President Obama today is visiting a small North Carolina manufacturing company that has outsourced half its workforce to Costa Rica and whose president is a Democratic politician who has contributed $2,000 to Obama.
WestStar Precision, a machine manufacturing firm headquartered in the Raleigh-Durham area, has a second plant located in San Jose, Costa Rica. There are 24 employees at each site, according to an NBC affiliate in Raleigh.
Ironically, Obama is traveling to the company’s headquarters to tout his new proposal to create jobs in the United States.
While he’s there, he can thank WestStar President Ervin Portman for his financial assistance.
According to the website Opensecrets.org, Portman, calling himself “Erv,” donated $1,000 to Obama on August 10, 2008. In a separate filing, “Ervin” Portman reported donating $1,000 Â to help fund Obama’s Inauguration.
Portman, who sits on the Board of Commissioners for Wake County, N.C., has also been a major contributor to other Democratic candidates.
In 2009-2010, Portman gave $5,000 to Democratic North Carolina Secretary of State Elaine Marshall’s failed campaign to unseat Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.). He also donated $250 to the successful 2008 campaign of Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.).
Portman’s company makes no secret of its outsourcing, touting its Costa Rican plant on its website.
Our new office and manufacturing facility in San Jose, Costa Rica, also has approximately 10,000 sq. ft. with similar equipment as the main office. This facility is designed for high volume production to support our international and domestic clients.
A big tip of the hat to one of our readers, Lizzy, who first alerted me to the Costa Rica plant.
159 thoughts on “Obama to Tout Jobs Act at Company that Outsources”
He’s going on another big, scary bus tour:
http://nation.foxnews.com/president-obama/2011/09/14/obama-going-another-bus-tour
Hide the kids. Thanks Janice.
It’s not really a “bus tour” when he takes AF1 to the bus.
Actually the buses get flown from town to town too…
And I love one of the comments:
The mobile mortuary is headed to a town near you!
Because nothing says, “Hope and Change,” like the giant, armored, Canadian-made Debt Star.
That’s a good one William!
Thanks for the laugh! That was awesome!
I guess your copy of the slogan was truncated. It should have read: “Hopeless and Only Change”.
You mean the bus is getting a freebie on an airplane? Gosh I am so
confused. What will the bus be saying this time. Maybe it will just
sing my wheels go round and round all day long.
Way to go Lizzy!!
This guy is a clueless gift that just keeps giving. I’m actually laughing my ass off right now. It’s like watching the Three Stooges meet the Bear. Man, he gives a new definition to a rigid mind.
Another 5 letter word for Fraud… OBAMA http://www.BirtherReport.com
I guess the only question is – how big a loan did he get THEM to outsource the jobs?
We need to end H-1B visa program NOW because of its’ detrimental effect on US employees.
Over the past 6 years I have been outsourced twice. Each time we train the
23-25 year old H-1B employees from companies like Covansys and Cognizant. They do not bring any new skills to the table that is beyond what the US IT work force currently has. Bottom line, fire the US IT worker, hire cheap labor via the H-1B visa program.
Why don’t US companies hire or train US college grads (those same 23-25 year olds)?
US companies have also stopped doing INTERNAL training of their US
workforce, INCENT them to do so with new legislation!
The H-1B visa program has decimated the US IT workforce. This program is keeping US citizens UNEMPLOYED!
http://migration.ucdavis.edu/mn/more.php?id=3589_0_2_0
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa
Indian outsourcers Infoys, Ttaa, Satyam, Cognizant, and Patni have been among the major users of H-1B visa holders
Good post–thanks.
Oblunder thought San Jose? Oh that’s in CA!
The Kenyan Klown is NC and handed out most of the tickets to college students, go figure.
Yea, my daughter who attends NCSU just called and said classes were cancelled due to Mr. O’s visit. She’s not attending his speech (she’s a Libertarian), but says her friends are very excited. He seems to do well with younger voters.
Because they have no world experience — like Obama.
He may be the Kenyan Klown, but there is nothing funny about what he is doing to our country.
As Forrest Gump might say reading your insightful article in response to “Why would the president do this?” — “Well, Stupid is as stupid does. Life is like a box a chocolates. You never know what you’re going get.”
