Build Public Pressure to Boot Jeffrey Immelt [New]
General Electric, America’s largest corporation, made $14,200,000,000 in profits in 2010 and paid $0 in taxes — that’s right, zero dollars in taxes.
At the same time, C.E.O. Jeffrey Immelt saw his compensation double. Now GE is expected to ask 15,000 of their unionized workers to make major concessions in wages and benefits.
Adding insult to injury, Mr. Immelt is chair of President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. That’s wrong. Mr. Immelt should not lead the administration’s effort to create jobs.
Join Russ Feingold and sign Progressives United’s petition for Mr. Immelt to resign from his position on President Obama’s jobs panel today.
What Do You Think?
9 Responses to 'Build Public Pressure to Boot Jeffrey Immelt'
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Oaktown Girl [New]
Thursday, 31 Mar, 2011 at 10:58 am
Got this in my email today – already signed!
Also placed a call to my Senators to ask them to vote against the current Rethuglican/Teabagger budget bill in the house that will lay waste to CA -even more than what’s already been done – because the super rich and corporations can’t possibly be asked to pay their fair share.
SpitBall [New]
Thursday, 31 Mar, 2011 at 3:39 pm
Remind me, again, how many jobs did GE create with the largesse shown them by the Central Government?
Is it too much to ask that our corporate citizens conduct themselves in accord with established patriotic standards?
Jeff Im melt(ing!) is the new Welfare Queen/King, living large at our expense. Yeah, even the Tea Party types. No surprise he’s a crony of the WH.
Emocrat [New]
Thursday, 31 Mar, 2011 at 4:32 pm
Hmm. You know, as much as I appreciate Feingold’s very necessary list-building activities, it’s necessary to point out that this is all this petition is really about. As far as it goes, that’s all fine and good, but it won’t put Immelt or the White House, on the defensive.
Does anyone really, honestly think that anyone in the White House gives a tinker’s cuss about what a bunch of DFHs think about anything at this point? Of course not!
GE is so ripe for the picking right now, it amazes me no end the progresso-sphere aren’t getting the messaging straight on this, most criminal of corporations. Taxes are only one aspect of this corporation and some might even say a minor aspect at that.
So GE is receiving $3.2 Billion per year in taxpayer subsidies (See? The paying-no-taxes part is weaker than the subsidy part, yes?) while it’s nukes are poisoning a large swath of Asia, the Pacific Ocean (and all the food that comes from it) and laying waste to all of northern Japan… all in one fell swoop. All this and GE is one of the biggest off-shorers of American jobs. All this and GE wouldn’t even exist today, had the Obama Administration totally bailed out their losses from the financial crisis they were instrumental in creating in the first place.
We can go way back, the the 1950s and 60s, when that fascistic asshole Jack Welch became CEO. Thanks to the generosity of the US taxpayer, his retirement is being paid for by a dying middle-class. It was this Welch who pushed the GE Mark 1 BWR and that built all 23 American sister plants to Fukushima Daiichi.
Immelt was chosen to be CEO by none other than Jack Welch, since Immelt was his protogé of many years. Welch mentored him, IOW.
Welch is also the guy who decided it was really super cool to dump thousands of tons of PCBs into the Hudson River…. it still hasn’t been cleaned up to anyone’s (except GE’s, of course) satisfaction. Nor will it ever be really dealt with.
The real solution here is quite simple: Tell the story. If the blogoshere and MoveOn and every other group really laid out the message, making GE the poster child of official corruption, there might be a chance to make something happen. Petitions don’t do that. People sign petitions, as if they do much of anything but provide the State with a list of people to blacklist later, and that’s it.
But if GE and Obama’s good friend Immelt became toxic to Democratic voters, that might suggest there is a real price to pay for keeping him around. The same should be done with Turbo Timmeh Geithner, Goldman Sachs, et al.
If there isn’t a very real political price tag attached to these associations and their resultant policies, then a petition is just cause for a good chuckle in the White House. “Hey, at least we know who our enemies are, eh? Bwaaa haaa haaa! I know, let’s put all of them on the no-fly list and see how they like that! Bwaaah haaa haaa!”
We sign petitions and what happens? Nothing. So what do we follow up with? More petitions, which lead to more fund-raising emails, which lead to more petitions and more nothing…. ad infinitum.
Of all the allegedly progressive blogs out there, how many are really reaching their respective audiences with the simple message, “See? This is why we’re so fucked. It’s time to get un-fucked. Let’s rid ourselves of these meddlesome CEOs.”
Because if people aren’t sufficiently upset about all this now, it’s only because they don’t have enough information. If people haven’t gotten the fact that the nation has been sold a bill of goods by slimy salesunits, it’s because they don’t have enough information.
I wish the “left” could manage to coordinate, even just on an ad hoc basis once in a while. Something big pops up, like GE’s melting reactors and their subsidies… and wham! The lights come on.
