Posted on 08/02/2004 5:34:00 PM PDT by Willie Green
For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.
LEWISTOWN - Miranda Frymyer waits in front of the Armed Forces Recruiting Center for the shuttle bus to drive her to boot camp. She seems neither happy nor sad, but resigned.
The 18-year-old, sporting a blue Grateful Dead teddy bear tattoo on her chest, is surrounded by her mother, her stepmother, her father, her sister, her boyfriend and several family friends, none of whom want her to join the Army.
"We're having this war," her mother, Lisa Courtney, says. "I do not want my daughter going. I'm here to cry."
For Frymyer, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan seem like a better option than the losing battle for decent jobs in Lewistown, where the population is falling, unemployment is among the highest in the state, and heroin is the escapist drug of choice among some of her peers.
"I want to make something out of my life," Frymyer says, crossing her arms. "There's nothing here."
On that, her mother agrees.
"I don't want her to be like me. I was a mom at 16, and I'm in a dead-end job," Courtney says, wearing a white T-shirt that carries the warning, "Staring won't make me like you more."
Even dead-end jobs are scarce in Lewistown, despite the fact fewer people are sticking around to apply for them.
Over four decades, the population in the borough -- the Mifflin County seat -- has slipped 29 percent, to 8,998 in 2000, from 12,640 in 1960. Mifflin County's unemployment rate jumped from an annual average of 4.5 percent in 2000 to 7.5 percent in 2003 and is hovering at more than 8 percent this year, well above the 3.5 percent rate in the Harrisburg region and the state average of 6.1 percent.
A series of plant closings over six months -- some due to the transfer of jobs to other countries -- has made a bad situation worse.
Series of closings:
Depending on who is talking, outsourcing is either a natural part of free trade in a global economy or a new way of describing the "great sucking sound" of U.S. jobs going abroad, as Ross Perot warned during his presidential bid in 1992. If Perot needs a vacant building from which to say "I told you so," Lewistown has plenty.
In February, Lear Corp. shut its Lewistown plant, which made automotive carpeting, leaving 308 employees out of work. Lear, which operates plants in 34 countries, transferred the work that was done at Lewistown to other places, primarily Canada. The company gave some of its employees the option of working at other Lear facilities, including plants in Carlisle and Virginia, but there were few takers.
The same month, Standard Steel, founded in 1795 and instrumental to the railroad industry in the 1800s, closed its ring mill, where locomotive wheels were made. One of 49 U.S. steel companies that have declared bankruptcy since 1997, Standard Steel struggles with overseas competition, and while it continues to operate in the Lewistown area, 109 workers lost their jobs at the ring mill.
Mann Edge Tool Co., an ax-and-hammer factory that opened in the late 1800s and employed as many as 350 people 20 years ago, closed its Water Street plant in September, idling the remaining 49 workers. Before the closing, the business was purchased by Delaware-based Collins Tool Co., a subsidiary of Truper Herramientas in Mexico.
Collins Tool continues to operate in the Mifflin County Industrial Development Corp. plaza, but the work once done at the ax forge plant on Water Street is done overseas.
Last November, Guardian Industries, a glass manufacturer, closed its Lewistown plant, laid off 69 workers and sent the jobs to Mexico.
No help nearby:
Neighboring counties offer little respite for Lewistown residents.
Six plants in Centre County and one in Huntingdon County closed during the past year, because of either foreign competition or the outsourcing of jobs to other countries, says Cynthia Spencer, counselor at Lewistown CareerLink. She says another plant in Lewistown may downsize this summer, when some of the 200 jobs will be sent to India.
Twice a week, a dozen Lewistown residents, many of whom worked at Lear and Mann Edge, drive an hour to Harrisburg to take taxpayer-financed retraining courses at Harrisburg Area Community College. There, they are learning how to repair heating and air-conditioning systems.
The courses and extended unemployment compensation are part of the Trade Adjustment Assistance benefits that the displaced workers receive from the state Department of Labor and Industry and the U.S. Department of Labor.
The benefits, awarded to workers who lose their jobs as a result of outsourcing and international trade, do little to mask the damage to this once-thriving manufacturing town.
"Lewistown is decimated," says Bill Thompson, an instructor at HACC's Harrisburg campus. "Businesses are shutting down or cutting back."
Making ends meet:
When not commuting and learning, the students -- mostly middle-age white men with families to support -- try to make ends meet by painting houses, fixing cars, cutting grass and doing other odd jobs, Thompson says.
