cycle we've gotten ourselves into, offshoring jobs because things cost too much, but now because of that offshoring the price of raw materials is skyrocketing. sad. __________________ Ron Paul '08 Vote for Freedom Go ahead and google Dr. Ron Paul. You'll like what you read.

08-03-2007, 01:30 PM	#5 (permalink)
ngdawg peekaboo Location: on the back, bitch	My question is, where are the American quality control officers in the first place? If I can make something that might have a little 'illegalness' to it to cut my own costs and no one gives a crap enough to inspect it, hell, I'm gonna go right ahead and do what I'm doing. But, if you tell me "keep this to these standards or you're out" and they back it up, I'm not gonna risk my livelihood that much.... I totally blame the greediness of corporate America and feel very satisfied when something like this happens because it gets them in their most sensitive area-their bank accounts. __________________ Don't blame me. I didn't vote for either of'em.

08-03-2007, 01:58 PM	#6 (permalink)
hunnychile Alien Anthropologist Location: Between Boredom and Nirvana	[QUOTE=ziadel] whats the word for the way I feel about them now? QUOTE] Umm, how about "fucked"?? It's time to stop buying ANY of their experts. Period. __________________ "I need compassion, understanding and chocolate." - NJB

08-03-2007, 02:05 PM	#7 (permalink)
Plan9 I Confess a Shiver	All our trade are belong to China. __________________ *Whatever you can carry.* "You should not drink... and bake."

08-03-2007, 11:45 AM	#3 (permalink)
MSD The sky calls to us ... Super Moderator Location: CT	All you have to do is look at crash tests of Chinese cars to understand that the attitude in their manufacturing business is that one hunk of grey metal is as good as another, and the better one is the cheaper one. From that, it's safe to conclude that the only concern is cost in other areas of industry. If lead paint saves a tenth of a cent per children's toy? That's $10,000 saved when you make ten million of them. Test for mercury in fish? Nah, that would just mean you have to throw some out.

08-03-2007, 02:06 PM	#8 (permalink)
blade02 Insane	I like how the media is acting like this is a shocker or something.

08-03-2007, 03:07 PM	#10 (permalink)
flat5 Very Insignificant Pawn Location: Amsterdam, NL	.. Last edited by flat5; 05-03-2008 at 01:35 AM..

08-03-2007, 03:23 PM	#11 (permalink)
ziadel Myrmidon Location: In the twilight and mist.	Ya know, between what those goddamn commies are doing to Tibet, and now this. I'm just in a rage. __________________ Ron Paul '08 Vote for Freedom Go ahead and google Dr. Ron Paul. You'll like what you read.

08-03-2007, 03:55 PM	#12 (permalink)
The_Jazz Asshole Administrator Location: Chicago	As unpopular as this may be, not all Chinese goods are bad. Millions of types of items (not the individual ones) are imported from there. By no means are all of them inferior, cheap, bad, or whatever slur you want to hurl at them. Were I to be able to channel roachboy and convince him/us to travel in my Wayback machine with Mr. Peabody and his Boy Sherman to the 1950's, this conversation would be about the Japanese. Were I to turn it back another 50 years, the 3.4 of us (Mr. Peabody, Sherman and the melded roachboy/The_Jazz) would be able to listen to the folks talking about the dangerous and substand goods coming out of the good ol' US of A. Upton Sinclair used factual evidence, as disgusting as that may be. The Chinese businessmen don't hate us any more than our businessmen hate them. They want our money. We want theirs. China is no more of a Communist country than France is today. __________________ "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - B. Franklin "There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush "We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo

08-03-2007, 04:11 PM	#14 (permalink)
Charlatan Getting it. Super Moderator Location: Lion City	Jazz has it right. ...and for all of you looking for revenge look no further than The Party. They executed the guy in charge of their food and agriculture for corruption around the last food scandal. You can be guaranteed that they don't want anything like corruption messing with their American rice bowl. More heads will roll before this is over. __________________ "My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars." - Old Man Luedecke

08-03-2007, 04:36 PM	#16 (permalink)
ngdawg peekaboo Location: on the back, bitch	Mood or not, these incidents have absolutely nothing to do with any isms. It's corporate greed, plain as can be. The store I worked in sold all those things recalled. Last year, we had boys' tshirts with silly sayings on the front. One was (sic) "the monkey's ate my homework". Uh...why is that apostrophe there? Because the shirts, made and printed in China, were not inspected by the manufacturer and the corporation had thousands of these shirts(yea, they sold, slowly and probably to parents that can't read english well anyway)...pay someone to actually check how things are going??? Absurd.... __________________ Don't blame me. I didn't vote for either of'em.