Free Republic

Connecticut’s Democratic leaders were willing Thursday to make minor changes to the business taxes that prompted some major employers to threaten to leave the state, but said they won’t roll the taxes back and expressed doubt that any of the firms would move. […] The plan includes numerous business tax changes, including higher taxes on computer and data processing services, limits on tax credits, limits on when losses can be reported, and how business income is reported. Meanwhile, Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of General Electric Co., sent an email to employees Thursday, saying he has assembled an “exploratory team” to review...

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is looking for vendors to run its "National Data Warehouse," a database for "capturing, aggregating, and analyzing information" related to beneficiary and customer experiences with Medicare and the federal Obamacare marketplaces. Although the database primarily consists of quality control metrics related to individuals' interactions with customer service, potential contractors are to "[d]emonstrate ... experience with scalability and security in protecting data and information with customer, person-sensitive information including Personal Health Information and Personally Identifiable information (personal health records, etc.)." Vendors are also instructed that one of the requirements of a possible future...

Barack Obama's Jobs Council hit a notable milestone on Thursday: one year without an official meeting. The 26-member panel is also set to expire at the end of the month, unless Obama extends its tenure. The group, formally known as the President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, last convened on Jan. 17, 2012 for a White House session where it presented formal recommendations to Obama. It was the panel's fourth official meeting since it was created in early 2011. A spokesman for Jobs Council chairman Jeffrey Immelt, who's the CEO of General Electric, referred questions about the panel's future to...

Is it time yet to put the face of Obama's Jobs Adviser, Jeffrey Immelt, on milk cartons? Have you noticed that he is MIA? Could it be that Obama's own jobs adviser is out of sight because he really supports Mitt Romney?

Among President Obama's disingenuous promises made over his four years, he said he would focus on creating "jobs that pay well and can't be outsourced." Yet he spent billions of U.S. taxpayer's money overseas to create outsourced jobs. Typical of Obama's passion for outsourcing was the appointment of his jobs czar, Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of General Electric. Even as he was basking in the prestige of his new title, Immelt was closing his last U.S. plant making light bulbs in Virginia and opening a plant in China to manufacture more expensive light bulbs, which Americans will be forced to...

Obama and his rich pals think you are just another useful idiot like the Occupy (OWS) crowd. While Obama seeks to enact the “Buffett Rule” to place a higher tax burden on families/small businesses that make $250K per year or more, his Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is suing Warren Buffett. Obama’s pal just doesn’t want to pay his taxes… but he has no problem stumping for Obama and calling for a higher tax burden on families and small businesses. “Get this: Uncle Sam is suing Warren Buffett’s company over taxes. Yes, taxes. The US government, in a little-followed case in...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Charles Gasparino with a piece in the New York Post today. "Back when he agreed to advise the Obama [regime] on economics, General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt told friends that he thought it would be good for GE and good for the country. A life-long Republican, Immelt said he believed he could at the very least moderate the president's distinctly anti-business instincts. That was three years ago; these days Immelt is telling friends something quite different. Sure, GE has managed to feast on federal subsidies, particularly the 'green-energy' giveaways that are Obamanomics' hallmark." Yeah, there's no question...

As we sprint toward the first official vote of the Republican primary season – to decide who will (hopefully) replace President Obama on January 20, 2013 – it is essential that we focus on the real goal. Rather than go after each other, the candidates must continue to confront the policies of the most inept President in modern times. The following is a selection of issues the candidates should emphasize as the rationale for replacing our current President: 1. Gibson Guitar – The Obama Administration entered the headquarters of an internationally-renowned, iconic American company and treated it like it was...

It was literally a show stopper. At the end of his "60 Minutes" interview with Lesley Stahl, GE CEO Jeff Immelt asked her: "I don't know why you don't" root for GE, and by extension for American business, the way company employees do? Did Immelt leave Stahl speechless? Rather than providing an answer, 60 Minutes could only cut to its tick-tick-tick stopwatch. View video here.

A presidential address before a joint session of Congress is a very big deal -- the political equivalent of opening night at the Met and the final game of the World Series, all rolled into one. Thursday night lacked both the drama of the former and the excitement of the latter. It quickly reached the heights of mediocrity, and then fell as sharply as the president’s own approval ratings. Preceded by months of teasers and fanfare, the people of the United States anticipated something of real magnitude and vision. Finally we would hear a program to restore jobs, heal the...