And on the rare occasion when full-time jobs open, a feeding frenzy ensues. At a recent daylong job fair at Trinity Packaging in Lewistown, more than 120 people showed up on a 90-degree weekday to apply for 35 jobs.
"We had to start turning people away at 5:30, so I'm sure there would have been more," says Lisa Woodruff, human resources manager at Trinity, where workers stuff plastic bags into boxes. "Our job fairs usually attract 50 to 60 [applicants], tops."
One applicant, Austin Shank, 19, went to the job fair because he's tired of working at Dairy Queen near his home in Reedsville. Of the eight children in the Shank family, three work for the ice cream chain, says Austin's mother, Martha Shank, as she sits on Trinity's front lawn and watches her son fill out his application.
"I have another son who's been looking for a job for two years, and he has a master's degree," Martha Shank says. "The jobs he's looking for ain't here. He's thinking of going into the Navy."
Austin is thinking of someplace other than Lewistown.
"If I can get a good enough job somewhere, I'll leave," he says.
Many people who get jobs at Trinity don't stay long, says Eric Goss, 28, who has worked at the plant for five years.
"A lot of people don't last more than a couple of hours," Goss says during a break. "Most don't last more than a week. It's noisy, and it's 20 degrees hotter than it is outside. With 100 percent humidity."
Goss says he has little choice but to weather the conditions. He's paid at top scale, $12.13 an hour, or $25,200 a year.
"Ain't too bad," Goss says. "Can't find anything else."
That's essentially the same reason Nicholas Seaholtz, 26, is filling out his application in his parked car. He drove to the job fair with his girlfriend, Ashley Druckemiller, 18, from their nearby hometown of Milroy. They left their infant son, Cole, in the care of his grandparents.
"I'll take whatever I can get, really," Seaholtz says. "It really doesn't matter as long as I can get a job."
Seaholtz says he has applied at 15 places since December, when he lost his job as a heavy-equipment operator.
"I think it's about time to move out of this state," he says. "Go out West. Down South. That's what it's coming to."
Rob Postal, president of the Mifflin County Industrial Development Corp., shares Seaholtz's frustration.
"I can understand the long-term benefit of outsourcing," Postal says. "But we don't have an adjustment for the short-term problems that are occurring. I understand that cheaper labor helps companies, but short-term, we're hurting."
Unlike other parts of Pennsylvania, including Harrisburg, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, "we don't have the service and government jobs to pick up the slack from the manufacturing losses," Postal says. "We're not replacing these jobs lost in manufacturing with other jobs. Those jobs that do come, the wages are not going to be the same."
Feeling the pain:
Other businesses in town are experiencing the trickle-down effect of outsourcing, consolidation and downsizing.
Revenue at Lewistown Florist is down 20 percent from a year ago, owner Mark Lawson says. He describes the current economic slump as the worst he's seen in the 24 years he has run the store.
"It's a lack of jobs," Lawson says. "People have no money to spend, and it's not getting better. Everybody feels it."
The opening of a Wal-Mart just outside Lewistown a decade ago didn't help matters, Lawson says, because it "also took business away" from downtown merchants.
"We're getting by," Lawson says while standing behind the counter of his shop, where he's surrounded by colorful flower arrangements and a caged bird but no customers. "Hopefully, something will turn around here."
Business is only slightly better at Henry's Subs & Suds, where two patrons sip beers in the otherwise empty bar.
"It's been like this for a while now," bartender Denise Fultz says. "Every week it gets worse. There's nothing in this town, and the people who are here don't have money."
Every once in awhile, road-construction crews who live outside of Lewistown stop in for beers after working on the highway widening project at routes 322 and 22.
Those workers brighten the atmosphere, Fultz says. "They come in, carry on and talk about sex."
When local residents do stop in, the conversations are "basically about how bad it sucks here," she says.
Gerald Hummel, president of the Greater Lewistown Corp., sees the town as half-full, not half-empty. He points to the highway expansion and the presence of Wal-Mart, or "Wally World," as the locals call it, as examples of growth, not decay, and says the region's access to rail service can attract business.
"The core stuff is here," Hummel says. "What isn't here is anybody's attention" to the area's potential.
Hummel's office is one of several county offices in the space formerly occupied by a Danks department store, which closed eight years ago. The 54,000-square-foot building had been vacant until four years ago.
The recent spate of plant closings follows years of other departures. Rite Aid moved out of town, as did three discount stores -- Murphy's, Kresge's and McCrory's. The Bon-Ton is still in town, Hummel says with pride.
But Hummel doesn't try to hide the obvious, that losses outweigh the gains in Lewistown. He escorts a visitor outside and glances across the parking lot at the latest reminder of that imbalance, the idled Mann Edge Tool building.
