Squeal Like a Pig
2013-05-30 - by
Thirty-four years ago, in 1979, I tagged along on Governor Jim Hunt’s trade mission to China – the first for a North Carolina governor. The goal: get the Chinese to buy more North Carolina products, like pork.
Now, we’re selling them more than pork; we’re selling them Smithfield Foods. “We’ve gone whole-hog,” Ferrel Guillory of the UNC J-School said at breakfast.
Over bacon and eggs, we talked about the Page 1 juxtaposition of that story and John Frank’s story about the McCrory administration’s new jobs strategy.
Frank wrote, with admirable understatement, “The full details of the public-private partnership remain unclear as lawmakers and administration officials continue to meet behind closed doors to draft the enabling legislation.”
Commerce Secretary Sharon Decker labored to answer legislators’ questions and concerns about the plan, which seems to be about shifting the same people around to new bureaucracies. (For a group that wants to rein in government, McCrory & Co. seem awfully fond of rearranging government organization charts.)
Decker’s explanation wasn’t as bad as Secretary Aldona Wos’ recent struggle to explain McCrory’s plan to “privatize” Medicaid. My PR associate, Joyce Fitzpatrick, said that came across like a Michelle Bachman skit on Saturday Night Live.
But let’s get back to today’s front page. The common thread was jobs. If the Smithfield sale goes through, 10,000 factory workers and a lot of farmers in North Carolina will have a new boss in China. That could be good – or bad. They may also have billions of new customers. That could be good. That could mean more pigs grown here. That could be good. And that could mean more hog waste. That could be bad.
Good or bad, Ferrel noted, “that’s the world we live in.” It’s called globalization. So have some sweet and sour pork.
Squeal Like a Pig
2013-05-30/
Thirty-four years ago, in 1979, I tagged along on Governor Jim Hunt’s trade mission to China – the first for a North Carolina governor. The goal: get the Chinese to buy more North Carolina products, like pork.
Now, we’re selling them more than pork; we’re selling them Smithfield Foods. “We’ve gone whole-hog,” Ferrel Guillory of the UNC J-School said at breakfast.
Over bacon and eggs, we talked about the Page 1 juxtaposition of that story and John Frank’s story about the McCrory administration’s new jobs strategy.
Frank wrote, with admirable understatement, “The full details of the public-private partnership remain unclear as lawmakers and administration officials continue to meet behind closed doors to draft the enabling legislation.”
Commerce Secretary Sharon Decker labored to answer legislators’ questions and concerns about the plan, which seems to be about shifting the same people around to new bureaucracies. (For a group that wants to rein in government, McCrory & Co. seem awfully fond of rearranging government organization charts.)
Decker’s explanation wasn’t as bad as Secretary Aldona Wos’ recent struggle to explain McCrory’s plan to “privatize” Medicaid. My PR associate, Joyce Fitzpatrick, said that came across like a Michelle Bachman skit on Saturday Night Live.
But let’s get back to today’s front page. The common thread was jobs. If the Smithfield sale goes through, 10,000 factory workers and a lot of farmers in North Carolina will have a new boss in China. That could be good – or bad. They may also have billions of new customers. That could be good. That could mean more pigs grown here. That could be good. And that could mean more hog waste. That could be bad.
Good or bad, Ferrel noted, “that’s the world we live in.” It’s called globalization. So have some sweet and sour pork.