In the mid 1960s, I spent my last year of high school working the evening shift at a factory in my small Ohio hometown.
Later, my manufacturing career at General Motors was truncated by military service.
My brother, a middle manager at a large regional steel company, would tell of factories disassembled and shipped offshore or to low-wage southern states.
The South also lost both furniture and clothing industries to countries across the world.
For Americans, the consolation prize was poor quality imports.
Suffering through Jimmy Carter’s postwar malaise into Ronald Reagan’s trickle-down economics, a policy originally castigated by Reagan’s fiscally responsible opponent George H.W. Bush as voodoo economics, the torch passed.
But violating his “Read my lips, no new taxes” pledge exposed Bush to outrage by his base.
That may have been the last time a Republican agreed to a tax increase.
Fast forward and the new witch doctor with his own special ju-ju of higher taxes disguised as “billions of dollars from abroad” arrives on the scene.
P.T. Barnum was known for his freak-of-nature shows. To keep the crowd moving through the exhibits, he labeled a strategically located door “This way to the Egress!”
The crowd, eagerly expecting to find another strange oddity, hurried through only to find themselves outside the building.
Being hoodwinked as a sucker at a carnival show is one thing, but the stakes are much higher now, and if we are not careful, all of us may wind up out in the cold.
Clyde Paisley Jr.
Port Angeles