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Four years ago, American factories were closing at an alarming rate.  By 2008, manufacturing had experienced a decade of brutal losses, during which more than 55,000 American facilities closed, and the millions of middle class jobs these plants supported were shipped overseas.  As more and more jobs were offshored, the prevailing mentality in Washington was that this was an inevitable trend that the federal government could do nothing to reverse.

Now, in contrast, President Obama is actively challenging this fatalist mindset.  He believes that a resurgence in American manufacturing is possible, and he’s taking an active role in making it happen.  Obama has made onshoring–bringing offshored American facilities back to the United States–a key component of his economic plan.  Results clearly linked to Obama’s policies include American exports topping $2 trillion for the first time ever in 2011 and the economy adding over the past four years more than half a million manufacturing jobs, reversing a decade-long trend of losses.

To encourage companies to invest in domestic production, President Obama worked to reduce the amount of time and money it takes to open facilities in the United States.  This included tax cuts, like the provision he signed in 2011 that allowed companies to write off the complete costs of investments in domestic plants and equipment.  It also involved streamlining bureaucracy that often slows doing business in the United States.  For example, to attract both foreign and American companies, Obama signed an executive order creating SelectUSA, an agency housed in the Department of Commerce assigned to eliminate investment barriers and facilitate growth.

In response to the Obama administration’s sustained commitment to American manufacturing, onshoring is beginning to grow, and companies of all sizes are bringing their facilities back to the United States.  This includes mom-and-pop operations like Pop Outerwear, a small company that makes snowboarding equipment. It moved its facilities from China to the Bay Area in 2011.  It also includes footwear, a notoriously offshored product.  In 2010, KEEN, a fast-growing shoe manufacturer based in Portland, Ore., moved production of its line of work boots from China to a new factory five miles from its corporate headquarters.  (more…)

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Speaking at a campaign rally in Ohio with former President Clinton, Vice President Joe Biden takes on what he sees as “patently false assertions” found in a Romney auto ad.

By Richard Trumka
President, AFL-CIO

Americans are about to choose among candidates who are debating whether to cut benefits for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and whether the richest Americans should pay their fair share of taxes.

Former Gov. Mitt Romney’s plan to turn Medicare into a voucher program and increase health care costs for seniors is a deciding issue in key battleground states and for key electorates. Another deciding issue is the scandalously low tax rate that people like Romney get away with paying.

Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of senators who are not up for reelection is working behind closed doors in Washington to reach a so-called grand bargain that completely bypasses this debate and ignores the views of voters.

What is the grand bargain? It boils down to lower tax rates for rich people — paid for by benefit cuts for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. These are precisely the issues that are being debated so vigorously in the campaign, and voters do not want anything to do with such a deal.

The pundits will tell you that Democrats have no choice but to accept Social Security and Medicare benefit cuts — because this is the only way Republicans will agree to more tax revenue. This is the grand bargain.

We could not disagree more. (more…)

By Dave Johnson
Fellow, Campaign for America's Future

Right now a company named Sensata is moving equipment out of a factory in Freeport, Ill. and shipping it to a factory in China. Sensata will be laying off all of the American workers, but first they are making the workers train their Chinese replacements. The workers’ last day is the day before our election. Here’s the thing: this company is owned by Bain Capital, and Mitt Romney — who says he is against shipping jobs to China — will make a fortune from the move to China.

The Sensata employees have set up a camp outside the factory that they call Bainport and are trying to stop the Bain trucks that are moving the equipment out for shipment to China. These soon-to-be-jobless workers have asked Romney to come help them.

This is a tremendous opportunity for Mitt Romney. As the former head of Bain Capital and with all the visibility of a presidential campaign, he could step in and help these workers. It offers him the chance to demonstrate to voters that he means the things he says on the campaign trail, and is not just saying these things to get votes. But Romney has refused.

Mitt Romney says on the campaign trail that he will crack down on China and is against companies shipping jobs to China. These are very popular positions to take — the public overwhelmingly wants to see things made in America again, and understands that China’s trade cheating is costing us dearly. So a candidate for president would certainly say he is for doing this. But when it comes time to show that he will actually means it and will do something about it, it looks as though Romney is not doing it. These workers have asked for his help, but he won’t do it. Voters should know about this, and make up their own minds about whether Mitt Romney means what he says, or just says what he needs to say to win.

