Bush Axes Southern Jobs and Southern Heritage

The Dixie Net Gazette ^ | Spring 2003 | Mike Tuggle

[mac_truck]

The Bush Administration has rewarded the South for its loyalty.

Having successfully continued the Executive usurpation of Congressional authority to negotiate trade contracts, thanks to NAFTA and "Fast-Track", as well as Congressional authority to declare war, Bush now enjoys unchallenged power. His latest exercise in imperial Executive authority came last week when he awarded the Socialist Republic of Vietnamincreases in its textile export quotas to the US from $49 million to $1.5 billion. This is good news for the Vietnamese, but more grim news for Southern textile workers. The Southern textile industry has closed more than 150 mills and slashed 90,000 jobs since 2001, according to the American Textile Manufacturers Institute, and has shrunk by a third in the last five years.

Southern textile workers have looked to Bush for help, only to be ignored. In September, 2001, weeks before the Twin Towers attack, Southern governors Jim Hodges of South Carolina, Mike Easley of North Carolina, Roy Barnes of Georgia, and Don Siegelman of Alabama appealed to President Bush to help their textile workers, and asked that he meet with them to finally take action against the dumping of foreign textiles in Mexico, which used the NAFTA agreements against us. Bush replied that he was "too busy to meet with them." That was true -- he was busy in Toledo, Ohio with President Fox of Mexico discussing yet another pardon of illegal Mexican immigrants. "I know there are some in this world and our country who want to build walls between Mexico and the United States," Bush chided, only five days before the World Trade Center tragedy. "I want to remind people, fearful people build walls. Confident people tear them down." Easley responded by writing another letter [ third item on link] criticizing the President for apparently being "unwilling to give the (previous) letter the serious attention it deserves."

On 22 March, 2002, governors Easley, Hodges, and Barnes met again at an emergency summit in Dallas, North Carolina, and were joined by 350 textile industry executives, workers, community leaders and members of the US Congress. Governor Easley called for all parties of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to comply with its provisions. He stressed that what was hurting his State's textile industry was the illegal smuggling of Vietnamese and Chinese textiles through Mexico, which he blamed as a major reason for his State's devastating loss of textile jobs. At the conclusion of the summit Easley, Hodges and Barnes signed a letter to President George W. Bush asking for him to aid Southern textile workers. Mark Warner of Virginia, though he did not attend the forum, also signed. The appeal from the four Southern governors pleaded for the Bush administration to take action against foreign competitors who refused to open their markets to Southern textiles-- in other words, to fulfill their end of the bargain.

Instead, Bush rewarded the Vietnamese textile industry.

This is not Bush-bashing, or even Republican-bashing. Both political parties have scoffed at concerns about the impact of Federal trade and immigration policies on native-born Americans. The Republicans welcome the cheap labor, while the Democrats cheer the arrival of more voters as they sneak across the border. As jobs at home are appropriated by imported foreigners, many of them illegal, even more jobs vanish into Mexico, thanks to NAFTA.

But once again, it's the South that has been singled out for abuse as Bush pursues his political agenda. Northern states, which went overwhelmingly for Gore in 2000, must be treated nicely, while it's okay to treat the South like a cheap date. Commenting on Bush's textile decision, the Greensboro, North Carolina News and Record observed that at the same time Bush sacrificed Southern jobs, "The US steel industry, plagued by inefficiency but based in states politically vulnerable for the GOP, won major trade concessions." As one ex-textile mill owner in North Carolina told me, "who cares about a bunch of rednecks up here in Stanly County?"

Why should uneven treatment of the South surprise us? It happens all the time, despite the South's contributions to the nation, and despite its loyalty to George W. Bush. As Jeff Adams has pointed out, "The South isn’t just the Bible Belt, it’s the ‘Patriot Belt’ of America. So why is it that while Southerners offer such respect to America, the rest of America cannot reciprocate that respect?" And while it's bad enough that we're ridiculed up North and in Hollywood, why does the president know who we Southerners are only when he needs our votes for elections or our young people for wars?

Why, indeed? Southern whites can be rode hard and put up wet not despite loyalty to Bush, but because of it. Bush and his mouthpieces have deceived our people into thinking he's on our side, so Southern whites believe the fake image of Bush as a Southerner. Bush & Co. know we're so irrationally loyal to him, he can treat us any way he wants. When our interests conflict with those of any other group, be they NAACP bigots, or Mexican illegals, or whoever, we Southerners will be sacrificed, yet we'll take it all without a whimper. And our handlers know it. Remember candidate George W. Bush's illegal removal of Confederate plaques from the Texas Supreme Court building? He could have stood up for Southern heritage -- or he could kowtow to the NAACP. Remember when Dick Cheney refused to attend the funeral of South Carolina Congressman Floyd Spence until the family agreed to remove the Confederate flag from the ceremony? Remember the way candidate George W. Bush groveled in front of the South-bashing NAACP at their national convention, doing his best to outdo Al Gore in catering to the race hustlers? And don't forget that Bush is doing everything he can to replace the South's traditional demographics with his campaign for open borders and endless pardons for illegal immigrants.

