January 14, 2012
NY Times Gives Romney The Cain Defense
-- by Dave Johnson
In which the NY Times avoids being a "truth vigilante" -- goes to the town of one of the companies in the Romney video, talkes to people who were not affected by what Romney's company did.
This is the Cain defense: there were actually women he didn't harass.
-- Posted by Dave Johnson at 11:11 AM PST on January 14, 2012.
European-Style
-- by Dave Johnson
Read how working people in Europe are treated. No wonder Republicans dread "European-style" government! Human rights, dignity, decent working conditions, health care... Daily Kos: Musings of a housekeeper in Belgium
-- Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:53 AM PST on January 14, 2012.
January 13, 2012
1% vs 99% In The News
-- by Dave Johnson
vs
'Mass suicide' protest at Apple manufacturer Foxconn factory
Around 150 Chinese workers at Foxconn, the world's largest electronics manufacturer, threatened to commit suicide by leaping from their factory roof in protest at their working conditions.
-- Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:38 AM PST on January 13, 2012.
Advertising Facebook For Free?
-- by Dave Johnson
Why do so many websites advertise Facebook for free? When you see a "Connect with us on Facebook" or "Like us on Facebook" widget, that is a free advertisement. Facebook does have competitors, and these websites are just helping Facebook dominate and a few people get rich -- for free.
Facebook should be paying people to put these on their websites. Twitter, too.
-- Posted by Dave Johnson at 7:32 AM PST on January 13, 2012.
January 12, 2012
Google Getting Hard To Use - Bad Results
-- by Dave Johnson
Have you noticed that Google is getting harder to use, and is providing poor results? I seriously need something like the old Google for research -- is there anything out there I can use?
Serious question, need to change I think.
-- Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:36 PM PST on January 12, 2012.
When Mitt Romney Came To Town -- Who Benefits?
-- by Dave Johnson
The MUST WATCH video from the post below:
Another aspect of this, you have to have a heck of a lot of money in the first place to participate in private equity, hedge funds, etc. Even in stocks, actually: 50.9% of all stocks, bonds, mutual funds are owned by the 1% and 39.4% owned by the next 9%. The bottom 50% of us own 0.5% of all stocks, bonds and mutual funds.
So if this does somehow benefit "the economy" it is not an economy that most of us participate in at all. All most people get out of this intense capitalism is the wage cuts, job cuts, loss of benefits, etc.
THIS is who benefits from the layoffs, job cuts, wage cuts, loss of benefits, environmental degradation, worker deaths/injuries, and the rest:
This chart says it all. The 1% benefit, almost no one else. And we are ALL -- 99% of us, anyway -- feeling it now.
-- Posted by Dave Johnson at 6:00 PM PST on January 12, 2012.
MUST Watch: When Mitt Romney Came To Town
-- by Dave Johnson
This is the story of what has happened to America since the 80s:
Outsourcing jobs to places where people don't have a say so they can't demand good wages, firing people and making them reapply for their jobs but at half the pay, gutting people's benefits, stripping companies, treating employees like throwaway Kleenex, closing factories, stealing pensions, borrowing and pocketing... Locust capitalism. Chop shops.
MUST WATCH!!
And keep this in mind if people try to tell you that doing what it take to increase the stock price helps everyone:
Also see post above, When Mitt Romney Came To Town -- Who Benefits?
-- Posted by Dave Johnson at 12:26 PM PST on January 12, 2012.
I'm Co-Hosting Fairness Radio Today 10-12am PT
-- by Dave Johnson
I will be co-hosting Fairness Radio with right wingnut Chuck Morse today from 10-noon PT. If you are not near on the the stations this show is on it can be heard online at www.cyberstationusa.com and will run later on www.blogtalkradio.com.
The call-in number is 617-328-3526
Send questions and comments to fairdoc@gmail.com
-- Posted by Dave Johnson at 9:28 AM PST on January 12, 2012.
January 11, 2012
Use State 'Buy American' Rules To Promote Insourcing
-- by Dave Johnson
President Obama is hosting a forum on "insourcing" today. We need to bring jobs back to America, and restore our "industrial commons." One way to help move this along is for states to require "Buy American" in their procurement rules. This is legal and here's the big thing -- it saves states money.
In December Steelworkers President Leo Gerard wrote a strong post, Antidote For Stupidity Of Shipping Tax-Dollar-Financed Jobs Overseas, writing,
Amid prolonged, painfully high unemployment, ABC News Anchor Diane Sawyer for the past year tirelessly advocated a simple solution – buy American-made products. She clearly explained the reasoning: every American dollar spent on an American-made product helps create an American job.
