Vote Mitt Romney . He is Just Like Everyday Average Americans

The Mittster is just an average American. You can tell. Here are some tell-tale signs,

Among the more comical episodes of the 2008 presidential campaign was the failed effort by Republicans to paint Barack Obama as "elitist" and "out of touch." Sadly for the GOP, that attack backfired hilariously when John McCain couldn't remember how many homes he owned, said a $5 million income made someone rich, and advocated tax cuts that would save he and his heiress wife hundreds of thousands annually.

Now three years later, Mitt Romney appears poised to fall into the same gold-plated trap. After decrying President Obama for referring to the sluggish economic recovery as a "bump in the road," GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney joked with jobless Floridians that "I'm also unemployed." Of course, one feeble attempt at humor doesn't make Mitt out of touch; that takes a lifetime of experience.

Here are just some of the ways you know Mitt Romney is out of touch:

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when the $250,000,000 son of an auto magnate jokes about being unemployed.

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he stages a photo-op with an unemployed single mom in Michigan - who also happens to be the mother of a paid campaign staffer.

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he won't release his tax returns during any of his runs for office.

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when decides he will not seek donations to repay $45 million in personal loans he made to his failed presidential bid -- "the biggest ever made by a candidate in a primary campaign."

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he responds "I'm not concerned about the voters" after Tim Russert asked him "why not tell the voters of Florida and across the country how much of your own wealth you're spending?"

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when his wife Ann jokes that "Mitt doesn't even know the answer to that" when asked how many dressage horses she owns.

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he sells two of his four multimillion dollars mansions because he and his wife are, according to an aide, "downsizing and simplifying."

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he apparently forgets which state he lives in, votes in and pays taxes in - twice.

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he says Democrats are "the party of the monarchists."

You Mitt Romney is out of touch when he claims his five sons serve their nation by "helping me get elected because they think I'd be a great president."

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he avoided combat duty in the rice fields of Vietnam by getting multiple deferments to perform his Mormon mission in the vineyards of France.

More of Mitt's qualifications at the link.

Tea Bagger Hypocrite Rep. Richard Hanna (R-NY). Are There Any Other Kind of Conservative Tea Nuts

Tea Bagger Hypocrite Rep. Richard Hanna (R-NY). Are There Any Other Kind of Conservative Tea Nuts

Rep. Richard Hanna (R-NY), a freshman who won last year with Tea Party backing, campaigned vigorously against President Obama’s stimulus plan, a legislative package backed by his opponent, former Rep. Mike Arcuri (D-NY). Hanna’s ads pounded Arcuri for voting for the “failed stimulus.”

But on Tuesday, Hanna seemed to be celebrating a successful stimulus program. Starting in 2009, workers funded by the stimulus refurbished a jobs placement and innovation facility, called the REACH Center, in downtown Rome, NY. Owned by a nonprofit called Rome Up and Running, the REACH Center won the stimulus grant to employ several dozen local youth to make renovations to the building. The investment paid off. Now, the REACH Center is open for business and has landed two tenants.

As the first tenant for the REACH Center moved in this week, Hanna was on-hand for the celebration. In fact, the Rome Observer snapped a picture of Hanna attending the ribbon-cutting ceremony. No word though if he gave thanks to the “failed stimulus” for making it possible.

A tea bagger is a conservative desperately trying to make themselves and America believe they had nothing to do with voting for the economic policies that caused the great recession and causing the nation to lose $17 trillion dollars in wealth. A tea bagger is someone who believed and repeated the lies about Iraq and WMD and now wants to pretend they had nothing to do with sending over 4000 Americans to their deaths over a lie.

Why the Republican War on American Workers’ Rights Undermines the American Economy

Why the Republican War on American Workers’ Rights Undermines the American Economy

The battle has resumed in Wisconsin. The state supreme court has allowed Governor Scott Walker to strip bargaining rights from state workers.

Meanwhile, governors and legislators in New Hampshire and Missouri are attacking private unions, seeking to make the states so-called “open shop” where workers can get all the benefits of being union members without paying union dues. Needless to say this ploy undermines the capacity of unions to do much of anything. Other Republican governors and legislatures are following suit.

Republicans in Congress are taking aim at the National Labor Relations Board, which issued a relatively minor rule change allowing workers to vote on whether to unionize soon after a union has been proposed, rather than allowing employers to delay the vote for years. Many employers have used the delaying tactics to retaliate against workers who try to organize, and intimidate others into rejecting a union.

