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.

  • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Yes. And the federal government cannot force private companies to do this. So this is literally just for flags the government buys. Which means a GSA contract. Which probably means someone like KBR or Halliburton. Now we already have a ton of oil and cotton. So that’s not exactly coming back from off shoring. We also do a ton of textile already. 530,000 people. So we’re probably just ordering the colored nylon cotton blend from them. What’s left? What’s actually new? Putting the flags together. Which is ten people and the right machine. Okay maybe it’s 20 or even 50.

    Stop giving us crumbs and require all government contractors to source the majority of their stuff from the US and have a majority of American employees, across the board.

    No you’re sitting here telling us to be grateful we grew a sector by 10 people to make a rich person richer and make sure the Americanism is maximum Americanist.

              • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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                4 months ago

                This isn’t a step. This is a delay. We’ve seen this a hundred times. They take years and drop the tiniest crumb they can get away with and then tell us to be patient. Years from now they’ll give a dollar raise to the federal contracting workforce and call that progress when they’re 10 dollars behind the national average living wage. And we’ll again be told that doing any more than that just isn’t possible yet and we should be grateful.

                FDR is spinning in his grave right now.