Just Heard Big Ed Talk About This; Can We Verify This?

[ChoppinBroccoli]

I was listening to Ed Schultz this afternoon, mainly because he was having MY Senator (and hopefully our next President in 2016) Sherrod Brown on to talk about last night's debate. After the segment with Sherrod Brown was over, Ed started making reference to a report that Mitt Rmoney actually took one of his Bain-owned factories in Freeport, IL, and not only forced the American workers there to train their Chinese replacements, but actually raised the Chinese flag over the factory. Could this be true? Can anyone verify this? And if it is true (and I generally trust Ed not to just blatantly make up stuff like this), why is the media not just having a field day with this?

I'll tell you this, if I find out it's true, I'm posting it on my Facebook page every day from now until the election. I haven't seen any mentions of it on DU, so either it's a newly-breaking story, or it's been SO ignored by the "liberal media" that it hasn't even made a blip. If I can find a link to the story and it looks credible, I'm going to shout it from the mountaintops.

[Blue Meany]

1. They didn't raise the Chinese flag; but they took down the American flag while the

Chinese trainees were there. The rest of the story is true, from just 2 years ago.

[JSK]

2. True

http://www.salem-news.com/articles/october112012/romney-us-flag-tk.php

[montanacowboy]

3. Apparently it's true

there are some threads posted today about it

[Enrique]

4. i've tried verifying it

the closest I came was a Raw Story article which has a quote from the company spokesman which seems to confirm the flag story. The quote was supposed to be in an AFP news story, but I could find no such AFP story.

edit: the AFP story is real, the problem is that virtually no news source picked it up. Raw story was one of the very few

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5h0gcACbciMOzibhELCDGdTjiJ-MQ?docId=CNG.d02e7ab04d6be93aa6a92f22805f4a7f.641

[Scootaloo]

5. As others have said, it's mostly true.

If the chinese flag had been raised... hoo boy.

Also, love the screename. Everything can become a ballad!

[getting old in mke]

6. Don't know about in this case

But I used to work for a large printing company.

When we had foreign visitors, we would put up their nation's flag along side the US & state flags on separate flag poles.

[fleur-de-lisa]

7. This video shows the Chinese flag flying . . . at about 3:15

Diane Sweets Blog . . . Crooks and Liars page;
October 12, 2012 12:05 PM
A Chinese Flag Flying in Freeport, Illinois? By Diane Sweet

Right now in Freeport, Illinois, some 170 workers at an auto sensor plant are sleeping in tents to protest Bain-owned Sensata Technology’s decision to ship their jobs to China.

The company recently made factory officials take down the American flag when they were forced to train their Chinese replacement workers, according to Tom Gaulrapp, with the United Steelworkers Union.

That's un-American, my friends.

This is taking place as Mitt Romney tries to convince people to believe that he doesn’t know about Bain's shipping American jobs overseas. He is trying to distance himself from Bain Capital, a pioneer of outsourcing where Romney made a fortune as CEO.

Another employee losing her job, Mary Jo Kerr, is a young mom of three. She's heartbroken because she can’t afford dance lessons for her daughter. Another is Dot Turner, so close to retirement, but will not receive it. Instead Dot will get just 26 weeks’ severance for 43 years of work in the plant.

Listen to their stories in the video above, and be sure to note the Chinese flag flying in front of the plant...in Illinois.

[LadyHawkAZ]

9. You beat me to it. n/t

[LadyHawkAZ]

8. Found this:

&feature=player_embedded#!

The guy in the segment starting at 1:21 tells the flag story- it would probably have been viewed as a courtesy gesture under other circumstances, but given what was on the agenda it was just an insult.

[highplainsdem]

10. Bain took down the American flag, which is outrageous enough. The Chinese flag was brought by

protesters, according to this story at Daily Kos:

http://m.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/03/1139084/-The-Faces-of-Outsourcing-Bainport-s-Tent-City-Protest-in-Pictures

And in the video which others have posted here, you see a Chinese flag at one point that's apparently part of a protest, and in other parts of the video, you see the Chinese flag flying over Sensata factories in China.

So far I haven't found anything indicating that Sensata flew a Chinese flag over its factory in Freeport.

But just taking down the US flag was bad enough.

[Live and Learn]

11. Here is some great info about the company

http://thecontributor.com/you-should-know-about-sensata-%E2%80%93-it%E2%80%99s-what-election-about

Sensata

The private equity firm Bain Capital put together Sensata Technologies in 2006 to make and sell sensors and controls to car makers and other manufacturers. The company is closing the Freeport, Ill. plant and outsourcing the 165 jobs to China. The workers have to train their Chinese replacements before they are laid off.

Sensata is making plenty of money. According to the company’s website:

Second quarter 2012 net revenue was a record $504.6 million, an increase of 10.9% from the second quarter 2011 net revenue of $455.0 million.
Second quarter 2012 net income was $26.1 million, or $0.14 per diluted share, versus second quarter 2011 net (loss) of $(34.6) million, or $(0.20) per diluted share.
Second quarter 2012 Adjusted net income1 was a record $97.5 million, or $0.54 per diluted share, versus second quarter 2011 Adjusted net income1 of $92.2 million, or $0.51 per diluted share.

Sensata explains that Chinese workers cost less.

More at link.