This war on workers’ rights is an assault on the middle class, and it is undermining the American economy.

The American economy can’t get out of neutral until American workers have more money in their pockets to buy what they produce. And unions are the best way to give them the bargaining power to get better pay.

For three decades after World War II – I call it the “Great Prosperity” – wages rose in tandem with productivity. Americans shared the gains of growth, and had enough money to buy what they produced.

That’s largely due to the role of labor unions. In 1955, over a third of American workers in the private sector were unionized. Today, fewer than 7 percent are.

With the decline of unions came the stagnation of American wages. More and more of the total income and wealth of America has gone to the very top. Middle-class purchasing power depended on mothers going into paid work, everyone working longer hours, and, finally, the middle class going deep into debt, using their homes as collateral.

But now all these coping mechanisms are exhausted — and we’re living with the consequence.

Some say the Great Prosperity was an anomaly. America’s major competitors lay in ruins. We had the world to ourselves. According to this view, there’s no going back.

But this view is wrong. If you want to see the same basic bargain we had then, take a look at Germany now.

Germany is growing much faster than the United States. Its unemployment rate is now only 6.1 percent (we’re now at 9.1 percent).

What’s Germany’s secret? In sharp contrast to the decades of stagnant wages in America, real average hourly pay has risen almost 30 percent there since 1985. Germany has been investing substantially in education and infrastructure.

How did German workers do it? A big part of the story is German labor unions are still powerful enough to insist that German workers get their fair share of the economy’s gains.

That’s why pay at the top in Germany hasn’t risen any faster than pay in the middle. As David Leonhardt reported in the New York Times recently, the top 1 percent of German households earns about 11 percent of all income – a percent that hasn’t changed in four decades.

Contrast this with the United States, where the top 1 percent went from getting 9 percent of total income in the late 1970s to more than 20 percent today.

The only way back toward sustained growth and prosperity in the United States is to remake the basic bargain linking pay to productivity. This would give the American middle class the purchasing power they need to keep the economy going.

Part of the answer is, as in Germany, stronger labor unions — unions strong enough to demand a fair share of the gains from productivity growth.

The current Republican assault on workers’ rights continues a thirty-year war on American workers’ wages. That long-term war has finally taken its toll on the American economy.

It’s time to fight back.


Robert Reich is Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton.

Imagine if the Democratic party tried to take away the first amendment rights of freedom of speech, freedom to assemble and freedom to petition. There would be cries by the extreme right heard from coast to coast, those mean Democrats are trying to take away basic rights guaranteed in the Constitution. Well conservative Republicans are the ones trying to take away those basic rights. Republicans are saying the average American worker has the right to shut-up and do as they are told. Did the Founders really envision an America where most Americans were mere serfs for powerful corporations. The US Constitution says no, we are not serfs, we are workers with rights. Conservatives continue to be the single greatest threat to freedom and individual dignity.

Republican Jerk of the Week - Rep. Leonard Lance (R-NJ) Deflects Rather Than Answer Questions About Medicare and Taxes

Rep. Leonard Lance (R-NJ) Deflects Rather Than Answer Questions About Medicare and Taxes

At a town hall in Westfield, NJ last Thursday, Rep. Leonard Lance (R-NJ) faced a torrent of critical questions from constituents. CranfordPatch reporter John Celock described the event, where Lance was quizzed on his support for reducing funds to Planned Parenthood, his vote to end Medicare, and on health reform.

One audience member ripped Lance for supporting Bush-era tax cuts for upper income families, and even volunteered to pay more:

“I pay a lot of taxes this year and I don’t have a problem paying more taxes,” an attendee said. “People who make a lot of money should make a contribution back to society.” He and other attendees proposed raising taxes for high-income earners and repealing the Bush-Era Tax Cuts.

As town hall attendees lobbed policy questions, Lance simply replied at times with political rebuttals. Asked about GE’s corporate tax avoiding, all Lance rebutted with a reminder that GE chairman Jeff Immelt has an appointment to a White House advisory board:

One attendee pointed to General Electric, the subject of a New York Times investigative story in March that revealed that G.E. paid no taxes in 2010 and claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion. “Those guys don’t pay a goddamn dime,” the attendee said to loud applause. “I apologize for swearing.”

