Posted on 08/25/2003 2:05:47 PM PDT by snopercod
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- This year's highly publicized job losses in North Carolina manufacturing, including the Pillowtex bankruptcy, could mean trouble next year for President Bush in a region that was a stronghold in 2000.
Bush won more than 56 percent of the vote in both North Carolina and South Carolina in 2000. But his strong support of free trade has turned some against him in the South, where U.S. trade policies are blamed for the loss of jobs in textiles and other manufacturing sectors.
Andy Warlick, chief executive officer of Parkdale Mills in Gaston County, said he doubts he will repeat his 2000 vote for Bush next year.
"He made a lot of promises and he hasn't delivered on any of them," Warlick said. "I've had some firsthand experience of him sending down trade and commerce officials, but they're just photo ops. It's empty rhetoric."
Fred Reese, the president of Western N.C. Industries, an employers' association, said executives are beginning to raise their voices against Bush and are planning education and voter drives.
"We're seeing a new dynamic where the executives and employees are both beginning to see a real threat to their interests. You're going to see people who traditionally voted Republican switch over," Reese predicted.
The hard feelings were on display days after Pillowtex's July 30 bankruptcy filing, when Republican U.S. Rep. Robin Hayes walked into a Kannapolis auditorium to meet with former workers.
"Thanks for sending the jobs overseas, Robin!" shouted Brenda Miller, a longtime worker at the textile giant's Salisbury plant.
In December 2001 Hayes -- who is an heir to the Cannon family textile fortune -- cast the tie-breaking vote to give Bush the authority to negotiate "fast-track" trade agreements, trade treaties that Congress must vote up or down with no amendments.
At the time, Hayes said he won promises from the Bush administration that it would more strictly enforce existing trade agreements and pressure foreign countries to open their markets to U.S. textiles.
"Are we pleased with the way they responded? Absolutely," Hayes said. "Are we satisfied with where we are? Absolutely not."
Jobs in many industries have fled overseas since 1993, when Congress passed the Clinton-backed North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. About half the textile and apparel jobs that existed in 1994 are gone.
Since Bush took office in January 2001, it is estimated North Carolina and South Carolina have lost more than 180,000 manufacturing jobs.
And even more textile jobs could be out the door once quotas on Chinese imports expire at the end of next year.
Republican U.S. Rep. Cass Ballenger voted for NAFTA and fast-track, and has seen his 10th District lose nearly 40,000 jobs, primarily in the textile and furniture industries.
"Certainly, there's a political cost to any controversial vote no matter which side you take," he said. "People are casting stones, but we're trying to pick them up and build something."
Democratic U.S. Sen. John Edwards voted against fast-track in 2002 after voting for an earlier version. In 2000 he voted for permanent normal trade relations with China.
Recently, though, while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination, Edwards has attacked Bush's trade policies and called for fairer trade measures.
Robert Neal, vice president of the local chapter of the Pillowtex workers' union, said Hayes has worked to try to ease the impact of job losses in his district.
"Though he (Hayes) voted for fast-track, he is really concerned about the workers and their conditions in the state of North Carolina," Neal said.
Not everyone feels that way.
Reese is organizing 1,500 manufacturing companies across North Carolina in an effort to leverage what he calls a new voting bloc.
In South Carolina, voter drives are planned for the first time at Milliken & Co., which has about 30 plants in the state. Mount Vernon Mills of Greenville, S.C., is forming a political action committee.
The company's president Roger Chastain, a one-time Bush voter, doesn't expect to support the president or Jim DeMint, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Democrat Ernest Hollings.
"We're basically liquidating our whole middle class, polarizing people on the two extremes, have and have-nots," Chastain said of the manufacturing job losses. "We'll be a Third World country."
"Stroke of the pen, law of the land?"
My, my, my.
You seem to be an admirer of the Clintons--or, at least, their methods of governance.
Please specifically indicate how said amendments would prevent investigations regarding treason and espionage?
Ever hear of the concept of "probable cause?" (Rhetorical question, as you've obviously not heard of it.) Fourth Amendment issue right there--you do not show probable cause for each investigation, merely a blanket claim of guilt.
Fifth Amendment: due process of law. Taking of private property for public use. (Hey, guess what? When you're doing government security investigations of private enterprises that are not directly engaged in government contracts...you're asserting that the GOVERNMENT actually owns those enterprises.)
