"plantsman" wrote in message
om...
Bull! to Newsmax. I don't care how they cook the books on this one, jobs
are not being created in Tennessee and more are going way south or far
east
every day. In just my area of NE TN, in the past ten years, we've lost
something to the tune of better than 6,000 manufacturing jobs and over
1,000
more engineering and support jobs for the area's industry. That's almost
a
quarter of all industrial jobs here. Even Burger King has taken down
their
"Help Wanted" signs. I'm a Republican but if the Bush team succeeds in
measuring burger flippin' as a manufacturing job, them I'm going to
reconsider my vote come November. Real estate here is a mini-mansion
buyers
market, as so many white collar folks have had to pull up and relocate
when
their $100K+ jobs evaporated due to cutbacks.

They're not selling to relocate to a new job. They're selling to relocate
to a nicer climate. Our real estate market in Southwest Florida is still
going gangbusters. I just sold my house today after about 60 days on the
market. We sold it for 37% more than we paid in January 2001. Finally, I
can pull the boat out of the marina (it's a friggin' hour and half drive to
go 30 miles), and park it in the back yard of my new home.





It's still not over, more
layoffs are expected as the area's largest employer, Eastman Chemical,
sells
off one of their divisions and potentially 2,000+ people will be impacted.
We've got Bechtel mechanical and chemical engineers delivering pizzas and
working for the newspaper in an effort to keep from having to move away
and
loose their butts on their homes. It is the pits! My former employer
(industrial equipment/supply) (I retired in July due to illness) went from
having over thirty people working to only about eleven, due to the fallout
from Eastman basically stopping in their tracks. They're not optimistic
about surviving as a company. Several competitors and related companies
have already bellied-up. Everyone from car dealers, furniture stores, and
everyone except Wal-Mart has been impacted.

I couldn't imagine a worse hardship than working for the only major
employer in a certain area, and then that employer picking up and moving.
Unfortunately, your area isn't experiencing anything different from what
those living in the mining towns of PA experienced decades ago. People
complained about the same thing back then.


It's a fact of life that every year, technology changes, mines dry up, or
jobs get sent overseas. It sucks that manufacturing jobs are being sent
overseas, but that's the reality in a World economy with the WTO and NAFTA.
Any candidate that will tell you he/she can do something to slow the exodus
of jobs going overseas is full of ****. Completely full of ****! Ask 'em
for details. Kerry says "he'll close the loopholes". What loopholes!?!?
Demand they be specific! The bottom line is...Perot and Buchanan were
right. However, the loss of manufacturing jobs was inevitable. NAFTA and
the WTO just expedited things.