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."
Calling people names does not do anything to help your case. It was the votes of the blue collar workers that gave Reagan the victory in 80, it was also their votes that allowed the GOP to take congress in 94. The biggest reason why Bush is now stuck in the mid 40s is most polls is because of a large loss of support among working class white males. Like it or not, the reality the likes of Limbaugh wants to paint does not exist.
The Reagan thing was 25 years ago. What have they done since then? And have you now or ever lived there? I know, I lived there. They are morons.
They were more like $10-12 hr, good solid work for those trying to get a college education or for a spouse to help pay the bills. Better jobs than $7-8 hr jobs at Wal Mart with less benifits.
I just came back from spending time in North Carolina. What a difference. Here in Massachusetts many of my friends have lost their jobs. It seems like there is full employment in NC and the cost of living is half of what it is in MA.
And again, people wonder why Bush is having problems with working class voters who own guns, go to church and are culturally conservative. Go on, alienate more people and soon the base gets weaker and weaker. One very iornic things is that the professionals who are most helped by these economic chnages such as Doctors, Lawyers and related feilds, are also trending Democratic based on social issues.
The iornic (sic) thing, is all my doctor pals are getting the hell out of PA due to the malpractice insurance charges.
You are correct. This entire issue is yet another area where the Republicans risk losing their own base. The real overarching issue here is globalism. The ruling elite of US business no longer has any loyalty to the United States or its people - people like those described in the article. The upper echelon of management in the Fortune 500 have, for the most part, received a thorough indoctrination in the Gramscian model of progressivism through control of the institutions. Like Bernard Schwartz of Loral, Inc., they will gladly sell anything to anyone. They are the literal embodiment of Marx's dictum: A capitalist will gladly sell you the rope that you'll use to hang him. If all people are to be reduced to mere commodities - individual economic units - it becomes imperative that arcane concepts like nationhood, loyalty, morality, etc. must be done away with.
Free trade with a nation like China - who litereally employs slave labor in the form of millions of political prisoners - is a lie at its core. There's nothing free about it - the slaves certainly aren't allowed the fruit of their labors are they? If the free enterprise system is divorced from transcendent moral concepts like patriotism. honesty, fair play, etc., it rapidly degenerates into a mafia-like system of ever increasing ruthlessness and immorality. In short order, open competition ceases to exist and is replaced by an oligarchical system similar to the one operating in most Latin American countries. That's what is happening to the west now on a global scale. Thus the constant cry from the Wall Street Journal for open-borders, outsourcng, "free-trade", H1B and L-1 visas, etc. Is it any wonder that folks like Kenny Lay and Bernie Ebbers view themselves as being above the law? In many respects, they literally are.
Kerry and Edwards, of course, will make all the noise about being for "the little guy", while their actual record is, if anything, even worse than Bush and the Republicans. Kerry is a "Bonesman" just as much as Bush is. You's never find that out from following the standard media coverage, though.
probably true, although the Democrats don't have any positive agenda or answers either - but indeed they will simply "inherit" these votes because they will be there offering more government programs, funded by more taxes on those who do have higher earnings.
right now, all of my friends who work(ed) in technology - are piling their kids into law schools, finance, real estate, or education (public school teachers), etc. Its an unsupportable trend - the economy can only support so many people working in non-productive jobs - earning a living by swapping real estate or financial securities back and forth, or earning a living through jury verdicts in civil cases, or through government employment.
Tech is dead in the US - if only because the current generation of engineers in the field, aren't letting their college bound children pursue it. So the next generation of engineers are either going to have to come from immigrants into the US (engineering school enrollments are increasingly made up of foreign nationals), or having those jobs exported to China and India (more likely scenario).
I see the Marxists at the DNC continue to outsource their FR propaganda work to you.
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. 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.
In my state of Ohio, I have seen this, the professional classes has trended towrds Democrats, and the working class who do not care for social liberalism are economically insecure, and they are fustrated that nothing is being done to stop the export of jobs and stop the importation of cheap labor.
More and more Amish are voting.