Lance deflected the question, stating it would be better referred to Obama, who appointed G.E. chairman Jeffrey Immelt to lead an economic policy advisory board. He added that House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., plans to hold hearings on corporate tax issues soon.

Lance’s dodgy responses sometimes lacked a factual basis. Asked why members of Congress are privileged with a health system protected with a regulated exchange and generous subsidies, Lance mocked the audience member and accused them of being in favor of “single-payer option”:

Members of the audience asked Lance about the health care coverage he receives as a member of Congress, arguing that all Americans should have access to similar medical benefits. “From a time an American is born, why can’t that person get the exact same benefits as a member of Congress?” one attendee said. “If you tell us what you get, why can’t we get it?”

Lance replied that it sounded like the attendee favored a single-payer or government-run option for healthcare – a response confirmed by loud applause from members of the gallery. The congressman went on to argue that health insurance should be provided by employers, not the government.

Rep. Leonard Lance (R-NJ) has shown what he really is - a blockhead ideologue who stands for the atrocious polices be votes for simply because those are what he has been trained to believe. Like so many modern conservatives thinking seems to hurt his pointed head. So he thinks single-payer insurance is bad? That would be Medicare - the closest thing the USA has to single-payer. The government subsidized his health care plan - n correction, the tax payers in his district subsidize his health care. Lance is also a deficit peacock on the deficit. he says it is a problem, but refuses to admit that one of the single biggest contributors to the deficit is not ordinary spending, it is the Bush tax cuts.

Is Race Baiting Part of Eric Bolling’s Fox News Audition?

Wisconsin Conservative Republicans Batters Democracy With Sleazy "Fake Candidate" Strategy

Wisconsin Conservative Republicans Batters Democracy With Sleazy "Fake Candidate" Strategy

One of the great contributions that the progressive reformers of a century ago made to the politics of Wisconsin and the nation was the open primary.

Before Robert M. La Follette and the Wisconsin progressive movement placed the issue of how candidates were nominated for partisan offices at the forefront of the national agenda, the designation process was controlled by political bosses who took money from the robber barons of the Gilded Age and then nominated Republican and Democratic candidates who owed their allegiance to the bosses and the political paymasters rather than the people.

La Follette decried “the menace of the political machine” and detailed the corruption of the American political system by corporations, wealthy individuals and their stooges.

Why were the commands of the corporations heard and obeyed in the capitals of the state and nation”?

“It is because today there is a force operating in this country more powerful than the sovereign (citizenry) in matters pertaining to the official conduct. “The official obeys whom he serves. Nominated independently of the people, elected because there is no choice between candidates so nominated, the official feels responsibility to his master alone, and his master is the political machine of his party. The people whom he serves in theory, he may safely disobey; having the support of his political organization, he is sure of his re-nomination and knows he will be carried through the election, because his opponent will offer nothing better to the long suffering voter. ..”

To change this dire circumstance, La Follette championed the open primary, which gave power to the people – not the bosses.

Open primaries could not be controlled by bosses because anyone could enter them, no matter what their ideology or past partisanship.

If a candidate aligned with the corporations wanted to be nominated, he would have to face the voters in an open primary. That meant that the corrupt politician could not be imposed on the process by the political bosses. As La Follette said when Wisconsin legislators embraced his proposal for open primaries in 1904: “The people shall rule.”

Now, more than a century after the state enacted the nation’s first open primary law, Wisconsin still makes it very easy for anyone to enter the primaries of the Democratic and Republican parties.

This has frustrated some Wisconsinites in recent weeks, as Republicans have announced plans to recruit “fake” Democrats to run in the primaries to nominate Democratic challenges to Republican state senators who are being recalled. The Republicans hope to create confusion among the voters, to force Democrats to spend precious campaign money and to delay the eventual day of reckoning for the legislative allies of Governor Scott Walker.

The recruitment drive is a sleazy stunt, and Wisconsinites will see through it.

In fact, it will do severe damage to Republican prospects – so long as Democrats do not climb into the gutter with the GOP.

Some critics of the governor and his agenda have proposed that Democrats might want to mimic the GOP stunt of recruiting fake candidates.

