Free Republic

Ford Motor Company made headlines on Wednesday, September 9, when, during an investor conference, CEO Mark Fields told attendees that it will invest $1.6 billion building a manufacturing plant in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, and will move all of its small car production there during the next two to three years. The announcement was hardly news as Ford has been talking about the shift for more than a year. But in the throes of an election that has both candidates decrying companies that send jobs to low-wage countries, the decision was an invitation for attention. The next day, during a...

Google has abruptly killed off one of its April Fools' Day "jokes" after it caused outrage online, with multiple people claiming that it lost them their jobs. The premise of the joke was simple. In Gmail, next to the standard "Reply" button, Google added a "Mic drop" button. Using it would reply to the email, archive it — and also add a GIF of a "Despicable Me" minion dropping a mic. "Email's great, but sometimes you just wanna hit the eject button," Google wrote in a tongue-and-cheek blog post explaining its purpose. "Like those heated threads at work, when everyone's...

A new White House petition wants President Obama to nationalize the "Twinkie industry," saving the popular junk food from possible extinction. "We the undersigned, hereby request Barack Obama to immediately Nationalize the Twinkie industry and prevent our nation from losing her sweet creamy center," a petition on the White House "We the People" website requests ...

Ah, the start of Labor Day weekend. Wouldn't it be nice if tomorrow's monthly employment report was good enough to honor its namesake holiday! This is the point where I usually have the nerve to make a prediction on whether or not the numbers will live up to the expectations of the experts, who believe tomorrow's figure will show that 120,000 jobs were lost in August. If that's the number, it would be only slightly better than the 131,000 jobs that disappeared in July. I'm not going out on a limb this time. I don't want to ruin my good...

At a time when our economy is struggling to produce jobs, the left is still intent upon keeping Americans from earning a livelihood. On Saturday, Democratic Representative Gabriella Giffords held a public hearing on a proposed copper mine in her district in Southern Arizona. But rather than being a public hearing designed to share information on the project, some felt it was more accurately a public hearing designed to present only one point of view. Not surprisingly, Ms. Giffords, all four panel members and all but one speaker were against the project. In a letter to the editor, one attendee,...

The Obama administration itself estimates that cap and trade will involve increased costs from 2012 to 2019 alone of $645 billion, and admits in its own budget that the actual costs could be much higher than that, depending on permit prices over those years. Indeed, other estimates put the costs three times higher. So the increased burden on each Ameri can over this period alone would be $2,100 to $6,300. For a family with two children, that would be $8,400 to $25,200, with much more to come after 2019. These increased costs are effectively a new tax on the American...

Gov. Mitt Romney flirted with abolishing a state advisory commission on gay youth for promoting a parade featuring a crossdressing master of ceremonies and embracing transgender teens, a spokesman said Friday. Initially, Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom said the governor, who signed a proclamation hailing a similar parade in 2003, considering killing the Gov.'s Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth because the parade press release was issued without the administration's blessing. On Friday, Fehrnstrom expanded on that explanation. "This year what was brought to our attention was a press release that was not authorized by this office but which went out...

WHY ARE THERE SO MANY JOBS GOING OUT OF THE USA?

Battered by the tech slowdown, EDS is shipping white-collar jobs offshore to catch up with low-cost competitors. The new Electronic Data System office in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) is half a world away from company headquarters in Plano, Tex. Getting to this Indian office requires a bumpy two-hour drive from downtown Mumbai. At every stoplight women dressed in rags and holding emaciated, dull-eyed infants tap car windows to beg. In the slums lining the roads, thousands of people live crammed into dirt-floored rooms, sheltered from monsoon rains by plastic sheets. At the end of the drive is a heavily guarded, new...

Xerox to cut another 165 jobs The Associated Press12/12/02 1:08 AM ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) -- Xerox Corp. will lay off another 165 workers from the Rochester area, officials said Wednesday. The job cuts will come from Xerox Engineering Systems, which employs about 230 people in the region, most at a site in East Rochester. The unit is a wholly owned subsidiary that designs and manufactures wide-format printers, such as those used for engineering plans and blueprints. Xerox had intended to sell the unit to raise funds and streamline operations. Instead, "we are folding that unit back into the corporation...

Alcatel to close Spokane office SPOKANE (AP) - Alcatel, which spent about $290 million to buy a Spokane technology startup four years ago, plans to close its office here by the middle of next year. Twenty-six people will lose their jobs by next July, about 16 of them engineers and the rest involved in marketing and support, Alcatel spokesman Ed Essa said. The decision was driven by the need to consolidate operations amid an economic downturn, Essa said. "We're just today releasing our next generation of networking products," high-speed data devices called switches, which are being designed at the...

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCERhttp://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/99348_smelter11.shtml Closed smelter Malaysia-bound; 300 jobs lost in Stevens CountyWednesday, December 11, 2002THE ASSOCIATED PRESSADDY -- A closed magnesium smelter that used to be this Stevens County town's largest employer will be dismantled and moved to Malaysia.The tentative $21 million deal ends any hope that Alcoa Inc. might reopen the plant and rehire some of the 300 workers who were laid off last year.Ozzie Wilkinson, a manager overseeing about 25 employees at the closed smelter, said the sale includes the furnaces, buildings and other noticeable assets.Left would be building foundations and the leveled site where another industry could be...