200 Jobs Lost as Another NC-based Textile Co. Closes

[tismyself]

http://wfae.org/wfae/1_87_316.cfm?action=display&id=4301

Spectrum says it was unable to secure credit from its two banks in order to remain open.

Kings Mountain Mayor Rick Murphrey retired from Spectrum last year after working in sales there for more than 35 years. He says the city will feel the impact of the loss.

"They've been a long time customer of our city. They're just a great customer, so now they have closed down. So we'll have to make adjustments in our revenue and expenses," he says.

Murphrey says Spectrum generated several million in revenues for the city.

[RedLetterRev]

1. Biddy Dole and Burr the Treasonous Federalist Fiddle while NC continues to be gutted

I remember when NC was nothing but textiles and furniture manufacturing. You could buy all sorts of clothes and goods that proudly bore the label "Made in the U. S. A.".

Levi's are made in Russia.
Lee's are made in Mexico.
Wranglers are made G'd-knows-where.

We don't even make our own damn bluejeans any more. T-shirts and drawers come from China. Socks come from South America along with most of our food. NC once led the world in the manufacture of fine furniture. That's all been parted out and now we ship our wood (clearcut!!!! ARGH!!!!!) over to China, where they turn it into cheapshit particle-board junk and ship it back. Broyhill, Ethan Allen, Drexel, Old Fort Finishing -- all distant memories.

So, this is the republicons' America. We don't feed ourselves, we don't clothe ourselves, we don't make our own goods any more and we don't employ our own people.

So, please tell me, freeperfreaks, WTF good is this "free market" the RWers keep crowing about? The only thing it was ever designed to do (and I'll say it "WE TOLD YOU SO") is exactly the only thing it ever accomplished: It put the American worker out of a job.

For every piece of cheap Chinese shit you insist on buying at WallyWorld, you put another American out of work.

Proud of that?

I hope every repuke chokes on it and dies.

[tismyself]

2. There's a lot of energy in your post.

I remember that North Carolina too. And there's something else I would like to add into the things you have bought up.

Interstates. I despise them. I see them as being inherently anti-life. Most every image you have conjured up of old NC is pre-interstate. They are a HUGE part of the overall disconnect problem.

I wonder if it would actually help to get off the damned interstates and rather than having fast food lunch from McD's, sit down at a mom & pop restaurant. Buy a jar of jelly on the way out. But when I try to get people to do this - by that I mean, when others have to travel with me - they are vehemently opposed: I don't have time. It takes forever. You have to stop so much.

I'm going on almost 12 years of being 99.9% interstate free. Backroads...the civilized way to travel.

[RedLetterRev]

3. :) My dotage is showing

I remember when I-40 stopped at Old Fort and picked up again well the other side of Canton. I-26 was in bits and reached almost to Asheville. I was raised in West Buncombe, right at Leicester, when air was clean and you could drink out of any creek there was -- and it was safe. I remember stars -- millions of them. Air you could breathe and "ozone alert days" hadn't been invented. Kids with asthma and diabetes were an extreme rarity. Now, thanks to repuke ravaging, there is not ONE safe source of drinking water in the entire US. The air isn't fit to breathe and our food isn't fit to eat.

That's just in my 51 years of life. Just think what atrocities they can accomplish with more freak-market deregulation in another few years. They'll successfully get us all dead. Then who'll buy their Chinese shit?

I remember forests and mountains covered with them. Now, the mountains are covered with McMansions and those are filled with repuke Floridiots who got tired of the despoilment they wreaked down there. Now they're up here trashing the beauty we once had and wrecking the Blue vote that used to be Appalachia. I was raised a strong Democrat in strong Democrat country. Now my home is full of imported wingnuts and they've run people people off land they've lived on for 5 and 6 generations. What's left have slowly been mindmessed into imported wackjob religions. Appalachian religion was either odd or non-existent. A lot of that fringey, snake-handling kind of stuff the repukes love so much has been brought in. It certainly wasn't around in the quantities it is now when I was a kid.

I remember when people had steady work for 20 and 30 years in industries that may not have been the best paying in the world, but they were better paying than selling Hardee's and Bojangle's to ungrateful transplants. That's about all the employment the repukes left standing. Biddy Dole (the absentee slumlord) and Buzz the Treasonous have lockstepped with the neoKKKon agenda of finishing off the reeling economy their predecessors started gutting in the 80s. NC took it in the shorts right after the steel mills of Alabama and Pennsylvania.

Nobody gives a shit about poor folks working or not, so the rest of the nation continued to snooze and cheer on Raygunomics while hate-radio indoctrination began here to keep the likes of us pacified and quiet.

It almost worked, until * and crew finally got a LIT-tle bit too greedy here at the eleventh hour and fifty-eight minutes. I devoutly pray that enough people will continue to wake up and shake off whatever blotter-acid the repukes have been feeding and finally - FINALLY - vote with some sense, while there's an economy left and enough Constitution left to save.

If we don't do it now, there won't be a USA left. The fascists will have completely won. They almost dealt the nation a death-blow in 2004. We had a pale rally in 2006. If there is a G'd, we'll turn the tide back to reality and a consitutional democracy again in just a few short weeks.

[tismyself]

4. If that's true, then so is mine. Damn.

I used to live down the road a bit from the area you're describing. Little cabin over in Candler. You probably knew my landlord, he was a wonderful person.

I'll get back to this post later tonight, you've touched on some subjects I would like to grouse about as well.

Great hearing from you.