H2O in a bottle

Dramatists will call this one of the biggest scam in social and economic history, and in this case I have a hard time disagreeing. Bottled water.

Really?

Seems to me this is one of those common sense things that people only go along with now because a)it has become ingrained in American society and b) the majority of Americans are too ignorant to really think about it. Consider this:

- The price of bottled water is 10,000 times the price of tap water.
- 40% of this bottled water comes from the very same tap sources that we all have access to.
- Bottled water producers are not required to test for e. coli, provide the source of their water, or even produce quality reports (this is because tap water is regulated by the EPA, while bottled water is regulated by the FDA).
- Enough oil is used in the production of bottled water each year to fuel 1 million cars for a year (17 million barrels of oil, to be precise).
- It takes 3 times the amount of water that is actually in a bottle to produce it.
- 1.1 billion people in the world today do not have access to safe drinking water.

Are there any positives here? Oh yeah, the bottled water industry takes in upwards of $61 Billion/year, and this number is only increasing. In the past decade, the market for bottled water has more than doubled as today three out of every four Americans regularly drink bottled water. This increasing reliance on bottled water is playing perfectly into the hands of the big corporations, as the World Health Organization predicts that by 2025, two-thirds of the population will lack access to enough water (and as a result, have to turn to companies like Coke and Nestle to provide).

Recycling alone is not enough. First of all, most people do not recycle every bottle that they drink. Regardless, even the bottles that are recycled are converted to a lower quality product that requires the additions of chemicals and other plastics. This is not a tough problem to solve. It does not take rocket science, it does not require any sort of monetary investment by the Federal Government or huge sacrifice by you.

Just use a goddamn water fountain.

Oh Perry...

This is from ThinkProgress.com, an interesting insight into Mr. Perry's jobs claims:

During an interview with Glenn Beck just two and a half months ago, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) claimed it’s impossible for the government to create jobs. “Government doesn’t create any jobs. They can actually run jobs away,” Perry said.
Leaving aside the fact that Perry is a government employee himself, he has had to change his tune now that he’s running for president. In fact, Perry bragged during a speech today that, as governor, he’s helped create lots of jobs:

[President Obama] has failed to create jobs by relying on bigger government. I’ve helped create a million jobs during my tenure as Governor of the state of Texas.

Of course, Perry left out the darker side of job creation during his tenure as governor. Texas has the nation’s worst job creation record when adjusted for labor force growth, and between 2008 and 2010, jobs actually grew at a faster pace in Massachusetts than in Texas. In fact, 26 states have lower unemployment rates than Texas, and “Texas has done worse than the rest of the country since the peak of national unemployment in October 2009.”
Perry’s state does, however, lead the nation by having the highest percentage of minimum wage jobs. And when it comes to government jobs, Texas is in no short supply, as between 2007 and 2010, 47 percent of all government jobs were created in Texas. In fact, under Perry’s watchful eye, government jobs grew twice as much as private sector jobs.
But any way its sliced, Perry is now taking credit for creating jobs, when just a few months ago he thought he had no power to create jobs.

Nice! Sad thing is, most people will only hear that he has created x amount of jobs while the US has lost x amount of jobs, and vote based on that.