**Written by Doug Powers Yes, there’s no better way to calm the racial seas than by getting Al Sharpton involved in the conversation. From The Hill : Newt Gingrich was confronted by a black man outside Tommy’s Country Ham House, who questioned him on his comments on having poor children work as janitors. The man said what Gingrich was asking for amounted to a “new form of slavery” and would force young African Americans to drop out of school. Gingrich engaged the man, speaking levelly and holding eye contact with him. He said that he suggested the jobs so that “They can get paid — they’d go to school, stay in school instead of dropping out.” The man persisted. “You say you want Afro-Americans to come into your political party but you’ve ratcheted [your rhetoric] up since you got down here,” he said. The man then said he’d spoken with Rev. Al Sharpton and asked Gingrich to meet with him, Roland Martin of CNN, Ben Jealous of the NAACP and Juan Williams. “Sure — glad to do it,” Gingrich said. “I’d be willing to do it. I know Al.” The protester kept pushing for the meeting as Gingrich talked, demanding that he meet with the black community. Gingrich nodded his head after the man interrupted him, and agreed. “Sure — and find a way to have everybody have a chance for a better future,” he said. Going to Al Sharpton for advice on the subject of improving the tone of racial rhetoric is like getting help overcoming an addiction to prop comedy by talking to Carrot Top. Newt and Al aren’t strangers , but if Gingrich does follow through on a meeting, for his own good I hope he waits until the current campaign is over… just in case the mini-summit culminates in another ill-advised public service announcement. Resist you much, Newt. **Written by Doug Powers Twitter @ThePowersThatBe
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Gingrich Tells South Carolina Man He’d Talk to Al Sharpton
The Obama re-election campaign has attacked Mitt Romney’s oft-touted business record, thereby adding to the growing chorus of seemingly anti-business rhetoric aimed at the former Massachusetts governor. President Obama’s re-election campaign sent out a memo on Friday accusing Mitt Romney of “destroying companies and good-paying jobs in order to reap huge profits,” according to Jamie Dupree of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution . These are some excerpts from the memo: … Romney’s objective in business was never job creation. …Romney closed over a thousand plants, stores and offices, and cut employee wages, benefits and pensions. He laid off American workers and outsourced their jobs to other countries. And he and his partners made hundreds of millions of dollars while taking companies to bankruptcy. Although some of the businesses in which he took a stake undoubtedly added jobs, neither Romney’s campaign nor any independent fact checker has supported his claim of producing a net increase of 100,000 American jobs – or even anything close to it. … Armed with the facts, the American people will determine whether Mitt Romney’s track record shows he believes our prosperity will come from an economy where the wealthy and powerful can rig the game at the expense of working Americans, or every American who works hard and acts responsibly will have a fair shot at success. Voters can judge for themselves whether his vision for the future is based on outsourcing and bubble economies that enrich speculators and corporate raiders, or an economy built to last in which the productivity of our workers is rewarded. … Our economic crisis and endemic income inequality were caused in large part by a few who put profits over people. Taking advantage of an uneven playing field, where there was one rulebook for those at the top and another for everyone else, Mitt Romney and his friends made money hand over fist while working families lost their grip on the middle-class lifestyle they earned. The memo’s authors quickly switch from condemning Romney to praising President Barack Obama for creating jobs and growing the economy: “ … [he] has taken formidable, decisive steps to protect free enterprise , investors and consumers – and why he’s fighting for an economy that’s built to last… ” “ …the President championed Wall Street reform that requires more rigorous disclosure and tightens oversight of the kind of speculation that caused the market meltdown… ” The memo also claims the president rescued the U.S. auto industry, revived manufacturing, and freed businesses from “burdensome regulations.” However, it’s not the boasts about President Obama’s economic “successes” that have some critics scratching their heads. It’s the decision to attack Mitt Romney via private equity. Considering the fact that President