Saturday, January 07, 2012 11:06:20 PM
Obama to promote businesses hiring at home
Associated Press
January 7, 2012
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Obama is highlighting companies that have returned jobs to the U.S. and he says that's one more way of putting people back to work.
The White House plans a forum Wednesday, called "Insourcing American Jobs," that will bring together business leaders who shifted work back home. The president said Saturday in his weekly radio and Internet address that the event will discuss ways business leaders can return more jobs to the country.
"We're heading in the right direction. And we're not going to let up," Obama said on the heels of the government reporting Friday that the unemployment rate fell to 8.5 percent in December.
Obama noted that the jobs report showed the economy added more than 200,000 private sector jobs last month and that more than 3 million private sector jobs had been added during the past 22 months. He said the nation was "starting 2012 with manufacturing on the rise and the American auto industry on the mend."
The president said the U.S. couldn't return "to the days when the financial system was stacking the deck against ordinary Americans," citing his decision to install former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray as the director of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau while the Senate was on break, circumventing Republican opposition to the appointment.
Obama said his "New Year's resolution" to all Americans was to "keep doing whatever it takes to move this economy forward and to make sure that middle-class families regain the security they've lost over the past decade."
New York Rep. Nan Hayworth, delivering the Republican address, said the jobs report showed the difficulty that many Americans face in finding work. Hayworth said the unemployment rate has remained above 8 percent for 35 straight months, "the longest such stretch since the Great Depression" of the 1930s.
"Leaders in Washington should have no higher priority this year than getting our economy back to creating jobs," Hayworth said.
The New York congresswoman said House Republicans would promote small business and reduce government regulation.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-01-07/obama-insourcing-jobs/52431472/1 [with comments]
===
A Dimly Flickering Light in a Darkened Downtown
Art Oehlke runs a vintage store, the 530 Shop, in Lorain, Ohio.
Michael McElroy for The New York Times
His store is on Broadway, just before it meets Lake Erie.
Michael McElroy for The New York Times
The mostly abandoned strip is a stark contrast to the town's bustle in the 1950s.
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
Published: January 7, 2012
LORAIN, Ohio — The dark, empty storefronts that clog the heart of this aging industrial city stare blankly at the street, their fading signs mute reminders of better and busier times.
But just before Broadway dead-ends into Lake Erie, there is a store whose windows are always bright. The 530 Shop, a vintage store with an eclectic assortment of items, from cribbage boards to antique lamps, has been open seven days a week for five years, according to its owner, Art Oehlke.
It is one of the few remaining businesses in this mostly abandoned strip that used to bustle with shoppers when the steel mill and factories flourished. In a grimly familiar Rust Belt refrain, malls came and manufacturing went, and storefronts went dark.
The decline inspired Mr. Oehlke, who is 78, to open the 530 Shop in a building constructed by his grandfather. He wanted to bring some life back into downtown, an effort he now believes was futile. But he continues to run the shop anyway, hoping every day for customers and greeting them warmly when they come, which is not very often.
“It’s slower than hell,” said Mr. Oehlke (pronounced EL-key) on a recent Friday. “Some days it’s so deserted, I feel like I’m the only one here.”
The shop is packed with objects he picked up at estate sales: old maps, lamps, vintage hats, board games, cake platters, license plates, crucifixes and ceramic eagles. American propaganda posters from World War II and photographs of Lorain in its heyday hang on the walls.
Mr. Oehlke never finished high school, dropping out to take a job. He has worked as, among other things, a welder, a truck driver and a sand dredger. Still, he has a special talent for spotting unique objects, which he applied full time after retiring. He selects only things he finds strange or interesting. Never anything new, and never anything that can be found at Walmart, a store he calls “rotten” for how he believes it treats its employees and its suppliers.
But his selection does not draw many customers. The most recent sale he made was two days before, of three nutcracker dolls for $1 each. Sales would be better, he believes, in a college town.
More often people want to sell him things. They bring in belongings of older relatives: rings, collections of comic books and records. They need the money, he said. But these days, he does too, so he rarely obliges them.
“In Lorain, everyone is selling everything,” Mr. Oehlke said. “People are selling stuff they don’t ordinarily want to sell, stuff that’s been in the family.”
