Tag Archives: Big Business

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Obama-connected General Electric paid no taxes on $14 billion profit

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From the Weekly Standard, a possible explanation of why GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt is tightly linked to Barack Obama.

Excerpt:

General Electric, one of the largest corporations in America, filed a whopping 57,000-page federal tax return earlier this year but didn’t pay taxes on $14 billion in profits. The return, which was filed electronically, would have been 19 feet high if printed out and stacked.

The fact that GE paid no taxes in 2010 was widely reported earlier this year, but the size of its tax return first came to light when House budget committee chairman Paul Ryan (R, Wisc.) made the case for corporate tax reform at a recent townhall meeting. “GE was able to utilize all of these various loopholes, all of these various deductions–it’s legal,” Ryan said. Nine billion dollars of GE’s profits came overseas, outside the jurisdiction of U.S. tax law. GE wasn’t taxed on $5 billion in U.S. profits because it utilized numerous deductions and tax credits, including tax breaks for investments in low-income housing, green energy, research and development, as well as depreciation of property.

“I asked the GE tax officer, ‘How long was your tax form?'” Ryan said. “He said, ‘Well, we file electronically, we don’t measure in pages.'” Ryan asked for an estimate, which came back at a stunning 57,000 pages. When Ryan relayed the story at the townhall meeting in Janesville, there were audible gasps from the crowd.

Meanwhile, Obama’s General Motors bailout is going to cost taxpayers at least $23.6 billion dollars.

Excerpt:

The Treasury Department dramatically boosted its estimate of losses from its $85 billion auto industry bailout by more than $9 billion in the face of General Motors Co.’s steep stock decline.

In its monthly report to Congress, the Treasury Department now says it expects to lose $23.6 billion, up from its previous estimate of $14.33 billion.

The Treasury now pegs the cost of the bailout of GM, Chrysler Group LLC and the auto finance companies at $79.6 billion. It no longer includes $5 billion it set aside to guarantee payments to auto suppliers in 2009.

Obama’s millionaires and billionaires get another bailout and taxpayers get the bill.

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News

Obama’s job creation advisor ships American business unit to China

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From Jack Cafferty of CNN. (H/T Reason to Stand)

Excerpt:

Here is more evidence of the suicide mission this country is on: General Electric announced it’s moving its 115-year-old X-ray business from Waukesha, Wisconsin to Beijing, China.

The X-ray business is part of General Electric’s GE Healthcare unit, and this move is just part of a broader plan by GE to invest $2 billion in China.

This will become the first GE business to be headquartered there. A handful of the unit’s top executives will be transferred to China but otherwise, the company says, none of the 150 staffers in the Milwaukee-area facility will lose jobs or be transferred. However, GE plans to hire more than 65 engineers and a support staff at a new facility in China.

It’s the kind of news that makes you want to reach for something sharp and jab it in your eye. General Electric’s Chief Executive, Jeffrey Immelt, is one of President Obama’s advisers on… ready? U.S. job creation!

[…]Two months after Immelt was named to the council, The New York Times reported that General Electric paid no income taxes last year… thanks to some fancy accounting footwork, even though the company earned $14.2 billion in profits last year – more than $5 billion in the U.S. alone.

Obama named Immelt as the head of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness in January. And it’s no surprise that he is shipping jobs overseas – that’s what happens when you elect a tax and spend socialist as President. When Obama attacks businesses with his anti-capitalist rhetoric, they curtail hiring here and hire in China instead. Who would try to expand a business with an anti-business liberal with his finger on the button? You would have to be stupid to risk your capital in a country that runs 1.65 trillion dollar deficits.

It’s important to understand that big businesses like General Electric are not conservative. Big business wants government to insulate them from competition by using regulations to block new entrants. Small businesses are conservative.

Videos

Obama administration hands out 111 waivers from Obamacare

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This video is 2 minutes long. (H/T Wes Widner of Reason to Stand)

ECM sent me this article for those who cannot see the video.

Excerpt:

111 companies and organizations were granted waivers by Obama’s Dept. of Health and Human Services so that they could get out of having to comply with Obamacare and unions were particularly well rewarded by the HHS with these waivers.

Interestingly, there was no great announcement of these waivers issued to the press. The HHS buried the waiver announcement six layers deep on its webpage and posted them on Friday when they imagined no one would notice. It’s a typical Friday evening document dump so common when an administration wants to avoid the prying eyes of the people. So much for the “most transparent administration in history,” eh?

One thing is sure about these waivers. Obama rewarded his union pals quite well.

[…]Interestingly enough, Obama has waived the onerous Obamacare rules for quite a few healthcare providers, too. One wonders how good Obamacare could be if the rules are waived for actual healthcare providers?

That article has the full list of the 111 special interest groups who got waivers from Obamacare. The rest of the corporations who did not get waivers will just have to lose jobs, I guess. I guess those are the ones that didn’t support Obamacare.

Remember how unions were pushing for Obamacare? Well they got waivers from it, too.

Neil Simpson has a list of UNIONS that got exemptions:

  1. Service Employees Benefit Fund
  2. UFCW Allied Trade Health & Welfare Trust
  3. IBEW No.915
  4. Asbestos Workers Local 53 Welfare Fund
  5. Plumbers & Pipefitters Local 123 Welfare Fund
  6. UFCW Local 227
  7. UFCW Maximus Local 455
  8. Local 25 SEIU
  9. UFCW Local 1262
  10. Local 802 Musicians Health Fund
  11. Greater Metropolitan Hotel
  12. Local 17 Hospitality Benefit Fund
  13. I.U.P.A.T.
  14. Transport Workers
  15. UFT Welfare Fund
  16. UABT

That’s the list of KNOWN unions.

If Obamacare is so great, then why do all the Democrat special interest groups have to get exemptions from it? Could it be that Obamacare is a job-killing nightmare that not even Democrats want to be bound by?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96Uu_tI0hTw&feature=share