Obama has “both taken donations from the industry and appointed a number of private equity veterans to his administration,” as Alexander Burns of Politico writes, this line of attack seems very odd. Here is a sampling of some of the “private equity veterans” President Obama has surrounded himself with (via Politico ): Jack Lew : The new White House chief of staff was previously a managing director at Citi Alternative Investments Nancy-Ann DeParle : A deputy chief of staff who helped lead the president’s health care reform effort was also a managing director at CCMP Capital Jeffrey Goldstein : The recently-departed undersecretary of the Treasury for Domestic Finance was also a managing director at Hellman & Friedman before he joined the administration. He’s returning to the private equity firm now that he has resigned Steve Rattner : A former auto czar who came out of the world of private equity before briefly working with the administration Mark Gallogly : Works for Centerbridge Partners, and is formerly of the Blackstone Group. He was on the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board Richard Parsons : Former Time Warner executive on the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. He is also linked to Providence Equity Partners Inc Walter Jones : Currently the U.S. executive director of the African Development Bank, he was also a senior private equity executive with Gravitas Capital Advisors And these are just a few examples. This list doesn’t even mention the other “private equity veterans” currently employed by the President’s Management Advisory Board, the Board for International Food and Agriculture Development, the National Infrastructure Advisory Council and the Advisory Committee of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. “If President Obama plans to campaign against Mitt Romney and the alleged evils of private equity, then he will need to start by purging the ranks of his own administration,” a private equity insider told Politico . Final Thought : Seeing as how they’ve decided to target him specifically, as opposed to any of the other GOP candidates, it seems the Obama re-election campaign is confident Mitt Romney will win the GOP nomination. Read the full memo here.
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Obama Re-Election Campaign Accuses Romney of Being a ‘Corporate Raider’ and Exploiting the Middle Class
After days of criticism, it appears that Newt Gingrich is finally backing off of his attack on Mitt Romney’s tenure as chief of investment firm Bain Capital. After Gingrich connected SuperPAC Winning Our Future released the 29 minute long King of Bain , a film meant to transform Romney’s free market executive experience from the cornerstone of his candidacy to a millstone around his neck, it might be too little too late. The film is filled with the sort of “tugging at the heart strings” that is meant to appeal to your emotions rather than your brain, and is normally a style that we associate with progressive filmmakers and not GOP presidential candidates. This alone is enough to condemn King of Bain . However, the film’s emotional appeal is not its most disturbing aspect. What is arguably more disturbing is that King of Bain depends on the ignorance of its viewer in order for to be effective (Side note: this should tell you something about what Newt Gingrich thinks about his potential voters). It’s this ignorance that makes the viewer vulnerable to the emotional plea and, for this reason, it is important that we understand why companies like Bain Capital are important and how they provide a valuable service to the economy. King of Bain chronicles the effects on individuals who at one time were employed by companies that have been broken up and liquidated by Bain Capital while Romney was at its helm. It gives the impression that the individuals interviewed had been victimized by Bain Capital’s greedy corporate raiders for no reason other than to line the pockets of fat cats who have no regard to the human effects. The fact that Bain’s sole purpose is to make profit for its investors is repeated ad nauseam throughout the film. It also happens to be one of the few aspects of the film that is 100% accurate. This fact also happens to be true for every single successful business that operates within a free market, so we can dismiss this outright as a legitimate source of criticism. Furthermore, firms like Bain generally don’t break up companies that can be saved. The reason for this is as obvious as it is simple: they have no financial incentive to do so. If a company can be saved it becomes a long-term source of profit rather than the short term source that a fire-sale creates. Turning an investment into a long-term