Maybe some sort of listserve or something might help with coordinating some kind of messaging. Something that might help editors coordinate on larger issues for a period of time. Enough time to actually make a dent in the larger discourse.
Something. Anything that isn’t more (bleep)ing petitions.
jlars [New]
Thursday, 31 Mar, 2011 at 4:47 pm
You beat me to it (and said it better too). Rec’d.
jlars [New]
Thursday, 31 Mar, 2011 at 4:44 pm
Call me nuts, but I’d rather see them pay their fair share of taxes than see this guy get canned.
Petitions like this are, frankly, what is wrong with progressive left organizations like MoveOn.org or the like. Every single email I get from them is always at alarm level 11; filled with indignant outrage over every single thing that happens.
Of course GE not paying their taxes is TRULY outrageous, but aiming for a single CEO misses the point and waters down the overall working-class rage by acting like a release valve. It’s the sort of timid half-step that gets people like Barack Obama elected President. “We could push hard for _____ (Nader, Kucinich, Universal Health Care, Real Finance Reform, etc. etc. etc.),” MoveOn.org seems to say, “but if we do that we might fail and anything is better than failure,” and then they fail at even their lowest set expectations. And then they say, “Oh, well, we really just wanted to turn attention to the issue,” as if that’s good enough. As if the people on their email list weren’t already paying attention or needed convincing of the idea of reforming this privateering racket.
Okay, that’s maybe a little melodramatic. I’m not trying to start a flame war here, but if this is the grand scheme that MoveOn has for getting/keeping momentum behind more meaningful financial reform, then they’re doing it wrong.
Where’s the petition for making GE pay the full 30-50% tax that the Republicans keep bitching and moaning about? I’d like to sign that one too.
I wonder if anyone noticed the HuffingtonPost over-sized headline this afternoon stating that “tea party leaders” warn the Republicans in congress that they’ll get “Massive Amounts of Primaries” if they cave on the measly $6Billion in cuts that currently separate the Democratic plan from the House plan…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/31/tea-party-rallies-in-city_n_842943.html
I’m just sayin’…
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Emocrat [New]
Thursday, 31 Mar, 2011 at 4:50 pm
Nice bit of juxtaposition there, methinks.
So while “progressive” groups are pushing petitions no one in power gives a shit about, the Koch-Fueled Tea Birchers are threatening massive primaries.
It’s like our side is insisting on bringing toothpicks to a gun fight, wondering if the H’orderves will be sufficiently tasty.
Those people aren’t serious about anything, IMO. Besides their own paychecks, anyway.
Thursday, 31 Mar, 2011 at 5:08 pm
Of course GE not paying their taxes is TRULY outrageous, but aiming for a single CEO misses the point and waters down the overall working-class rage by acting like a release valve.
of course. this is so damn true and I’m so damn embarrassed for not noticing it…
Mark [New]
Friday, 1 Apr, 2011 at 1:50 pm
This is where I disagree. The right has done an excellent job of creating Villains of the Week. It has served them well.
While many people (myself more than most) are top down thinkers who prefer the big picture and work our way down, most people work the other way, naturally preferring to build a big picture brick by brick.
This would be the difference between intuitive (N) versus sensing (S) types in Meyers Briggs. Roughly 75% of the population is sensing, so concrete examples are extremely important.
SpitBall [New]
Friday, 1 Apr, 2011 at 4:17 pm
This is where I defer. Is that the correct word for accepting your point while repudiating it?
The “left” needs to highlight “villains of the week” (or even “Chatty Cathies” and “Archie Bunkers”) in a way that connects with the popular culture. The comedian Jon Stewart does this, and so do Leno, Letterman and the rest, in their own benign arenas.
The “top down” admission is what tripped my switch. We need both and all at once. Bottom up, top down, inside out and outside in (to mention a few) are all the way to go. Even unleashing dogs of war upon the “friendliest” of dictators (you know, that Libyan version of Gilbert Gottfried’s former alter ego) or was it the “AfPak” brigade?
If not Gadaffy, why Saddam? (to put it bluntly). If I were Obama (not O’Bunny) I would strafe Manama and rail against the destruction of the Pearl. I would shout “No Fly” in Syriah. I would recruit human shields for Sanaa to ensure the guilt of any government that attacked us. I would suspend all aid to undemocratic governments. I would offer close air support in Ivory Coast. I would confiscate the cash reserves of autocrats and tax-evading multi-national corporations to pay for it. I’d nationalize GE and make them prove they did not acquire that wealth by illicit means (citing US drug laws as precedent). I’d make a national initiative of the concept that “paying taxes is patriotic”. In my America it would be good business to contribute more to the public sector, not through charity but through civil culture and public services. I would go to the front line and I would have camped in the Madison state house. I’s toss Jeff Immelt out on his ass and send him the bill.
Both/And. Short and Long term. Bottom up AND top down.