Posted on 10/23/2002 9:42:45 AM PDT by Tumbleweed_Connection
Rick Young wants the small coffee growers of the world to get a fair shake. He may end up putting them out of business.
Forget about competition, survival of the fittest, laissez faire, freedom of choice and individual liberty. In fact, forget about the American way of life in Berkeley, while we're at it, because he wants residents to have fewer java choices.
If Rick Young, described by the San Jose Mercury News as an 'environmentally conscious lawyer', gets his way through his November ballot initiative, all coffee sold in Berkeley will be fair-trade, organic and shade-grown.
And before you ask, yes, that type of coffee is already offered as a choice in Berkeley, but that's not good enough for Mr. Young. Like many liberals, he wants to make your choices for you.
Young told The Mercury News, "If it's a question of giving up a few coffee choices in order to protect the environment and cut down on the exploitation of workers, that's a trade-off I'm willing to make. People should be responsible for their purchases."
As far as we know, they already are, and so far, because of a little thing called the Constitution, they choose what they want to drink, since this is America.
Young's opponents agree: "It's stupid. It's absurd. People are trying to exercise too much political control over everything. I should have the right to buy whatever I want to drink," said David Snipper, 66, a longtime Berkeley resident.
Perhaps Young's next initiative will be to have Berkeley declared a 'U.S.-free Zone', but we digress.
Young continued: "It's a social and economic disaster in the coffee industry. It just seems to me if there's a product that causes a lot of problems we should be using the alternative."
He says that it's large companies that are clear-cutting the rainforests, and that fair-trade growers are guaranteed "a minimum 'fair-trade price' of $1.26 a pound and credit against future sales, according to the Oakland-based TransFair USA, the country's only certification organization" reports the MN.
We're not quite sure where Young gets his figures, since small farmers, squatters, villagers and legitimate landowners alike all clear-cut thousands of acres of Brazil's rainforests every year, and the vast majority (about 70 percent) of the world's coffee is grown by small farmers, not large corporations.
The National Coffee Association has also denounced Young and his initiative, claiming that such legislation, if you can call it that, will decrease coffee drinking and hurt the very farmers Young hopes to help.
Leave it to an environmentalist to cut off his nose to spite his face.
He most certainly does not think this, I think.
He thinks he should be responsible for their purchases.
And he thinks that "others" (whoever that might be) should be resonsible for us all.
Let's see: Title IX, racial quotas, the progressive income tax system, selective import taxes, NEA grants ... and that's just off the top of my head.
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