I’ve heard of Scranton, Pennsylvania before. On the show “The Office”! I also remember Joe Biden talking about Scranton as being his birth place when he was running for the VP office. Here is an enterprising young man creating fake military equipment for our government to use in military training exercises. The amazing thing is how much it costs and when his business began. This article is interesting. It sounds like, a rags to riches story. Here is a grocery store guy that some how gets this big military contract for “fake” equipment. He’s not even producing real products. That is clever!
The business is not for the general public. They basically sell to government and to “Hollywood”. What I’m curious about is how they got all these contracts and the start up money. It’s obvious that they have filled some kind of unique niche that centers on fighting terrorism. http://www.inertproducts.com/home
This article showcases the company and I came across it and found it interesting and thought many of you might as well. http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/scranton-company-s-arsenal-of-replicas-keeping-troops-safe-1.1097416#axzz1CXjm9Mw6
This is some of what I find interesting about this article:
“There’s only a handful of companies in the country that deal with what we deal with,” said Mr. Rozzi, 31, of Clarks Summit. “We’re growing 600 to 800 percent a year. Last year, we did $6 million in sales.”
Spending on Defense Department orders in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre/Hazleton metro area grew by 9 percent in fiscal 2009 to $499 million, according to recent U.S. Census Bureau data that is the most current information available on defense contract spending.
“We need to ride the high of the defense spending for now,” said Teri Ooms, director of the Institute for Public Policy and Economic Development, a Wilkes-Barre-based think tank. “It’s good for us to have the diversification where we have some of these companies.”
There is more here:
Inert Products, though, has experienced explosive growth during its brief existence.
Mr. Rozzi, a former grocery store manager, started the company alone in 2007 as an outgrowth of his hobby making materials for pyrotechnics training.
After Mr. Rozzi began fashioning mock mines and artillery projectiles from homemade casting materials, Inert Products bought a building in West Scranton that formerly housed a food distributor and paint shop. The company now has 10 employees and most of its products are manufactured in Ohio, though some dummy explosives, like blasting caps and dynamite, are made in Scranton.
So the company employs ten people. I have to figure most of them are probably family members. I’m just guessing here as I have brothers that are in business and they take care of family first.
This story can be inspirational if you look at it from the point of view of a little guy creating a product and making a living off it. Or, it can be another story about the craziness of our military spending. This line alone tells you how insane our country is about military spending.
“The U.S. Department of Defense spends more on training each year than some other countries spend on their entire military budget,” he said.
Yes, I know you can all say we are a big country. Of course I have visions of weekend warriors dressing up and playing paintball with gusto. Is this what President Obama was speaking of when he was talking about reinvention? I see we can reinvent guns into fake guns, etc. When the Pentagon spends more than 22 billion dollars on fake equipment and training, which is more than the annual budget of the state of Arkansas, you have wonder what’s up with that. http://www.usgovernmentdebt.us/state_spend_gdp_population
Another curiosity is the growth in military spending.
. The picture here to me is warped. We are a militaristic country. Everything we do is beginning to revolve around the military. Even our first lady, Michelle Obama has mentioned the lack of fitness in our youth as being a national security issue.
We are not building a nation. We are building a military industrial complex. Our job is to defend the world from terrorists. We are the mercenaries that run around the world invading countries, assisting in régime change and spreading our “vision” around the world to make it safe for big business whether it be oil, nickel, big Pharma or Coke. We have reinvented ourselves. We are the few, the proud, the chosen ones to save the world from itself! Yet, we may not be able to save ourselves from ourselves!
We need to listen to President Eisenhower as he talks about the disastrous rise of misplaced power.
Here is another picture of our federal budget. Defense spending is out of control!
