I'd been meaning to yap about this for a while and what better time than when my neighborhood is trying to burn itself down around me in celebration of its existence.
For all of our shortcomings and excesses we live in a great country, and being conscious of it and proud of it is the best impetus to fix the problems we do have. One very important aspect of supporting domestic industry is, unfortunately, keeping intact our ability to make tanks and fighter jets. If we no longer have factories making the steel that makes the tools that make the [insert really important thing to have in an emergency here], what happens when the $#!+ hits the fan? Funny thing is it was actually a Chinese immigrant professor of mine that recently reinforced my thinking on the topic.
As a small fry shop it's very hard to track the true sources of my materials and even harder to keep them consistent. That said, my steel supplier is based in Seattle, my laser cutter (for the aluminum parts) is in a suburb south of Portland, and my fasteners shop is biking distance from my house. These are just distributors, of course, but I have been able to determine that most of the metal I use, by weight, is in fact American made and what is not is mostly Canadian. I also, whenever possible, buy American made tools, though I must admit it's because they're usually much higher quality than the cheaper imports. And of course I'm supporting American business just by being one.
OK, enough late night rant, here's to having a cuh-hold one or so and not burning ourselves too badly this weekend.
PS, Blogger sux and has a bug with Cannon cameras that rotates my image no matter what I do to the source file, sorry to make you crane yr neck.
