Who Has Two Thumbs And Oversaw The Growth In Manufacturing – This President

By Nathaniel Downes   September 26, 2012    AddictingInfo

The good news for President Obama keeps on coming. Now Bloomberg is confirming what many have said, that the US is experiencing solid Manufacturing growth. The new level of 12 million manufacturing positions is still 7 million less than the highest point, set in 1979, but it is a solid improvement after the Bush administration had manufacturing drop from 17 million when he took office to 11 million when he had left. Obama’s 8% gain in Manufacturing jobs is a bright spot and an upswing for the nation.

Now, some have said that the reason for US manufacturing decline has been the cost of the US worker. But studies show that the US Worker’s direct cost is now 40% lower than comparable manufacturing nations, while the overall cost is higher due to factors outside of the worker. Reports cite the lack of a national healthcare, that the US lacks a full pension system, that US courts are too heavily weighed in favor of giant corporations and not to smaller entities, for US having lax consumer protections, and the lack of regulations as the prime drivers for increased manufacturing costs, not the workers.

It was none other than Alexander Hamilton, the first US Secretary of the Treasury, who put forth that America must be a nation of manufacturers. His economic program with its heavy focus on domestic, self-sufficient manufacturing, became known as the American School of Economics.

Obama is not an economics master, he is a constitutional lawyer turned politician. But even he understands that a strong manufacturing base is essential for our economy. That message seems lost on the Republican party, who have run someone who outsourced jobs to foreign nations.

Thom Hartmann gave advice to President Obama shortly after he won in 2008, before he had taken office. That advice was simple, listen to the wisdom of Alexander Hamilton, of the American School. With the turnaround in manufacturing, and the Obama Administration standing up to China and other trade-bullies, it might be that the President has listened after all.

                                           Creative Commons License

Technorati Tags: Barack Obama,Manufacturing,The Economy,Current EventsEmployment

Friday Funnies: Mitt Romney Is Stupid Edition

   So Mittens thinks that airplane windows should be made to be opened? What an idiot!

Jimmy Fallon: "Clint Eastwood’s new movie, “Trouble with the Curve,” opened in third place this weekend after making only $12 million. Of course, when he saw a movie theater had so many empty seats, Eastwood was like, 'Look at these crowds!'"

Jay Leno: "Well, last week in Vermont, the guy from the Dos Equis beer commercials -- you know "the most interesting man in the world" -- he hosted a fundraiser for President Obama. See, that shows you how things have changed. Four years ago the slogan was hope and change. Now it’s 'stay thirsty my friends.'"

"At a concert the other night, Madonna promised fans that she will strip naked if President Obama is reelected. Is it just me, or does that sound like an endorsement for Mitt Romney?"

"Congratulations to both Mitt Romney and President Obama. They both won Emmys for their performance on "60 Minutes" last night. Obama won for acting as if everything has gotten better over the last four years, and Romney won for pretending to care about that other 47 percent."

"A new book claims the reason Texas Gov. Rick Perry did so terrible in the debates and forgot everything was due to a sleep disorder. Apparently the disorder was he slept through grade school, high school and college." –Jay Leno

Seth Meyers: "The 14 percent tax rate Romney paid is less than the 20 percent paid by the average American. How does he pay such a low rate? He claims 47 percent of Americans as dependents."

Technorati Tags: Mitt Romney,Barack Obama,Republicans,Late Night Talk,Jay Leno,Bill Mahar,Political Humor,Current Events,Friday Funnies

MoveOn Calls For Criminal Investigation Into Mitt’s Time At Bain Capital

   Via AddictingInfo.org on September 27, 2012

   By Don Hamel               Creative Commons License

This morning, MoveOn.org sent an 8 page analysis of Mitt Romney’s financial disclosure to the U.S. Department of Justice, outlining their contention that Romney lied about the extent of his involvement in Bain Capital in his federal financial disclosure filing (form SF-278). If that is the case, Mitt Romney could be prosecuted under the federal False Statements Act (18 U.S.C. §1001), a felony.

