Georgia Republican Senate candidate David Perdue was busted saying in a
deposition that he had spent "most of my career" outsourcing jobs.
Of course, no one likes the assholes shipping jobs overseas, so Perdue and his people were in a jam. How to deal with this? And the solution, apparently, has been to try and redefine what "outsourcing" means.
“Defend it? I’m proud of it,” he said in a press stop at The White House restaurant in Buckhead. “This is a part of American business, part of any business. Outsourcing is the procurement of products and services to help your business run. People do that all day.”
You see, he's proud of his outsourcing, which is really the procurement of products and services! Say, you want a sandwich? You outsource production to the corner deli! You need paper? You outsource procurement to the nearest Staples!
Except that's not what oursourcing means. He's talking about "procurement" for goods, and "sub-contracting" for services. But in case there was any doubt about what he meant by "outsourcing" in his deposition, let's look at the questions in their context:
q. Can you describe your experience with outsourcing?
A. Yeah, I spent most of my career doing that. Kurt Salmon Associates, some of my experience there was helping footwear companies develop the ability to import shoes from Asia, specifically Taiwan, Korea, China, Indonesia, Malaysia [...]
Then at Reebok most of -- all of our production was sourced in Asia. Same thing, both apparel, textile products, and footwear products. I could go on with that. That's the summary.
Boy, he could talk about his outsourcing to Asia all day! But he summarized for our benefit. And I summarized his summary, which in short, was explaining how he helped footwear (and textiles and apparel) companies make their products in Asia, then import them to the U.S.
Then he explains how he did the same thing for Sara Lee, which "did not have a centralized sourcing operation in Asia, and we built that from the ground up." And then he actually defines his definition of "sourcing":
We were sourcing within the first six months; that means importing product to Europe and the U.S.
So yeah, we're not talking about procurement of sub-contracting. We're talking about good ol' fashioned outsourcing, the kind everyone hates, and for a million good reasons. All Republicans love outsourcing,
so give $3 to get rid of them.