Recently a young woman who had driven from several hours away tried to sell him some of her belongings, including books and magazines, he said. He had bought things from her before, mostly out of pity, but on that day he could not afford to. She stayed in the store for some time, he said, crying softly in a back aisle.
On the recent Friday, a man in a blue wool hat came in with a plastic bag full of old records.
“Do you buy albums?” he asked, placing scruffy copies of Stevie Wonder, Funkadelic, the Ohio Players and Donna Summer on the counter.
Mr. Oehlke said he did not, but chatted with him anyway. The man’s name was Jason Freeman. He said the last time he had worked was six years ago, cleaning steel dust at the steel mill. Now, at 52, he collects cans and looks for homes left empty in evictions, salvaging the belongings that people leave behind.
It took him two full days, he said, to transfer all the albums in this particular collection to his apartment, carrying them in double plastic bags on his bicycle.
Though estate sales are the source of most of Mr. Oehlke’s merchandise, he is still struck by how weird it is to be sifting through the remains of a stranger’s life.
“It’s a funny feeling when you go in a house and there is stuff on a night stand as if they had just left,” he said. “I never did get used to that feeling.”
Once he had a start at a sale when he came upon an old man who had lived in the house sitting quietly in a chair in a back bedroom, an encounter that made him sorry for the man and angry at the organizers.
“They could have put him somewhere else,” he said.
He often feels sorry for elderly parents whose children are intent on selling their belongings. Once a man who looked to be in his 30s arrived with his mother offering some of her belongings for sale.
“I could tell she hated giving up her stuff,” he said. “It’s your life, and they are selling it.”
Mr. Oehlke did not say how much the shop makes. But a clue, he said, is in the thermostat on the wall near the cash register, which showed 45 degrees. If the store were more profitable, he said, it would be warmer.
But he preferred to see the bright side.
“It’s got an advantage,” he said. “If I have to go somewhere, I already have my coat on.”
© 2012 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/us/recession-takes-toll-in-lorain-ohio.html
===
from earlier this string, (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=69133046 and preceding and following
Associated Press
January 7, 2012
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Obama is highlighting companies that have returned jobs to the U.S. and he says that's one more way of putting people back to work.
The White House plans a forum Wednesday, called "Insourcing American Jobs," that will bring together business leaders who shifted work back home. The president said Saturday in his weekly radio and Internet address that the event will discuss ways business leaders can return more jobs to the country.
"We're heading in the right direction. And we're not going to let up," Obama said on the heels of the government reporting Friday that the unemployment rate fell to 8.5 percent in December.
Obama noted that the jobs report showed the economy added more than 200,000 private sector jobs last month and that more than 3 million private sector jobs had been added during the past 22 months. He said the nation was "starting 2012 with manufacturing on the rise and the American auto industry on the mend."
The president said the U.S. couldn't return "to the days when the financial system was stacking the deck against ordinary Americans," citing his decision to install former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray as the director of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau while the Senate was on break, circumventing Republican opposition to the appointment.
Obama said his "New Year's resolution" to all Americans was to "keep doing whatever it takes to move this economy forward and to make sure that middle-class families regain the security they've lost over the past decade."
New York Rep. Nan Hayworth, delivering the Republican address, said the jobs report showed the difficulty that many Americans face in finding work. Hayworth said the unemployment rate has remained above 8 percent for 35 straight months, "the longest such stretch since the Great Depression" of the 1930s.
"Leaders in Washington should have no higher priority this year than getting our economy back to creating jobs," Hayworth said.
The New York congresswoman said House Republicans would promote small business and reduce government regulation.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-01-07/obama-insourcing-jobs/52431472/1 [with comments]
===
A Dimly Flickering Light in a Darkened Downtown
Art Oehlke runs a vintage store, the 530 Shop, in Lorain, Ohio.
Michael McElroy for The New York Times
His store is on Broadway, just before it meets Lake Erie.
Michael McElroy for The New York Times
The mostly abandoned strip is a stark contrast to the town's bustle in the 1950s.
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
Published: January 7, 2012
LORAIN, Ohio — The dark, empty storefronts that clog the heart of this aging industrial city stare blankly at the street, their fading signs mute reminders of better and busier times.