For instance, the group “We Are Wisconsin,” which brings together community, environmental, farm and labor groups that oppose Walker and his allies, has suggested that:

“Given the situation Republicans have so despicably concocted to manipulate these recall elections, it is the opinion of We Are Wisconsin that it would be in the interest of Democrats to run candidates in the Republican primaries to ensure the dates of the general election are predictably on August 9th, and that Republicans are forced to win a primary election instead of diverting their unlimited resources to back their “fake” candidates against 'legitimate' Democrats. To that end, it would be in the interest of flipping the Wisconsin Senate that interested Democrats contact the Democratic Party of Wisconsin.

“This opinion is not rendered lightly. This is the most cynical manipulation of the Wisconsin electoral process in our state’s history, and is being done by a Republican party that has demonstrated no respect for the rule of law and our state’s tradition of clean elections and good governance. Unfortunately, however, after evaluating the strategic implications of their despicable tactics, to simply stand idly by would amount to unilateral disarmament and would almost certainly thwart the will of the hundreds of thousands of voters who support recalling Republican Senators in the upcoming elections.”

After initially sending some mixed signals, Democratic Party leaders seem to be rejecting this suggestion. And rightly so.

The "We Are Wisconsin" proposal embraced the “two-wrongs-make-a-right” theory of politics.

That may work in Chicago or Louisiana. But it won’t work in Wisconsin.

One can hardly blame Democrats for doing onto others as is being done to them. It is one of the great comic ironies of the last fifty years of US politics that Republicans from Watergate to Reagan's Iran-Contra scandal to the Supreme Court appointing Bush president in 2000, that Republican use so many dirty tricks and are so intrinsically corrupt. If once in a while Democrats turned the tables it would not be a good thing, but it would be understandable. Democrats may not be perfect, but at least they play by the rules most of the time. It may be a hundred years before conservatives can claim the same.

Why Does Looney Conservative Presidential Candidate Rick Santorum hate Women: Doctors Providing Abortions To Rape And Incest Victims Should Be Criminally Charged

All Are God's Children: On Including Gays and Lesbians in the Church and Society

Republicans Believe Things About the Economy That Just Are Not True

Deficit cutting has become the common 'wisdom' of economic policy wonks in DC. But it can't muster one rational argument

Sometimes, it can be fun to get inside a crazy worldview to ask how it deals with contradictory evidence. For example, how do creationists reconcile their view that all plants and animals were created in their current form around 10,000 years ago, with fossil evidence of life forms dating back hundreds of millions of years?

Treasury Secretary Geithner Outlines President's Plans For Job Creation And Economic Growth

In this vein, it's worth asking how the proponents of deficit reduction think that lower deficits will lead to increased growth and job creation in an economy mired in a severe slump? There is not an easy answer.

There is a standard "econ 101" story about how reducing deficits can boost the economy. The theory goes that if the government reduces its deficit, and therefore borrows less, it will reduce interest rates. Lower interest rates will, in turn, give firms incentive to invest more.

Lower interest rates should also cause the dollar to decline, since it will make US government bonds and other dollar assets less attractive to foreign investors. If the dollar falls in value, then our goods will be more competitive on world markets. This will cause us to import less and export more, thereby creating jobs.

However, is this what the deficit hawks believe will happen now? The interest rate on 10-year Treasury bonds is already down to 3.0%. Assuming a 2% inflation rate, this translates into a real rate of about 1%. How much lower do the deficit hawks think interest rates will fall if we were to sharply cut the deficit? Furthermore, how much more investment do they think we can induce even if we got a large reduction (for example, 0.5 percentage point) in real interest rates?

Do they think that this sort of decline in interest rates will send the dollar tumbling and thereby improve our trade balance? Against which currencies will a lower interest rate cause the dollar to fall sharply?

Neither of these stories really passes the laugh test. At best, we may hope to see modestly lower interest rates if cutting the budget deficit slows growth further. But there is no reason to expect any future decline to have any more impact than the recent decline in the 10-year Treasury rate from 3.6% in the winter to near 3.0% present this month.

There is another story that the deficit hawks occasionally push. This one says that if we lay off workers in the public sector, that will increase employment in the private sector. The story here is, presumably, that mass layoffs of public sector workers will depress the wages of workers further, thereby making it more profitable for employers to hire them. There's a simple problem in this picture. In order for wages to actually fall, the additional employment in the private sector must not be as large as the job loss in the public sector.

