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Can the world's biggest corporations act with impunity? When it comes to General Electric (GE) -- the eighth largest U.S. corporation, with $146.9 billion in sales and $13.6 billion in profits in 2012 -- the answer appears to be "yes."
Can the world's biggest corporations act with impunity? When it comes to General Electric (GE) -- the eighth largest U.S. corporation, with $146.9 billion in sales and $13.6 billion in profits in 2012 -- the answer appears to be "yes."
If we dig deeper into the record, a broader pattern of corporate misbehavior emerges. Indeed, the Fort Edward factory is one of two GE plants that polluted the communities at Fort Edward and nearby Hudson Falls, as well as a 197-mile stretch of the Hudson River, with 1.3 million pounds of cancer-causing PCBs for several decades. When the extent of this environmental disaster began to be revealed in the 1970s, GE began a lengthy campaign to deny it and, later, a multimillion dollar public relations campaign to prevent remedial action by the Environmental Protection Administration.
GE has produced other environmental disasters, as well.
Another important product produced by GE is the export of jobs.
Townsend also noted that, even when GE kept its operations going in the United States, it slashed wages, sometimes by as much as 45 percent at a time. For example, the work of the Fort Edward plant will be moved to Clearwater, Florida, a non-union site where GE pays many workers $12 an hour and hires others through a temp agency at $8 an hour -- little more than the minimum wage.
Although technically a U.S. corporation, GE - with operations in 130 nations - apparently feels little loyalty to the United States. Jack Welch, a former GE CEO, once remarked: "Ideally, you'd have every plant you own on a barge to move with currencies and changes in the economy." According to a Bloomberg analysis, to avoid paying U.S. taxes, GE keeps more of its profits overseas than any other U.S. company -- $108 billion by the end of 2012. Thanks to this tax dodge and others, GE reportedly paid an average annual U.S. corporate income tax rate of only 1.8 percent between 2002 and 2011. In 2010, when GE reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, it paid no U.S. corporate income tax at all. Instead, it claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.
Despite this appalling record, the U.S. government has been very generous to GE. During the financial crisis of 2008-2009, the federal government's Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program loaned approximately $85 billion to GE Capital, the company's huge finance arm. GE needed the bailout because, among other reasons, GE Capital was marketing subprime mortgages. The Federal Reserve also bought $16.1 billion worth of short-term corporate i.o.u.'s from GE in late 2008, when the public market for this kind of debt had nearly frozen. In yet a further indication of GE's influence, President Obama appointed Jeffrey Immelt, GE's CEO, as chair of his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, which strategizes about how to revive America's manufacturing base. One of Immelt's favorite panaceas is to end taxes on the overseas profits of corporations.
Thus, it might seem that those 200 embattled workers at Fort Edward have no possibility at all of effectively challenging a corporation this wealthy and influential. But stranger things have happened in the United States -- especially when Americans have had their fill of corporate arrogance.
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Can the world's biggest corporations act with impunity? When it comes to General Electric (GE) -- the eighth largest U.S. corporation, with $146.9 billion in sales and $13.6 billion in profits in 2012 -- the answer appears to be "yes."
If we dig deeper into the record, a broader pattern of corporate misbehavior emerges. Indeed, the Fort Edward factory is one of two GE plants that polluted the communities at Fort Edward and nearby Hudson Falls, as well as a 197-mile stretch of the Hudson River, with 1.3 million pounds of cancer-causing PCBs for several decades. When the extent of this environmental disaster began to be revealed in the 1970s, GE began a lengthy campaign to deny it and, later, a multimillion dollar public relations campaign to prevent remedial action by the Environmental Protection Administration.
GE has produced other environmental disasters, as well.
Another important product produced by GE is the export of jobs.
Townsend also noted that, even when GE kept its operations going in the United States, it slashed wages, sometimes by as much as 45 percent at a time. For example, the work of the Fort Edward plant will be moved to Clearwater, Florida, a non-union site where GE pays many workers $12 an hour and hires others through a temp agency at $8 an hour -- little more than the minimum wage.
