Time to Support Made In America Products

If you’re looking for a reason to maybe pay a couple more pennies for a product, or some points to convince your friends of the benefit of buying American made products, here are some of the top reasons to buy American.

1. Jobs – Above all else, when you buy American you save or create AMERICAN JOBS! These are the jobs that are at the foundation of our economy, and have unfortunately been moving overseas, but by buying American you can help to reverse that trend.

2. Environmental – Many of the top countries where our goods come from have little or no regulations to protect the environment, and the manufacturers have no regard for the earth and they pollute and abuse the soil, air, and the water. When you buy American you know there are regulations in place to protect the environment so our children can appreciate this beautiful country as much as we do.

3. Human Rights – The countries the United States import from often have nonexistent standards regular working conditions. Many of the factories producing US bound goods are worse than our prisons, and filled with children working extremely long days. No one wants to support that, and by buying American you know you aren’t we have regulations and agencies in this country to prevent those types of atrocities.

4. Democracy – Americans believe in and stand up for democracy whenever we can, and by choosing to buy American you are supporting the ideals of democracy.

5. Conservation – When buying products that are produced overseas built into the price is the cost of shipping that product all the way from that country to the United States, usually crossing the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean.

This wastes an extremely large amount of petroleum and produces unnecessary emissions into the atmosphere.

6. Domino Effect – When you buy American that money stays in the United States. That money goes to pay the wage of many people that are directly or indirectly responsible for creating your product. Each of them in turn spends this money on goods (hopefully American made) and services, and the cycle continues. The more you buy American, the more the economy is stimulated, and the more jobs are created.  Plus, American workers pay taxes on wages earned in America.

7. MORE JOBS – For every manufacturing job there are FIVE additional jobs created. Do the math. Dollar for dollar it is a great investment in this amazing country!

It was 43 years ago today….

43 years ago today, on July 20, 1969, the United States’ Apollo 11 became the first manned mission to land on the surface of our moon.  The USA followed this achievement with an additional six missions as part of the Apollo program between 1969 and 1972 and a total of 12 men have had the experience of visiting the lunar surface.

Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin – Tranquility Base

And now, America continues its exploration of space for evidence of life with the landing of the Curiosity Rover on the planet Mars on August 5^th.  After 8 months the craft will have travelled 150 million miles from earth to join an earlier rover, Opportunity that has been collecting data since January of 2004.  The decision to send the more ambitious rover, Curiosity, was made after Opportunity found geological evidence that Mars was once warm and wet, with pools of salty water that dried up eons ago.

Curiosity is about the size of an Escalade travelling 13,000 miles per hour and its landing must be in perfect sequence, with perfect choreography and timing to avoid leaving a $2.5 billion dollar hole on the face of the planet.  Yippee Ki-Yay!

Wish my Escalade could do this!

In fact, it will take Curiosity 7 minutes to decelerate from 13,000 mph to zero with no margin for error. Encased in a heat shield it will let out a parachute, fire its retro rockets, be lowered by cables from a landing stage then send a signal that it is safely down.  Talk about a white knuckle manuever!  At a distance of 150 million miles from earth, any communications will take 14 minutes to reach NASA even travelling at the speed of light!  The excitement of my own space adventure is building as the test flights have begun.  It is astounding that this 2.5 billion dollar endeavor is being done entirely unmanned and by remote control.  I am one person who will be anxiously awaiting the touchdown of Curiosity on August 5th!