source of profit is always a preferable scenario for an investment firm and Bain has numerous examples of having successfully done this. Sometimes, however, companies cannot be saved, in which case they need to be “creatively destroyed” as economist Joseph Schumpeter might describe it. In these cases, investment firms will acquire ailing companies and squeeze every dollar of value that they can out of what is left of them. As cynical as this might sound, it serves a purpose beyond the amassing of profit for the firm’s investors. First, the assets that are sold are usually purchased by companies that can make better use of them than the one that failed. Machinery, raw materials, and other forms of physical capital are put to better use than they had been. Second, the revenue from the assets sold is redirected by the investment firm into new companies, allowing new ventures to take root and prosper. In other words, the death of one failing business can support the growth of two, three, or more startups, just as dead vegetation will fertilize the soil and facilitate the growth of new vegetation. The sort of redirection of capital that investment and asset management firms facilitate isn’t just a feature of the free market, it is its lifeblood. It is precisely what makes it superior to a centrally planned economy where failing companies continue to sap resources through public subsidies. We cannot deny that this sort of business that investment firms engage in has an effect on real people and, in the end, will often cost real people their jobs. It’s an extremely unpleasant fact to acknowledge but it is a feature of the free market, not a bug. On the flip side of this unpleasant fact, and what the King of Bain filmmakers are hoping that you don’t understand, is that the redirection of capital into more productive areas of the economy creates jobs as well. Those jobs are, unfortunately, unseen and difficult to quantify. So here’s to Bain capital and other investment firms like it. The truth is that without them we would be more dependent on investment banks like Morgan Stanley or Goldman Sachs. Our other option is having the government centrally manage the growth of our modern economy, something that may appeal to progressives and those who have distributed this film, but certainly shouldn’t appeal to conservatives. Nick Rizzuto is a producer for GBTV. Follow him on Twitter @Nick_Rizzuto .
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Why firms like Bain Capital are important to the free market
As analysts keep predicting that economic conditions in the country will improve, some claim that it’s not enough to quote national statistics and vague data. Perhaps tangible, localized measures will help paint a clearer picture of where the nation is heading and one of the best is new jobs growth. Between November 2010 and October 2011, the biggest cities in the country by population added 443,446 jobs . Unemployment in these 250 cities dropped by 7 percent, on average, during the period. Of course, some cities are faring much better than others. An increase in the total number of new jobs would be great news for the economy. It means that the total number of people working is increasing. And if everything else stays the same, the unemployment rate improves. However, if new jobs are added and the total size of the labor force — those employed or looking for work — goes up too, unemployment actually can become worse. However, data shows that, in general, the cities that added the most jobs as a percentage of total employed also experienced improved unemployment rate, suggesting a strong relationship between the two. The unemployment rate in five of the cities that added the most jobs as a percentage of total employed dropped. Miami’s 13.6 percent unemployment rate last year dropped to 11.2 percent in October of this year, mirroring a 4.2 percent increase in new jobs , the fifth biggest increase in the country. But it is not always the case. In Jackson, Mississippi, the addition of nearly 2,500 jobs was not enough to offset the climb in its total labor force of 3,000. The unemployment rate in the city worsened from 9.6 percent to 9.8 percent. While cities that are losing jobs should see an increase in their unemployment rate, the relationship is much less consistent. Unemployment will increase when jobs are lost, provided the labor force decreases or remains the same. However, if the number of jobs lost is less than the decrease in the labor force, the unemployment rate can actually rise. Of the top cities that lost the most jobs, only two saw an increase in unemployment. Surprisingly, the sharpest drop in unemployment was in Vancouver, Washington, a city that lost the fifth most