I knew what we would get with OweBlamer, but couldn’t convince enough folks to use their head and pay attention to the other hand.
Just knowing this companies President has contributed to this President, makes me sick. I just couldn’t do business with a company that openly supports these losers.
We need a list of all the companies that contribute to this jerk and then try our best not to purchase anything they sell. I said “Try”, because it is difficult. I can only find GE light bulbs (made in China), but I try to avoid anything GE.
It all fits. Warren is a bug sponosr and won’t pay his 10 year fight on taxes with IRS. Immelt gets money from Warren and stimulus. Then takes 2 operating divisions out of the country. The link you say?
All gave campaign money,…how is your Hope & Change working?
The tentacles of this administration’s corruption go on and on. Southwest Windpower, a small wind generator company in Arizona, received a $10 million grant from GE (I don’t know why, but it was apparently part of their $14 Billion stimulus handout) to expand their production. They used it to move their production to China, laying off the majority of their employees. THAT’S WHERE OUR TAX MONEY IS GOING
Another Drudge link. I guess this time congratulations to both Keith and Lizzy.
Way to go Keith & Lizzy…Congrats!
William,
Don’t “beDrudge” him the notoriety. Sorry about that!
Maybe if enough people start to read WHD Keith will be able to move out of the cesspool of the DC area and buy a nice little farm in the country. A place to raise his kids and dog.
Good going Keith!
Ahh, a place in the country. Dogs, bucolic bliss, kids running free . . . and bugs . . . sometimes i do wish it but remember Shofar, I’m born in Manhattan!
I understand, once a city boy always a city boy. My roots are LA and Chicago so, to quote the vernacular, “I feel ya!”
Hey! I’ve come out in favor of Drudge links! Well, so long as they don’t wind up in Keith abandoning the blog for better opportunities. He can do both.
Thanks WIlliam. The Drudge links boost revenues and actually help keep me here – I know you’ve alluded to this before as well. And honestly, what better opportunity could there be than writing my own journalism all day and meeting so many fantastic people?
When will we as a country discover that if we want a leader that understands how jobs are created, we need to elect leaders with backgrounds as CEOs or entrepreneurs? Electing lawyers isn’t working very well, I’d say.
Lawyers without any real world experience.
I think you spelled that wrong, it’s LIARS, not lawyers.
We’re workin’ on it Dave.
American Spirit will prevail.
Barry is history, and if he doesn’t know it by now he is as much of a fool as Carter is.
You are so right Keith. The irony of it all. He’s touting his new jobs bill at one of his crony’s companies where half the jobs are outsourced to Costa Rica. Only Obama would have the gall to do something like this.
Michelle Malkin has a great article on his green jobs boondoggle this morning…
http://michellemalkin.com/2011/09/14/obamas-big-green-boondoggles/
Thanks, good piece Susan.
IF ANY OF THESE AMERICA HATING DEMOCRATS REALLY WANTED TO HELP THE UNEMPLOYED AMERICANS THEY WOULD RIGHT THINS MOMENT MAKE E-VERIFY MANDATORY FOR ALL US EMPLOYERS AND TAKE BACK THE JOBS STOLEN FROM AMERICAN WORKERS BY THE 30 MILLION CRIMINAL ILLEGAL ALIENS HERE IN THE USA IT WOULD START THE ECONOMY ROLLING OVERNIGHT BUY THE GREEDY DEMOC RATS CARE NOT ABOUT THIS COUNTRY OR ITS WORKERS ONLY ABOUT VOTES AND MONEY AND THEY WILL BE THE DEATH OF AMERICA
E-verify would cost the Usurper-in-Chief his own job!?!
If the borders weren’t as porous, those whom are legally present would not have to identify themselves as such!?!
Another solution must be found. One that requires only the usurpers to identify. Oh, that might just work. Open the welfare / foodstamp lines and identify them there. Don’t misuse the abuse of constitutional authority. Yes, that would be entitlements.
Photo ops politically connected crony run businesses that export American jobs?
Yes we can!
This is the Hope&Change! that you voted for.
I believe in the free market, but in this case the US should tax job exporters out of existence. Especially bloodsucking liberal hypocrites.