Repeat and amplify: Every dollar spent on an American-made product helps create an American job.
Buy American Legislation
Gerard wrote,
Now there’s an antidote for California’s stupidity. It is legislation called the Invest in American Jobs Act. Championed by U.S. Rep. Nick J. Rahall, (D-W.Va.) and Senators Sherrod Brown, (D-Ohio), Bob Casey, (D-Pa.), and Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), it would strengthen existing requirements for buying American products when federal tax dollars pay for construction of highway, bridge, public transit, rail, water systems and aviation infrastructure equipment.
California Example
California decided to "save money" by purchasing Chinese steel to build the new Bay Bridge. Gerard writes about the disaster that brought to California. Never mind all the problems with the quality, the welds, the delays, and the problems overseeing the work that he described... Gerard also gets into the hidden costs to the state and country from the loss of business and the loss of jobs this caused:
Also, Schwarzenegger’s estimate that $400 million would be saved failed to account for the wages American workers lost, the taxes they would have paid, or the multiplier effect on the economy when workers spend their wages in their hometowns. In addition, Schwarzenegger’s estimate failed to account for the downside of hiring Chinese workers with American tax dollars, or in this case, bridge toll receipts. That includes unemployment compensation, Medicare fees and other costs borne by governments for joblessness.The Investigative Reporting Workshop at the American University School of Communication included a story about the Bay Bridge project by two-time Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporters Donald L. Bartlett and James B. Steele in a series called What Went Wrong: the Betrayal of the American Dream.
In their report about California sending the bridge work to China, Bartlett and Steel quote Tom Hickman, vice president of Oregon Iron Works in Clackamas, Ore., one of the American companies that tried to form a consortium to perform the Bay Bridge work. Here’s what Hickman said about the jobs California denied American workers and the work California denied his America company:
“These jobs are living-wage jobs and family-wage jobs. They provide health and welfare benefits, 401(k)s and pensions. Our facilities meet all of the environmental requirements, and it just is a very, very difficult thing to compete with the Chinese when you are really competing with the Chinese government (which subsidizes Chinese industry).”Caltrans argued that no American company had the facilities to perform the work. Hickman said the consortium could have done it. But if government agencies like Caltrans continue to ignore the real costs of shipping work to China, American factories will continue to close. America lost 55,000 manufacturers over the past decade. If that doesn’t stop, at some point, America will forfeit the capacity to perform this kind of work.
Buying steel from another country proved to be a disaster for California every way you look at it.
Buy American Costs LESS
California "saved money" by purchasing Chinese steel to build the new Bay Bridge. In fact, the one government agency that built the bridge may have "saved money." But what about the other costs to government and the rest of us because of the jobs lost from not making that steel here? What about the lost taxes from the unemployed workers and the American steel companies that would have provided the steel -- and their suppliers ? What about the unemployment, food stamps, Medicaid, and all the other "safety net" costs that resulted? What about the loss of business to grocery stores and gas stations near the steel plants, and near all the suppliers that had to lay people off, and the lost sales taxes, etc?
When you add in the cost of losing jobs, factories, companies, industries and communities that result from decisions like this, you start to see that it really doesn't make sense to "save money" by buying things made elsewhere.
BART Buys American
The Bay Area Rapid Transit district learned a lesson from the Chinese steel debacle and last year introduced a Buy American policy. BART Adopts "Buy America" – First in U.S., Agency Says,
The Bay Area Rapid Transit district has become the nation's first transit agency to approve a "Buy America" policy, BART said.The new Buy America Bid Preference policy, adopted unanimously by the BART board Thursday, "gives preferences to rail car manufacturers who create jobs in the U.S.A.," according to a BART news release Friday.
BART is preparing to award $3 billion in contracts for its new fleet of train cars, which the agency calls the "Fleet of the Future."
Buy American Policies
If we really want to start insourcing American jobs, then we should put our policies where our mouths are. "Buy American" provisions should be a mandate on federal, state and local government purchases, consistent with our trade laws. There is no reason our own government should be undermining American manufacturers. To accomplish this, our bottom line for federal procurement should be:
- All federal spending should have "buy America" provisions giving American workers and businesses the first shot at procurement contracts.
- New federal loan guarantees for energy projects should require the utilization of domestic supply chains for construction.
- Our military equipment, technology and supply purchases should have increased domestic content requirements.
- Renewable and traditional energy projects should use American materials in construction.
State-level spending should have similar requirements, and this panel will discuss these, and strategies to getting them in place.
Today many state-level procurement laws are very weak. As a result, a lot of tax dollars go to purchase goods made overseas instead of goods made in the USA. The impact of this often includes delays or cost overruns such as what happened with the San Francisco to Oakland California Bay Bridge, as well as the loss of jobs and revenue in the US.