According to their website the analysis contends, in brief, that:

Romney claimed in his disclosure filing that he departed from “any” active role in Bain Capital in 1999, which would be politically convenient because it was before Bain Capital was most heavily involved in outsourcing jobs. However, the legal analysis released today, which includes a review of state law in Delaware, where Bain Capital was incorporated, concludes that existing evidence is “clearly inconsistent with [Romney’s] flat disavowal of ‘any’ involvement in the ‘operations of any Bain Capital entity in any way’” after 1999.

It is undisputed that Romney was the sole director, Chief Executive Officer and President of Bain Capital, Inc. at least through the middle of 2000. MoveOn’s analysis finds that under Delaware law, while he held these titles, Romney was legally required to maintain “reasonable oversight” of Bain, which contradicts Romney’s claim in his 2011 disclosure filing that he did not have “any” involvement in Bain after 1999.

Reports that Romney’s financial disclosures are at odds with Bain’s records have been widespread. Even ultra-conservative Forbes magazine expressed grave doubts about the veracity of Romney’s timeline. However, like his tax returns, Romney’s seeming unwillingness to deal honestly with voters is a huge, well-known issue, that hasn’t yet been fully explored.

The full text of the document sent to the DOJ was further analyzed and seconded by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), whose Executive Director stated:

CREW strongly supports a Department of Justice investigation into the evidence that Mitt Romney remained involved with Bain Capital after 1999, given that he stated the exact opposite in his financial disclosure forms in apparent violation of the False Statements Act.

Any investigation that the DOJ undertakes will immediately be inundated with accusations of ‘partisan politics.’ But all appearances suggest a rather obvious discrepancy in Bain documentation and Romney’s statements. Furthermore, lazy misrepresentations  have been a hallmark of the Romney campaign since its very beginning; it’s almost as if he’s daring someone to do something about it.

And finally, someone has.

Technorati Tags: Mitt Romney,Bain Capital,S.E.C.,False Statements Act,Current Events

Republican Firms Commits Voter Fraud In Florida…

…which really is nothing new for the company, Strategic Allied Consulting.

  I’m wondering just exactly what Florida Governor Rick Scott is going to do about this?

GOP hypocrisy continues as a firm hired to register Republican voters is accused of voting fraud in Florida. Palm Beach County election officials suspect a GOP campaign consulting firm of knowingly submitting more than 100 fraudulent voter registration forms.

Strategic Allied Consulting, the firm suspected of voter fraud, has received $2.9 million from the Republican National Committee so far this year, according to an NBC News analysis of federal election records.

Nathan Sproul, who heads Strategic Allied Consulting, has a long and sordid history with the GOP, and has been accused in previous elections of suppressing Democratic voter turnout, throwing away registration forms, and manipulating ballot initiatives. So it rings false when Sean Spicer, communications director for the RNC, said the committee had “zero tolerance” for voter fraud. Sproul’s record is no secret.

Until recently, Sproul was charged with voter registration efforts in five states: Nevada, North Carolina, Virginia, Florida, and Colorado.

Sproul was caught when an employee of his firm dropped off suspected fraudulent registration forms at the office of Okaloosa County election board. Some of the Santa Rosa County new registrants appeared to be dead people, said Paul Lux, Okaloosa County Supervisor of Elections.

“It’s kind of ironic that the dead people they accused ACORN of registering are now being done by the RPOF (Republican Party of Florida),” Lux told NBC News.

Palm Beach County election supervisor Susan Bucher said 106 of the 304 forms Sproul’s firm submitted were flagged as potentially fraudulent, having “similar looking” signatures and addresses of local businesses. Bucher said she has also heard of similar fraudulent documents submitted by Sproul’s firm to another Florida elections office.

As this incident remains under investigation, we are left to ponder the intense irony of the Republican Party: It passes laws against voter fraud, while hiring dubious personnel who has multiple accusations of voter fraud against him.

Originally posted by Liberal Lamp Post to AddictingInfo.org on September 27, 2012

Technorati Tags: Voter Fraud,Strategic Allied Consulting,The Republican Party,Florida,Nathan Sproul,2012 Elections Bain Capital,Current Events

Romney Screwed Up And Told The Truth…

  …and his campaign is in hyper-mode. In fact, they have already re-leased their press statement.

  So what did Mittens say?  He told a group of supporters that, contrary to Republican talking points, President Obama has not raised taxes in 4 years in office.

“I admit this, he has one thing he did not do in his first four years, he’s said he’s going to do in the next four years which is to raise taxes”

    View the video here.

