Take your organic bread and shove it up your ass

Happy Earth Day!

Remember when we were young and Earth Day was just something for the weirdos and we all wished that Ed Begley Jr. would shut the hell up about his electric car?  Water was something that was going to last forever and the Amazon was just a bunch of jungle that we didn't need anyway....well, not nearly as much as we needed our Big Macs (which came in nifty styrofoam containers.  Remember the huge-ass one for the McDLT? "It keeps the hot side hot and the cool side cool!")?  They were the freaks, the hippies, the people who needed to worry about REAL problems...like how to convince people that Trickle Down Economics was working and if Bill Clinton really got a blow job.

And now the pendulum has swung the other way, and I can't say that things are much better. 

When the grocery circulars for this week came in the mail on Friday, like always I started scouring through them in my continuing project of being a cheapskate (the whole couponing thing).  Between the 5 we get each week, there were 14 extra pages of trees sales promoting how "Earth Friendly" their stores are.  They have organic cleaners!  Organic Meat!  Organic Produce!  And it's only almost double the price of the regular stuff!  Hop in your Hummer and come on down!

And now Clorox is really pushing their new "green" line of cleaners.  But have they reduced production of their "non-green" lines?  Not from what I can see.  At my supermarkets, all that has happened is that yet another display of product has been erected in the middle of an aisle for me to crash my cart in to. 

If all of these companies were really serious about protecting the environment, they would halt production of the less eco-friendly products and only produce the "green stuff".  Sure, people would be pissed that they couldn't find their blue Windex (I may be mixing companies, but you know what I mean).  But it would force them to use the new stuff and eventually they would get used to it.  And I have to think that if the companies were only producing eco-friendly products and not the others, the price of the "green stuff" would come down.  Then again, I am not an economist, so what do I know?

(and now I need to tell my father, if he is reading this, to stop reading and do something else.  I love you Dad and don't want you to have a heart attack)

So here is the point of the post where this lifelong Republican says that perhaps it IS time to revert to a "Nanny State".  I'm not talking about programs for the poor, uninsured, etc (although that certainly needs work as well).  I'm talking about a LOT more regulation of the so-called Free Market. 

Because the Free Market is killing us.

I picked up a copy of the "Healthy Living" free magazine at my local supermarket.  Inside was an article informing people of the benefits of organic produce and meats.  And then I noticed a little "sidebar box" which said:

what's Not in organic

• Persistent, toxic herbicides and pesticides
• Genetically modified organisms
• Ionizing radiation
• sewage sludge
• antibiotics and growth hormones

And while this is good information to have, my first thought was "How the fuck has this country got to the point where the absence of these things is considered a NOVELTY?"

Oh yeah - because we have let companies do whatever the hell they wanted for the last decade.  And as a reward for their producing things that are killing us, we even cut their taxes!  This insanity HAS to end!

So what is the meaning behind the title of this post?  It's simple:  stop looking at the problems with the environment as simply a marketing tool.  Don't ask me to pat you on the back because (for example) your store/bakery now makes organic bread.  You'll get a pat from me once you stop making the other crap.  When you don't just sell the environmentally friendly cleaning products, but you use them to clean your store/factory.

/rant