For those of
you who are familiar with my political leanings, you probably think this is a
post about our current President. Nope.
In fact,
growing up in Ohio, which pretty much leans Democrat, I, too, tended to vote
Democrat. All of my relatives voted
Democrat. It was pretty much unheard of
to NOT vote Democrat. Voting a straight
Democratic ticket is probably the only thing my mother's and father's side of the
family agreed upon. With that in mind,
my inclinations were always Democrat- leaning right up until Bill Clinton
ruined it for me. Keep in mind that I
voted for the dude the FIRST time. I
didn't vote in the election after that due to moving issues.
In 1998, I
got a job in commission sales. I sold
maintenance supplies to any place with a maintenance shop. My best customers were manufacturing
plants. However, hospitals, schools,
etc. were also good accounts. When I
started, manufacturing was still doing fairly well, but they were beginning to
feel the pain of this little thing called NAFTA. My shop guys were talking about it a
lot. They were worried. Before I started this job, I didn't think at
all about NAFTA. It sounded like a good
thing. It was a free trade agreement,
right? Turns out that the trade benefits
were really benefiting other countries.
The USA? Not so much.
It wasn't
long before we started to see plants closing all over the US. It didn't happen overnight, mind you. Turns out it had been happening even before I
started. Hence the talk and worry. There had been a lot of consolidating. Employers were really trying to make it work
in the U.S., but they simply couldn't compete against the foreign markets. Many businesses were moving their business
overseas to places like Mexico, where they could get cheaper labor. They wouldn't go out of business. What was going on here? Oh yeah... NAFTA. Sigh.
As I started
losing one good account after another, and my personal check got smaller each
month, I had to go out and solicit smaller
business (that I wouldn't have bothered with before) in a market that got
tougher and tougher. There was less cash
for the business to spend on consumables.
Businesses became less interested in quality and more interested in
price. They just wanted cheap. Heck,
they just wanted to stay in business. Of
course, cheap isn't better. Cheap isn't safer. Every time I heard this, I knew this was
another business that was about to close it's doors for good.
I look
around now and see very little manufacturing here in the U.S. (compared to how
it used to be) and can trace that line directly back to NAFTA and Bill
Clinton. That is something that I
wouldn't have been able to do if I weren't a person who wasn't feet on the
ground watching it happen.
I know most
people think of Bill Clinton and think Monica Lewinsky or Interns. ("I did
not have sex with that woman."
~Bill Clinton) I think of NAFTA
and how Bill Clinton sold this country down the river. Without manufacturing a country is a service
provider, and any country that is primarily a service provider is a THIRD WORLD
COUNTRY. The once great United States of
America is now a third world country. We
are just too stupid to know it. We are
too busy buying the Propaganda the Media Machine is selling.
And, don't
bother impeaching Barack Obama for anything (the list is too long for me if I
got started). Just like the House of
Representatives impeached Bill Clinton; the Senate would only acquit. In other words, they can impeach him, but he
wouldn't leave.
Rating: Life
Lesson............Bill Clinton and his decision about NAFTA made me understand
that the decisions that they make in Washington D.C. affect MY life and
livelihood, so I better start paying attention.
Their Big Ideas have very real consequences (like complete economic
meltdown). My vote matters more than
EVER.
Did you grow up to vote like your parents? Did something in your Real-Life Experience ever cause you to rethink it? Do you still vote like your parents? Do you consider yourself "in tune" with what is going on? Do you see how specific issues that are decided in Washington play out in your life, your paycheck, your job (or lack thereof), your wallet?
