The Rev. Jesse Jackson has been arrested in a group of protesting northern Illinois workers during an act of civil disobedience in Freeport.

Jackson was taken into custody Wednesday with about a dozen workers. He is expected to be released later in the day.

Sensata Technologies is owned by Bain Capital and in the process of moving its Freeport manufacturing operations to China. That'll cost Freeport 170 jobs.

WIFR:

Jackson spent most of the afternoon in "Bainport”, the make-shift campsite that's been home to Sensata employees and their supporters for the last 40 days. Things took a turn around 4:00 p.m. when Jackson and about a dozen workers decided to march onto company property, before being arrested by police.

You may remember the plant is scheduled to close the day before the election, because around 170 jobs are being relocated to China. Today, Jackson said workers were humiliated because they've had to rain their Chinese replacements. He says he hopes his arrest will get Sensata management to the negotiating table. He hoped to convince them to keep the plant open.

“When these workers lose their jobs, they lose their homes, they lose their cars. Their kids cannot stay in school, they lose their hope. We are fighting for the integrity of the American worker, we're fighting for an even playing field,” said Jackson.

Sensata emerged as a flashpoint in the controversy over Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s ties to Bain this summer, with the company’s employees pleading publicly with Romney to help save their jobs from being outsourced to China. Not only does Romney stand to profit from the outsourcing of these jobs to China through the stock he still owns in the company, his 2011 tax returns show that he got a huge tax break by moving Sensata stock to a charity organization he controls -- and that he continues to profit from Bain’s offshore holdings and tax avoidance strategies.

A caravan of about 50 former workers and supporters headed to the fire department where the people who were arrested are to be released.

These American workers all have one thing in common: Bain Capital laid them off and outsourced their jobs. They've traveled from all over the country to gather outside the debate tonight and demand that Mitt Romney answer their questions about how he ran Bain, and how he'll run the country.

Update: This is a statement directly from the now unemployed Sensata workers in Illinois:

"There seems to be some confusion about whether or not our Sensata plant took down our American flag and replaced it with the Chinese flag. Here is the truth. Sensata took down our American flag on the day they flew in our Chinese replacements that we were forced to train. They put our American flag back up after the Chinese workers left. They never flew the Chinese flag."

I've also been attempting to contact a spokesperson for the workers directly, with no response yet, but I think it's probably safe to say that if the plant owners had placed that small flag on the fence in the video, that would have been mentioned in this statement. My apologies for any confusion created by my statements about the Chinese flag.
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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 at about 1:10 into the video...in Illinois.

More on the Bain-owned Illinois Sensata plant:

'When I Hear Mitt Romney Speak it Makes Me Sick to My Stomach'

Sensata Worker Outsourced by Bain Speaks Out

Occupy Tampa: Shut Down Bain Capital

Arrests at Bain-Owned Sensata Plant

Sensata Employees Ask Mitt Romney To Save Their Jobs

With Election Day on the horizon, a Bain-owned company in Freeport, IL, is moving out equipment as it shuts down operations in the U.S. to ship 170 jobs overseas. On Monday, workers and community members blocked the loading dock for a second time to prevent equipment from being removed from the plant. Three community members -- including the daughter of a Sensata worker -- were arrested when they refused to move after the company called the police.

The company -- Sensata -- emerged as a flashpoint in the controversy over Romney’s ties to Bain this summer, with the company’s employees pleading publicly with Romney to help save their jobs from being outsourced to China. Not only does Romney stand to profit from the outsourcing of these jobs to China through the stock he still owns in the company, his 2011 tax returns show that he got a huge tax break by moving Sensata stock to a charity organization he controls -- and that he continues to profit from Bain’s offshore holdings and tax avoidance strategies.

Sensata workers are certainly not alone watching their jobs sail off to China, or to have wealthy American businessmen profit by investing in those companies:

NYT:

The tale of Asimco Technologies, an auto parts manufacturer whose plants dot eastern China, would seem to underscore Mitt Romney’s campaign-trail complaint that China’s manufacturing juggernaut is costing America jobs.

Nine years ago, the company bought two camshaft factories that employed about 500 people in Michigan. By 2007 both were shut down. Now Asimco manufactures the same components in China on government-donated land in a coastal region that China has designated an export base, where companies are eligible for the sort of subsidies Mr. Romney says create an unfair trade imbalance.

But there is a twist to the Asimco story that would not fit neatly into a Romney stump speech: Since 2010, it has been owned by Bain Capital, the private equity firm founded by Mr. Romney, who has as much as $2.25 million invested in three Bain funds with large stakes in Asimco and at least seven other Chinese businesses, according to his 2012 candidate financial disclosure and other documents.

“How is it China’s been so successful in taking away our jobs?” he(Romney) asked recently. “Well, let me tell you how: by cheating.”

That was Mitt Romney the candidate for president. Mitt Romney the millionaire, or is it billionaire --trust him, you'll never know for certain -- that Mitt Romney is calling the American people "suckers."

Some day I would like to see people who do everything they can to avoid paying taxes ostracized as the unpatriotic, selfish, leeches they are.

Who will Homer Simpson vote for in the 2012 Elections? Barack Obama or Mitt Romney? This episode hits on the Voter ID issue, Obamacare, Mitt Romney's tax returns, and even outsourcing to China!

Mitt Romney is going to have some unwanted company on his upcoming bus tour across several swing states.

The Democratic National Committee announced on Thursday that it will stage its own four-day bus tour alongside the Romney campaign’s trip through Virginia, North Carolina, Florida and Ohio. The tour, called “Romney Economics: The Middle Class Under the Bus Tour,” will begin on Friday with a news conference in Alexandria, Virginia.