Remember all this stimulus was for jobs. Just not jobs in America. Obama has provided tens of thousands of jobs with our tax dollars just in other countries. A job overseas is considered a new job. Too bad he is an open borders type of president. A job anywhere in the world is a job produced to be counted for the US Economy. Remember he blocks drilling in the US but provides US Tax dollars to drill off Brazil. Oil rigs in the Gulf have been going there because they can get work to drill instead of wait months for permission to drill in the gulf. Yep US stimulus is providing jobs in the rest of the world. Too bad we can not get some of it to provide American jobs except for Government or Union jobs. THose are the only good jobs in America he seems to support.
that’s why they call it a “Jobs Act”…. it is just an act.
OweBlamer’s play will be over soon. It’s only a one act play. ONE AND DONE!!!
President Zero encourages outsourcing as yet another way to bring down the US economy. ‘Erv’ is just doing as he was told.
The Big O touts his latest “jobs plan”/”stimulus” program in a plant that has its “new office and manufacturing facility in San Jose, Costa Rica”!
Way to go, Dumb Ass!
Par for the course, what a jackass. He needs to take his jobs bill to Cuba! along with Obamacare…sorry they already have those two programs
So the president takes Air Force One, all the regalia of office, to vist a company that employs 24 people. This really is, well, kind of dumb.
It was smart, we get to pay for the trip.
Let’s face it. His “New” proposal is nothing but another tax a spend “stimulus” like the 2009 boondoggle. My Mom taught me “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
Hey guys thanks to Keith and insomnia i sleep with my IPad I find these
little gems. American’s if we are going to prevail we have to let the sunshine
in on all the dubious workings of this group of sixties pretenders! They treat
us as fools and we aren’t! So keep your eyes peeled they can shuck and
jive all they want but as Superman always said ‘Truth, Justice and the American Way’ we will always prevail. Excuse my typing recently went blind
in one eye and not adjusted and I think faster than I type:)
2012 will be a very good year!
Well done Lizzy!
That was a good catch, no matter the reason.
That bus needs a big blade on the front, like a bulldozer, to represent what his policies have done to the American economy. Anybody need some solar panel manufacturing equipment, cheap? Forclosures, anyone? There’s a bankruptcy auction near you.
I asked–$20K for panels for my 1350-sf rancher. No wonder no one has these!
This just goes to show that Obummer and his fake followers are trying to out source everything in America, and destroy everything that we have making here.
If every company that wants to sell anything here in America had to make that product here then we would not be in the mess we’re in right now.
Built by American’s Buy From American’s should be the new energy solgan that this country needs right now.
Obama is the village idiot . . . in every village he goes to.
This jerk is a total prick
Your side bar on ‘Obama Polls’ states the wrong numbers for the Health Law Mandate, CNN June 3-7. Side bar states 54% Support with 44% Oppose but the linked story states the opposite. This was brought to my attention because the poll numbers above it for Repealing the Health Reform Law, Rasmussen Reports June 10 – 11, didn’t jive with the CNN poll results. You need some proof readers on your main page. Sorry I just had to point this out. That said, I do like your web site and have marked it in my favorites. Good Job.
Stephen, thanks, I will change.
Poof! There goes another American life… read on, if you have not been indoctrinated…
Nobody says squat, while their neighbors jobs and lives continue to be given to foreign-nationals…
read-on, if you can handle the truth.
Death-By-F¬oreign-Nat¬ional is not laissez-fa¬ire!
Death-By-F¬oreign-Nat¬ional is not free-marke¬t!
MNCs’ are not [supposed to be] in charge of U.S. immigratio¬n.
Start Article:
MUMBAI: US diplomat Peter Haas, recently appointed consul-general in Mumbai, stressed the importance of people-to-people contact in Indo-US ties.
US-India people-to-people connections are more powerful than any government initiative, said Haas. “While 8 lakh Americans travel to India each year, the US issues half a million non-immigration visas to Indians yearly,” he said adding that Indian citizens formed the largest group of people to be issued H1B and L visas by the US over the last year.
End Article.
How, can anyone speak of returning jobs to Americans, while they ignore the continued replacement of Americans, in American offices and worksites, with foreign nationals, at a ‘clip of’ hundreds of thousands per year?!
