My husband's college educated, childhood friend worked for Honeywell for almost 20 years as an engineer. He graduated from Purdue University and settled with his family in Freeport, Illinois. At one time, home of good jobs for growing middle class families.
Well, not any longer.
My husband's friend has had to go through the heart breaking task of training his replacement and his former co-workers replacements in China.
Yes, their division was ripped and stripped and sent to China, thanks to the help by Bain Capital.
Yes, Sensata Technologies is owned by Bain Capital and the Romney bus tour, sure did not even attempt to get to Freeport, Illinois.
When Romney made stops in Janesville and Dubuque Monday, he was just up the road from the town of Freeport, Illinois.
But Romney did not stop in Freeport, a town that like Janesville and Dubuque has been hard hit by trade and fiscal policies that encourage corporations to shutter US factories and ship jobs overseas—and that has been even harder hit by speculators who buy up factories, strip the assets and close them.
On the day Romney was busing across the region, employees of Freeport’s Sensata Technologies plant gathered in front of the factory with handmade signs that read:
“Romney! Stop Bain Outsourcing to China”
“Mitt Romney Save Our Jobs”
“Romney: Instead of talking about JOBS, just don’t ship MINE to China”
I know how hard this is for these folks. My husband's friend is on his last leg and his job ends mid-July. I know how hard it was for him to actually FLY TO CHINA, to train his Chinese counterpart who has taken his job, his livlihood. That is some drastic and hard shit there, which is why the pressure of exposing Mitt Romney must not stop.
The Obama Campaign must ignore the idiot pols of the D.C. cocktail party circuit, who think they know the pulse of the country while touting conventional wisdom and continue the path unveiling Bain Capital, Romney "Out of Touch with average Americans", and Romney the "Outsourcer in Chief". The public not only understand this message but many have and are living through this message. This strike, negative as it may be (and the more the better) must continue.
Mitt Romney must be totally destroyed on the only platform he thinks will catapult him to the Oval Office, "as a job creator".
Mitt Romney must be known as a man who will buy anyone out for the ultimate dollar, at no cost, cold blooded and with a no-carish attitude. By the time the fall comes around, Mitt Romney must be the laughing stock of a wannabee "job creator".
Real folks, with real stories. That is what the Obama Campaign must continue to put out there EVERY DAMN DAY.
This is the reality of what a company like Bain Capital does every damn day:
The plant’s operations are rapidly skrinking as Sensata moves to outsource work from Illinois to China.
“This used to be a very high-volume plant and now it’s pretty much a ghost town…and by the end of the year it will be a ghost town”, Sensata employee Cheryl Randecker told local reporters.
Had Romney come to Freeport, he would have heard how much Bain’s approach has harmed not just the Sensata workers but Freeport and counties along the Illinois-Wisconsin stateline that have suffered more than their share of plant closings.
“Sensata is moving forward with the process of relocating jobs from their operations in Freeport to China,” explains John Blum, the chairman of the Stephenson County Board.
The value of the average worker in the United States of America means nothing any longer. Turning this country back to the time of the
"gilded age" is what Romney & Crew is all about, the American public need to be scared to death of this and what this man will do "if" given the opportunity to become President of the United States.