Before we Southerners can reclaim our pride, our heritage, our independence, and our economic security, we must first rid ourselves of the psychic prison that keeps us loyal to a two-party, one-agenda regime that feeds on our misdirected sacrifices and misplaced loyalties. We must first reassert our sense of outrage at unjust treatment.

We must first escape from Bush Country.

[mac_truck]

An interesting read, from a group of disaffected southerners.

[GOPcapitalist]

An interesting read, from a group of disaffected southerners.

Meaning somebody has a misguided fear of free trade. So what's your point?

[mac_truck]

An interesting read, from a group of disaffected southerners

[mac_truck]

Your comments..?

[GOPcapitalist]

Looks like old garbage_truck is having quite a time getting somebody to take the bait of his thread. Things are difficult for the Wlat brigade these days now that their leader has been exiled to a small island in the Sea of Google.

[rmlew]

The irony is that the Democrats, especially Southern Dems, were pro-free trade in the 19th century.
It is always a conspiracy agains tthe South, huh?

[Lysander]

I see no irony. In the 19th century the north had a near monoply on factory goods.

Of course we did lose a war to Vietnam and need to treat them good...

[arthurus]

Textiles is an industry appropriate to developing countries just getting their start in an industrial revolution. In the developed countries the textile industry is a drag on the economy and generally a waste of time and of capital because it cannot exist as any sort of large scale enterprise without government subsidy which makes textiles cost more at the store and even more because taxes are subsidizing the manufacturers. It should have disappeared long ago in North America. Clothing is like food in an economy. It is basic to existence. The declining costs of food and clothing are what makes automobiles and air travel possible.

[Commander8]

So much for our "compassionate conservative" president.

[squidly]

You're confusing the definition. Compassionate conservative = Republicans spending a lot of tax dollars

[GOPcapitalist]

It isn't free trade when your competition uses slave labor and or politically motivated slave labor.

Free trade is a condition of domestic economic policy by the nation that opens its borders from trade barriers. It makes no determination of the similar or different domestic policies exercised elsewhere nor should it. That is a political matter to determine on other reasons entirely. Thus, while I share your moral objections to situations such as China and while I would theoretically even be open to trade sanctions against them for political reasons, the same cannot be said for economic purposes.

Nor can it be said that labor abroad places America at an "unfair" advantage. That is a mercantilist concept and is economic bunk. If anything, cheap labor abroad BENEFITS us because it makes the goods they produce cheaper for us to buy - essentially allowing us to get more out of the same dollar.

[xtorpedoman]

uh....i'm a southerner and i'm not dissaffected....
quite frankly...at the moment the main thing i am concerned about has nothing to do with free trade or any issue related to it...i see that as being related to the bigger issue....centralized government...period. no matter who is in control of it.

[arthurus]

Ther should be NO quotas in textiles or in anything else. Textiles is an industry of developing countries and in a developed United States it is a misallocation of resources that must be maintained by government because the market would not allow it to continue. Were the market allowed to operate freely the resources used by the textile industry would go to more efficient uses and so would the employees. It is also another slap at the Vietnamese entrepreneurs who are building a free economy in Viet Nam under the nose of the Communist government. That and the catfish embargo seem to be American measures designed to keep the present system in control. It is a shameful way to treat one of the most pro-American populations in the world.

[Indie]

..no matter who is in control of it..

Yep. And right now, it appears that the Dictatorial Supreme Courts of the Oligarchical Federation of America has control pretty well wrapped up, after shredding the Constitution repeatedly without impediment over the past decades.

See Ann Coulter's latest column.

[arthurus]

There is no excuse for a textile industry in the United States that cannot pay its own way. Textiles is a labor intensive industry that is suited to a developing country. In an advanced economy the textile industry exists as a make-work welfare scheme paid for by the consumers through higher prices because the government limits competition, it hampers the market.Those higher prices represent money that does not go to other Americans in more efficient industries and prevents large amounts of labor from seeking efficient employment. It's like a welfare check that does not end until the recipient decides to work, however long that might take.