Jim Hightower | CORPORATE AMERICA’S “CHEAP” IMPORT ADDICTION

Let’s be honest. China’s trillion-dollar-a-year export economy is based squarely on the country’s deliberate lack of humane standards. That’s precisely why our CEO’s rushed over there – every corner cut, every penny taken from workers and the environment, every product made on the cheap is pure profit for importers sitting so comfortably in their executive suites.If you’re outraged by shoddy, dangerous, and deadly products from China, don’t point at the Chinese – point at America’s corporate elite… and start saying “no” to their “cheap” import addiction.

I have to say I agree with Mr. Hightower. Cheap goods from China are only cheap as long as their real costs are hidden from view. When the health hazards begin to be visible…and costly to the customer, the cheapness becomes visible for what it is, a hiding of the real costs until the products are in someone else’s hands.

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Kolache festival is filled with pride | Chron.com – Houston Chronicle

CALDWELL — Prune would not have been Nikolas Faust’s first choice.But prompted by his grandmother, Lydia Mae Faust, the 10-year-old entered a prune kolache in the city’s annual Kolache Festival Bake Show competition last year and rode it to victory.

“I thought it would be the cherry cheese or one of those,” said Nikolas, last year’s grand champion in the Burleson County youth division. “I had no idea it would be prune. Prune is not one of my favorites.”

It is a taste of tradition, though.

And in an age of kolache innovation that has resulted in the jalapeño cheese sausage – a taste that might have been as foreign as text messaging to the Czech immigrants who introduced the doughy pastry to the farmlands of Burleson County – tradition remains important.

When I was growing up there were a few home bakeries in our neighborhood where you could buy a dozen of these little fruitful treats. My mother and father had both grown up amongst the Czech farmers of the SE Texas coastal plain and brought their taste for these treats to town with them. I would venture to guess I ate more kolaches  growing up than I ate donuts, that other morning pastry.

I have to agree with the judges at the  Kolache Festival Bake Show though. I have never considered the sausage and cheese or the ham and cheese rolls real kolaches. But, oh my lord, keep the cream cheese kolaches away from me…I don’t need the temptation.

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