After repeatedly touting his business experience as an asset towards reviving the U.S. economy, Mitt Romney has been put on the defensive by Bain Capital workers who are fighting back against the outsourcing of their jobs. One hundred and seventy workers at a Sensata Technologies plant in Freeport, Illinois — of which Bain is the majority owner — are calling on Romney to help save their jobs from being shipped to China. The factory manufactures sensors and controls that are used in aircraft and automobiles, but has been dismantling and shipping the plant to China piece-by-piece — even as it requires the workers to train personally their Chinese replacements, who have been flown in by management. We’re joined by two workers from the Sensata plant in Freeport, Illinois: Tom Gaulrapp and Cheryl Randecker. Both worked at Sensata for 33 years and were told their jobs would be terminated by the year’s end.
Set up for the Republican National Convention in Tampa, the “Romneyville” encampment is similar to Hoovervilles of the 1930s Great Depression. Residents of Romneyville are calling for an end to foreclosures, homelessness and the criminalization of poverty. We hear from Shamako Noble, a Romneyville resident and executive director of the Hip Hop Congress. And we speak to Cheri Honkala, the Green Party’s vice presidential nominee in the 2012 election and the National Coordinator of the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign.
from The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann (RT)
Medea Benjamin, Global Exchange & Code Pink joins Thom Hartmann. Harkening back to the days of the Great Depression – when Americans took up living in tent cities across America named “Hoovervilles” – a group of demonstrators have set up their own tent cities in Tampa in protest against the RNC. They’re called Romneyvilles
DecodeDC.com founder Andrea Seabrook and Rolling Stone‘s Michael Hastings join Cenk to call out journalists for clogging up the media with so-called news from both Republicans and Democrats, regardless of whether it’s truthful or relevant
Only decades ago women suffered through horrifying back alley abortions, or they used dangerous methods when they had no other recourse.
So when the Republican Party officially promotes forcing rape victims to bear the children of their attackers as part of its assault against a woman’s right to choose–we had to ask:
Why is Romney & Ryan’s GOP trying to send women back. . . to the back alley?
“People have the power. If they begin to organize, if they protest, if they create a strong enough movement, they can change things.” — Howard Zinn
The late historian, writer and activist Howard Zinn would have turned 90 years old today. Zinn died of a heart attack at the age of 87 on January 27, 2010. After serving as a bombardier in World War II, Zinn went on to become a lifelong dissident and peace activist. He was active in the civil rights movement and many of the struggles for social justice over the past 50 years. In 1980, Howard Zinn published his classic book, “A People’s History of the United States,” which would go on to sell more than a million copies and change the way we look at history in America. We air an excerpt of a Zinn interview on Democracy Now! from May 2009, and another from one of his last speeches later that year, just two months before his death.
Ron Collins, Communication Workers of America (CWA) joins Thom Hartmann. A job that’s becoming increasingly harder and harder to find in America over the last few years is one in the call center industry. Since 2006 – a half-millions American call center jobs have been packed up and shipped overseas to low-wage countries. Companies like Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and T-Mobile are the some of the biggest culprits when it comes to killing American call center jobs. But, Democrats in Congress have been pushing legislation to put an end ot this mass exodus of jobs. The United States Call Center Worker and Consumer Protection Act cuts off federal loans and benefits to companies that off-shore their call center jobs. This bill also keeps a running list of companies that have off-shored call center jobs in an effort to discourage the practice. Back in June, the House of Representatives took a vote on this legislation – and most Republicans lined up against it – killing the bill – and leaving the few Americans who still have call center jobs screwed. But now, Democrats in the Senate are trying to revive the legislation with the help of Senators Sherrod Brown in Ohio and Bob Casey in Pennsylvania – two states that have been hit really hard by call center job losses. As Senator Sherrod Brown said this week in defense of the United States Call Center Worker and Consumer Protection Act: “When companies send call center jobs overseas, they don’t just frustrate consumers – they hurt our economy as well. With thousands of Ohioans looking for work, it just doesn’t make sense to ship these jobs overseas.” He’s right – so what can be done to make sure this legislation passes to stimulate OUR economy – instead of stimulate foreign economes with what used to be American call center jobs.
The federal government has rescinded its approval of the proposed Prairie Parkway which would connect I-80 and I-88 in Kane, Kendall, and Grundy counties under an agreement to settle a lawsuit filed by opponents of the highway project.
The action eliminates federal funding for the project, and the Illinois Department of Transportation will now shift federal funds previously allocated to the Prairie Parkway to improvements to Illinois 47 and US 34.
After an 11-year fight, we have finally scuttled this highway which would have destroyed thousands of acres of prime farmland, threatened the Fox River and its tributaries, and forever changed the area’s small community way of life,” said Jan Strasma, Chairman, Citizens Against the Sprawlway (CATS), the grassroots organization long opposing the highway.
Note: The Prairie Parkway opponents will celebrate the end of the project at the 11th Annual “Stop the Beltway’ Picnic which begins at 4 pm Sunday at the Marvel Davis farm, 47W066 Jericho Rd, near Big Rock, about 5 miles west of Illinois 47.
Matt Taibbi, contributing editor for Rolling Stone, talks about how the lack of any individual prosecutions relating to the 2008 financial crisis has emboldened Wall Street in this “Viewpoint” Web exclusive. Taibbi recently took Attorney General Eric Holder and the Department of Justice to task for failing to bring any cases against Goldman Sachs in a Rolling Stone piece.
Assassination has always been a tool of the American state, but before the “War on Terror” it was not something our leaders bragged about. As TomDispatch.com‘s Tom Engelhardt and Nick Turse explain in their new book, Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050, President Obama has gone beyond his predecessors, even beyond George W. Bush, and consolidated his power to the point of becoming the Assassin-in-Chief. Whether the American people are in favor of this type of warfare has never been asked, leaving the decision of who lives and who dies squarely with the president.
On August 21, 2012 CTU members and supporters engaged in informational picketing at schools across the city to discuss contract negotiations with the communities we serve.