In other words, if we lay off 500,000 public sector workers, then the private sector must increase employment by less than 500,000 workers; otherwise, wages would rise, not fall, and businesses would then not have any incentive to hire more workers. This means that this route of economic stimulus through government cutbacks can, at best, get us close to where we were before the layoffs. It is not a way to add jobs to the economy. And even in a best case scenario, it would take a considerable period of time to get close to that situation, since wages do not fall quickly.

Neither of these channels sounds very promising, as almost any serious person would have to acknowledge. This leaves the mystery channel of bad feelings. This story goes that businesses feel bad about the deficit. They are worried that they might pay higher taxes in the future, there could be inflation, or the government could collapse. For these reasons, businesses that would otherwise be investing their hefty profits are, instead, sitting on them.

There are two problems with the bad feelings story. First, businesses actually are investing at a pretty healthy rate. There was huge overbuilding of structures in the real estate boom, but investment in equipment and software as a share of GDP is almost back to its pre-recession level. Given the excess capacity in this sector, we really should be asking why investment is so high, not why it is low.

The second problem with this story is that the fear of higher taxes in the future is a good reason for businesses to try to invest and earn profits now. When the congressional budget office used various models to examine the impact of Bush-type tax cuts, the ones that showed the most positive effects were ones that assumed the tax cuts would be temporary. This effectively pulled investment and work effort forward into the low tax period. The point is that if people really believed they would pay much higher taxes in the future, then they should be working hard and investing today – the opposite of the deficit hawk story.

So, finally, we don't have a coherent story as to how reducing the budget deficit will boost growth – just as the creationists don't have a coherent explanation for what we know about the plant and animal kingdoms. The big difference is that the deficit hawks are determining economic policy.


Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR).

Republicans policies - conservative economic policies - whether they were implemented by Republicans and sometimes Democrats are largely responsible for shifting and redistributing most of America's wealth into the top 10%. Anyone really believe the richest ten percent of America does 90% of the work. We live a reward wealth punish work conservative economy. It did not benefit the middle-class or working poor in the 1980s or from 2000 to 2008. No matter how they package it, the same old disproved policies will not work now. We do not have a deficit problem in America we have a revenue problem. We need to have the people who benefit the most pay more in revenue so we have have a civilized economy that grows jobs for everyone, not just the wealthy elite.

Fox News and Anti-American Zealot Michelle Malkin Call Jobs Initiative a Boondoogle

Fox News and Anti-American Zealot Michelle Malkin Call Jobs Initiative a Boondoogle

Fox & Friends host Steve Doocy and Fox News contributor Michelle Malkin mocked a new Obama-endorsed job training initiative, saying it was part of "the usual federal job training boondoggle" that only serves to "redistribute unemployment." However, many employers in multiple industries have said they need more trained applicants for their skilled labor positions.

Obama Endorsed "Manufacturing Skills Credentialing" Program

Obama Endorsed Efforts To Get 500,000 Community College Students Credentialed For Manufacturing Jobs. During a speech at Northern Virginia Community College, Obama endorsed jobs training initiatives at community colleges and called on Congress to reauthorize the Workforce Investment Act of 1998:

So we've got to do everything we can, everything in our power, to strengthen and rebuild the middle class. We've got to be able to test new ideas, pull people together, and throw everything we've got at this challenge. So we're going to have to have all hands on deck.

And that's why, last year, we brought together major companies and community colleges to launch a new campaign, led by business leaders from across the country, called Skills for America. And the idea was simple. If we could match up schools and businesses, we could create pipelines right from the classroom to the office or the factory floor. This would help workers find better jobs, and it would help companies find the highly educated and highly trained people that they need in order to prosper and to remain competitive.

So today, we're announcing several new commitments by the private sector, colleges, and the National Association of Manufacturers, to help make these partnerships a reality. Through these efforts, we're going to make it possible for 500,000 community college students -- half a million community college students -- to get industry-accepted credentials for manufacturing jobs that companies across America are looking to fill. Because the irony is even though a lot of folks are looking for work, there are a lot of companies that are actually also looking for skilled workers. There's a mismatch that we can close. And this partnership is a great way to do it.