Although technically a U.S. corporation, GE - with operations in 130 nations - apparently feels little loyalty to the United States. Jack Welch, a former GE CEO, once remarked: "Ideally, you'd have every plant you own on a barge to move with currencies and changes in the economy." According to a Bloomberg analysis, to avoid paying U.S. taxes, GE keeps more of its profits overseas than any other U.S. company -- $108 billion by the end of 2012. Thanks to this tax dodge and others, GE reportedly paid an average annual U.S. corporate income tax rate of only 1.8 percent between 2002 and 2011. In 2010, when GE reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, it paid no U.S. corporate income tax at all. Instead, it claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.
Despite this appalling record, the U.S. government has been very generous to GE. During the financial crisis of 2008-2009, the federal government's Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program loaned approximately $85 billion to GE Capital, the company's huge finance arm. GE needed the bailout because, among other reasons, GE Capital was marketing subprime mortgages. The Federal Reserve also bought $16.1 billion worth of short-term corporate i.o.u.'s from GE in late 2008, when the public market for this kind of debt had nearly frozen. In yet a further indication of GE's influence, President Obama appointed Jeffrey Immelt, GE's CEO, as chair of his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, which strategizes about how to revive America's manufacturing base. One of Immelt's favorite panaceas is to end taxes on the overseas profits of corporations.
Thus, it might seem that those 200 embattled workers at Fort Edward have no possibility at all of effectively challenging a corporation this wealthy and influential. But stranger things have happened in the United States -- especially when Americans have had their fill of corporate arrogance.
Can the world's biggest corporations act with impunity? When it comes to General Electric (GE) -- the eighth largest U.S. corporation, with $146.9 billion in sales and $13.6 billion in profits in 2012 -- the answer appears to be "yes."
If we dig deeper into the record, a broader pattern of corporate misbehavior emerges. Indeed, the Fort Edward factory is one of two GE plants that polluted the communities at Fort Edward and nearby Hudson Falls, as well as a 197-mile stretch of the Hudson River, with 1.3 million pounds of cancer-causing PCBs for several decades. When the extent of this environmental disaster began to be revealed in the 1970s, GE began a lengthy campaign to deny it and, later, a multimillion dollar public relations campaign to prevent remedial action by the Environmental Protection Administration.
GE has produced other environmental disasters, as well.
Another important product produced by GE is the export of jobs.
Townsend also noted that, even when GE kept its operations going in the United States, it slashed wages, sometimes by as much as 45 percent at a time. For example, the work of the Fort Edward plant will be moved to Clearwater, Florida, a non-union site where GE pays many workers $12 an hour and hires others through a temp agency at $8 an hour -- little more than the minimum wage.
Although technically a U.S. corporation, GE - with operations in 130 nations - apparently feels little loyalty to the United States. Jack Welch, a former GE CEO, once remarked: "Ideally, you'd have every plant you own on a barge to move with currencies and changes in the economy." According to a Bloomberg analysis, to avoid paying U.S. taxes, GE keeps more of its profits overseas than any other U.S. company -- $108 billion by the end of 2012. Thanks to this tax dodge and others, GE reportedly paid an average annual U.S. corporate income tax rate of only 1.8 percent between 2002 and 2011. In 2010, when GE reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, it paid no U.S. corporate income tax at all. Instead, it claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.
Despite this appalling record, the U.S. government has been very generous to GE. During the financial crisis of 2008-2009, the federal government's Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program loaned approximately $85 billion to GE Capital, the company's huge finance arm. GE needed the bailout because, among other reasons, GE Capital was marketing subprime mortgages. The Federal Reserve also bought $16.1 billion worth of short-term corporate i.o.u.'s from GE in late 2008, when the public market for this kind of debt had nearly frozen. In yet a further indication of GE's influence, President Obama appointed Jeffrey Immelt, GE's CEO, as chair of his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, which strategizes about how to revive America's manufacturing base. One of Immelt's favorite panaceas is to end taxes on the overseas profits of corporations.
Thus, it might seem that those 200 embattled workers at Fort Edward have no possibility at all of effectively challenging a corporation this wealthy and influential. But stranger things have happened in the United States -- especially when Americans have had their fill of corporate arrogance.