Yesterday’s rant ended with the ‘unemployment crisis’ and today the focus remains on the number one problem facing our deteriorating civilization.
Before we delve into today’s collectively mind-blowing offerings I’d like to take a moment to explore what little is being done to address this civilization destroying phenomenon.
Let’s start where we left off, with clueless Newt and his feigned ‘ignorance’. Newt likes to pretend there are plenty of jobs…all you need to do is ‘ask’ for one.
While this mindset is in keeping with capitalism and capitalistic views, especially the extremely misguided notion that it is up to YOU to make yourself ‘useful’ to the capitalist…
What do you suppose these people did to piss off their capitalist?
WICHITA, Kan. — The crowd gathered at the local headquarters for Boeing was euphoric. The company had just won one of the largest military contracts in history. Thousands of the resulting jobs, Boeing had promised, would be headed here, to the sprawling manufacturing complex where residents have been building airplanes for generations.
“It’s good for Kansas, it’s good for Wichita and it’s a great day to be alive here and to profess victory,” said Senator Pat Roberts, part of the political team that spent a decade battling on behalf of the company. “Every once in a while the good guys win.”
That celebration last February was supposed to confirm this city’s enduring status as the “Air Capital of the World.” But less than a year later, on Jan. 4, Boeing executives solemnly gathered here for another announcement. The jobs would not be arriving after all, they said. Instead, they would shut down all of the company’s local operations by the end of 2013.
Let’s see, we lost 8 MILLION jobs in the six months after the last down turn 3 and a half YEARS AGO. Despite claims to the contrary, NONE of those jobs came back.
In fact, the labor force today is still smaller than it was in 2000! (Never mind that the labor force ‘participation rate’ is at an all time low…)
What you need to understand, good citizen, is our infinitely screwed up economy has been kept ‘afloat’ largely on the back of orders for new aircraft.
While this ‘spin-off’ will (briefly) keep the plant from going dark, the, er, ‘smash and grab’ tactics of, ‘private equity’ (like what recently happened to Twinkie the Kid) pretty much insures that this new kid on the block will choke to death on the debt it has been saddled with.
But wait! There’s even more carnage Newt appears ignorant of!
The Chapter 11 filing was made in United States bankruptcy court in lower Manhattan. Kodak said that its non-American subsidiaries are not part of the filing. [snip]
“Kodak is taking a significant step toward enabling our enterprise to complete its transformation,” said Antonio M. Perez, the company’s chief executive, said in a news release. “At the same time as we have created our digital business, we have also already effectively exited certain traditional operations, closing 13 manufacturing plants and 130 processing labs, and reducing our workforce by 47,000 since 2003. Now we must complete the transformation by further addressing our cost structure and effectively monetizing non-core I.P. assets.” [snip]
Besides potentially aiding in the patent sale, bankruptcy protection could also allow Kodak to shed hundreds of millions of dollars in pension obligations. Kodak said in a filing that it contributed about $245 million to its U.S. pension obligations last year, and that it has been unable to shrink those liabilities to a more manageable level. [WTF!]
I especially dislike that last paragraph which rubs in what a chump these people have been for being ‘loyal employees of the company’.
But that is the culture which is destroying our civilization!
Profits for the investors while we throw the employees (and potential customers) under the bus!
Somehow this is written off as the need to ‘crack a few eggs’ if one desires to make an omelet…
So we have not one but TWO major US employers that are shuttering their US operations (almost 4 years after the start of the Greater Depression…) and then we have gasbags like Gingrich who are going to ‘teach the poor “how to ask for jobs.”; bringing us full circle with the inescapable fact, ‘what jobs’?
Well, maybe they mean these jobs!
The number of people seeking unemployment benefits for the first time plummeted last week to 352,000, the fewest since April 2008, the Labor Department said Thursday. The decline added to evidence that the job market is strengthening.
Weekly applications fell by 50,000, the biggest drop in the seasonally adjusted figure in more than six years. The four-week average, which smooths out fluctuations, dropped to 379,000. That was the second-lowest such figure in more than three years.
When weekly applications fall consistently below 375,000, it usually signals that hiring is strong enough to push down the unemployment rate. A department spokesman cautioned, however, that volatility at this time of year is common.
So, as the ‘private sector’ continues to ship jobs off-shore (to enrich their capitalist owners…AT YOUR EXPENSE!) The public sector (current administration) is running on a ticket of ‘job creation at the public’s expense’.
Rebuilding our nation’s ‘infrastructure’ is to be the ticket to future prosperity…for the few. The rest of us had best get used to speaking another language or figure out a way to survive on a steady diet of rocks.
Like everything else, Banana Republics don’t need much in the way of ‘infrastructure’.
The overlords have plumbing and electricity, the peasants don’t!
You’d have thought we’d seen the end of these stories like Kodak and Boeing with the current ‘hostility’ being pointed at the, er, one percent (which, as I pointed out yesterday, is totally misleading!) and I’d opine that this final ‘bailing out’ of capitalists from the American labor pool will be ‘the end’ of the multi-nationals departing the sinking ship.
The rest have already gone.
So what will our 'uni-party' rulers do for revenue now?
Thanks for letting me inside your head,
Gegner
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