But just before Broadway dead-ends into Lake Erie, there is a store whose windows are always bright. The 530 Shop, a vintage store with an eclectic assortment of items, from cribbage boards to antique lamps, has been open seven days a week for five years, according to its owner, Art Oehlke.
It is one of the few remaining businesses in this mostly abandoned strip that used to bustle with shoppers when the steel mill and factories flourished. In a grimly familiar Rust Belt refrain, malls came and manufacturing went, and storefronts went dark.
The decline inspired Mr. Oehlke, who is 78, to open the 530 Shop in a building constructed by his grandfather. He wanted to bring some life back into downtown, an effort he now believes was futile. But he continues to run the shop anyway, hoping every day for customers and greeting them warmly when they come, which is not very often.
“It’s slower than hell,” said Mr. Oehlke (pronounced EL-key) on a recent Friday. “Some days it’s so deserted, I feel like I’m the only one here.”
The shop is packed with objects he picked up at estate sales: old maps, lamps, vintage hats, board games, cake platters, license plates, crucifixes and ceramic eagles. American propaganda posters from World War II and photographs of Lorain in its heyday hang on the walls.
Mr. Oehlke never finished high school, dropping out to take a job. He has worked as, among other things, a welder, a truck driver and a sand dredger. Still, he has a special talent for spotting unique objects, which he applied full time after retiring. He selects only things he finds strange or interesting. Never anything new, and never anything that can be found at Walmart, a store he calls “rotten” for how he believes it treats its employees and its suppliers.
But his selection does not draw many customers. The most recent sale he made was two days before, of three nutcracker dolls for $1 each. Sales would be better, he believes, in a college town.
More often people want to sell him things. They bring in belongings of older relatives: rings, collections of comic books and records. They need the money, he said. But these days, he does too, so he rarely obliges them.
“In Lorain, everyone is selling everything,” Mr. Oehlke said. “People are selling stuff they don’t ordinarily want to sell, stuff that’s been in the family.”
Recently a young woman who had driven from several hours away tried to sell him some of her belongings, including books and magazines, he said. He had bought things from her before, mostly out of pity, but on that day he could not afford to. She stayed in the store for some time, he said, crying softly in a back aisle.
On the recent Friday, a man in a blue wool hat came in with a plastic bag full of old records.
“Do you buy albums?” he asked, placing scruffy copies of Stevie Wonder, Funkadelic, the Ohio Players and Donna Summer on the counter.
Mr. Oehlke said he did not, but chatted with him anyway. The man’s name was Jason Freeman. He said the last time he had worked was six years ago, cleaning steel dust at the steel mill. Now, at 52, he collects cans and looks for homes left empty in evictions, salvaging the belongings that people leave behind.
It took him two full days, he said, to transfer all the albums in this particular collection to his apartment, carrying them in double plastic bags on his bicycle.
Though estate sales are the source of most of Mr. Oehlke’s merchandise, he is still struck by how weird it is to be sifting through the remains of a stranger’s life.
“It’s a funny feeling when you go in a house and there is stuff on a night stand as if they had just left,” he said. “I never did get used to that feeling.”
Once he had a start at a sale when he came upon an old man who had lived in the house sitting quietly in a chair in a back bedroom, an encounter that made him sorry for the man and angry at the organizers.
“They could have put him somewhere else,” he said.
He often feels sorry for elderly parents whose children are intent on selling their belongings. Once a man who looked to be in his 30s arrived with his mother offering some of her belongings for sale.
“I could tell she hated giving up her stuff,” he said. “It’s your life, and they are selling it.”
Mr. Oehlke did not say how much the shop makes. But a clue, he said, is in the thermostat on the wall near the cash register, which showed 45 degrees. If the store were more profitable, he said, it would be warmer.
But he preferred to see the bright side.
“It’s got an advantage,” he said. “If I have to go somewhere, I already have my coat on.”
© 2012 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/us/recession-takes-toll-in-lorain-ohio.html
===
from earlier this string, (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=69133046 and preceding and following
Greensburg, KS - 5/4/07
"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
from John Philpot Curran, Speech
upon the Right of Election, 1790
F6
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