There are real solutions, not lies masquerading as same…
Start Article:
The J-1 student work-travel program was created in 1961 to offer work opportunities and cultural enrichment for foreign students, and in the process, create goodwill ambassadors for the United States.
Today, students from Poland, China, Russia, Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus sign up and pay thousands of dollars for the privilege of meeting Americans and practicing English.
But the kids aren’t working in professional settings that complement their studies. They’re toiling in warehouses for huge companies such as Hershey’s, which have laid off hundreds of workers, and resorts, from Disney World to Morey’s Pier in Wildwood, and for much lower wages than Americans earned doing the same tasks.
Companies who hire J-1s are not required to advertise to American workers first. It’s a great deal for U.S. companies, because they don’t have to pay payroll taxes, Social Security or health insurance for J-1s.
One Spring Lake staffing company even has a nifty calculator to help businesses compare the costs of hiring J-1 vs. American workers.
Gee, thanks, fellas. During one of the most vicious unemployment downturns in memory, this is spitting in the eye of jobless Americans.
End Article.
H-1b, L-1s, OPT, J-1, B-1, lotteries, green-cards, and on and on, it is no longer enough to stand as a nation and compete with the world-at-large, but no, the world at large will be brought to you, so that you may compete with them in your own offices and worksites…
We won’t even talk about national security!
In a sane world, visas such as H-1b, (also referred to, incorrectly, as H1b…) L-1, etc., would be suspended. Millions of our better paying jobs would be instantly made available, in America, for Americans.
Over two (2) decades of alphabet-soup visas like H-1b, etc., have decimated the tech sector, and are impacting others, such as health and medicine, education, etc.
We should also revoke some or all green-cards. Again, a massive number of American jobs would be returned to Americans.
And then there is the issue of sending our jobs offshore, often implemented by those brought to our country on visa, or those having become a green-card holder, who then coordinate the shipping of entire departments, knowledge-bases out of our country, ultimately, entire industries.
Then for the low to medium wage jobs, we can look at the wide-open borders, and the traitors that advocate a nation without enforcement of its own borders, its laws, and disinterest in its own sovereign best-interest, survival.
And yes, it is Americans who have facilitated this betrayal of Americans, by corporations, supported by a sold-out government and press.
The nifty calculator mentioned above is at http://seasonalstaff.org/Tax-Benefits-For-Employers-Hiring-J1-Foreign-Staff.html
It is typical that Barry is going on his Canadian made bus to a donor’s company who outsourced half of his workforce out of the U.S.
I wonder if anyone has told “Erv” about the outcome of the much touted company in CA Solyndra (sic). Yeah “Erv”, Barry spoke there also – they’re out of business. The list is long – if I had any money invested in “Ervs” business, I’d pull it out ASAP! Dummies
where did all the comments go???
God he’s so BRAVE walking into the lions den! I notice how he ins’t going to Caterpillar again where their CEO called Mr. Obama a LIAR!
I wouldn’t exactly call this one outsourcing based on the information provided in this article.
However with 25 people it wouldn’t warrant a trip from ronald mcdonald let alone the president.
This democrat machine donating company must be in trouble and need your money.
Oh and Obama should give Dem a federally backed loan so they too can go out of business!-)
Does anyone in this administration even bother to check into the companies Obama visits? Once Obama is there, the Obama touch will doom the company to bankruptcy or moving to another country anyway. If I owned a company, I wouldn’t allow Obama anywhere near it unless I had a death wish.
If a old girl of 60 can find this with a high school education it doesn’t
say much for all those Ivy League bozo’s in the WH does it:)
There is no correlation between education and smarts. Just look at Paul Krugman with his Ivy League PHD and terminal stupidity in the smarts department.
Amen to that!
I didn’t vote for Barack O’Bama because, post-voting for Carter & Clinton, (Carter begat shah Palavi & paved the way for the senile traitor, Reagan; Clinton gave us ‘N.A.F.T.A.’ & ‘C.A.F.T.A.’, with predicted out-sourcicing & tax evasion-related job loss, stained blue ‘tent’ dresses, etc.), both 1st. timers, I’ll NEVER consider a first-timer again!