jobs as percentage of the total number of workers. Vancouver lost more than 1,500 jobs, but its labor force decreased by nearly 6,000, mostly from those looking for work. The actual unemployment rate for the city therefore improved. These are the cities that added and lost the most jobs. THE CITIES THAT ADDED THE MOST JOBS: 3. Springfield, Missouri Employed pct. increase: 4.96 percent Total employed increase: 3,610 Workforce: 82,429 Unemployment rate: 7.4 percent The employed workforce in Springfield, Mo., jumped nearly 5 percent between November, 2010 and October, 2011. The city has added 3,610 jobs over the course of the past year, and unemployment has dropped to 7.4 percent, below the state rate of 8.5 percent. The city of Springfield says its sales tax revenue increased more than 10 percent from last year. The improvement came in “sectors like restaurants, department stores, and home improvement stores,” according to Ozarksfirst.com. 2. Pueblo, Colorado Employed pct. increase: 5.3 percent Total employed increase: 2,432 Workforce: 53,951 Unemployment rate: 10.5 percent As of October 2011, the unemployment rate in Pueblo was 10.5 percent, a full 2.4 percentage points higher than Colorado’s rate. Over that time period, the employed population in the city increased by more than 5 percent. At least this is an improvement from 12 months ago, when 11.7 percent of the city’s workforce was unemployed. In 2010, Danish wind turbine manufacturer Vestas opened a plant in Pueblo, adding hundreds of new jobs. 1. Fort Wayne, Indiana Employed pct. increase: 6.36 percent Total employed increase: 7,052 Workforce: 129,151 Unemployment rate: 8.7 percent In just one year, Fort Wayne has added more than 7,000 jobs, increasing its employed population by some 6.4 percent. The unemployment rate dropped from 10.7 percent to 8.7 percent. Fort Wayne added the 11th most positions in the country, eclipsing the natural job growth of much larger cities like San Antonio, Phoenix and Philadelphia. In fact, the Fort Wayne metro area had the fastest job growth, according to The Fiscal Times. “Fort Wayne—which had a 4 percent increase—continues to benefit from the rebirth of auto manufacturing and high levels of defense spending,” The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette reports. See the other cities that have added jobs at 24/7 Wall St. THE CITIES THAT LOST THE MOST JOBS: 3. Baton Rouge, Louisiana Employed pct. decrease: 2.43 percent Total employed decrease: 2,435 Workforce: 106,391 Unemployment rate: 8.2 percent Unemployment in Baton Rouge is up slightly, as the city lost more than 2,400 jobs over the course of the last year. The city has an unemployment rate of 8.2 percent, higher than Louisiana’s rate of 7 percent. According to the Associated Press, a portion of the losses have been in the goods-providing sector. But the largest portion, roughly 1,000 positions, have been in the service-providing sector. In an otherwise successful year for the state of Louisiana, Baton Rouge was the only major city to lose jobs over the course of the last year. 2. Spokane, Washington Employed pct. decrease: 3.61 percent Total employed decrease: 3,437 Workforce: 100,317 Unemployment rate: 8.6 percent Spokane is the third city on our list from Washington. This goes to show that, to a certain extent, statewide problems are affecting these local economies. While unemployment in nearly every state in the country declined over the past six measurable months, Washington state had a much smaller decrease than other states, including neighboring California and Oregon. Spokane lost 3,437 jobs last year — the third biggest loss of the 250 largest cities in the U.S. Spokane’s unemployment actually dropped 0.5 percentage points despite the job losses. There have been a series of job losses, including the dismissal of hundreds of census workers, and the firing of 1,000 leisure and hospitality workers in April alone. 1. Abilene, Texas Employed pct. decrease: 5.62 percent Total employed decrease: 3,111 Workforce: 56,106 Unemployment rate: 6.9 percent Unemployment in Abilene was 6.9 percent in October, well below the Texas average of 8.4 percent, as well as the national average of 9 percent. The city is, however, doing substantially worse than it was 12 months prior. Unemployment is up from 6.7 percent, and the city has lost 3,111 jobs, the fourth-most loss over that period among the 250 largest cities in the U.S. In May, a cooling tower manufacturing plant owned by Broadwind laid off dozens of employees. In March, 178 local teachers were fired. These small layoffs and a multitude of others like them have brought unemployment in the state closer to the Texas average. See the other cities that lost jobs at 24/7 Wall St.
