Thread: Bootsie..............

just heard the president will be in Kernersville on Monday but I didn't catch what he'll be doing.

OH GOSH--had_enuf! I JUST finished reading that in the Winston paper and was ROLLING by the time I finished it! He is going to speak at the Deere-Hitachi plant to employees AND a small, INVITED group of people.

I'll post the article!!! For some unknown reason, I haven't been invited! Maybe my invitation is LOST IN THE MAIL???

A Private Visit
Kernersville excited, but few will see Bush
By Wesley Young and Richard Craver
JOURNAL REPORTERS
Friday, December 2, 2005



President Bush will stop at Deere-Hitachi Construction Machinery Corp. on West Mountain Street. The visit will not be open to the public.
(Journal Photo by Megan Morr)
KERNERSVILLE - President Bush’s scheduled visit Monday to a successful venture between American and Japanese companies has people in this town of about 20,000 excited about being in the spotlight.

Bush is expected to speak about economic issues and tax policy when he visits the Deere-Hitachi Construction Machinery Corp. plant on West Mountain Street. The meeting is closed to the general public. Bush will meet with workers at the plant and a small number of invited guests.

It could be Kernersville’s first visit from a sitting president since George Washington’s stop for breakfast in 1791.

Town leaders said they got many calls yesterday from people trying to get in on the visit.

“I quit counting somewhere around 30,� Mayor Curtis Swisher said.

“I wish I could get everybody in, but it is not that type of event. It is not ticketed like some events in the past have been. To go, you have to have an invitation.�

Bush last visited North Carolina on July 15, when he went to a textile plant in Gaston County to push for the passage of the Central American Free Trade Agreement.

The White House has still not officially announced the Bush Kernersville visit, nor stated its purpose.

Jim Culbertson, who was the chairman of the state Bush-Cheney campaign in 2000 and 2004, said he was pleasantly surprised when he got a call from a White House official inviting him to Deere-Hitachi.

“With that as a backdrop, it has got to be about business and how it relates to North Carolina,� Culbertson said. “He is not coming down here to talk about Iraq.�

On Wednesday, Bush defended his conduct of the war in Iraq in a speech before midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.

When Kernersville’s fire chief, Jimmy Barrow, heard Tuesday night that someone from the Secret Service wanted to speak to him, he thought someone was pulling a prank.

“The guys at the station called and I said, ‘Yeah, right,’� Barrow said.

Kernersville has long called itself the “Heart of the Triad.� Lately, townspeople have been boasting about their location midway between two high-profile economic expansions: the opening of a Dell Inc. computer-assembly plant on the town’s southwestern flank, and the planned construction of a FedEx Corp. distribution center just over the Guilford County line to the east.

Deere-Hitachi has been quietly marking solid growth all along with little fanfare, town officials said.

“They like to aim under the radar even when they do good things,� said Bruce Boyer, the president of the Kernersville Chamber of Commerce.

“They are working around the clock. They have three shifts. They are going all the time,� Boyer said. “Just within the last three years have they added that last shift. Their workers are skilled workers. They have provided consistent employment - you don’t hear of Deere-Hitachi doing a lot of layoffs and that kind of thing.�

The company was created in 1988 by Deere & Co. and Hitachi Construction Machinery Co. Over the past four years, it has evolved from just assembling foreign-made components to making and assembling the components on site.

That caused a significant expansion of the plant’s work force.

There is also a foreign free-trade zone at the plant.

“It’s an example of a joint U.S.-foreign company being a successful business organization model in the global economy,� said Michael Walden, an economics professor at N.C. State University.

“It makes heavy equipment for export in the Western Hemisphere, so it symbolizes the fact that the United States and U.S. workers can compete internationally in manufacturing,� Walden said.

The plant also received an award in 2003 for working without lost injury time over the previous five years, he said.

In Deere-Hitachi’s most recent report to the chamber of commerce in 2004, the company said that it had 640 full-time employees and 25 temporary workers at its plant on West Mountain Street.

The company also leases a large warehouse from The Pope Cos. in South Park, a Kernersville industrial park.

Recently, Intertractor America Corp. decided to open a manufacturing and distribution operation at 195 Budd Blvd. in Winston-Salem, in order to serve the Deere-Hitachi plant.

Intertractor, based in Vernon Hills, Ill., designs and makes undercarriages for crawler equipment for use in the construction, mining, utility, forestry, road-building and agricultural industries.

A spokesman for Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-5th, said that Foxx will be at Bush’s meeting.

So will Swisher, the mayor, who called the visit “a great honor.�

“It shows what kind of company Deere-Hitachi has for the president to come and speak at this company,� Swisher said.

“It is a rare event that the president comes and speaks at your town, especially a town the size of Kernersville.�

Originally Posted by Bootsie

OH GOSH--had_enuf! I JUST finished reading that in the Winston paper and was ROLLING by the time I finished it! He is going to speak at the Deere-Hitachi plant to employees AND a small, INVITED group of people.

I'll post the article!!! For some unknown reason, I haven't been invited! Maybe my invitation is LOST IN THE MAIL???

I am sure you will get a call this morning from Bush around 0800 hours. Stay by your phone.

I'll post the article!!! For some unknown reason, I haven't been invited! Maybe my invitation is LOST IN THE MAIL???

Don't count on it. They probably left you out on purpose when they learned what a pain you were tracking down WS's illegal rapist!

Deere-Hitachi as in our old John Deer tractor?

I think I will take Scub's advice and be BY THAT PHONE at 0800!!! I had better get a move on because I MUST run some errands. Maybe they will leave my message on the answering machine JUST IN CASE I don't get back in time!!!

Oh gosh--I had better hold off on any letters to any EDITORS for a few days!!!

Why is this president holding a meeting at a company that is closed to the public. Is he hidding something? Speaking on such subjects, the public should be attending, the whole town should be there. I can't stand this guy.

OF COURSE, he's hiding something. He's HIDING an awful lot if you ask me. And, he is AFRAID to be questioned about anything by anybody ergo his habit of ONLY speaking to "invited" audiences. It is DISGUSTING.

Bootsie,

We may need to consider a ground protest against Temporary Worker. Please scope out the location and let me know if there is an area where a few hanfulls of us could protest.

W

Originally Posted by Rockfish

Why is this president holding a meeting at a company that is closed to the public. Is he hidding something? Speaking on such subjects, the public should be attending, the whole town should be there. I can't stand this guy.

Because he is a moron, and yes he hides everything. The man could not withstand real questions and concerns from the public.