President Obama Calls on Bill Clinton

President Obama Calls on Bill Clinton

At the request of Barack Obama, former President Bill Clinton will have a marquee role in this year's Democratic National Convention.

WASHINGTON — Former President Bill Clinton will have a marquee role in this summer's Democratic National Convention, where he will make a forceful case for President Barack Obama's re-election and his economic vision for the country, several Obama campaign and Democratic party officials said Sunday.

The move gives the Obama campaign an opportunity to take advantage of the former president's immense popularity and remind voters that a Democrat was in the White House the last time the American economy was thriving.

Obama personally asked Clinton to speak at the convention and place Obama's name in nomination, and Clinton enthusiastically accepted, officials said. Clinton speaks regularly to Obama and to campaign officials about strategy.

Clinton's prominent role at the convention will also allow Democrats to embrace party unity in a way that is impossible for Republican rival Mitt Romney.

George W. Bush, the last Republican to hold the White House, remains politically toxic in some circles. While Bush has endorsed Romney, he is not involved in his campaign and has said he does not plan to attend the GOP convention.

Clinton will speak in prime-time at the Democratic convention in Charlotte, N.C., on Sept. 5, the night before Obama formally accepts the party nomination. While the number two on the ticket often speaks that night, the Obama campaign has instead decided that Obama and Vice President Joe Biden will speak on the same night.

Biden will speak before Obama on Sept. 6, in front of tens of thousands of people expected to fill an outdoor stadium in Charlotte, and millions more on television.
The vice president's speech will focus on outlining many of the challenges the White House has faced over the past four years and the decisions Obama made to address them, officials said.
"To us it's about deploying our assets in the most effective way," Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod said. "To have President Clinton on Wednesday night laying out the choice facing voters, and then having Vice President Biden speak right before the president in prime time on Thursday, giving a testimony to the decisions the president has made, the character of his leadership and the battle to rebuild the middle class that's so central to our message."

Clinton's role at the convention was to be formally announced Monday. It was first reported by The New York Times.

Clinton spoke at the 2008 convention, part of a healing process for the Democratic party following the heated primary battle between Obama and the former president's wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Since then, the ties between Obama and Bill Clinton have strengthened significantly. Obama has called on the former president for advice several times during his term and the two have appeared together this year at campaign fundraisers for Obama's re-election bid.

By JULIE PACE and KEN THOMAS 07/29/12 11:49 PM ET

Associated Press writer Beth Fouhy in New York contributed to this report.

GM Vows To 'Insource' Most Of Its IT Jobs: Beginning Of A Trend?

GM Vows To 'Insource' Most Of Its IT Jobs: Beginning Of A Trend?

U.S. workers have been dealing with the effects of outsourcing for years now. But in a trend that many no doubt would like to see continue, General Motors Co. has committed to bringing back technology jobs it now outsources.

 

 

The automaker currently outsources about 90 percent of its information-technology services, including running data centers and writing applications, to other companies. But in a 180-degree turn, newly installed chief information officer, Randy Mott, who joined GM in February, wants to "insource" 90 percent of the company's IT operations within three years, InformationWeek reports.

Bringing back IT jobs at the scale GM needs would require the Detroit-based company, which currently employs about 1,500 IT workers worldwide, to go on a hiring binge to staff the three U.S.-based software development centers it's planning to build. Those would include jobs such as software developers, project managers, database experts and business analysts, according to the magazine.

In doing so, GM follows a path first blazed by Ford Motor Co. about five years ago. The plan focuses less on the bottom line and is more concerned with getting the most value from IT development.
But the move is rare. InformationWeek notes that in a survey it conducted of 513 business-technology professionals last year, just 4 percent said their companies plan to decrease IT outsourcing. Seventeen percent were weighing their options, and the remaining 79 percent were maintaining or increasing their outsourcing.

One reason for that is that companies have cheap and reliable access to virtual networks, known as cloud computing. The technology allows businesses to take advantage of low-cost labor in countries such as the Philippines, Malaysia and India, where wages are a fraction of those in the U.S. and other developed nations, according to Staff.com, a website that allows employers to hire workers virtually through the Internet.
Not only can workers be hired on the cheap, Staff.com boasts that its software allows employers "to track low-wage workers minute-by-minute using time-tracking software -- all in the cloud." Moreover, global access permits employers to find people who can work around the clock.
Those attributes, says the site's founder and CEO Rob Rawson, make continued outsourcing a no-brainer.
For more on the wage disparities among workers around the world, check the infographic below from Staff.com

Source: By David Schepp