Jeff Immelt, Crony Capitalist

So Jeff Immelt gave megabucks to the Clinton Foundation while Clinton was lobbying Algeria to give a multi-billion dollar contract to GE.

Justin Danhof, general counsel for the National Center for Public Policy Research, asked Immelt at the Oklahoma City gathering: “While Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton lobbied foreign governments on behalf of companies including General Electric at a time when those companies were making donations to the Clinton Foundation. In late 2012, for example, Clinton urged the Algerian government to award a power plant contract to GE. GE contributed to the Clinton Foundation. Then in 2013, Algeria awarded the power plant contract to GE. By donating to the Clinton Foundation while receiving a huge favor from the secretary of state … [was GE exposed] to the risk of being charged with honest services fraud?”

Danhof then asked Immelt if he would make public all of GE’s written communications with the State Department during that time frame. And Immelt’s reply?

No, he said, NCPPR reported.

“That’s not something we would do,” he said.

Danhof, in a written statement, expressed dissatisfaction with Immelt’s reply.

“There is no evidence that GE did anything wrong – but that’s the point, there is no evidence, period,” he said. “When one of the world’s most powerful companies teams with the secretary of state and the end result is a massive donation going one way and a multi-billion foreign contract coming back the other way, the company’s investors are right to ask questions. … It is disappointing to see Immelt put GE in the same boat as Mrs. Clinton in hiding the company’s communications from public view.”

Does anyone wonder why GE has been doing so poorly under a crony capitalist like Immelt?

“The company’s actions are really the focus here, not Mrs. Clinton’s,” he said, in his written statement. “Lobbyists have been imprisoned under honest services fraud for far less than the sum that changed hands between GE and the Clinton Foundation.”

The Wall Street Journal listed the GE donations to a health partnership with the Clinton Foundation between $500,000 and $1 million.

“Clinton’s subsequent actions helped GE obtain a contact with the Algerian government to supply turbines for six power plants to the tune of $1.9 billion,” he said.

GE: We Bring Bad Karma to Life

It turns out that GE, in bed with Obama from before the beginning of his disastrous administration, is suffering from the policies of the administration it cheered on.

General Electric is telling its investors that Obamacare is to blame for recent losses in the company’s health care division, The Daily Caller has learned.

It's noted that it's the stupid inconsistency of Team Obama that is leading to the current economic malaise, much as it did during FDR's "Great Depression."

The second under-discussed issue is what scholar Robert Higgs has called “regime uncertainty.” Roosevelt’s victory in 1936 had been so convincing that people believed he might do anything. FDR reinforced this suspicion with an inaugural address so aggressive that modern presidential advisers would never allow it on the teleprompter. Roosevelt told the nation he sought in government “an instrument of unimagined power.” That scared markets and small businesses.

Roosevelt relished hunting down big firms through regulatory action and blaming new sectors, such as utilities, for slowdowns — on some days. Other days, he invited business leaders into the Oval Office and talked about partnership and a “breathing spell.”

This inconsistency itself posed a problem. The diary of an Ohio lawyer named Daniel Roth, which was recently republished, captures the pervasive anxiety of the period. “We are having a bad steel strike in Youngstown and the mills have closed,” Roth wrote on June 22, 1937. “The state and federal governments seem to support the labor unions and there has been a complete breakdown of law and order. Business is very quiet.”

From the U.K., John Maynard Keynes wrote to FDR that it was all right

to nationalize utilities or to leave them alone — but what, Keynes asked, was “the object of chasing the utilities around the lot every other week?””

Immelt: Communist China 'Works'

The chairman of the President Barack Obama's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of GE, praised China this morning on CBS:

NBC fires editor for altering Zimmerman 911 call; when will MSNBC fire the writer who did the same?

In case you have not been following along, NBC edited the phone call made by George Zimmerman, taking out a question by the police dispatcher asking for Martin’s race. When Zimmerman replies “he looks black” the NBC editors removed the question and made it look as if Zimmerman was profiling Martin because he was black, heightening the story line that Zimmerman is racist.

NBC is owned by GE, the global company run by Jeff Immelt, close bud to Barack Obama, the company that does not pay taxes and the company that's the poster child for crony capitalism. 

Americans shouldn't be cheerleaders for GE

Immelt has long lamented this stubborn individualism of the U.S. economy, compared with the more cooperative Asian and European economies. At last year's annual conference of the Export-Import Bank of the United States -- a federal agency that subsidizes U.S. exporters like GE and Boeing -- Immelt had a rather dour description of the free market in the United States.: "For so long, we've said, 'It just doesn't matter. Let whatever happens happen.'"