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The American Cities That Added (And Lost) The Most Jobs
Here we go again. You remember where the “Day of Rage” 2011 festivities first broke out earlier this fall, don’t you? If you were paying attention, you know the answer: The port of Longview, Washington. Unionized longshoremen stormed the port there and took a half-dozen guards hostage in early September. They damaged railroad cars and dumped grain, smashed windows, cut brake lines, and blocked a train for hours while the ILWU and AFL-CIO cheered them on. Despite violating a judicial restraining order and committing systematically planned sabotage and trespassing, most of the thugs got away with wrist slaps. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union received a $250,000 fine to cover damages from the vandalism. One of the mobsters arrested was this unhinged ILWU guy , who threatened to beat up KGW reporters: After the fine was dealt, longshoremen’s union bosses threatened to “do what we have to do” and ILWU vowed that “It’s going to get worse before it gets better.” All because a grain importer, EGT, chose a different union for 50 construction jobs on a $200 million grain terminal. If you were paying attention, you also remember that this initial outbreak of violence and property destruction came right after the Labor Day incitement of Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa Jr., who agitated the crowd in Detroit for President Obama. “President Obama, this is your army,” Hoffa bellowed. “We are ready to march. Let’s take these son of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong.” Obama stood by the violence-prone Teamsters and vice versa. It’s a brass-knuckle bromance sealed with boodle . On November 2 , the Occupiers led by the Oakland contingent went after ports again. My column on the planned riots reminded you of the Bay Area Left’s violent Oakland port shutdown in 2003 and the ignominious Oakland agitator and strike leader Boots Riley — and connected the dots between Riley, Oakland’s Van Jones, Occupy Oakland, and the violent ILWU thugs and their supporters who kicked off the Day of Rage warm-up show in Longview, Washington in September. The Oakland shutdown was: …an expression of “solidarity with longshore workers in their struggle” against grain importer EGT. In Longview, Washington, wildcat union workers cut train brake lines, smashed windows, dumped grain, and took hostages earlier this fall to protest the company’s decision to employ not non-union workers, but workers from a competing shop. A federal judge fined the ILWU $250,000 after it defied a court restraining order; even Obama’s National Labor Relations Board was forced to issue a complaint against the union’s “violent and aggressive” actions. Here’s a refresher on how that protest turned “peaceful” protest turned out: Source: Twitpic Source: Twitpic Big Labor has sent mixed public signals over whether it supports today’s coordinated shutdown. See this San Francisco Chronicle article for union leaders playing Hamlet for political viability’s sake. But the Worker’s World website is crystal-clear on who inspired it, who’s behind it, and who’s providing the muscle: Battle lines have formed as the West Coast Occupy movements, from San Diego to Alaska, flex their collective muscle against the federally coordinated, brutal attacks targeting the pro-Occupy Wall Street movements across the country. They are organizing for blockades of West Coast ports on Dec. 12 in San Diego; Los Angeles/Long Beach; Port Hueneme, Calif. (central coast); Oakland; Portland, Ore.; Seattle; Tacoma, Wash.; and possibly more. Solidarity actions have been called by OWS in New York and inland locations, as well. The pro-OWS movement is aligning itself with labor and the working class, as the West Coast Occupy movements organize to support the struggle of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union in Longview, Wash. Longshore workers there are waging a ferocious battle against transnational EGT, controlled by Bunge Ltd., of the grain cartel that controls most of the world’s trade in food products. EGT is trying to break the ILWU in an attempt to drive down wages and destroy the union. (Read “Longshore workers call for anti-racist unity in their ranks” at www.workers.org/2011/us/ilwu_0922) The West Coast Occupy movements are also aligning with the struggle of port truckers, who are fighting for the right to organize for union representation. Twenty-six of them were fired in Los Angeles for wearing Teamster jackets to work. Occupy LA and Long Beach are targeting SSA, an anti-union port terminal operator, majority owned by Goldman Sachs, the notorious Wall Street investment