So if you're a company looking to hire, you'll know exactly what kind of training went into a specific degree. If you're considering attending a community college, you'll be able to know that the diploma you earn will be valuable when you hit the job market. [Remarks by the President at a Skills for America's Future Manufacturing Event, 6/8/11, via WhiteHouse.gov]

Fox & Friends: Job Training Initiative Is A "Boondoggle"

From the July 9 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends:

DOOCY: So there he is, Michelle, announcing a job training program to create jobs, retrain people. Isn't that what the stimulus was supposed to do? We were going to create all these job, people were going to work for years. That didn't pan out. Now this?

MALKIN: Yes, the same old tired, trite response to economic crisis, which is to grow government even more and grow the usual federal jobs training boondoggle. Since the '70s, these things have turned out to be nothing but make-work jobs that redistribute unemployment, and if you actually scrutinize the way that the stimulus job training programs have worked over the last couple of years, what you'll see is people who get trained for jobs that don't exist. Heck of a job, Obama.

DOOCY: No kidding. And think of how much we saw some of those facts in the last year or so, some of those jobs, each one, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to create and to work for a little while, but they don't exist anymore.

MALKIN: Right. And in some cases, and I've scrutinized some of these job training programs over the last couple of years, what you have is most -- what he's trying to do is pander to the youth demographic. But the summer youth job training programs in one case, I believe it was philadelphia, were used to pay young people to lobby for more job training money! [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 6/9/11]

The only research Malkin and Fox have ever done is how to be a fascist-lite Anti-American imbecile. Malkin and Fox are on record as calling anyone that belongs to a union - teachers, police, firefighters - as socialist thugs. Malkin apparently didn't call any manufacturing group and see what they thought.

But Employers And Industry Leaders Say They Need More Trained Applicants

WSJ: "Manufacturers are scrambling to find enough skilled workers." From the May 6 edition of The Wall Street Journal:

U.S. manufacturing companies, long known for layoffs and shipping jobs overseas, now find themselves in a very different position: scrambling for scarce talent at home.

Large and small manufacturers of everything from machine tools to chemicals are scouring for potential hires in high schools, community colleges and the military. They are poaching from one another, retraining people who used to have white-collar jobs, and in some cases even hiring former prisoners who learned machinist skills behind bars.

Even with unemployment near 9%, manufacturers are struggling to find enough skilled workers because of a confluence of three trends.

First, after falling for more than a decade, the number of U.S. manufacturing jobs is growing modestly, with manufacturers adding 25,000 workers in April, the seventh straight month of gains, according to payroll firm Automatic Data Processing Inc. and consultancy Macroeconomic Advisers. The Labor Department's jobs report on Friday is expected to show moderate employment growth in the overall economy.

Second, baby-boomer retirements are starting to sap factories of their most experienced workers. An estimated 2.7 million U.S. manufacturing employees, or nearly a quarter of the total, are 55 or older.

Third, the U.S. education system isn't turning out enough people with the math and science skills needed to operate and repair sophisticated computer-controlled factory equipment, jobs that often pay $50,000 to $80,000 a year, plus benefits. Manufacturers say parents and guidance counselors discourage bright kids from even considering careers in manufacturing. [The Wall Street Journal, 5/6/11]

Plastics Trade Publication: "Concerns About Finding Skilled Workers" Are Stifling Industry Recovery. From Plastics News:

After years of cutbacks, layoffs and scraping for work, business is finally picking up for the tooling industry, but early signs of recovery are bringing with them concerns about finding skilled workers to handle more work today and training a future workforce.

At the same time, fears the economy could slow again are keeping many firms from plunging head first into new hiring.

"Everyone's a little gun-shy," said Gary Chastain, consulting and training manager for RJG Inc. "When the big downturn happened, people cut back, and they've continued to do as much as possible with as few employees as possible."

Chastain, who runs training sessions focused on tooling for the Traverse City-based consulting company, said in a May 31 telephone interview that he is busier than he has been in years, running on-site classes for firms that cannot afford to take employees off the job for classroom training. Both mold-making companies and workers need to fine-tune capabilities to keep up with the increasing demands on the tooling industry from original equipment manufacturers and molders alike.

"Most companies are [anorexic] because everyone is afraid to staff up," he said.

And just behind the concerns about current staffing and a shortage of skilled workers are long-term worries about where the next generation of toolmakers will come from. [Plastics News, 6/6/11]

President Of The Association For Manufacturing Technology: "Public-Private Collaboration" Plays "Crucial Role" In Revitalizing Industry.

Why does Fox and Malkin hate America. Why do these conservatives want America to fail.