If I vote in 2012, it’ll be the first time I voted for a ‘closet’ republican, (Barack O’Bama), since there simply AREN’T any democrats or independants running…
People who wear their piety on their sleeves, &/or, believe dinosaurs & humans co-existed, despite terrabytes of repeatedly validated scientific data to the contrary, aren’t ‘reality-oriented’ enough to have access to the ‘football’, (the nuclear launch authorization).
Of course, Trident, (with it’s D5 missil system), IS, perhaps, the greatest abortificiant-device ever created, but then, thermonuclear war doesn’t enter into the religious right’s ‘fetel’ & ‘control of other’s sexuality’ obssession, does it?
Ahhh…I understand now:
In a nuclear war, some ‘angry-Godman-in-the-sky’ will arrive to rapture_out the superficially pious & fetels, leaving the rest of us, (once a republican, closeted or otherwise, gets the NEXT ‘war-for-the-helluvit’ started), to duke it out!
…A classic sub-varient on the ‘Christian Caritas’ theme!
I hope this angry godman isn’t schedule-challenged, as He apparently was during Harold Camping’s (once-&-future) ‘Rapture’!
Did the publicly pious happen to notice that ‘m1919-a1-self-propelled-wombs’ seem to be far more negatively affected by enhanced radiation neutron weapons then evengelical doctrine (apparently) allowed for??
AND…
Why did a pope currently on the ‘sainthood’ fast track, (patron saint of child buggery?, L.O.L.!), apparently give a papal ‘peace’ medial to the scientist who thought up the neutron bomb, anyway?
I hear the Huff & Puff calling your name. They want their idiot back.
Bear (Ursus means bear),
I read and re-read your comment, and still cannot make out what you are talking about. I am going to make a leap, since I did look up some of your other comments posted on other sites, and presume that you are totally anti-God, and thereby against anyone that espouses any kind of Judeo-Christian belief. You rant about the robes in Rome, and how the religious right is simply waiting to push the button and bring about the Rapture.
I guess you have been ignoring the rants of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has openly said that it is his goal to bring about cataclysmic events in the world in order to bring back the Mahdi, and establish Islamic law throughout the world.
I don’t know about you, but I would rather have someone who values life, as is the Judeo-Christian philosophy, than someone who wants to and has said he intends to destroy the world if need be to bring about his personal ideology.
Rejection of God does not negate the existence of God. I can say that I do not believe in gravity, yet I do not float skyward. I have found over the years that those who are the most ardent deniers of God are the ones that have the most to fear from His judgement.
To simplistically rant about how anyone with a moral compass derived from the Judeo-Christian ideology is wrong is the same as saying all gay males are flamers, all lesbians are bull, all blacks are on welfare, well hopefully you see the point. It is stereotyping of the worst type. With regard to Camping, Scripture says that NO MAN will know when the end time shall come. Camping is one of the false prophets that Jesus warned about, and they are getting to be more and more.
If you have a shred of common sense you will do a cost/benefits analysis of current state of American politics, and the politicians running. Is it worth allowing Obama (there is no apostrophe in his name, unless you are making a joke about his trip to Ireland) and the Dems to continue down the economic sink hole or do we hire someone else? Personally, I would rather hire someone who has laid bare their beliefs, record, and accomplishments than to continue with what we currently have. It’s a gamble, but so is walking out the door. But, at this point, it is a gamble I and millions of others are willing to take.
Well said, great post!
Don’t eat the brown acid.
“Everything thing we have, every great achievement has come from the independent work of some independent mind. Every horror and destruction came from attempts to force men into a herd of brainless, soulless robots. Without personal rights, without personal ambition, without will, hope, or dignity. It is an ancient conflict. It has another name: the individual against the collective.” ~ Howard Roark from Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead
————- http://911essentials.com
Maybe the stimulus he wants to give the company can all go to Costa Rica. He continually wants to re-distribute our tax money to anyone who does not live in the US. It is time to wake up America, or you will lose your country. It is happening right now.
From my experience in the manufacturing world. When they build and identical plant, it’s to move ALL the jobs there, not just half.
My assumption – can’t prove – is that much of the management is in Raleigh while the workers are in Costa Rica.
