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Area's economic efforts praised
The second conference was held Wednesday and it was a repeat performance with the same national suppliers back again as well as Riley, Sessions and Bonner. The state leaders had nothing but praise for the efforts of Thomasville and Clarke County. Sessions noted, "Clarke County has been a center of economic development in this region."
Riley said the state's economy has recently been called the best in the nation. He said unemployment is at a record low and that people and businesses are adapting to technology changes that benefit them and the state. He said the state-and Thomasville- has a lot of things going for it including a "high quality of life that people in the rest of the world can't even imagine." Plus, the state has a remarkable work ethic. He noted that one manufacturer told him that an Alabama plant outperformed an Indiana counterpart by 36 percent and he credited that to the state's strong work ethic. "I wish we could replicate what we are doing here [in Thomasville and Clarke County] in every small town in this state," he said. Gen. James H. Pillsbury, commander of the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command, headquartered at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, was the featured speaker and told of a new $12.5 billion appropriation for aviation needs that includes $1.2 billion specifically earmarked for small businesses. He described a billion: "If you had spent $1,000 a day since Jesus walked this earth you would not have spent $1 billion." He said the U.S. Army has some great partners in the private sector and asked, "Why can't we do business in rural Alabama," to a heavy applause from the audience. He said he was a Texas native who had found Alabama to be a "great place to work and a great place to raise a family." He said he would retire in the state. Pillsbury said he was a soldier and would leave the politics to others but he said he wanted people to know, "Your soldiers are doing a darn fine job." He said that soldiers serving in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East believe in what they are doing. "To a man and woman, you can look into their eyes and they know they are doing the right thing, that they are setting the conditions for Iraq to be a free and democratic country in an area where that is a foreign term." Pillsbury said, "We didn't start this son of a gun, they did." He said the United States must fight this "evil enemy" on their soil or we will have to fight it at home. He urged the group to continue to debate the issues but to also continue to support the military.
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