Rooting For the (outsourcing of...) Jobs Czar...

"I want you to root for me, you know, everyone in Germany roots for Siemens. Everybody in Japan roots for Toshiba. Everybody in China roots for China South Rail. I want you to say, "Win, GE."

Jeffrey Immelt, who since being appointed by President Obama as "Jobs Czar" has presided over an unemployment rate that has not dipped below 9% and who, as CEO of GE eliminated or outsourced more than 30,000 U.S. jobs, ten thousand of them union jobs. Surely not "everybody" working for those foreign companies would be rooting for their respective CEO's if they has similar track records. But after all, as he told his CBS interviewer when asked if he had any "civic responsibility" in the United States,

"My name's not above the door, I work for investors. Investors want to see us grow earnings and cash flow, they want to see us be competitive, they want to see us prosper."

And in that department, Immelt has surely done his job. Under his expert management GE gutted its pension and health insurance benefits in spite of the fact that the pension was in such good shape that the company hadn't contributed to it since 1987.  In 2010, when the company made $14.2 bn in profits, not only did they pay no corporate tax, they received a $3.2 bn tax credit. This was due to the fact that all those laid off American workers weren't consuming much, and thus most of GE's profits now come from foreign markets and aren't subject to U.S. corporate taxes. During this year Immelt's compensation package was $21 million. The company also spent $15 million for a movie and TV PR campaign celebrating the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan, who was a GE spokesman in the 1950s.

Bankster Parable...

    "If you're a restaurant and you can't charge for the soda, you're going to charge more for the burger."

     Jamie Dimon, chairman and chief executive of J.P. Morgan Chase, explaining why regulations like the Dodd-Frank financial regulation won't work. After all, no one would dare ask the board of directors to give up any of the $4.8 bn in profits they made in the second quarter, that would be class warfare. The only choice the banks have will be to screw the consumers with increased fees.

Hard to Find a Job These Days...

"I'm Also Unemployed"

Mitt Romney, Republican Presidential Candidate with a net worth of approx. $200 million, to a group of unemployed Floridians. True, he doesn't have a job at the moment (well, for the past four years) but he spends a lot of time and money on his hobby, being a really boring presidential candidate. 

With God on Our Side...

 "The rights and interests of the laboring man will be cared for -not by the labor agitators, but by the Christian men to whom God in His infinite wisdom has given the control of the property interests of the country."

 George F. Baer, President of the Philadelphia and Reading Rail Road, in response to a letter during the Anthacite Coal Strike of 1902, urging him as a Christian to make concessions to the workers. The Philadelphia and Reading owned huge tracts of coal lands in eastern Pennsylvania, which it acquired by charging such exorbitant shipping rates to the independent coal operators that they were forced to sell to the rail road. In a statement to the Anthracite Coal Commission, convened by Theodore Roosevelt as arbiter of the strike, he stated in regard to working conditions in the mines...

"These men don't suffer, why hell, half of them don't even speak English"

 and more recently...

"I'm just a banker, doing God's work."

Lloyd Blankfein, CEO Goldman Sachs

The More Things Change...

"I can hire half of the working class to kill the other half." Jay Gould 1836-1892, Railroad Baron and Financier on his strike-breaking methods in the Great Southwestern Railroad Strike of 1886.


"Use live ammunition." Jeff Cox, Deputy Attorney General for the State of Indiana on how to deal with those in Madison, Wisconsin protesting Gov. Scott Walker's "budget repair" bill, which stripped public employees of their right to collective bargaining.