Peoria Pundit

From a source:

“Today, Suresource Inc’s Peoria call center shuts down. As of 4pm, I and my fellow employees are unemployed.”

Here’s the scoop on Suresource, by way of their LinkedIn profile:

SureSource, LLC provides direct-to-consumer ecommerce solutions for brands. It offers direct channel planning, multi-channel commerce, merchandising, marketing programs, and supporting services. The company also operates and manages storefronts for consumer brands and licensed properties. In addition, it provides distribution, customer, merchant, search engine optimization, promotions, consumer surveys, and product registration services, as well as service plans. SureSource, LLC was founded in 1989 and is based in Shelton, Connecticut.

They have offices in the New York area and in Peoria.

And they have a spiffy Website.

My sympathies to the soon-to-be-unemployed.

UPDATE: This is not MY employer. My job is secure, the last I heard anyway. Three people have expressed sympathy to me today over having lost my job and they cited this post.

First we have the Obama Administration, which is dropping hints all over the place that it’s going to start nationalizing banks. They deny it, but they don’t flatly rule it out. It sorta sounds like what Peoria Mayor Dave Ransburg used to do: State firmly that there are no plans to do a certain thing, like lay off his workers and send their jobs to China, and keep saying saying this — right up until the moment he announces he’s laying off workers and sending their jobs to China.

‘We have no plans to nationalize the banks …’  Yeah, right.

So the markets took a sickening nose dive on these remarks.

And its no wonder there aren’t more people going insane with fury:

UPDATE: Chris Muir couldn’t let is pass either:

Heh.

via tumblr:

prophetic

From a press release:

Schock Calls for Public House – Senate Stimulus Negotiations

 Calls for Stimulus conference negotiations to be open to public

 Washington, D.C. – Congressman Aaron Schock (R-IL) issued the following statement calling for an open and public forum for House – Senate negotiations on the stimulus bill.  House rules dictate that there must be an open hearing for conference committee negotiations.

 “Given the billions of taxpayer dollars at stake in the stimulus, negotiations between the House and Senate must be completely open and transparent.  American taxpayers deserve to know how and where the government plans to spend their money.  I believe it is an open invitation to trouble to keep these negotiations closed.”

 “Allowing this historically enormous spending package to be negotiated between a small handful of people behind closed doors would eliminate accountability to the American taxpayers and wholly undermine all efforts at bipartisanship.”

“I support fast action but not at the expense of getting this wrong.  We need to work in an expeditious and bipartisan manner to proceed under full sunlight so taxpayers can have full faith in this process and the resulting economic stimulus bill.”

I wasn’t going to comment on this, but I’m fed up.

Every single time there’s a news article or blog entry about layoffs and business closings, some joker leaves this snarky comment: “It’s better here!”

It’s a line from a series of television and radio ads that feature Peoria government leaders, including Peoria Mayor Jim Ardis, extolling the positive business climate here. Bring it up in a news story about tough economic news might make for a quick zinger, but it reveals the commenter to be a bit of an idiot.

First, those ads were taped after the national crisis started, but before the Peoria area economy started to talk. In other words, these public service spots ads were accurate at the time they were made.

And note that these are public service ads, designed to promote the Peoria-area. Do these commenters think Ardis and the others should have been taking to the airwaves telling prospective businesses and visitors to stay the Hell away. Apparently so.

The tone of these comments sometimes seems to suggest that Ardis and the others are responsible for the fact that the local economy isn’t bucking the trend. If you want to argue that some of the decisions being made aren’t exactly the wisest moves from a free market standpoint, you will get no argument from me. But Ardis’s didn’t lay off 800 factory workers, either.

And you know what? It is better here. I was born here. I’m staying here. I’d rather live in my nicely maintained urban neighborhood than the most exclusive neighborhood in North Peoria or Woodford and Tazewell counties. You meet a better class of people.

Last week, the nation was served by five giant investment banking companies, which financed the sale of bonds that allowed new businesses to start and grow. Today, there are two. Why? There’s lots of blame to go around, but much of it is due to the housing crisis, which was caused by the government demanding that housing lenders grease the wheels for those who wouldn’t otherwise afford down payments and/or the sort of interest rates the free market would demand.

So, why bail out these investment banks, not to mention an insurance company like AIG? Why not let them fail? After all, isn’t the freedom to FAIL an essential element of a free market economy, which is the best way to guarantee overall economic prosperity?

Because just about everyone in government is buying into the argument made by Wall Street that if we don’t, the economy will sink into a second Great Depression, and that must be avoided at all costs.

Well, I’m sure that’s what Wall Street told the politicians, since a bailout keeps so many of them from having to go out and get honest jobs. I suspect the situation is far less dire. And even if it is, the best outcome might be to let the free market work. Instead, they’ve decided to hang a multi-billion-dollar dead weight around the neck of the economy. If taxes don’t skyrocket, look for prices to because of all the money they will print to pay this off.

Everybody knows this is a bad idea in the long run, but they will do it anyway. Congress knows that the voters have no patience for long-term solutions that cause short term pain.

Why did we get into this mess? I agree with Merle Widmer, who says that politicians and taxpayers alike now believe government’s role is to guarantee everyone has an equal standard of living. One such standard is that everyone needs to own their own homes. Merle says some folks have no business trying to own homes, because they haven’t the means to invest their own money.

It’s no secret that people who own their home take pride in their property. But I don’t see how that applies when ownership arrives without significant sacrifice. It’s no different that public housing really, especially when the home buyers cannot afford to make payments.

Has it ever occured to anyone that it’s not the %&$*ing government’s job to prop up the stock market? It is govenrnment’s job to provide a basic framework and establish what behaviors are crimes and punish those who committ them. Why should the president take to the airwaves and reassure the public that the market is healthy, when in fact it might very well not be healthy? Will George W say he is sorry to little old ladies who pump their life’s savings into stocks — then lose their money — when it might not be the safe thing to do? The president should be a leader, but not a cheerleader. Did anyone see the recent split screen on one of the 24-hour news networks? One screen had G.W. praising the market’s strength, the other showed a board with dropping stock prices.

economy,free market,stock market,george w bush