SAN NARCISO, Calif. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- Last August, Walgreens announced its plans for a $1 billion cost-reduction initiative. The largest U.S. drugstore chain upped the ante this Thursday when it revealed the anticipated closure of 200 stores across the nation, a move intended to further boost profits and increase the proposed cost-cutting effort by another $500 million. “After a rigorous analysis, the company has identified additional opportunities for cost savings, primarily in its Retail Pharmacy USA division,” company spokespeople explained in a statement to the press. Reorganizing staff and eliminating overhead expenses were two of the main strategies discussed. However, the decision to shutter 200 points of operation has left many wondering what will become of the workers in those locations. Walgreens vowed that it will not lay off its employees. Instead, the company launched a revolutionary program, patterned off of Uber’s obscenely lucrative business model, which will allow the affected workers to become independent contractors who peddle drugs directly to consumers on the streets.

SAN NARCISO, Calif. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney pledged to restore American jobs and economic prosperity by getting tough on China. In a statement Thursday -- setting the tone for his running mate's debate with Vice President Joe Biden -- Romney vowed to designate China a "currency manipulator" the first day after his inauguration, something no administration has done in nearly two decades. During his tenure at Bain Capital, Romney outsourced a staggering number of U.S. jobs to economically depressed countries, with China taking the lion's share of the work. In 1992, Bain closed down the Holson Burnes plant in South Carolina and offshored more than 75 percent of its manufacturing. Ten years later, Romney helped implement an internal IT system for state offices in Massachusetts by ditching pricey New England contractors for resources in China. But Romney now believes China has gotten greedy, enabled by the current administration's leniency. "What we have seen from the Obama administration has been acquiescence to China," Romney said of the president's "pivot" to Asia. To show voters his commitment to U.S. interests, Romney will fight to prevent companies from offshoring labor to China by encouraging them to consider outsourcing to India, Eastern Europe and Mexico instead.

SAN NARCISO, Calif. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- Mitt Romney continues to face challenges on his uphill battle toward the 2012 presidency. His staggering unlikability and open disdain for nearly half of America's citizens have made it difficult to entice the tax-dodging volunteers he desperately needs to run ground support for the campaign. Although he eventually clinched the GOP nomination, Romney's own party presented him with resistance and obstacles to overcome throughout the process. He's spent over five months ramping up his staff to match the colossal operation President Obama organized across the nation. Now, the GOP challenger seems to have caught up, but only by monetary standards. Romney spent $4.04 million on payroll, closely approaching Obama's $4.37 million, according to statements filed with the Federal Election Commission last week. But while Obama's cash bought him 901 workers, Romney managed only 403. The figures would seem to lend credence to Obama's claims of creating jobs, which in this case doubled the number of positions filled by Romney. Demonstrating the strategic business thinking for which he is famed, Romney one-upped the president Tuesday by announcing his intentions to outsource a number of his campaign's call center and mass mailing positions to lower-cost contractors in India and China.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- Much has been made by the Obama campaign about discrepancies in Mitt Romney's tenure with Bain Capital. A lot of that confusion has been generated by Romney himself. The 2012 Republican presidential contender ostensibly wants the public to know two opposing things: one, that he was the "controlling person" in several Bain investments between 1999 and 2002; and two, that he was not actually the "controlling person" overseeing those investments. It's quite a pickle. A senior campaign advisor for President Obama summed up Romney's position as being either a felon for misrepresenting his position at Bain to the SEC, or a liar for misrepresenting his position at Bain to voters. Seizing on this momentum, Obama gleefully attacked his opponent for a plan that could send over 800,000 American jobs overseas. But Romney, who has since been on the defensive, cried foul with new attempts to illustrate "Obama's distortions and lies." Romney called the president's interpretation of his plan misleading and misinformed: "This proves the president knows nothing about business. We're not going to send nearly a million jobs overseas; the point of outsourcing is to eliminate jobs."

"I know better than Barack Obama what a third-world education looks like; I've outsourced thousands of jobs to third-world countries." -- Mitt Romney

BOSTON, Mass. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- Bain Capital, a private equity and assets management firm co-founded by Mitt Romney, outsourced a staggering number of American jobs to economically depressed countries under Romney's watch. "If you just look at some of the Bain startups, like Sports Authority, Staples, Bright Horizons, the job number you come up with is in excess of 100,000," the Romney campaign boasted during the January 2012 debates. And most of those jobs went to cheap labor in foreign markets. But that's also the tremendous benefit of Romney's overseas experience -- he has proven more instrumental than President Obama in creating hundreds of thousands of jobs, embracing globalization, and keeping overhead low for business owners. Now, that same experience in third-world countries is giving Mitt Romney an edge over Obama in, of all things, education reform.

SAN NARCISO, Calif. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- The conservative noise machine lost some of its steam and clamor Thursday with the deaths of right-wing journalist Andrew Breitbart and a congressional jobs bill predicated on a study of Indian poverty. Breitbart, 43, was pronounced dead at 12:19 a.m. at UCLA Medical Center. The jobs plan died hours later. Breitbart collapsed walking near his home around midnight, according to his father-in-law, actor Orson Bean. Paramedics were unable to revive him. Ultra-conservative Tea Party members, among Breitbart's biggest supporters, praised God for deciding the writer's fate instead of leaving him to the amoral pseudo-science of medical doctors. However, other officials deep within Party ranks expressed concerns that Breitbart's passing may have been the Lord's condemnation for his support of conservative gay rights groups (GOProud) and his role in founding The Huffington Post, a socialist propaganda publication. The cause of Breitbart's death is being classified as natural causes pending the results of an autopsy. Based on the findings, socially conservative lawmakers have said they are prepared to expand the definition of "natural causes" to include factors such as drugs, auto-erotic asphyxiation and bum fighting -- a standard courtesy for all Party advocates that was enacted in December 2010, following Rush Limbaugh's heart attack scare.

Courtesy Getty Images

HUDSON, N.H. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- Mitt Romney's Republican rivals seized on a gaffe he made during a political speech at the Gilchrist Metal Fabricating plant in Hudson, N.H., in which the former Massachusetts governor declared that he liked to fire people who failed to provide the level of service he expects. The blunder occurred as Romney addressed members of the Nashua Chamber of Commerce on Monday. While discussing plans to improve the nation's "monopolistic" health insurance system, the presidential hopeful argued that insurance providers face inadequate incentives to offer better care to consumers. Most citizens obtain health coverage through employer-sponsored programs, Romney stated, which limits choices and the ability to "fire" providers who are not performing satisfactorily. "For example," Romney said, "I don't like the way my 70-year-old Cambodian masseuse ends my massages. But if I don't have the means to fire her and choose a different provider, I'm stuck with a dry, superficial and generally unhappy ending to my treatment. It's like bringing up sodomy without Santorum there -- you feel like something's missing."

SAN NARCISO, Calif. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- As President Obama prepares to deliver a major jobs speech on Thursday, conservative Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry warned his supporters against falling prey to a politically motivated address full of “red herrings and fear-based rhetoric” that will be used to pass a dangerous socialist agenda. Perry said he believes the White House will leverage the country’s concern over unemployment to promote public sector jobs and the subsequent expansion of the federal government. “If you’re already struggling to make ends meet -- if you’re fighting to keep the IRS from your doorstep -- this is just going to make things worse. I should know. When I first started as a civil servant, I made $45,000 a year. But by 2007, I was making six figures and using my position to amass over a million dollars in government land deals. You know who paid for that? You. For the good the country, we can’t allow this to continue.”