The parent company of Fox News — News Corp. — paid the U.S. government $4.8 billion in taxes over the last four tax years (2007-2010). GE, which owned most of MSNBC until late last year, paid zero taxes in 2010.In fact, GE received a $3.2 billion welfare check from Uncle Sam.From Pulitzer Prize winner David Cay Johnston: (Reuters) — Readers, I apologize. The premise of my debut column for Reuters, on News Corp’s taxes, was wrong, 100 percent dead wrong.Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp did not get a $4.8 billion tax refund for the past four years, as I reported. Instead,...

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama will nominate businessman John Bryson to lead the Commerce Department, a White House official said Tuesday. Bryson's appointment brings another private sector player into an administration that has been making a concerted effort to improve its relationship with the business community.

In today's NYT, in a surprising critique of the company that is the right arm of Obama's administration, there is finally an extensive focus piece on how GE, which made $14.2 billion in 2010 ($5.1 billion of which came from the US), paid, wait for it, zero taxes in 2010. NYT summarizes this odd quandary as follows: "Its extraordinary success is based on an aggressive strategy that mixes fierce lobbying for tax breaks and innovative accounting that enables it to concentrate its profits offshore. G.E.’s giant tax department, led by a bow-tied former Treasury official named John Samuels, is often...

In America today, the biggest recipients of handouts are not poor people. They're corporations. General Electric CEO Jeffrey R. Immelt is super-close to President Obama. The president named Immelt chairman of his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. Before that, Immelt was on Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board. He's a regular companion when Obama travels abroad to hawk American exports. (Why does business need government to do that?) "Jeff Immelt is perhaps the CEO who is most cozy with President Obama," says journalist Tim Carney. "General Electric is structuring their business around where government is going ... high-speed rail, solar, wind....

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: I'm sure you saw it by now -- Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of General Electric (who now they're saying is a big Republican, lifelong Republican), has been appointed to replace somebody on the Council of Economic Advisers. Now, folks, I'm gonna tell you something. This really smells. Congress needs to really look into this. We have another advisory board created by executive order to tell the government what it needs to do to help create jobs. They have a deficit-reduction board. Did you know that? How good a job has that bumbling done? Diddly-squat. A giant failure....

Is David Gregory trying to raise his profile by becoming more overtly partisan? Gregory struck what at one point seemed to me a hostile tone in his questioning of conservative Sen. Tom Coburn on last week's Meet The Press. Then, on today's Morning Joe, Gregory went out of his way to defend Pres. Obama's history of being less-than-friendly to business. And the MTP host did it in a way that will warm White House hearts: by blaming George W. Bush. The subject at hand was PBO's naming of GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt to replace Paul Volcker as a key economic...

The ninth chairman and CEO of General Electric, Jeffrey Immelt , has upended the traditional innovation model. Among his radical ideas to fire up the $183-billion conglomerate are putting India and China at the centre of a management model that talks of developing products in emerging markets and distributing them globally. In an e-mail interview with ET , Immelt discusses the idea and GE’s India plans. Excerpts: You are expected to make some announcements regarding investments and joint ventures in India. Can you give us some details? India represents one of the significant growth markets for GE globally and we...

It's a very dangerous situation when any huge multinational corporation wages war against media companies. Especially when that huge multinational corporation is General Electric, which itself owns a media company, NBC Universal, and it's using all its power and influence and money to try to harm another media company, Nielsen, and Nielsen Business Media, and its trade publication The Hollywood Reporter. This certainly sounds like a situation which the FCC, and the FTC, and the U.S. Justice Department should be investigating. Just one problem: the controversy stems from GE/NBCU's coverage of President Obama. Here's what happened: According to my sources...

O’Reilly: “Will GE get paid for supporting President Obama? GE, which owns MSNBC, has been very aggressive in helping Barack Obama. O’Reilly: “There is also emerging evidence that GE CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, and NBC News Chief Jeff Zucker, told CNBC personnel to stop criticizing Obama’s economic policies. Now, that would be a major breach of journalistic ethics. In fact, Obama critic Rick Santelli was reported to have said that he was sent to a “Re-education camp” by NBC. “ An O’Reilly Factor producer and GE stockholder, Jesse Watters, asked GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt the following question at a stockholders’ meeting...

After the Democratic Party obtained a majority in both the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate in 2006, some believe the mainstream media saw this as an indication the country had made a decided turn to the left. Suddenly, what was once a clear case of media bias became a strident effort by many in the media to promote a liberal agenda. No network was more guilty of this departure from journalistic objectivity than NBC and its sister cable outlet, MSNBC. NBC's news division, which had been losing viewership at an alarming rate, made a decision to roll the dice...