"What's happened here has taken place over so many years, it does not strike anyone as being dramatic," he says.
Plenty of volunteers:
Back at the recruiting center, Army Sgt. Joshua Ochs, 31, has no trouble finding volunteers, despite the rising death toll in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"They know we're capable of doing more for them than Lewistown can," Ochs says while waiting with his latest recruits for the shuttle bus.
Some people join because "they just want to do their part" for the country, says Ochs, who speaks in short, crisp sentences and wears a closely cropped crewcut. Others join because "there's nothing to do in this town," he says.
The shuttle pulls up, and Frymyer lingers in a long group hug with her family members, who are crying.
Ochs, standing to the side, ends the goodbyes.
"Let's go," he says.
As Frymyer rides off to boot camp, her stepsister, Tabitha Campbell, 13, issues a warning to no one in particular.
"If she gets hurt over there," she says, "we'll go over and nuke 'em."
Well, yes. I've lived equivalent places (southern IL.) Just because people are morons doesn't mean you totally write off their votes. Most people in the US are *not* smart, are *not* going to be "professionals." Outside of genetic surgery, they aren't going to be. The GOP look the other way while we allow them to devolve into a meth using-self-destructing rural and small town underclass, or the GOP can actually get a bit more populist.
I don't know s**t cuz I dint like school.
I can't get a job and it's Bush's fault.
The big bad war came and got me, and it's Bush's fault!
Grateful Dead teddy bear tattoo? You just can't make up stuff this weird. The DNC is working overtime?
Today is no different, except that with global trade we've managed to enjoy a high standard of living by hiding the working-class misery out of sight in places like Mexico, China, Malaysia, Indonesia, etc.
Exactly. Because by that time, the coal he was mining wasn't just being used to manufacture steel for autos -- it was used to make steel for a whole bunch of things he couldn't afford (tanks, airplanes, warships, etc.).
Today, China and India have severe trade restrictions to protect their domestic industry.
The free traitors feed and nourish the Chinese Dragon as they strangle and starve the American Eagle. Ultimately, free traitors will be ashamed to ever admit their despicable views, even to themselves. They will hide their loathsome treason, but the stain upon their character can never be fully expunged.
Does this mean we're talking Pennsylvania?
I love posters whose minds are so narrow that they can't remember that there is a universe beyond themselves.
Mentioning a state when posting would be nice.
It's remarkable that the finest minds in the world can't get beyond those two choices: unbridled pollution or the job-killing kind that returns 2 cents on the dollar worth of benefits.
Good luck to them.
And how exactly will dumbass turn the picture around in Lewiston if he wins? All he's told us so far is that he hates Bush and was in Viet Nam.
I don't think so. In 1980, 50% of the country roughly was registered Democrat. Now its around 30%.
Wo where these people who "dropped out"? Reagan Democrats, who became Republicans or Independents.
There is no big pool of Reagan Democrats anymore. They don't exist in anything but the most isolated pockets, and many are now retired and out of "the system".
Yep. Morons, one and all. They will be morons right up until they drive the last manufacturer out of town.
FDR was the man who instituted modern free trade policies which have so decimated the non-competitive Rust Belt industries by taking away their guaranteed US market. They voted against their own interests out of a greed for the money they thought they could get with FDR union policies. It worked - for them -, for about 25 years until the huge recession in 1958 (a recession the Republicans were rightly punished for with 25 years in the wilderness for their complicity with FDR economic policies). Anyone with eyes could see it was all over after that as one industry after another (ship building, primary metals, steel, mining, autos, machine tools, rail equipment, textiles) folded quickly like a cheap suit over the next 25 years. It certainly sucked for their children and grandchildren.
But Americans are kept such economic illiterates, they'll never even realize what happened.
Where are these Chinese jobs? China has lost 15 million manufacturing jobs in the last decade or so. China's growth in jobs is in services.
Its the same story all around the world.
Henry Ford was a visionary and genius. He invented scores of manufacturing processes. By doing so he was able to drastically cut the cost of cars, and basically move them from rich mens toys to a utilitarian object for the middle class.
The original Ford plant, in River Rouge, started with raw ore coming on the Rouge River and ended with cars rolling out the door. Thus you had a completely integrated manufacturing facility.
Today most US Autoworkers can probably afford to buy the cars they build (though maybe not super high end models like Hummers and Cadallac Escalades).
When reading about a factory that makes hammers and axes in Pennsylvania, and has been in business since the 1800s one wonders whether they have simply been left behind.