Bain Capital And Sensata

Mitt Romney started the “private equity” firm Bain Capital. Bain’s business model is to purchase companies using “leveraged buyouts” that borrow huge sums using the purchased company’s own assets as collateral, uses the borrowed money to immediately pay itself, then cuts costs by doing things like sending jobs to China, cutting wages and manipulating tax rules to cut taxes owed, along with standard big-business practices like consolidating business units, taking advantage of economies of scale not available to smaller competitors, squeezing distribution channels for price cuts, and other practices that bring competitive advantages. (See So DID Mitt Romney Really “Create Jobs” At Staples? and Truthout: Romney & Company Shipped Every Single Delphi UAW Job to China.) After reorganizing the purchased companies and cutting costs — namely: you — Bain then “harvests” them for profit.

One company that Bain Capital purchased — after Romney’s time as CEO — is Sensata, a sensor manufacturer that makes key components for our automobile supply chain. Sensata then announced it is closing the factory in Freeport, Ill., and sending all of the manufacturing and jobs to China. This is significant because China is engaged in an effort to capture the automobile manufacturing supply chain, and sensors are a key strategic chokepoint. China built a factory for Sensata, and offers other incentives to the company to move manufacturing there.

So Bain is currently moving all of the equipment out of the Freeport factory, preparing to shut it down and lay off all of the American workers. Bain/Sensata brought in Chinese workers and made the Freeport workers train them. Bain/Sensata is moving the equipment out of the Freeport factory and shipping it to China right now.

The Sensata employees heard Romney on the campaign trail, and somehow got the idea that he opposes sending our jobs to China just because he says that he opposes sending our jobs to China. So the Sensata workers asked him to come to Freeport/Bainport and help them. Read on to learn about Romney’s response to the Sensata workers, and how Romney is actually making big money right now from shipping their jobs to China.

“The week before they came they took the American flag down outside the plant. The week after they left they put it back up.”

Romney Making A Fortune From Sensata Sending Jobs To China

While Mitt Romney no longer manages Bain Capital, he still has millions of dollars in Bain funds and will personally make a fortune from this company moving to China – both from profits and from tax breaks. (What you and I consider a fortune, Romney might consider a drop in the bucket.) (more…)

By Hugh J. Campbell
Philadelphia, Pa., son of a Steelworker

Self-proclaimed as, Independent and America, NEWSMAX’s article Romney’s $2 Billion Sacrifice for America is a not so independent “Hail Mary” shot to convince voters to trust Mitt Romney’s results at Bain to aid our nation to solve its economic problems. Stephen M. R. Covey in his book “The Speed of Trust” makes a persuasive case that trust is situation specific, i.e. don’t trust a dermatologist to perform heart surgery.

Romney’s results at Bain are less relevant to returning America to its former greatness than Romney’s intent and agenda once he is President. Will his agenda be to pander to his contributors, to whom he needed to vilify the 47%, to get them to contribute more or will he reverse his Bain Days agenda, to stop the bleeding of jobs? If America is like a hen house and can voters trust Romney not to return to his wolf role at Bain?

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Mike Lux
Co-founder and CEO, Progressive Strategies

I am a huge fan of the idea of the Obama campaign closing with putting out an economic plan for the next four years. This is something I have been urging on them not only them but a number of other candidates in tough races for quite a while. I really believe that voters have a deep innate understanding that the economy came off the rails four years ago in a more serious way than usual, that it was due to some big structural problems that had been building for a long time, and that we needed some big, comprehensive ideas to revive the middle class and get the economy back on the right road. I think a great many Americans understand this deep in their bones, far better than the elites in DC who are in too much of a bubble, and are doing too well, to get it. Because of this, voters have been hungry for a serious plan, for big ideas on how to deal with what ails us.

