Precisely. That may be a case where one's mouth may write a check that one's hindparts can't cash.
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."
I addressed them. You just didn't like the answers, and you have no facts to challenge them with, so you are left with a claim that I distorted them.
Waah, waah, waah. Tango Sierra.
You never really want to address anyone's post in its entirety, you pick and choose things out of context, a snippet here or there.
Yes, a sentence here, the next sentence there, the sentence after that over there...
Until I run out of your sentences to quote, of course.
And, once again, the politician's whine of "I was taken out of context."
Professional politicians don't get a pass here, son. Neither do people who try to act like the worst of them.
I note that most of your anarchist buddies have a similar style.
"Anarchist?"
BWAHAHA!
Is your mission one of discrediting the far Right?
I leave that task to your eminently-capable hands.
Ah, so it's a "cabal" now.
Hard to keep those code words straight.
I was just pointing out to other people that you've made ad hominem remarks to or about your stunning hypocrisy.
I can understand why you would dislike me doing that.
I believe that there must be a specific reason (probable cause) for each such an investigation before it can begin.
There are already plenty of areas where that probable cause may exist to take up any serious AG's time. If those companies in violation are punished severally and in public for the proven violations, it will act as a deterrent for the whole...which is how it should work.
In addition, for those companies working on classified material, a serious enforcement and proscribing of existing classified materials and security classification would work. It used to be much tighter and more difficult than it is now in my opinion.
Otherwise, we are setting up the entire nation up for a massive all entrusive governmental undertaking of all companies and all employees...probably logistically impossible and something the people (yours truly included ) would not sit still for. Imagine the bureauracy and government spending necessary for such an undertaking. Imagine the chances and opportunities for abuse, particularly under am administration like the former one (Clinton).
You should seriously consider rewording at least that part of your plan IMHO.
Now, there is no doubt in my mind that the level of outsourcing of our manufacturing, technological and agricultural base that is going on today is foolhardy and dangerous. Not only is it hurting American workers and allowing for significant technology transfer associated with it, but we are placing the physical assets necessary for us to operate as a nation in the hands of nations who are some of our most potential adversaries.
Making yourself dependent upon and vulnerable to such adversaries is never a good idea. Like I said, it is foolhardy at best.
We need policies that address this issue and protect our free market for what is was intended, and that is the free, unrestricted trade between free nations. When nations who represent the anti-thesis of freedom and liberty want to get involved...you restrict them from it until they change, letting up on those restrictions progressively as they change.
We don't need another massive governmental program that restricts us all to do this. In fact, we need to remove th heavy governmental restrictions already placed on American workers (heavy social restructuring taxation, OSHA, myriad Agenda 21 environmental restrictions, Employment, etc.) to make them more competitive. IMHO, we also need to establish incentives for invetiveness, quality and competitiveness, and then, except for using our trade restrictions to keep undesirable, totalitarian and non-free nations out of the mix (ala some of harpseals proposals), government needs to get the heck out of the way altogether.
Just my opinion.
Out of pity for you, I don't address every inane and foolish argument you make, particularly the idiotic ones that ignores basic elements of jurisprudence.
What A, B, and C may or may not have done is irrelevant to the question of whether there is probable cause to investigate X, Y, and Z.
One needs specific reason to conduct an investigation. You refuse to recognize that fact.
Do I have to hit you over the head with one point per post and couch my questions in such a manner that you provide a yes no answer? Is that what it takes to engage in a debate with you?
No, it takes the ability on your part to recognize that you don't know what you're talking about. Until then, I'm the one debating, and you're just demonstrating your ignorance.
And it's always the same (very small) group who shows up screaming that the sky is falling, so I guess you're guilty of being part of a cabal as wel.
I've also noticed largely the same cabal showing up on any posts which have to do with the increasing geopolitical threat of the PRC. Do you work for the PRC?
No.
And you've just revealed the abject shortcomings of your character. Unable to argue with facts, you engage in ad hominem attack, accusing all who disagree with you of disloyalty. Of course, you'd NEVER say that sort of thing face-to-face.
Precisely. That may be a case where one's mouth may write a check that one's hindparts can't cash.
If Bill Clinton were to complain about you being a crook...I would be hard-pressed to actually care about it, even if you were some sort of crook, simply because he's so much worse a crook than the mean or median for crooks.
Please cite the appropriate US law making it illegal for someone employed by a US company from expressing his opinions in talks with officials of a foreign country, particularly. I'd really like to see that section of the US Code.
No.
But you need to cite the appropriate section of the US Code that forbids such actions.
Did you also approve of Sean Penn going over and being a Saddam bootlicker?
No.
But you need to cite the appropriate section of the US Code that forbids such actions.
Rhetoric is a fine thing when you're simply on the stump. But when you start talking about things being "illegal," you really need to show exactly how they are illegal.
As would I.
I hear asphyxiation is not a pleasant way to die.
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