bank. Teamster president, Jimmy Hoffa Jr., has publicly expressed support for the Occupy movement. Michael Novick of Anti-Racist Action, one of the main organizers at Occupy LA working on the port shutdown action in Los Angeles, told WW that the strategy will be to shut down three main targets. Novick states, “When we put the resolution through at the General Assembly in support of the port shutdown, it was tied to building a general strike on May 1st of 2012 and building relations to the migrant rights movement.” Finally, the West Coast Occupy movements are targeting the ports as major commercial centers, showing that they can strike at the institutions which help to aggregate the wealth of the 1 percent by disrupting Wall Street on the waterfront. It’s the history of the militant ILWU which enables this attack to have teeth. The ILWU rank and file have historically supported political struggles such as the anti-apartheid movement, the anti-war movement, in defense of Palestine in the face of attacks on Gaza, in support of the Wisconsin struggle against union busting, etc. The 1 percent, under the banner of the Port of Oakland, launched the first volley of their assault on Dec. 4, with full-page ads in the San Francisco Chronicle and Oakland Tribune against the planned Occupy port blockade. They know all too well how powerful this movement has become, evidenced by the historic general strike call and blockade of the Port of Oakland on Nov. 2, when the Occupy movement, with the support of the ILWU rank and file and port truckers, shut down the entire port. Who bears the costs? Small business owners, independent truck drivers, and taxpayers trying to make ends meet, of course: The mobilization of over 60,000 people that shut down the Port of Oakland on Nov. 2 is being used by organizers as the model for the West Coast efforts this Monday. However, some independent truckers at the Port of Oakland told the Huffington Post they were dismayed by the plan. “It’s going to have a snowball negative effect. I depend on the port to feed my family. Why should I have to be put in a predicament because these people lack the skills to get a job?” said Vladimir Torres, an independent trucker who is based out of Long Beach, CA, and comes to the port of Oakland on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Torres is an owner-operator who said he would be dually affected because he works at two West Coast ports. Josh Thomas, a spokesman for the Port of Portland, told the Columbian that 88% of the exporters who call the port home are small and medium-size businesses. “We see this as hurting working people,” Thomas said of the Occupy movement’s port initiative. “We consider it no laughing matter when there’s a large group of people threatening to either block or enter the terminal,” Thomas said, “and we’d have to work closely with local law enforcement agencies and our own marine security officers and potentially (the U.S) Coast Guard, if it came to that.” Way to go, Occupiers: The Alameda County Building and Construction Trades Council’s secretary-treasurer, Andreas Cluver, said many of his union’s workers were recently hired at port building projects after long stretches on unemployment. Given that, a port shutdown aimed at punishing the 1 percent “makes no sense,” he said. …Nearby, changing a tire on his rig before he also left with a load of paper, Hai Ngo 0f San Leandro said he resented the loss of income. “The Occupy people handed out flyers to us, but never asked what we thought before they planned this,” Ngo said. “I will lose about $350, and at holiday time that hurts. It’s just a waste of our time and money, and won’t accomplish anything.” The “battle” over power at the ports has been building for months. And the progressives are only going to escalate from here. From the socialists’ website: EGT is planning to bring a huge grain ship to the Port of Longview, sometime in December or early January, to unload the grain piled up there with the use of scab labor. That isn’t going to happen without a major fight. Plans are in the works for phase two of this struggle. Caravans will be heading up to Longview to support the ILWU’s fight to keep their jobs and maintain their union…The battle is on! Like they said: “It’s going to get worse before it gets better”… …and it’s all being brought to you with explicit support from teachers’ unions , Democrats , and the White House. Remember in November.
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Your guide to D12: Occupiers return to ports for West Coast shutdown
Meanwhile Americans face a Christmas crippled by the jobs crisis.
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Obama Frolicking in Hawaii While Economy Burns
