Reuters has a firsthand example of this. Today’s special report chronicles the story of GS Technologies in Kansas City, Missouri, a steel mill that had been in business since 1888—and for decades was a major local employer. The mill work was hard, but the wages were fair, and the mill lifted “countless families into the middle class,” allowing them to buy homes, cars, and college educations.
That is, until Bain showed up.
“Less than a decade later, the mill was padlocked and some 750 people lost their jobs. Workers were denied the severance pay and health insurance they’d been promised, and their pension benefits were cut by as much as $400 a month. What’s more, a federal government insurance agency had to pony up $44 million to bail out the company’s underfunded pension plan. Nevertheless, Bain profited on the deal, receiving $12 million on its $8 million initial investment and at least $4.5 million in consulting fees.”
That’s right. The man who denounced President Bush’s bank bailouts in 2008 and President Obama’s successful rescue of the auto industry relied on a federal bailout to profit off a bankrupt company.
Mitt Romney has made the central argument of his candidacy the fact that he has been a private-sector job creator—to the tune of 100,000 jobs.
That is fundamentally dishonest—and it’s a slap in the face to those who have lost their livelihoods to Mitt Romney’s profiteering ways.
US retail sales rose less than expected over the holidays while new jobless claims climbed to a six-week high, underlining the slow pace of recovery from recession.
Retail sales increased 0.1 per cent in December to $400.6bn, missing forecasts of a 0.3 per cent rise and logging the weakest growth since last May, according to a commerce department report.
Separately, first-time claims for unemployment benefits rose to 399,000. Economists say claims need to stay below 400,000 to sustain job growth.
December sales of electronics and appliances fell 3.9 per cent and department store purchases slipped 0.2 per cent. Meanwhile, cheaper fuel prices brought down receipts at petrol stations 1.6 per cent last month, while food and beverage sales fell 0.2 per cent.
“December’s retail sales figures suggest it was not a happy holiday season for US retailers,” said Paul Dales, senior US economist at Capital Economics. “In other words, households have started to pare back their spending, most probably because their real incomes have continued to fall.”
My take on Ron Paul? If I suddenly have the urge to vote for an islam-appeaser who wants to see Israel wiped off the map, has no problem at all with a nuclear weaponized Iran, and thinks that the United States is an imperial force of evil in the world, I’ll just vote for Obama, because at that point, the less-crazy metric points to the guy who DOESN’T wear eyebrow toupees. – Ann Barnhardt
Billionaire George Soros gave advice and direction on how President Obama should allocate so-called “stimulus” money in a series of regular private meetings and consultations with White House senior advisers even as Soros was making investments in areas affected by the stimulus program.
It’s just one more revelation featured in the blockbuster new book that continues to rock Washington,Throw Them All Out, authored by Breitbart News editor Peter Schweizer.
Mr. Soros met with Mr. Obama’s top economist on February 25, 2009 and twice more with senior officials in the Old Executive Office Building on March 24th and 25th as the stimulus plan was being crafted. Later, Mr. Soros also participated in discussions on financial reform.
Then, in the first quarter of 2009, Mr. Soros went on a stock buying spree in companies that ultimately benefited from the federal stimulus.
Soros doubled his holdings in medical manufacturer Hologic, a company that benefited from stimulus spending on medical systems
Soros tripled his holdings in fiber channel and software maker Emulus, a company that wound up scoring a large amount of federal funds going to infrastructure spending
Soros bought 210,000 shares in Cisco Systems, which came up big in the stimulus lottery
Soros also bought Extreme Networks, which, months later, said it was expanding broadband to rural America “as part of President Obama’s broadband strategy”
Soros bought 1.5 million shares in American Electric Power, a company Mr. Obama gave $1 billion to in June 2009
Soros bought shares in utility company Ameren, which bagged a $540 million Department of Energy loan
Soros bought 250,000 shares of Public Service Enterprise Group, 500,000 shares of NRG Energy, and almost a million shares of Entergy—all companies that came up winners in the Department of Energy taxpayer giveaway that produced the Solyndra debacle
Soros bought into BioFuel Energy, a company that benefitted when the EPA announced a regulation on ethanol
Soros bought Powerspan in April 2009. Just weeks later, the clean-energy company landed $100 million from the Department of Energy
In the second quarter of 2009, Soros bought education technology giant Blackboard, which became a big recipient of education stimulus money
Soros also bought Burlington Northern Santa Fe and CSX, both beneficiaries of Mr. Obama’s plans for revitalizing the railroads
Soros bought Cognizant Technology Solutions, which scored stimulus funds in education and health care technology
Soros also bought 300,000 shares of Constellation Energy Group and 4.6 million shares of Covanta, both of which landed taxpayers’ money through the stimulus, the former of which bagged $200 million
In Throw Them All Out, Schweizer catalogs several more of Mr. Soros’s trades and says that, while “it is not necessarily the case that Soros had specific insider tips about any government grants,” nevertheless, Soros’s “investment decisions aligned remarkably closely with government grants and transfers.”
WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Former Polish president and anti-communist leader Lech Walesa unveiled a statue of Ronald Reagan on an elegant Warsaw street on Monday, honoring the late U.S. president for inspiring Poland’s toppling of communism.
Though Reagan’s legacy is mixed in the U.S., across much of central and eastern Europe he is considered the greatest American leader in recent history for challenging the Soviet Union.
The moniker he gave it — the “evil empire” — resonated with Poles, who suffered greatly under Moscow-imposed rule.
“I wonder whether today’s Poland, Europe and world could look the same without president Reagan,” Walesa said. “As a participant in those events, I must say that it’s inconceivable.”
The 3.5-meter (11.5-foot) bronze statue depicts a smiling Reagan in a historic moment — as he stood at a podium at Berlin’s Brandenburg gate in 1987 and said the famous words, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”
It sits across from the U.S. Embassy on Aleje Ujazdowskie, a street lined with embassies and manicured parks in the heart of the capital.
“Reagan gave us hope,” said Janusz Dorosiewicz, the president of the board of the Ronald Reagan Foundation in Poland. He conceived of the monument and struggled for six years with bureaucracy to secure the prized location for the statue.
Several statues of Reagan have gone up this year, the centennial of Reagan’s birth. Most notably, monuments to him have been erected in London and in Budapest, Hungary, and yet another is to be unveiled later this week in the former Soviet republic of Georgia.
“If you are not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” – Malcolm X
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