This is what President Bush ’43 and Congress wanted to do to the Federal work force. Contract it out!
at this type of manufacturing plant he will have to create 25 million jobs, half for americans and half for outsourcing.. way to go obumer
It’s not as if WestStar closed their facility in Apex and moved all their operations to Costa Rica. I would hardly call their strategic move at penetrating foreign markets “outsourcing”.
You don’t see the irony of him giving a jobs speech for Americans at a company that has set up shop out of the country? A jobs speech that touts tax increases on income levels that captures most small businesses? With 25 employees, this company should be in his bulls-eye. Because the owner of the company is one of his cronies, he will get a waiver. He’s picking the winners and the losers in the business world. Have you heard about Gibson Guitars?
And we should be surprised at this, why? Look who is an advisor to the president on jobs and the economy – king of outsource himself, Jeff Immelt.
Mad in America – YouTube
Thank you….keep up the information,,,we need to know.
Pingback: Obama jobs plan to be trumpeted at company that outsources half its workforce | Wizbang
Gee…………isn’t our president just the smartest guy that ever walked the face of the earth. A failed solar panel company was his last evidence of his genius and they are now in bankcruptcy to the tune of $500+ Million of our tax dollars and now this nonsense………….I don’t know about you, but I am sick and tired of seeing and hearing this moron.
What an embarrassment to our country………………pathetic at best.
Hope they place this on their new Attack Watch and we fill them with how we really feel about this thug and those that support his corrupt administration.
I agree, I fail to see where this imbesile has shown any smarts at all? First, somehow he has managed to seal his college records so we have no idea what the dummy actually did do while he was in school. WHY would a president want to do that and WHY would the people who elected him allow that????? All he does is stand there and read from our teleprompter as if he likes to listen to himself talk with his little onion head swinging back and forth left to right. I can’t believe the american people actually bought this flop and his big talk? Did anybody really believe a guy with literally zero executive experience at running anything could take on the largest most complex economy in the world and understand what he was doing? How F’kin ridiculous does that sound? That’s what the american people ordered up for themselves and we wonder why the place is falling apart! This clown couldn’t run a paper route.
Well, this needs to be all over the media and internet. I know the POTUS isn’t stupid, I hate his politics and not the man. I believe he is very smart, but this was a dumb move…and as we know if conservatives say or do dumb things, it’s blasted all over the planet.
His jobs plan will not work because it is government conceived, and government fails at almost all levels.
Sorry, but I am sure Obama is intelligent . . . but smart? . . . just not sure of that.
Just how do you think this guy isn’t stupid? How could you possibly say such a thing? Of course he’s ignorant, stupid, dumb and unknowledgable. No way he could support and propose his anti-US policies unless they’re true or he’s better than most in the Barnum Bailey Circus when they say “watch this hand …………..”
Hey, why does’t he speak at the BOEING factory which he closed down because it was not favorable to his union buddies??
Or pehaps he should speak at one of the solar energy companies which he threw useless money at and is closing down because it product doesn’t work.
Or maybe he shoud speak on one the oil rigs he forced to close because he hates oil companies??
Better yet, why doesn’t he do a real benefit to this country and step down and go back to Kenya where he belongs!!
I swear, If I owned one of those oil rigs, I would ignore this bozo and continue operating in the gulf anyway, what he is doing isn’t constitutional and I would force them to have to take me to court. I blame the american people for this! Maybe next time they will realize that this isn’t a popularity contest and these people who we elect are there to run a business, OUR business and who gives a $hit which one is better dressed or more popular. Who cares if the brain dead media wants to try to create another camelot, these boons are so far from that it is laughable but that was the plan. The bozo was actually trying to dress like Kennedy, this is a F’kin joke! Ross Perot would have saved us all from this and he was right on every count but the american people weren’t smart enough to listen when it was put to them in straight talk. What can you do when the people don’t know any better?
Having an office outside of the US is not outsourcing. It might be considered “offshoring” if jobs from the US went to Costa Rica. If no jobs from the US went to Costa Rica, I’d call it expansion.
I’d call it pay to play…
I understand your point, but outsourcing has moved from the economic to the common vernacular, and setting up a plant overseas instead of in the United States to take advantage of cheap labor fits the popular definition of outsourcing.
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