Don’t Sh!t Where you Eat
North and South Carolina are Bush country. This is where bedrock cultural conservatives, hardcore anti-labor interests, traditional military families, and old economy agribusiness congeal into a miasma of the deepest “red state” red. In electoral calculus as well, these are states that can be counted on to line up squarely in the R column to offset Democratic “gimmes” in New England and the West.
From a political and sentimental standpoint, the necessity of keeping these people happy should be job one at the White House. Bush is their guy. When the policies tilt towards someone, these are the folks ready with their rain-barrels (or pork barrels). So what do the locals have to say about the rosy economic picture in the Carolinas, according to hometown paper The Herald Sun? (link courtesy of Nathan Newman)
"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." [Emphasis added].
Empty rhetoric? Who’s this Warlick character anyway? Some disgruntled union guy or civil rights agitator? No, according to the article, he’s chief executive officer of Parkdale Mills in Gaston County. CEO? Couldn’t be. Or how about this malcontent, Fred Reese, the president of Western N.C. Industries, an employers' association. According to the article:
[Reese] 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.
Read that again slowly. Executives. In North and South Carolina. Are beginning to raise their voices. Against. Bush.
A more damning indictment of Bush’s economic plan could hardly be imagined. Griping from out-of-power groups suddenly getting the short end of things is always to be expected, and rightly draws skeptical comment. But policies that hurt the interests of core constituents in strategic states cannot be attributed to cynicism, malice, or misplaced priorities. They’re simply incompetent.
Put another way, if Bushonomics isn’t benefiting business owners in the Carolinas, who exactly is it helping? North and South Carolina have lost 180,000 manufacturing jobs since 2001 – mostly to lower-cost overseas suppliers. As Bruce Springsteen put it, “those jobs are going, boys, and they ain’t coming back.”
There’s been much talk lately about how the Right Wing spin machine is filling people’s heads with lies and garbage to justify all this nonsense, or blind people to their own economic interest in the name of some higher, purer ideology. But until they can start filling people’s wallets, stories like this from the real world will continue to puncture the fantasy that Bush and his people have any productive or coherent – much less fair and balanced – answers to the economic crisis that is driving enormous numbers of Americans (even those in Bush country) to the wall.
12:02:05 PM 
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