"Germany is the model," Immelt has said, because it has more "public will" and national "vision." He explained: "The companies roam as a pack. They stick together. And the government supports the companies to be exporters." He enviously described China's "incredible unanimity of purpose from top to bottom."

Again, Americans bristle at the suggestion that we should all march under the GE flag. But Immelt isn't some lone wolf here: He's basically articulating Obamanomics.

Ah, yes: "Germany is the model."  "You vill do vat ve tell you.  Papers please."

Immelt is one of the crony capitalists who want the US government help him rescue his failing company. Under his so-called leadership the GE shareholder has lost 75% of his money, and GE is no longer a Blue Chip company.

How do you think Immelt's GE would fare, relative to smaller players, if we were more like China and Germany? Here's one clue: GE spends more on lobbying the federal government than any other corporation.

Immelt may not be able to get America to root for his company. But maybe he can get America's political class to help GE win.

GE's Jeff Immelt

Via Drudge

GE Immelt lectures biz owners: 'Stop complaining about government'...

FLASHBACK: Company Paid NO TAXES Last Year...


One of those "do as I say, not as I do" moments.

GE Has Shed U.S. Jobs Since “Jobs Czar” Immelt Took Helm

President Obama has tapped General Electric Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt to head a new White House panel tasked with finding a way to grow jobs. But since Immelt took over, GE has shed thousands of jobs, according to the conglomerate’s annual reports.

The Yacht Tax Rises from the Grave; This Time It Wears Wings.

Remember the yacht tax? That was back in 1991 when the class warriors in congress decided that putting an excise tax on boats over $100,000 was an easy and painless way of taxing the rich.

Well, that’s not the way it worked out. The rich decided not to buy any new yachts. Instead of collecting taxes from the rich, the government ended up putting thousands of workers - the middle class that builds boats - at boatyards and marinas out of work.

The executive vice president of the National Marine Manufacturers Association, Frank Scalpone, said the tax had already adversely affected the nation's top boat builders. He cited companies like Pearson Yachts, O'Day Corporation, Shannon Boat Builders and Bristol Yachts as ones that have been forced out of business. "For production boat builders fighting the recession, it was the straw that broke the camel's back," Mr. Scalpone said.

How stupid do you have to be not to foresee this? Apparently you have to be as stupid as the average Democrat in government, as stupid as Barack Obama is about all the rest of the economy. Nothing, literally nothing that Obama has done about the US economy has worked out. Not the “stimulus,” not “cash for clunkers,” not support for underwater mortgages, not his “green jobs” initiatives, not his promise of “shovel ready” jobs. And now he’s suggesting a repeat of the disastrous yacht tax, but this time on aircraft.

If this passes, get ready for the destruction of the private jet industry and the 1.2 million people it employs. Like yachts, people and corporations can defer the purchase of a plane, or decide not to buy one altogether.

I don’t know if Obama knows this or if he does know, whether he cares. I suspect he sees it as a campaign talking point useful in portraying Republicans as the party of the rich but which will never be enacted into law. If the Republicans were bloody minded enough, they might be tempted to go along just to see the corporate jet business crash and burn as the result of the Obama tax and use it as an election issue. An added benefit would be to hurt GE – a huge jet engine manufacturer - whose chairman, Jeff Immelt, is a major Obama backer. It could be a win-win.

UPDATE:  The Other McCain on the jet tax. 

And Rush Limbaugh: With the Obama Myth Shattered, What's Left is a Failing Narcissist.

Well, that's all Obama's got. All he has is class warfare. You know, Obama's out there chiding the Republicans for not acting like grownups. So when's he gonna go answer questions about jobs or the economy? He just... I don't know. The White House says they're gonna host a Twitter town hall with President Obama on July 6, and that's where the president will answer questions submitted via Twitter which limits messages to 140 characters. "The town hall will focus on jobs and the economy and a video feed of Obama's answers will be streamed online." So he's gonna go answer questions about jobs and the economy on Twitter.

Limbaugh on taking Obama seriously:

How do you take this guy seriously? The only reason you take this guy seriously is because of the power he's got but you don't take him seriously because of his intellect. He can make fun of, he can mock 535 members of Congress for not showing leadership while he refuses to lead. How do you take that seriously? He can brag that his pre-teenage daughters don't wait 'til the last minute to finish their homework while he hasn't even turned in last year's budget -- and he gets their ages wrong! He doesn't even know how old his daughters are. So on the one hand you have to take it seriously; on the other hand you feel like a fool for doing so.

What newspapers did Obama read?

The Left openly derided Sarah Palin for failing to name a newspaper she read in her interview with Katie Couric. I watched the video and I thought her answer was a good one, but that’s just me.