Organizers said they will highlight Mitt Romney’s record of failure as Governor of Massachusetts, the lack of support small businesses received from Governor Romney’s Administration and Romney’s proposed tax hike on middle-class families to pay for massive tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. The DNC’s latest tour represents a reprise of the successful tour by the same name that the DNC conducted in June to respond to Mitt Romney’s tour at the time, which included stops in NH, PA, OH, IA, WI and MI.

“Throughout Mitt Romney’s career, middle-class families have frequently found themselves thrown under the bus as a result of his failed record and top-down economic policies,” the committee said in a news release. "When Romney was Governor of Massachusetts, the number of business start-ups fell by 10 percent and hit its lowest point during his last year in office. Massachusetts ranked 47th out of 50 in job creation, and Romney hiked taxes and fees by $750 million a year in addition to saddling the Commonwealth with the highest debt per person in the country."

The committee further stated that "Policies Mitt Romney has embraced as a candidate would only further erode middle-class security. Mitt Romney would hike taxes on the middle class to pay for massive tax cuts for wealthy Americans like Romney. Independent economists found that Romney’s plan would raise taxes on the average middle-class family with children by $2,000 in order to give hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires."

They also hammered Romney for favoring a tax plan that benefits millionaires and billionaires like himself while raising taxes on the middle class, as he continues to refuse to release more of his own tax returns. The DNC tour organizers insist that "Americans have a right to learn more about why Romney had a Swiss Bank Account, how low a tax rate he has paid and if he even paid taxes at all some years, and what his finances looked like while he was outsourcing jobs, offshoring his own money and laying off workers in the private sector."

Speakers on the tour include Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman of the committee, Ed Rendell, a former Pennsylvania governor and Chet Culver, a former governor of Iowa. Two state representatives from Massachusetts will speak at the opening news conference: Kathi-Anne Reinstein and David Linsky, both long-serving Democrats.

The Romney campaign announced its bus tour earlier this week, leading to speculation on what the itinerary might say about his pick for vice president. The final stop is in Ohio, the home state of the rumored front-runner, Senator Rob Portman.

The side of the committee’s bus features tire tracks over the words “Middle Class” and the slogan: “Romney Economics: Outsourcing, Offshoring, Out of Touch.”

This Youtube video has good footage of the damage as a result of the July 18, 2012 riot at the Maruti Suzuki plant in India, but it is a continuous loop of the same images for over 6 minutes.

Outsourcing to cheap foreign labor may have to eventually become a thing of the past as now auto workers in India have resorted to deadly violence in their desperate efforts to have India's outdated labor laws overhauled, and their wages increased.

Reuters reports:

Hiding in his office near New Delhi as workers armed with iron bars and car parts rampaged through the factory, Maruti Suzuki(MRTI.NS) supervisor Raj Kumar spent two terrified hours trying to comprehend the warzone his workplace had become.

By the end of the day, one of his colleagues had been burnt to death and dozens wounded, many with broken bones, as a long-running struggle between the shop floor and management exploded at a factory racked by mistrust.

While police investigate and the carmaker counts its mounting losses, the July 18 clash has rattled corporate India and shone a light on outdated and rigid labour laws in a country where cheap labour drives manufacturing and draws foreign investment. High inflation, a shortage of skilled labour and rising aspirations have emboldened workers' demands.

"There was always a strong sense of unease," Kumar, 43, told Reuters as he stood outside the locked factory gates more than a week after the riot in the industrial town of Manesar.

"We are living in fear... The kind of violence these guys showed was unbelievable."

Hyundai and Honda plants located in India have also seen labour unrest in their plants as some labor laws date as far back as 1920.

Since July's rioting, Maruti Suzuki has remained on shut down, with its some 2,500 workers in hiding fearing punishment from the company, criminal charges or both.

Troubles for Maruti began as far back as 2000, when workers hunger-striked for better wages. The best and highest paid manufacturing workers in the area are paid 25,000 rupees a month, the equivalent of just $445.79 in U.S. currency.

A new report before the "official" report on poverty in the U.S. is released gives a heads-up on what we can expect to be revealed. Yes, poverty is on track to reach levels not since before Lyndon Johnson's "war on poverty" in 1964.

Peter Edelman, director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy spells out in this report exactly what's pushing the poverty rate ever higher; globalization, automation, outsourcing, immigration, and less unionization.

Via:

The Associated Press surveyed more than a dozen economists, think tanks and academics, both nonpartisan and those with known liberal or conservative leanings, and found a broad consensus: The official poverty rate will rise from 15.1 percent in 2010, climbing as high as 15.7 percent. Several predicted a more modest gain, but even a 0.1 percentage point increase would put poverty at the highest level since 1965.
...

[...] Millions could fall through the cracks as government aid from unemployment insurance, Medicaid, welfare and food stamps diminishes.

"The issues aren't just with public benefits. We have some deep problems in the economy," said Peter Edelman, director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy.

He pointed to the recent recession but also longer-term changes in the economy such as globalization, automation, outsourcing, immigration, and less unionization that have pushed median household income lower. Even after strong economic growth in the 1990s, poverty never fell below a 1973 low of 11.1 percent. That low point came after President Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty, launched in 1964, that created Medicaid, Medicare and other social welfare programs.

One item not mentioned as an issue in the economy is the absolute greed of the wealthy corporations and CEOs. Take for example the Caterpillar Corporation seeking steep concessions from its workers even when business is booming.

Then there are the corporate raiders whose greed, and cruelty, know no bounds. Take Mitt Romney's Bain Capital, for example:

I don't think it's my imagination that the wealthier these greedy corporations become, the deeper into poverty the rest of us fall.