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."
There are many people who believe that they've been abducted by space aliens.
"Belief" and "fact" are not semantically identical.
Look I'm not some scumbag lawyer so I ain't got no stinkin' cite.
I'm not a lawyer, either. But if I'm stating that something is illegal, I can cite the appropriate section of the US Code to support my thesis.
"Cites, we ain't got no cites. We ain't gonna show you no cites. We don't need to show you no stinkin' cites!"
Ah, you quote the motto of the "Revolutionary Justice Councils" as they liquidate "enemies of the people."
But in all seriousness, if we were to rate, on a scale of 1 - 10, the degree to which crimes of interference with US foreign policy (private individuals and corporations are forbidden to make claims to represent it or to drive it), and crimes of treason are being investigated, and prosecuted, the number would be quite low.
Probably because what you personally deem a crime and what the US Code deems a crime are not congruent.
It was certainly higher 150 or 200 years ago.
Do you have proof for this claim, or are you merely pounding the table?
You can't even tell me what law, if any, actually makes it a crime, and now you expect me to simply believe you when you claim that lots of people were prosecuted under this law that you're absolutely certain exists.
That's my standard. What is yours?
Oh, things like actual legal citations and actual case law that support your assertions. Little things, to be sure...
Ah. But we aren't in a state of declared war. Notice that folks spying for the USSR during the Cold War didn't get popped for treason.
Try again.
I am not arguing that the example mentioned meets that criteria; perhaps Sean Penn's behaviors comes closer.
Good thing you posted that sentence.
"Closer" only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and nuclear bombs. We were not in a state of declared war with Iraq at the time of Sean Penn's visit.
Exceptions to the rule are extremely rare, and merely saying something that the government dislikes is not grounds for a treason conviction.
Here is another one that thought she was exercising free speach.... Time will tell.
I don't see a reference to a charge of treason in that article.
It's always been "squeamish," because the standard of proof for treason was deliberately raised to an extremely high level. Note that treason is the one crime that is defined in the Constitution, and that the standard of proof is also defined the Constitution. There is a specific reason for that: the Crown had this habit of charging people with treason for saying things that displeased His Majesty. Your dislike of this aspect of the US Constitution comports well with the views of such distiniguished advocates of judicial reform as Josef Stalin and Saddam Hussein.
That has been the case ever since the McCarthy hearings occurred.
It was the case BEFORE the McCarthy hearings occurred, too.
Our government has also been squeamish about pursuing investigations of foreigners commiting industrial espionage, other espionage and various acts which according to the PLA white paper on "Unrestricted Warfare" as well as numerous older Soviet and newer Russian documents fit in with their strategies of fighting wars against the US and West in the economic and cultural dimensions.
We haven't been squeamish about it. Espionage is an extremely difficult crime to prove in a judicial system where one is guilty until proven innocent. Also, kindly note how well the Soviet Union did in fighting the US in economic and cultural dimensions.
THEY LOST.
How should we defend ourselves against such attacks?
When your opponent insists on shooting himself in the foot, your best defense is to keep passing him more ammunition.
Meanwhile, US corporations are undertaking activities in Communist countries, self declared "formerly Communist countries which actively support anti Western rogue nations and, other anti Western countries.
Uh-huh. They also undertake activities elsewhere.
Is this treason?
No.
Do we need to define some new crime which this ethically wrong set of activity is?
I'm sure you'll think of something such as "thought crime," "counter-revolutionary deviationism," or (most likely) "capitalism."
"Hoarding" is a long-time hobby of shopkeepers. Also, "gouging".
PUH-leeese
It's evasion of tax on excess inventory...
Two words: Beowulf Cluster.
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