But the question came to mind after watching Barack Obama make a joke about those “shovel ready jobs” that the trillion dollar stimulus was supposed to create.

When I first heard the “shovel ready jobs” slogan I knew immediately that it was a crock. I’m not in the construction business, have never occupied public office and only know what I read in the paper or the Internet, but even I know that there are no “shovel ready jobs” ready to go for public construction waiting only on the injection of cash from Washington.

When one nutty environmental group can halt the construction of another nutty environmentalist group’s construction of a solar power facility in the middle of the God-forsaken Mojave Desert you know the truth. It is a tribute to the persistence, greed, single-mindedness (and often cupidity) of some people that anything is ever built in this permit-obsessed, rule-laden and law-encrusted country.

So when Barack Obama, hailed at his election as the smartest man ever to hold the office, is unaware of the fact that “shovel ready jobs” is an oxymoron when it refers to the public sector it makes you wonder. It is to give him the benefit of the doubt to call him ignorant; the alternative is to conclude that he knew the slogan was a lie. If he was ignorant, it’s a valid question to ask what else he doesn’t know and why he doesn’t know it. Flushing a billion dollars down the drain to educate the President about this little item is really more than the country can afford. Think of what else he doesn’t know and what the cost in blood and treasure may be to educate him.

To paraphrase Rush Limbaugh, in the end it may not matter whether Barack Obama’s destructive policies emanate from ignorance or are bad by design. The result for the country is disastrous. I could not help but notice that the people surrounding Obama in the video are not being hurt by his policies. Jeff Immelt, the head of GE, made over $15 million in 2010. Obama has free public housing, is surrounded by household staff catering to his every whim, a fleet of jet aircraft, and fleets of cars, is personally worth millions from the sale of books and will be able to command millions more from speeches once he leaves office. He can talk about the 20% unemployed as a bump in the road with the gracelessness as the French aristocracy just before the revolution.

But it would have been nice if the media had asked Barack Obama – just once – before the election: “what newspapers do you read.”    Perhaps we would have had fewer "bumps on the road to recovery."

GE lobbied for $50 light bulbs.

GE, run by Obama’s jobs czar Jeff Immelt, lobbied for government regulations that outlawed the light bulbs it makes in plants like the one in Winchester, VA. As a result, “jobs guru” Immelt is firing 200 employees in this plant alone.

Instead it has outsourced the production of the poisonous mercury containing compact fluorescent bulbs in China where wages are much, much lower and environmental regulations virtually non-existent.

The step beyond compact fluorescents are LED bulbs that are being brought to market at $50 each. Considering the fact that incandescent (regular) light bulbs are a commodity that anyone can make, and that they’re cheap so they don’t have a big profit margin, GE has colluded with the government to outlaw the bulbs that you like and force you to buy bulbs you don’t like at a much higher price with much bigger profits. That’s how big business and government to collude to screw the consumer.

And they do it “for your own good.”

GE: Poster Child for Free Enterprise vs. National Socialism

From Powerline: 

So the symbiosis between GE and the federal government, in particular the Obama administration, is obvious. GE strikes us as a "modern" company, in that its business strategy consists largely of exercising political influence. In truth, however, the concept is not new: the virtual merger of Big Government and Big Business has long been a hallmark of national socialism.

After noting that GE

• paid no federal income taxes in 2010 after reporting a $14 billion profit.
• has cut its US work force by 20%, 
• is now generating most of its revenue overseas,
• runs a TV network (MSNBC) that runs pro-Obama programming 24/7,
• and has decided that getting government subsidies for "green energy" is the key to its future,

John at Powerline compares GE to Koch Industries:

One can hardly resist comparing GE with another American company--one that has steadily increased its American workforce, rather than cutting it. One that has never gone to the federal government for a bailout. One that lobbies out of self-defense, as all companies do, but not to secure special privileges for itself at the taxpayers' expense. One that pays lots of taxes. One that not only advocates free enterprise, but lives by it, competing for business with superior products and services.

A number of companies would fit that description, but I have in mind Koch Industries. Koch is smaller than GE, although not radically so--$100 billion in revenues vs. $150 billion--but it pays a whole lot more in taxes. One might think that a company like Koch would be honored and respected compared with a company like GE, but that is not the case--not on the left, anyway. On the contrary, it is Koch's very integrity that makes it public enemy number one for the Democratic Party.

I once worked for GE; I'm very glad I don't any more.

