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."
To me, it's pretty simple...If you can't afford to hire "American citizens" in your business, you shouldn't be in business in America...
You have no right to demand any more than that employer can afford to pay for that function simply because you are of Northern European ancestry, and through a stroke of good luck, you happened to be born behind American borders.
It costs big bucks to move a business to China...Business doesn't move to China to do business in China...They move there to do business in the U.S...It's the profit "Margin"...
If I could buy a Shakespeare rod and reel that is now made in China and the company sold it at the same profit margin that it used to get in the U.S., the rod and reel would cost me about $1.75.....But that's not how it works,is it....
And you are right, I was lucky to be born in the U.S...And legal immigrants are lucky to be able to move here...But none of us are going to be too lucky if the current trend continues...So there you go, "big man"...
653+ replies
Anyone reading threads like this knows that support for Bushco is FRAGMENTING!
Won't be long now!
Really? I give much of my money away just like you do no doubt.
We can't afford to take off and go to college and get trained for another career. We have 3 kids, a mortgage.
My husband put himself through college while working several jobs. He's been out of college for 15 years. He's patented software. He was one of the creators of on-screen TV-Guides. Now, I don't know what is going to happen to us."
Yeah that definitely sucks. But, it is not the end of the world. My Family went through basically the same ordeal back in the early 80's and it was the best thing that ever happened to us.
I was on the fast track in a nice job making fairly good money even though I was in business for myself on the side. I wanted to get rid of the headache of running a business and let someone else worry bout the problems associated with one. My dad was basically in the same boat and them the Bad Economy finally washed through our little corner of the world.
I had a house payment, a brand new car payment, a Mrs. Dawgg and no job and not nearly enough income to pay for it all. I swore to myself that very day I would never let myself get into that position again. Thank god I hadn't dumped my business. My Father was exactly in the same boat.
From that day on even though we have all had JOBs in the intervening years we always looked for ways to increase our income from MANY revenue streams.
In other words if you rely on one source of income you are playing financial Russian roulette.
You don't think those Indians taking "American" jobs are here legally?
NOW you tell me!
Amazing how democrats always go for the race card isn't it?
I doubt you can find one PhD in economics who would would go along that mathematics has no place in economics. Clearly at least mosts economics courses beyond 101 level require a knowledge of mathematics to iunderstand them. Without mathmetics behind it is not science merely voodo mnd your bvelief structure while fine for you has no validity as public policy unless and until you can eitehr get that belief structure ratified as part of Constitutionor supported by enough people to be enacted into government policy.
How much I want one apple can't be measured and compared to how much you want an apple, or how much either of us would want a hundred apples. Valuation is subjective and as importantly, temporal.
Valuation is an aggregate of how much many peopel value your hypothetical apple. Economics is the study of the distribution of scarce goods and resources by a society. It is not a study of your desires and what you want and how much you want it at a given time mathematics allows one to sum up an aggregate to determine economic policies. If you can not understand this differenc ebetween your I want and policies with effects then you are just another selfish gimmmee gimmee.
Liberty lets the individual use their talents to satisfy their wants as they see fit, you're trying to pull the levers of government coercion to get an outcome you desire, your fellow man's liberty and desires be damned
In order to insure the maximum of liberty of a period of time teh US Constitution was ratified thereby pretty much defining the Federal government. Now I freely admit the Federal government has exceeded teh exprtessly delegated powers in many cases but that does not imply any liberty is lost by the exercise of the expressly delegated powers. i will stand by teh Constitutional definition of liberty not the liscense you imply. Clearly the kind of liberty you imply is merely a form of anarchy whereby rule ogf the strong is the only limit in anyone which has been swhown to destroy most individual's liberty. Calligula had all the liberty anyone could name when he ruled Roime his subjects enjoyed no such liberty. We have a compromise as a Constitution and that compromise does not include teh "liberty or liscense" depending upon one's point of view you assert shouldbe yours. Can you name a government that guartees such liberty?
Here are some of the wisest words ever uttered about college:
"If you want a degree go to college, if you want and education go to the library." ---Paul Henry Gettles
Democrats? The most loyal Bush/GOP supporters on this thread are the ones arguing for capitalism. The ones opposed to capitalism are the ones like "janetgreen" who say they will help the Democrats beat Bush next election.
Haha. Now it's the deficits. We're all doomed (just like we were doomed by the deficits in the early 1990s).
I thought you supported legal immigration?
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