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."
The Bushes are/were 20 times the globalists than Reagan ever was. I think thats pretty obvious to most.
It couldn't be that I comprehend and share their understanding. I'm blindly accepting. Ok. Whatever.
As Mises and Rothbard often pointed out, one cannot quantify human action. This does not mean that people do not engage in activity in which mathematics is not important, but rather that we cannot accurately use math to describe how humans behave.
Take the simple "Lagrangian Multiplier" that we use in basic graduate-school economics to "explain" consumer behavior. Here, economists construct an equation in which one?s utility depends upon, say, goods "x" and "y." The ability to accumulate such goods is constrained by one?s income and the prices paid for the goods.
In determining the "optimal" state that the consumer can enjoy, one uses tools of multivariable calculus to reach a point where "equilibrium" is reached. At that point, the marginal utility of good "x" divided by the price of good "x" is equal to the marginal utility of good "y" over the price of that good. (I have not done the mathematical work on this page for obvious reasons.)
The problem here is that this "solution" is nonsense. Utility (or consumer satisfaction) cannot be measured in cardinal terms. There is no way to take a cardinal measure of someone's satisfaction. I can say that I like chocolate more than vanilla, but I cannot put that preference in cardinal numbers. An attempt to do so is nothing short of an exercise in fraud.
Yes, of course! Voting for the converse is always the best choice. I mean at least the "BEST" Bad guy gets the prize that way.
Lets all be sure to rememeber that.
A guy that he lost not his job, but his company, because he was not allowed to import overseas to India and China without high tarriffs, but his competitor who moved his plant over there, was allowed to use both tax breaks, insurance, and slave wages to import the product back into the states without all the tarriff hassle, is not going to be heartened when you tell him, that in the long run, they are only hurting themselves by not letting you actually sell things for profit.
That position is an absolute joke. Simply put, you guys won't discuss free trade. The system is rigged right now, and you pretend it's an invisible pink elephant in the living room. I bet 90% of people with questions about "free trade" would be quite satisfied if India dropped their tarriffs, China stopped pointing missiles at us and using slave labor, and our goods and our people could move as freely in their countries as they are allowed to in ours.
An analogy. You tell a boxer, that when he boxes against people whose social security number ends in 1,6, or 7, they have to have one hand tied behind their back, but against them, the other fighter gets to carry a sledgehammer.
When somebody complains, you suggest that they just don't believe in fair sporting. What? Are you suggesting that people who have SSN's ending in 1,6, or 7 can't fight? Are you prejudiced against them?
If India drops the tarriffs, and our government stops giving financial incentives for our companies to move there... not even penalize, no incentives, I will withdraw my objections with trade with India. Is that difficult?
You all refuse to debate these facts. Absolutely always sidetrack, insult, throw out red herrings. In fields such as IT these days, you often aren't anybody's employee as it is, but a free agent contractor. Just a fair clean fight. We can not compete on wages, low safety standards, environmental pollution, etc... when you give tax breaks, and insurance to sweeten the pot, that isn't free or fair.
You announced that no one else was addressing your issues in 1999...and you suddenly claim that you jumped ship for Bush.
I ended up voting for Bush because I knew Buchanan didn't have a chance.
I don't believe you.
Too many of your ilk have taken to deception for me to just believe whatever you say.
And that is supposed to mean something deep in political thought?
You will be voting to defeat Bush in 2004. Good luck.
Did you even read that book? Thomas Friedman is a liberal, not a free market capitalist conservative. In that book he wrings his hand and frets over and over about the loss of "sovereignty" to some states and other crap like that that someone who doesn't have faith in capitalism would do.
Spin it however you want but you are as anti-capitalist as the most rabid socialists. You people and they aren't protesting at WTO meetings by some coincidence.
Duhhhhh.... And you all want more government intervention with Tarffis and laws against moving companies off shore?
How about repealing the crap that is causing companies to leave.
Or does that make too much sense?
Huh that isn't spam.
Seems like your animus should be against Ronald Reagan for being a free trader.
Hey Dennis Kucinich has announced he is agianst NAFTA and repeal it if elected president.
I actually respect him more than you.
At least Kucinnich doesn't play games like you Buchanan Brigadiers do.
Kuchinnich actually comes out and disagrees with Reagan's trade polices, while you Buchanan Brigadiers hate Reagan policies about trade and yet try to hide behind Reagan's legacy.
Can you say glaring phonieness.
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