Cheryl Randecker, Sensata worker whose job is being outsourced. Aside from his offshore tax havens – Romney also wants people to ignore what’s happening at a factory in Freeport, Illinois. That factory belongs to Sensata Technologies – or at least it did – until Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital took it over. And with Bain Capital in charge – all 170 workers at that factory are about to lose their jobs. Over the last few months – Sensata workers have been watching chunks of their factory packaged up and shipped off to China – and all their jobs will be following suit by the end of the year thanks to a decision made by Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital. Romney doesn’t want you to know this is happening – especially since he’s running as the guy who will create 12 million AMERICAN jobs in his first term. But those workers at Sensata do want you to know what’s going on.
by n0madic, posted on Thursday, August 30th, 2012 at 1:27 pm
from Democracy Now!
… the old-school industrialists, like Mitt Romney’s father, they were men and women who built communities. They had factory towns. They were very anxious to leave, you know, hard legacies that people could see: hospitals, churches, schools—you know, the Hersheys of the world, the Kelloggs. But these new owners have absolutely no allegiance to American workers, American places, American communities. Their only allegiance is to the investors and to themselves. And so, it’s not at all uncharacteristic to have these situations where people are pleading for their jobs or they’re saying, you know, “We’ll tighten our belts, if you just make this concession and keep us.” That’s irrelevant to the Mitt Romney/Bain Capital/Carlyle Groups of the world. They’re entirely about making profits. And if that means shipping jobs to China or eliminating jobs, that’s what they’re going to do. And that’s the new generation of corporate owners in this country. — Matt Taibbi
A new article by reporter Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone sheds new light on the origin of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s fortune, revealing how Romney’s former firm, Bain Capital, used private equity to raise money to conduct corporate raids. Taibbi writes: “What most voters don’t know is the way Mitt Romney actually made his fortune: By borrowing vast sums of money that other people were forced to pay back. This is the plain, stark reality that has somehow eluded America’s top political journalists for two consecutive presidential campaigns: Mitt Romney is one of the greatest and most irresponsible debt creators of all time. In the past few decades, in fact, Romney has piled more debt onto more unsuspecting companies, written more gigantic checks that other people have to cover, than perhaps all but a handful of people on planet Earth.”
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
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?
As Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney names Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin as his vice presidential running mate, we speak with two Wisconsinites about the seven-term congressman’s record, and how his views are influenced by the controversial philosopher, Ayn Rand. “This is not necessarily a foolish choice by Romney,” says John Nichols, political writer for The Nation magazine. “It is an extreme choice and it does define the national Republican Party toward a place where the Wisconsin Republican Party is — which is very anti-labor, willing to make deep cuts in education, public services, and frankly, very combative on issues like voter ID and a host of other things that really go to the core question of how successful and how functional our democracy will be.” Ryan is chairman of the House of Representatives Budget Committee and architect of a controversial budget plan to cut federal spending by more than $5 trillion over the next 10 years. “Ryan gets a lot of mileage for understanding so-called the budget and economics,” says Matthew Rothschild, editor and publisher of The Progressive magazine. “But if you look closely, he doesn’t really get it.” Democrats argue Ryan’s planned Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security reform would essentially dismantle key components of the social safety net.
“Mitt Romney’s creepy hand wants your $2k to pay for tax breaks for his millionaire and billionaire friends. Tell Mitt Romney: Get your hand out of my pocket!”
The famed award-winning investigative reporting team of Donald Barlett and James Steele have just published a new book, “The Betrayal of the American Dream,” a followup to their landmark bestseller, “America: What Went Wrong.” As Republicans and Democrats continue disputing who should bear the brunt of the tax burden, Barlett and Steele argue that America’s middle class has been decimated over the years due to policies governing not only taxes but also bank regulations, trade deficits and pension funds. Their book chronicles how the American middle class has been systematically impoverished and its prospects thwarted in favor of a new ruling elite. Barlett and Steele have worked together for more than 40 years, sharing two Pulitzer prizes and two National Magazine awards. The duo joins us for the hour to discuss the assault on the middle class, the great tax heist, deregulation, the end of retirement, the outsourcing of U.S. jobs, the 2012 election and more.