So I am very glad that the plan is the central part of Obama’s final message, and I think it is working: Obama remains ahead in the all-important swing states. I would have opted for a bigger and bolder plan if I were writing it, both for political and policy reasons, but having this plan be at the heart of the closing argument is a great thing. But there are two other pieces to the message that I think should be part of the entire Democratic party’s end game message, and their progressive allies as well. These campaigns have a lot of ads running, and a lot of speeches being given, and there can be more than one element to the message.

The first is to bring the 47% video back to the table. That video came out shortly after the Democrats cleaned the clocks of the Republicans in terms of convention messaging. Voters had moved decisively toward Democrats, in races up and down the ticket, after hearing the two parties contrasting messages of “you’re on your own” vs. “we’re all in this together” — and then the 47% video reinforced and hardened voters’ rejection of Republican values. We had them on the run with a gap that was widening and solidifying. In the aftermath of the first debate, where Romney acted like he was a Democrat and the president failed to make a strong values argument, and worst of all failed to make the contrast between the ideas Romney discussed in the 47% video and Obama’s “we’re all in this together” values, the race returned to the deadlocked election it had been before the conventions. Worse, the Obama team and the many Democratic outside groups doing ads didn’t go back to that values argument which the 47% video invoked, and voters stopped thinking about it. I hope that both the progressive groups doing ads and mail and calls in the final days of the campaign and the Obama campaign make the 47% part of the closing argument.

Here’s the other thing I hope the president, vice president, and Democrats in general do in these closing days: remind voters that this is not just about Romney but about the entire philosophy and values of the Republican Party. One of the things that is absolutely clear in the polling reports I am reading is that the reason the president remains ahead in the swing states is that the brand of the entire Republican party, including Mitt Romney but not exclusively him for sure, is dragging them down. Congressional Republicans, whose intellectual leader is their VP nominee, is the most unpopular institution in American politics.

It’s been interesting to me throughout the campaign that Obama has run pretty much exclusively against Romney and to a lesser extent Ryan, and have never chosen to run against the far more unpopular Republican Congress the way we did in the 1996 Clinton re-elect, and the way Harry Truman did in his 1948 campaign — the last two Democrats to run for re-election with Republicans in control of the House. In our 1996 race, we made the decision early on to make the race not against Bob Dole but far more against Newt Gingrich — we ran far more attack ads against Newt than we ever did against Dole. (more…)

Four years ago, the average college student carried a credit card balance of $3,173.  Half of all college students had four or more credit cards, and only 17 percent regularly paid off the complete balance of their cards each month.  Credit card companies aggressively targeted young people because many didn’t fully understand what having a credit card meant. This allowed companies to charge students high interest rates and profit from fees when students used their cards to live beyond their means.

Now, in contrast, the federal government prevents credit card companies from exploiting teenagers, giving students a chance to learn how to be financially responsible before they’re saddled with a lifetime of debt.  The Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act (CARD Act), which went into effect in February 2010, limits the way credit card companies can interact with young people, making it harder for banks to trap students with deceptive offers.  Now, only 35 percent of students have a credit card—down 7% from two years ago.  Those who have cards are also being more careful with them: 33 percent of student cardholders carry no balance on their cards and 41 percent carry balances less than $500.  (more…)

By Jim Hightower
Author, Commentator, America’s Number One Populist

Poor Mitt Romney. To dodge the tax payments he owes to America, the multimillionaire has for years stashed piles of his annual income in such secret offshore hideaways as Swiss bank accounts and the Cayman Islands. This has been very, very good for his personal fortune, but it’s been very, very bad for his public political image.

This internal conflict might explain why Romney chose Paul Ryan to be his running mate. Ryan bills himself as a big, big, BIG thinker, and last year he came out with a really big thought that must’ve touched Mitt’s heart, for it offered a happy solution to Romney’s tax shelter dilemma. In a magazine interview, Ryan complained about offshore shelters – not because they are tax dodges, but because they’re offshore. His solution? “Let’s make this country a tax shelter,” he bubbled!

How’s that for a big idea? Ryan proposes to make America as small and deceitful as the Caymans, a safe harbor where the ultra-wealthy of the world can hide their loot from public need. Yes, this would still leave Mitt a tax dodger, but, by gollies, at least he’d be doing his dodging right here in the USA! (more…)