    As I stated, Romney’s campaign was quick with a statement by way of ABC News:

“President Obama has raised taxes on millions of middle-class Americans during his first term in office,” spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg said in a statement. “Governor Romney was clearly communicating about an additional tax increase President Obama is proposing on American small businesses that will jeopardize over 700,000 jobs. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan will stop the President’s tax increases, create 12 million new jobs, and turn our economy around.”

Technorati Tags: Mitt Romney,Barack Obama,Tax Increases,2012 Elections,Current Events

Romney’s Success Story?: Staples Is Closing Sixty Stores

By Justin Acuff  September 25, 2012       Original

Staples is closing fifteen stores in the U.S. and has plans to close forty-five stores and/or delivery businesses in Europe, reports Huffington Post. This is interesting because Romney has claimed Staples as a success and an example of his job-creating prowess.

Huffington Post:

Staples is trying to adapt to the evolving needs of its customers. Last month the company reported that its second-quarter net income fell as sales of computers, software, and basic office supplies softened. Computer sales have been pressured by the introduction to many offices of the computer tablet and other mobile devices. Traffic is also down at Staples’ stores and Europe continues to be a weak spot.

The chain expects the U.S. store closings will result in a charge of about $35 million in the fourth quarter. For fiscal 2012, it anticipates about 30 U.S. store closings. Staples also expects 30 stores will be scaled down and stores being relocated.

In Europe, the store closures are expected to occur before the end of fiscal 2012. The company has also tapped John Wilson to serve as president of Staples Europe. Wilson succeeds Rob Vale, who is retiring.

The retailer says its U.S. retail and online businesses will now be run by Demos Parneros. Joe Doody will continue to lead the North American contract and Quill.com businesses, and will assume leadership of supply chain and customer service operations in North America.

While the closing of the stores doesn’t necessarily bode poorly for the company itself, it does put those employees’ jobs in danger. Not only that, but its stock fell to a fifty-two week low in late August.

FreakOutNation reports:

Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney is having a dreadful week. Romney claims that his business experience would solve our countries employment issues — while giving a nod to cutting regulations. Staples, Romney’s success story, pays their employees at a minimal pay rate and now many of Staples’ workers will now be unemployed.

The Framingham, Mass., company anticipates annual savings of about $250 million by fiscal 2015′s end, so they’ll be faring well, however, touting the company as job creators is a distortion of facts. The facts are, that Staples pushed smaller businesses out, while bringing their large company in.When will politicians tout Mom and Pop stores, small local businesses and community, instead of privatization, enormous stores that go out of style leaving no means for the people left behind?

In other words, Mitt Romney’s businesses are failures. What would he do with the country?

Technorati Tags: Mitt Romney,Staples,Jobs,2012 Election,The Economy,Current Events

Lynard Skynyrd Upsets Some Fans

Gary Rossington, the only living survivor of the original band has distanced the group from the Confederate Flag calling it pretty much a symbol of racism as the KKK, the skinheads, and others have hijacked the flag for their racist views.

Raw Story

And in doing so, that last original member, guitarist Gary Rossington, has sparked a backlash among some of the band’s staunch supporters who see his move as an affront to everything the band once stood for.

In a CNN interview earlier this month, Rossington said that the flag had been hijacked by racists and, in the process, become detached from it’s original meaning as a symbol of rebelliousness and states’ rights. As a result, he said, he was concerned about the band being associated with the flag lest people get the wrong idea.

    This upset some fans prompting Rossington to issue a message on the groups website saying:

I wanted to clarify the discussion of the Confederate Flag in our recent CNN interview. Myself, the past members and the present members (that are from the South), are all extremely proud of our heritage and being from the South. We know what the Dixie flag represents and its heritage; the Civil War was fought over States rights.
We still utilize the Confederate (Rebel) flag on stage every night in our shows, we are and always will be a Southern American Rock band, first and foremost. We also utilize the state flag of Alabama and the American flag as well, ‘cause at the end of the day, we are all Americans. I only stated my opinion that the confederate flag, at times, was unfairly being used as a symbol by various hate groups, which is something that we don’t support the flag being used for. The Confederate flag means something more to us, Heritage not Hate…

  The Tea Party racist will ne up in arms over this, you can bet on it.