Ford no longer makes the Model T, nor uses the same processes as they did in the T era. Any company that has been building only hammers and axes and has not diversified in 100 years is probably not going to make it to the end of the 21st century intact. The huge change in distribution channels alone assure this.
I left for the Navy in 1984. There was no jobs in PA then.
I left for the Navy in 1984. There was no jobs in PA then.
Could you explain this. Never having lived there I'm not sure what you mean.
Well Bush is not personally wrapping up equipment and shipping it to Mexico. The owners of those factories are. Now ask yourself why? Because it is too expensive to build things here. It's much cheaper in Mexico. Why? Environmental regulations play a part, but labor costs is the biggest component. Would you support elimination of minimum wages laws and getting unions out of the factories to restore American competitivness? Just curious? How about relaxing environmental regulations? I'm not advocating these things, just asking questions.
Why the attitude? Do you want to alienate voters? Do you like to reward those who will never vote for the GOP based on social issues? The professional class of voters have shifted to the Democratic party in the last 15 years, look at how NJ used to be GOP leaning and now is fairly solidly Democratic, same with Long Island.
In our two party system both parties reinvent themselves to get to the magical 50%+1 needed to win. The Dems have moved to the left on social issues in a big way in the last 50 years. In doing so they have picked up a bunch of professional voters for whom taxes are less important than gay rights, abortion rights and other stuff that motivates lefties.
The GOP has not stood still. Look that the party Reagan was part of. Nelson Rockefeller, a liberal, was one of the main players. Nixon proposed guaranteed annual incomes. Liberal compared to most GOPers today, on both social issues and economic ones.
It's interesting that neither party has really had a strong economic message. Both support internationalization and free trade, but wobble when it suits them. Clinton had 'balance the budget' as a theme but that was to co-opt the Perot vote and also because his advisors told him he couldn't have prosperity any other way. (Carvelle: "In my next life I want to come back as the bond market" quip)
At the end of the day the GOP is not important to most voters, some issues are. If jobs becomes the top issue then the Dems, with at least the ability to talk about unions, protectionism and other economic issues that normal people can relate to will probably become the majority party.
Right now the GOP runs on social issues and free trade, but it's an uneasy alliance. Many WSJ reading free traders could care less about gun rights or abortion. Many fundamentalists are only semi-sympathetic to free trade concepts. As long as they are employed it seems reasonable. Let their job be outsourced and suddenly it will not be as attractive.
I've seen dozens of friends in the computer industry go from big free trade advocates (when it was GM's jobs going to Mexico) to Perot-like protectionists (when its H1-Bs and outsourcing to India) .
Buchanan was the only recent national Republican candidate who attempted to meld populist economic notions with conservative social issues. He failed, in part because he was an imperfect vehicle for his message, in part because the Free Traders had better arguments, in part due to timing (we'd just won the cold war, not exactly the time to propose trade-unioninsm as a solution).
What is scary is to consider what happens if Kerry loses, Bush goes on to a second feeble term with continuing downsizing.
At that point you have set the stage for a true leftist Democratic candidate, far to the left of Kerry, to run and win. Inevitably GOP voting social conservatives will be screwed in the process.
The GOPs bast chance at counter acting this is getting the votes of socially conservative working class voters, but as more of them are economically displaced, they will vote Democratic.
So you say. But what is important to the leaders of the Republican party. A tricky question. My guess is that the Free Trade part of their platform is the key and the support for social conservatism is a tool to get elected. Look at the total lack of support for immigration control. When Free Trade ideology bumps up against Social Conservative values (stop the invasion, support our language and culture, don't let the SW turn into Mexico Norte) the Free Trade side wins.
An alternate strategy for the GOP is to make "small government, low taxes" their theme and embrace a more liberal social policy, dropping anti-abortion and pro-gun positions. This is probably a more likely route to majority status (ie: win soccer mom votes) then a fair-trade Buchananist approach. (You think the mainstream media is hostile to Bush!! Imagine a Buchanan or Buchananite candidate!!)
People like Bush and Kerry adopt whatever policies their handlers tell them to to 'drive wedges' 'split the vote' and 'triangulate'. Bush's thin majority last time and squeaky close polls after four years may indicate that the free trade / conservative values coalition is no longer a majority. Don't expect to see more candidates running on it if he loses. Something new will be tired (as Clinton dropped the left-economics to put his coalition into power in 1992)
What's important to you? If you want trade issues addressed Gephardt was probably the best candidate. I wanted him to win the Dem nomination because I wanted a debate on these issues. If your top issue is immigration you have no candidate. Even in the primarey season.
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