Word: alberts
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...This is quite a Christmas present," said Harlan Nelson, then mayor of Albert Lea, Minn., on that December day in 1990 when he learned that a closed factory in the town would reopen. "Fairy tales do come true...
...Seaboard Corp., a giant of agribusiness with headquarters in Merriam, Kans., and controlled out of Chestnut Hill, Mass. Seaboard officials announced that they would restart the shuttered pork-processing plant that had once been the town's largest employer--if the city offered a little help. Albert Lea responded by giving Seaboard a $2.9 million low-interest loan and a special deal on its sewer bill and grading and paving parking lots for employees. And before long, the plant reopened, and several hundred workers were back...
...when the process began by which the fairy tale turned into a very bad dream. Just four years later, in 1994, Seaboard phased out the plant and moved its hog-slaughtering operations to another town 800 miles away, which came up with an even larger corporate-welfare package. Albert Lea was left saddled with debt, higher utility bills and an abandoned slaughterhouse. The entire episode, says City Manager Paul Sparks, was a "disaster...
...closeup view of Seaboard, let's begin with Albert Lea. For most of this century, Wilson Foods operated that pork plant and was the town's largest employer. Wilson fell on hard times in the early 1980s, cut workers' average annual pay from $22,200 to $16,600 and eventually sold the plant to Farmstead Foods. In turn, that company went belly-up a few years later, after it lost its biggest customer--Wilson. Then, in December 1990, just as workers were receiving the last of their unemployment checks, Seaboard appeared...
...might be. You know, when I was going to college, there was this 12-year-old perfect master, a guru, in India, and people flocked to him to learn the truth from this guy. I think this guy Dick Albert is such a person that he has some kind of inner wisdom that he could share with all of us. But for now, it's just the forecast...