So the questions are posed rather starkly. Which company should Americans respect, the company that lays off more and more Americans, or the one that keeps hiring them? The company that dodges taxes, or the one that pays them? The company that makes money by partnering with government to force uneconomic products on an unwilling public, or the one that sells top-notch products that consumers want, without any compulsion from Washington? The company that stands for a Big Business-Big Government partnership, or the one that stubbornly defends, and practices, free enterprise?

GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt is a very, very bad man.

GE paid no taxes on $26 billion in profit.

Via the Heritage Foundation

General Electric, the nation’s largest corporation, had a very good year in 2010. The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States. Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.

GE has become a poster child for a corrupt system of government that provides targeted benefits to preferred companies.

Jeff Immelt, GE Chairman:

[W]e are going through more than a cycle. The global economy, and capitalism, will be ‘reset’ in several important ways. The interaction between government and business will change forever. In a reset economy, the government will be a regulator; and also an industry policy champion, a financier, and a key partner.

How do you feel about a company that's the Obama administration's partner so that it can avoid taxes on billions in profits?  I have no fondness for taxes or for the absurdly high taxes that US corporations pay compared to the rest of the world, but I do believe in fairness and a level playing field.

This is how GE plays the game

The [tax]shelters are so crucial to G.E.’s bottom line that when Congress threatened to let the most lucrative one expire in 2008, the company came out in full force. G.E. officials worked with dozens of financial companies to send letters to Congress and hired a bevy of outside lobbyists.

The head of its tax team, Mr. Samuels, met with Representative Charles B. Rangel, then chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, which would decide the fate of the tax break. As he sat with the committee’s staff members outside Mr. Rangel’s office, Mr. Samuels dropped to his knee and pretended to beg for the provision to be extended — a flourish made in jest, he said through a spokeswoman.

That day, Mr. Rangel reversed his opposition to the tax break, according to other Democrats on the committee.

The following month, Mr. Rangel and Mr. Immelt stood together at St. Nicholas Park in Harlem as G.E. announced that its foundation had awarded $30 million to New York City schools, including $11 million to benefit various schools in Mr. Rangel’s district.

We’re sure there was no quid pro quo between Rangel and Immelt. That would be bribery, which is illegal. [sarcasm off].

Jeff Immelt presided over a GE whose stock price plunged 90% and a dividend cut of 70%.  He is not only corrupt, he's incompetent. 

GE Distances Itself From CEO's Reported Comments

Who is this GE and how can it distance itself from the guy who runs the company?

Via the Wall Street Journal:

General Electric Co. said Thursday that blunt language reportedly used by Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt at a gathering in Rome to describe China and the Obama administration doesn't reflect the company's views.


GE's disclaimer followed a report in the Financial Times, which quoted Mr. Immelt lashing out at China for making it hard for foreign multinationals to do business there and the Obama administration for its approach to regulation.

Unless Immelt is no longer CEO, this is a bizarre comment.

Jeff Immelt and the politics of commercial prostitutes

At the risk of transgressing Godwin's Law, it's frequently observed that Hitler had his support among German big business. That may be true in part - the streets of the Wiemar Republic were in turn occupied by Communists and Nazis - and business interests unusually try to win favor with the the factions in the arena.

In the US business interests give to both Democrats and Republicans to buy access. But with Congress and the White House firmly in Democrat control, the smart money is backing the current winners.

Which brings us to the corporate interests supporting our new "Maximum Leader."

One of the most prominent supporters of the "new regime" as personified by Barack Obama is Jeffrey Immelt of General Electric who has managed to drive the GE stock price from $60 to $6 (at its recent low) . GE is a manufacturing, financial and media powerhouse that would have gone bankrupt without a bailout via federal intervention in the commercial paper market. In response, Immelt has become a slavish devotee of all things Obama, promoting "green energy" via GE wind turbines that manage to slaughter migrating birds while providing erratic power from time to time all the whole attracting millions - and soon billions - in Federal subsidies to aid GE's stock price and to re-attach Immelt to his coveted corner office position and control of the GE mcorporate jet fleet. If there were a college course in corporate malfeasance and an example were needed of a top executive got away with destruction of shareholder value - and retained his job (forget about the chairment of GM, AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac) -Jeff Immelt would be the poster boy for this case study.

At one time GE Chairmen were not assigned the job of bootlicker to Presidents. We're not sure if the position was applied for by Immelt or if he was assigned, but he takes his position seriously. And his position is to grab his ankles and bend over. Pictures of the acts committed between Obama and Immelt are not appropriate for discussion on a family oriented web site.

