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."
He's got himself in a terrible jam, all out there in free trade land
So drop your jobs and vote Republican, we're gonna have a whole lot of fun....
My family is better off. What have you been doing for the last 30 years? Wasting all your money on toys and expecting the government to save you?
Sorry, you have Reagan backwards. He is the one who started the negotiations for NAFTA. In response to calls for retaliatory tariffs he said the following during a radio address, November 20, 1982, "If one partner shoots a hole in the bottom of the boat, does it make sense for the other partner to shoot another hole in the boat." He graduated with a degree in economics, and had a fundamental understanding of liberty and same that you haven't yet achieved. "America's open market is its strength, not its weakness." America's economic resurgence was consequence of his slashing taxes. GWB's tax cuts are appreciated, but piddling in comparison. Furthermore, relief isn't happening at the state level, while expenditures are much greater than they were in the 80's.
Well, everybody in Barry Bonds family can play baseball well, so that means we all can.
I am doing fine. Great. But it isn't just about me. It may all be just about you, but my family extends beyond my walls. The people at church, my next door neighbor, my fellow americans all matter to me. I have not taken one red dime from the government other than the GI Bill/Army College fund thank you very much.
You still have not addressed the point. Has family life improved since manufacturing started moving off shore?
Lies! Lies! It's all lies, I tells ya!! Must... subsidize... industry... and... ban... foreign... products...
And here we have what this always about. You ask all these people and they are always doing just great... but it's not about them... it's about how much they can demonstrate to you how great a person they are because even though they are doing great they still care about "the little man" out there who is hurting.
What did Ken Lay produce? He is simply another parasite enabled (and still protected?) by Republocrat political connections. The Free Market is what exposed Enron, even while former politicians on his payroll were trying to keep pulling the strings.
American is driven by the entrepenuer. Unless and until the government gets out of his way, the economy is imperilled. You can't build a fence around him, unless you think Kruschev had it figured out with the Berlin Wall.
The question is not, are both parents combined income enough to pay the bills. My question is, are we living in a better world where high paying jobs for blue collar guys are gone, and their wives are obligated to find jobs as well, even if they want to stay home?
My father never even went to high school. He joined the merchant marines, then the real marines and went to vietnam. He came back at 21, took a job as an apprentice machinist, and within 8 years was able to make half the price of our house with one year's salary. That was reality then. College graduates now in certain areas, can't afford the housing their parents had, even with more education. So, they both work. Have kids, ship them off to day care and refinance their mortgages, spending 15 minutes at best of quality time per day with their kids.
I thought you neo-cons actually believed in morality. Does that stop when the almighty Chinese yuan is waved in front of your faces? What are you first? An american or a merchant?
Both parents are doing this because they have 3 SUVs, a lakehouse, season tickets, DVDs, and major 4-year universities to pay for now. No family is required to have both parents working the last time I checked. Mine didn't.
Just because you want to exploit third world people, some could consider you a racist with more justification. I don't hear anybody here talking about deporting ethnic Chinese or Indian americans who are born and raised american citizens. If you want to make an argument on Xenophobia, fine.
People who live in paper houses by a particular harbor, shouldn't be tossing so many writs.
How many bureaucrats do you intend to add to the dole to go around counting noese? How many more people not producing anything of value do you think we can afford to carry? Lemme see, government taxes and regulation are chasing capital offshore in seek of better returns. Your simple answer is more taxes and regulations. Genius! I appoint you emperor for life!
And then We Da Pee-PULL! decided that the factory he worked at was polluting the environment when they disposed of waste products in a perfectly legal manner, and had to be fined and forced to pay for cleanup of the local waste dump (despite never having used it), and that the factory was engaged in "racial discrimination" because they only hired 3 black men in one year when, on a statistical basis, they should have hired 3.1671209 black men, and had to be fined, and that the factory owner was "too rich," and had to pay more taxes, and that the union had the right to firebomb the factory when the owner (that guy who was "too rich") fired another machinist for drunkenness that damn near killed your dad and a couple other guys on the production line one day.
That is absolutely true. I've been exposed to and part of several levels of corporate America, and while Scott Adams may be funny as hell, his portrayal of middle management is spot on. I have met every one of his characters, including Alice and the pointy-haired boss, in person.
And I'm not just talking about medium-sized coporations, either. When I was with Xerox, it was more like Dilbert's environment than the smaller companies.
What about ones that moved here after they were born?
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