Sixth Amendment: you've just ensured that NOBODY is going to get a speedy trial in this country, even if they aren't invesitgated under this act. Also, your whole premise is that everyone is guilty until they are proven innocent.
Eighth: Excessive fines or bail.
Your proposal has far less to do with the concepts of ordered liberty than it does with the Marxist-Leninist concepts of "purging class enemies" and "show trials."
Some such investigations are already occuring on a small scale.
Based on those reactionary principles of probable cause, due process of law, et cetera--the ones that keep you from instituting your concept of purging your class enemies and building the New Soviet (Business)Man in your image.
Your idea, at its core, is related to the concept enforced by His Majesty's soldiers--the one holding that every white fir in the Crown Colony of Maine belonged to His Majesty, and that a settler who committed the heinously evil act of cutting down a white fir on his property had in fact, committed treason against the Crown.
Oye.
"But, in general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favor of free trade." ~ Karl Marx, On the Question of Free Trade, January 9, 1848 http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/01/09ft.htm#marx
I sincerely doubt that you will, but I'm willing to let you try.
Firstly, with your ad hominem attack trying to paint me as a Clinton fan, you imply that the President does not have the authority to manage his AG and his DCI?
He may do so...within the confines of the Constitution of the United States, which is still the supreme law of the land, efforts by you and your ilk to the contrary notwithstanding.
Clinton and his cronies tried to do the very thing you advocate--they just have slightly different targets.
Secondly, you believe there is no probable cause that US firms have done business inappropriate and in cases engaged in treason with our enemies and hostile anti Western countries, witness Hughes, Loral, Sun Microsystems, SGI, many others...
Ahem. You need probable cause for EACH INDIVIDUAL INVESTIGATION. (Mind-blowing concept, isn't it?)
Timothy McVeigh blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. He rented a Ryder truck. He also purchased fertilizer.
By your logic, there is now probable cause for an investigation of every person who rents a truck, or purchases fertilizer. After all, they're all probable domestic terrorists.
That isn't any sort of "probable cause," however.
Thirdly, you believe that asking companies to be more stringent regarding hiring H1Bs / L1s / Resident Aliens who are Citizens of Communist and other anti Western nations is "taking of private property" as is regulating how such firms can operate in those same hostile nations.
Your proposal goes far beyond that. Perhaps you're just functionally illiterate.
I am stating that your proposal to mandate a security investigation of every employee (citizen or alien) of every company in America amounts to the government determining who I may hire and fire--essentially, the government replaces the business owner and is in the position of determining how to dispose of the company's payroll.
At that point, the government is acting as the owner. It's a taking--unless you're of the school that holds that ALL property rightly belongs to the state, and that the state then deigns to allow us use of said property, whereupon we must be appropriately grateful and bootlicking to the agents of the state.
Fourthly you equate tough laws with issues that have nothing to do with the laws themselves but rather, our increasingly permissive and criminal protecting (promoting?) legal system corrupted as it is by the Communist ACLU.
Wrong. I have no problem with tough laws.
Tough laws that violate specific clauses of the US Constitution--I have a problem with those.
"Toughness" is not the sole criterion of a law's effectiveness. A law that mandates the death penalty for smoking in a public park is "tough." It is also manifestly unconstitutional.
Fifthly, you believe that creating punishments that would actually impact the behavior of firms and individuals who have tremendous financial resources and who would never respond to slap-on-the-wrist punishments is "excessive."
Go and read the Eighth Amendment. Go and read the case law on the Eighth Amendment.
Your fine is arbitrary, and extremely high. It will not withstand judicial review--under ANY standard that the nation has employed since its founding. You may not like this fact. Tango Sierra.
Then you go on to equate the restoration of order over the anarchy that has resulted as anti American globalist firms who simply happen to headquarter here out of convenience with Marxism?
The Marxists always like to talk about "restoring order" over the "anarchy" of the free market. belmont_mark argues the Marxist line; the logical conclusion is that belmont_mark is, in fact, a Marxist.
I just simply wanted to document your beliefs for all here to see.
I'm presuming that you're not a complete moron (a dangerous presumption, to be true).
Given that presumption, the only thing I can conclude is that you simply despise the notion of freedom, because your proposal has shown nothing but contempt for the Bill of Rights. It's something far more worthy of Hillary Clinton and Janet Reno than it is of Free Republic.
That's like being called a pervert by Bill Clinton, or being called ugly by Helen Thomas...
It's utterly devoid of meaning, even if it was factual.
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