In any case we are indebted to Dennis Gartman for the following observation:

We do know that it is terribly important these days for chief corporate figures to try to hold to a line of reasonable political correctness, for otherwise they shall come under severe pressure from Washington to become so and in the process bring down the vengeance of the government upon their business. Better it is, apparently, to be politically correct and to avoid Washington’s wrath than it is to be economically correct and invite that wrath. We know this and we understand this and we are dismayed by that fact, and so we take what Mr. Jeffery Immelt, the Chairman of General Electric, said in a recent interview regarding the distribution of wealth here in the US.

Speaking last week at West Point… and haven’t the young men and women of West Point had just about enough of being used as the nation’s sounding board for executive pronouncement, with the President last week having spoken then and now Mr. Immelt having done the same; shouldn’t these young men and women be studying? Shouldn’t they be learning the lessons of battle in the field, or studying international relations, or nuclear fission, or bridge building or almost anything rather than being forced to sit and listen to speeches that are not meant for them but are instead meant for some larger audience?...

Mr. Immelt launched into a politically correct attack upon the pay scales of Wall Street, noting that he and his fellow CEO has launched into an era of “meanness and greed” that, according to Mr. Immelt, has done irreparable damage to the US economy. Mr. Immelt said that the gap between the wealthy and the poor in the US has grown larger than at any time in our nation’s history and he took issue with that fact. Whether that is true is a question for another day, but then Mr. Immelt said some things that are simply not factually true and in the process gave the centre-left media a champion they could point to and say, “See, even the President of GE agrees with us.” Mr. Immelt said that this new thesis of “meanness and greed” had created an environment where

Rewards became perverted. The richest people made the most mistakes with the least accountability…where the bottom 25 per cent of the American population is poorer than they were 25 years ago. That is just wrong…

Well, Kum-bye-ya to you to, Mr. Immelt, but that is just plain wrong. Where did Mr. Immelt come up with such nonsense and why would he say such a thing other than to deflect criticism of his own leadership at GE? In the past twenty five years it is clear that indeed the gap between the wealthiest 1% of Americans and the lower 25% has widened but it is also true, without question, that the people in the bottom 25% have seen their wealth and their standard of living rise materially over that time.

We live longer; we live in larger houses; we have fewer and fewer people living below the “poverty line” even though that line has been raised and raised and raised again; we have conquered more diseases; fed more people; increased production of food and
housing; we’ve powered more machinery and increased communications domestically and internationally. Simply put, life for the 4th quartile of Americans is a haven compared to life for almost anyone anywhere else in the world. It is why people die trying to get to the US in steadily increasing numbers; they try to get here simply to become the bottom quartile hoping that life for their children will be better still and always it is.

So again we wonder aloud, where did Mr. Immelt get his data, and we wonder even more why he said such a thing that is clearly and unquestionably wrong. This is political correctness run very amuck. Shame upon Mr. Immelt for bowing to it. What he should have said was that mistakes have been made of course, but we should remember that this is a nation of progress and that we are progressing. He should have said that on his watch pay within GE was made according to the profits of each centre, and that the shareholder’s best interests were furthered. What he should have said is that it is his responsibility to push GE’s value up, and that he has and he shall in the future exploit each and every opportunity to do so, and that if all companies and all individuals worked to their own best interests the interests of society as a whole are furthered. China seems to understand that; why can’t Mr. Immelt? Kumbye- at that one!

I have met Jeff Immelt and he is a charming guy, but so is every con artist and snake oil salesman; so was Bernie Madoff and - I'm told - Bill Clinton. The secret to being a successful con artist is to be charming ... and believable. There is an expiration date on the credibility of both Immelt and his patron - Obama. Their "past due date" is fast approaching.

Jeff Immelt's Non Answer to a Legitimate Question.

It turn out that not everyone licks the feet of Obama like Jeff Immelt does.

GE's Immelt: Faith, morality and academic freedom are at oods.

Shilling for Obama now appears to be a full time career move for Jeff Immelt. He wrote a letter to the University of Notre Dame which has been embroiled in a controversy regarding its invitation to Obama as it's commencement speaker.

Here is part of what he wrote

Faith traditions and the institution's moral compass can sometimes seem at odds with academic freedom

This from the man who managed the decline of GE from a $60 stock to a $6 stock in 9 years, cut the dividend 68% (a major income source for many GE retirees) and lost GE it's AAA credit rating. For this, he collected $14 million in pay just this last year, a reduction from his pay in prior years. As a shareholder said at the last annual meeting: "...we can buy your level of incompetence for a hell of a lot less"

So, he's shilling for Obama at Notre Dame ... and slamming faith and morality in an academic setting. Is Immelt right? Is there a conflict between faith, morality and academic freedom in the modern academy? That seems an appropriate topic of discussion.