The idea that national and state governments should "Buy American" isn't in any way a partisan issue. If you look at polling you find that Republicans as well as Democrats believe that at least now while we are in economic distress, and trading "partners" are selling to us but not buying from us, our tax dollars should be supporting American companies and jobs.
There is a reason countries like China are working so hard to get this business.
This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
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-- Posted by Dave Johnson at 11:31 AM PST on January 11, 2012.
India And Philippines Declare War On Call Center Bill
-- by Dave Johnson
Last month I wrote about a bill before Congress that would both help fight the offshoring of call-center jobs and protect consumers. Now the countries where we have been sending those jobs are organizing a lobbying campaign to fight the bill.
The Bill
There is a bipartisan bill before Congress, The U.S. Call Center Worker and Consumer Protection Act, that would let the public know which companies are engaging in sending jobs out of the country, let customers ask to use an American call center instead, and ban federal grants or guaranteed loans to American companies that move call center jobs out of the US. In Call-Center Bill Would Let Customers Ask To Talk To Americans, I wrote about some of the specifics and the reason the bill is needed,
Today many call-center jobs are being moved out of the country to India and the Philippines. This costs American jobs, and can be very frustrating to consumers who have to speak to people who they cannot understand because of language problems or cultural differences. The The U.S. Call Center Worker and Consumer Protection Act gives consumers the right to ask where the person they are speaking with is based, and ask for an American-based representative instead. Among the things this bill would accomplish:
- Require the Department of Labor to publicly list firms that move call center jobs overseas.
- Make these firms ineligible for any direct or indirect federal loans or loan guarantees for five years.
- Require 120 day advance notification of a proposed move off-shore.
- Require call center employees to tell U.S. consumers where they are located, if asked.
- Require that call centers transfer calls to a U.S. call center if asked.
Lobbying Campaign
India and the Philippines are organizing a lobbying campaign here -- yes, foreign countries lobby Congress to take our jobs -- to keep this bill from even being considered. An article in The Hindu explains,
India's ambassador to the United States Nirupama Rao said that India would work to protect its business interests in the context of a proposed U.S. legislation against outsourcing call centre works to countries, including India.
The Manila Bulletin gets specific,
President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III was urged to create and send a strong contingent of Filipinos that would persuade lawmakers in the US Congress to stop the passage of a bill that could kill the US$9-billion business processing outsourcing (BPO) in the country.Eastern Samar Rep. Ben Evardone, chairman of the House Committee on Public Information, lamented that US House Bill No. 3596 or the Call Center and Consumers Protection Bill will discourage American companies from outsourcing services in other countries like the Philippines.
“We have to act immediately by sending a strong lobby team in the US. I believe this will kill the BPO industry in the country,” Evardone said.
In, Anti-Outsourcing Bill Stirs Fears In India, Philippines at the Huffington Post, Dave Jamieson quotes Rep. Tim Bishop's (D-N.Y.) reaction to this effort by India and the Philippines,
When asked about such reactions, Bishop said that the fears in India and the Philippines reinforce the argument for the legislation."Frankly, the fact that both the Indian government and the Filipino government are reacting like this says that our bill is very badly needed," he said. Most of the call center jobs lost in the U.S. are "sent primarily to India and the Philippines. So I hope [the bill] does have an impact."
... While discussing the call center legislation last month, Bishop said that "outsourcing is one of the scourges of our economy and one of the reasons we are struggling to knock down the unemployment rate and reduce the number of Americans who are out of work ... We can't prohibit it, but we can certainly discourage it."
Consumer Protection
This is not just an offshoring issue, it is also a consumer-protection issue. In Who Protects Info You Give To Offshored Call Centers?, I wrote about a study showing that offshoring of call centers causes us to lose protections on our privacy and financial information,
Not JUST Jobs Lost -- Data Privacy Is Lost, TooA new study by the Communication Workers of America backs up the need for that bill. The report is called, Why Shipping Call Center Jobs Overseas Hurts Us Back Home. The study found that offshoring call-centers undoes protection of Americans’ private information. Personal data can be available to people who could use it for criminal purposes. Also, once information is sent across borders governments do not need warrants to collect this info.
The full text of the bill is available here:
H.R.3596 - To require a publicly available a list of all employers that relocate a call center overseas and to make such companies ineligible for Federal grants or guaranteed loans and to require disclosure of the physical location of business agents engaging in customer service communications.
This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
Sign up here for the CAF daily summary.
-- Posted by Dave Johnson at 11:30 AM PST on January 11, 2012.