  Fans who commented in CNN’s comments section were a little bit vocal.

“ I guess this means they will be opening for the Dixie Chicks? “

“ This isn't the real Lynyrd Skynyrd anyway. They should have taken a name like "Obama's Politically Correct Sell Your Soul Make Believe Imposters" or something. They'll never be able to mimic the real Skynyrd's music and they certainly can't live up to their southern statesmanship. We hope you never come back to "Sweet Home Alabama" Cowards. “

Technorati Tags: Lynard Skynyrd,Confederate Flag,Racism,KKK,CNN,Current Events

 

Conservative Policies On Education May Be Killing White People

   According to the following article, the Conservative Party ( Republican ) is committing a slow suicide with their cuts in education and their attempts to limit access to education. The majority of their victims are their very own block of voters…white people.

  By Deborah Montesano   September 23, 2012

At a time when conservative policies seem designed to limit access to education, a new study has come out that shows a large decline in the life expectancy of white people who have less than a high school diploma. This appears to be yet another self-defeating stance by conservatives who are arguably aiding and abetting the death of their own constituency.

As cited in the New York Times, the lead investigator of the study, S. Jay Olshansky, says that white women without a high school diploma lost five years off their life expectancy between 1990 and 2008. On average, they can expect to live until age 73.5, compared to age 83.9 for white female college graduates. White men without a high school diploma lost three years, but they were already behind females. They can expect to live to age 67.5 whereas white male college graduates live a whopping 13 years longer, until age 80.4.

The life expectancy of other races continues to climb, regardless of educational level. Hispanics live longer than whites, across the board. Life expectancy for blacks has risen, but remains below that of whites–except for those without a high school diploma. Theirs is just about even with that of white women and men with the same level of education.

While the causes for this dramatic change are unknown, the link between education and life expectancy are clear. The speculation about contributing factors includes increased rates of smoking, more prescription drug abuse, and a lack of health insurance. But what’s also clear is that the populations of conservative states are less educated than liberal ones, as well as less diverse.

Conservative policies tend to discourage education, for instance; denying funding for early childhood education, demanding rigorous and inflexible testing as the ultimate test of achievement, undermining public schools through decreased funding and the use of vouchers, forcing college tuition to rise through slashing state funding, and shrinking the dollar amount of Pell Grants. The extent to which these factors contribute to the high school dropout rate and/or limit access to higher education is the same degree to which conservatives are sabotaging themselves.

The reason why they would do so can be found in statistics from the 2008 Presidential election. According to a Washington Post/ABC News poll, white people without a college degree supported John McCain by a margin of 17 percentage points. Those with a college degree favored Obama by 9 percentage points. Nevertheless, the long view of thoughtful persons would see that older white people among the Republican voter base–in other words, the working class in red states–are becoming an endangered species.                           AddictingInfo                                Creative Commons License

Technorati Tags: The Republican Party,2012 Elections,Conservatives,Education,Current Events

BREAKING: Attention! Possible Voter Suppression In YOUR Area

   Tis the season for the Republican Party and their backers to start with their “you-can’t-vote “ scams, which include miss-direction.

While exploring Facebook for news stories, I ran across the following post on the popular fan page “Being Liberal:”

I immediately commented and told him who I was and how to reach me in my capacity as a journalist. He quickly emailed me with the following;

I still have the ballot because i never did fill it out and mail it in.  I also don’t have the instruction sheet.  So, it is my word against theirs.  But, I am sure that if someone looked into this situation, I can’t be the only one who got instructions two weeks later.  Why I didn’t save the envelopes and post dates, and the instructions…  I have no idea.  Of course I wish I would have.  So, now all I have is my word and the ballot without any notification of where to write my ID number on it.  I wish I had the instruction sheet they sent me two weeks later.

That is all I have to offer, and it probably isn’t enough.

While this is pure speculation, there is a very possibility that it was done on purpose. Be aware and hold on to your ballots for a duration of time before sending them in.

If you have any information regarding this story, including the original copies of the instructions for sending out the ballots, please contact me at acuff.justin@gmail.com or reach me on Facebook.

By Justin Acuff  September 22, 2012 at AddictingInfo

Technorati Tags: Voter Suppression,Mail In Ballots,2012 Elections,Current Events