My good friend Mike A. Salvadore, Sr. wrote me yesterday about the dismantling of the American Manufacturing base:

Dear Homer,

I went to the Texas Instrument auction sale, today (3-11-04), and it wasn't a very pleasant experience. The sale was held while part of the plant was still working and some of the employees, when they were on break, would wander in and cry out there tale of woe. This plant had 5,000 people working, then cut it down to 1400, and now it's down to 130. It will close in 1 month and the TI company will no longer have a prescence in this little New England town. Everyone will suffer, gas stations, markets, cleaners, banks, stores, etc. TI is moving to Mexico! So much for NAFTA. For your information the Chinese had a broker here buying up all the scrap iron available so that although the deman for machinery has diminshed they michinery is going to China as SCRAP! Last year Bass shoes closed their plant in Maine and the town just died. The whole town was really dependent on the Bass plant but all of its manufacture is now in China too. TI had a campus in Attleboro MA., I do not have any idea what will happen to the many buildings, or the craftspeople. I learned that the tools were, or are, being made in Holland and Portugal and I saw the tols and they are really well built. And INEXPENSIVE!
I receive brochures everyday (enclosed), like the enclosed, and am really troubled by what is happening. My fear s that we are unknowingly bleeding and I worry about our nation's seciruty and direction we are heading in.

How can we secure our childrens Future?