They are all card-carrying Unionists (firemen, truck drivers, telephone company). The idea that the middle of the state, where NO ONE lives will carry the state is such crap.
If the Republicans win, it is because York, Lancaster, Lycoming, Blair, Chester, Franklin, Cumberland and Butler put up big numbers for them (those eight can produce a 250,000+ vote Republican margin easily, as they did for Santorum), and they carry the inner Philadelphia and Pittsburgh suburban areas. The bulk of the "T" provides a Republican margin, but it is nothing spectacular, since as you note, so few people are there. Most of the so-called "T" votes are the counties SE and SW of Harrisburg plus Altoona, Williamsport, and Butler.
There ain't no one to vote Repub in Philly proper anymore.
Actually, there are about 120,000 of us still in the City. We even have the Speaker of the State Assembly from amongst our number. Port Richmond, Northeast Philadelphia and Roxborough are still Red-America.
again, because the population in NC is increasing - jobs that normally come as a result of the expansion that accompanies population growth are created.
wait until the trend continues - those increased numbers of people will demand more service from government, taxes will rise. government employment will rise to provide those services, those workers will demand higher wages, and taxes will rise.
and very soon - NC will look just like MA does now.
Looks like Lewistown lost focus on its core competencies and lost any competitive advantage it may have had at one time.
What fustrates me is there doesnt seem to be anything that will stop this trend. Anyone who understands history and politics will see that the higher percentage of the population that is economically displaced. the higher the possibility that they will vote for those who promose to protect their standard of living. Now this may have been counter acted in the past when those in the professional classes tended to be Conservative, but that is not true anymore, as examples I have given in my previous post.
Another example is the state of IL. The GOP strongholds of the Chicago suburbs that used to give upwards of 70% of the vote to GOP canidates are now barely give over 50% to statewide GOP canidates. These people have been greatly helped by tax cuts, and their cost of goods have been held down by outsourcing of jobs and the importation of cheap labor, but they are not moving any further towrds the GOP because they vote mainly on issues of being "pro choice" the enviroment, and other "soccer mom" issues.
The working class but socially conservative voters who are in parts of the Chicago area and in downstate IL would be fertile territory to pick up votes, but the economic policies, and to be sure these policies started during the Clinton admin under Robert Rubin, have been continued and have shoved these voters towrds more marginal economic territory, and as this happens, not only do they not move towrds the GOP, but because of economic stress, they move towrds the Democrats.
The new Result, IL is out of reach for the GOP, where before 96, it was a swing state that had a slight GOP lean.
well put.
I am on long island, and that is exactly the trend. The professionals now work in essentially non-productive industries - they make their money off "the system", and seek those in government who will keep feeding that system. Anyone who talks about tort reform, or litigation reform to lower insurance rates, or medical savings accounts, or accountability from wall street - isn't going to play too well here.
I have always felt that if there is a "hidden" vote in this 2004 election that will break against Bush - this is where it is coming from. But then again, Kerry has been so inept at framing even the simplest argument here, that it probably will not materialize.
Well. kudos to you for staying that hell-hole. There are 'pubs in Roxborough? Color me shocked.
and that trend you mention in IL and NJ - what the folks posting about how "things are better in AZ and NC" don't realize is - its coming to where you live also. there is no escaping from it, you can hide for a few years in North Carolina and Georgia, but the same trends from IL and NJ - are coming. Just give it a few years. The suburbs will grow, demand for services will rise, taxes will rise, and the demographics will create Democratic states there.
Except for the newest Gullup Poll, Bush has been at 45% in the polls for months, not great territory for incumbents, and Kerry might be inept, but at least as of yet, he hasnt been as inept as Dukakis was. Going into the details of the polls I have been able to get access to to see their internals, lower income white male voters are the biggest drop off among Bushes supporters. Bush is in the low 50s in the white male vote, he needs it to be at least 10 points higher.
..........Oh Please!
Stop whining. Start a business. Move to a state with a better tax and regulatory environment. Figure out how to automate your industry to make labor rate arbitrage irrelevent. Act like a conservative, not a union socialist.
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