Assurant Solutions Call Center in Lawton (Oklahoma) Will Close, 175 Laid Off

There have been a awful lot of call center closings lately. Guess people don't need help with stuff anymore, or something. Here is NewsOK with the story:

The Assurant Solutions call center in Lawton says it will phase out operations over the next few months and close the facility next year, leaving about 175 people out of work.

President Craig Lemasters tells a local newspaper that work will be transferred to company centers in Miami, Fla., and Albany, Ore.

The Lawton center handles calls in the insurance and warranty industries. The center opened in 2001 and at one point had more than 400 workers.

And so it goes.

Hey, Senator Inhofe, It Was 67 Degrees Fahrenheit in DC Yesterday

Back on August 19th of last year, I posted a Friday Rant called, "Hey, Senator Inhofe, It's HOT Outside," in which I called out the senior Senator from Oklahoma for his family's dumbass publicity stunt of building an igloo during one of the blizzards that struck DC two winters ago in order to mock Al Gore and others who are concerned about climate change. Specifically, I blasted the global warming denying Inhofe for not subsequently acknowledging this past summer's record breaking heat wave in The Sooner State:

So to recap, Okalahoma's record for the highest monthly temperature ever recorded was just smashed by an astonishing one full degree Fahrenheit. And yet, there was nary a peep about it from the esteemed Senator Inhofe and his merry band of inbreds.

All of this almost makes me wish I lived in Oklahoma. During July I would have had this very strong desire to go find Senator Inhofe's house, wait until about four o'clock in the afternoon, and then break open a couple of eggs and fry them right on his front walk. Then I would have held up my own sign for all passersby to see: "Pray for Cooler Weather...Maybe that Will Help."

Well, guess what? After Oklahoma suffered through a summer season right out of Dante's Inferno, the locale where the "Honorable" Senator Inhofe spends the lion's share of his time is literally going through a year without a winter. We've had exactly one truly cold night so far here in the DC area during this non-winter of 2011-2012, just this past week when the temps dipped into the teens. Other than that we've had maybe three or four nights when it has been below 30 degrees, and the current 10-day forecast is for more of the same through mid-January.

Yesterday, the mercury soared all the way to 67 degrees, and it felt more like early May than January. Even more pertinent is a factoid I read just this past week that DC has not experienced a temperature reading below zero degrees Fahrenheit since 1994, which is astonishing since before that time it was not all that uncommon an occurrence during the coldest months of the year.

So what I want to know is what does Senator Inhofe's family have to say about this run of extremely warm weather we are now experiencing? The silence on that front has been deafening. If you're going to be assholes whenever there is a snowstorm, you're setting yourself up for this kind of criticism. Even at the time their little publicity stunt was monumentally stupid because despite the fact that DC experienced three major winter storms two years ago, each time the temperatures rebounded into the 30s and 40s almost immediately afterward rather than going into a deep freeze, which used to be the norm.

I guess it's true what Stephen Colbert told George Bush the Lesser years ago at the White House Correspondent's Dinner: reality does have a well known liberal bias.


Bonus: John Fogerty knows what's going on

What's the Matter With Oklahoma, Part 2

image: never trust a state government that places an oil well on its own capitol grounds

Lots of recent manufacturing layoffs, actually:

Oklahoma has lost more than 20,000 manufacturing jobs since 2008, reports KOSU’s Ben Allen, who filed a story that highlights how the state’s employment is evolving.

Unfortunately, as Allen reports, the shift is bringing plant closings, layoffs and unemployment.

The KOSU piece examines the plight of the Mercury Mercruiser plant in Stillwater, which boasted about 400 employees in its heyday.

But then in 2009, the company wanted to cut costs. They managed to get major union concessions from their larger plant in Wisconsin, so they’ll soon move all their operations there.

Stillwater’s QuadGraphics, which prints magazines, is also closing. The 240 jobs there are going out-of-state, KOSU reports.

Since 2008, the state has lost more than 20-thousand jobs in the manufacturing industry. Oil and gas drilling has started to build payrolls up, but not enough to get back to previous levels, Allen reported, citing figures from the state Employment Security Commission.

So which companies are doing all of these layoffs?

Announced manufacturing layoffs in the state since 2010:

Air Systems Components (Ponca City, OK) – 63 employees

Caterpillar (Tulsa, OK) – 289

Gatorade/Pepsico (Pryor) – 107

High Sierra Energy (Centrahoma) – 125

Imation (Weatherford) – 107

L-3 Stratis (Oklahoma City) – 43

Lufthansa Technik (Tulsa) – 59

Mercury Marine (Stillwater) – 56

Plant Performance Service (Sand Springs) – 63

Raytheon (Oklahoma City) – 152

Simonton (McAlester) – 246

Terex Corporation (Oklahoma City) – 117

URS (Enid) – 74

VT Group (Ft. Sill) – 243

Zeledyne – 2 rounds of layoffs – Tulsa : 206, Broken Arrow : 325

Oklahoma, of course, is a deep red state that has staunchly supported conservative candidates at all levels of government for many years even as those same conservatives once in office have most ardently favored "free" trade agreements and other laws that have utterly destroyed the state's manufacturing base. Right about now I ought to write something about how this situation desperately needs to change, but at this point it is already likely far too late.


Bonus: Sadly, "Tulsa Time" has become the idle time of unemployment