Category: Business & Capitalism

… maybe it’s not too late for the California utility to join the USSR Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Click here for PG&E’s letter of resignation.

The Senate Judiciary Committee held the confirmation hearing yesterday for Ignacia Moreno to become the top federal environmental litigator at the Department of Justice.

Moreno is currently a top environmental lawyer for General Electric.

If she’s confirmed, which will probably happen later this month,  we guess this will just more of… well… as GE recently put it in a memo soliciting PAC contributions from its employees :

“The intersection between GE’s interests and government action is clearer than ever.”

[Click here for YouTube video of Steve Milloy discussing this point with Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly.]

Apparently, it’s not enough that GE CEO Jeff Immelt is already on President Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board — and getting stimulus money in return.

Of course, maybe GE just wants to make sure that it doesn’t get sued when its Hudson River cleanup project backfires.

Does GE now stand for “Government Electric”?

General Electric’s political action committee (GEPAC) issued the following letter to GE employees soliciting contributions so that it can support politicians who make money for the company, including with respect to the Waxman-Markey climate bill, financial services reform and military spending.

The e-mail (below) was apparently sent today by John Rice, the CEO of GE Technology Infrastructure:

Dear Colleagues:

I would like to invite you to join me in an important initiative available to GE leaders — the GE Political Action Committee (GEPAC). This year, Senior Professional Band (SPB) employees will have the choice to join other eligible employees to become members of GEPAC.

The intersection between GE’s interests and government action is clearer than ever. GEPAC is an important tool that enables GE employees to collectively help support candidates who share the values and goals of GE. While we must continue to engage elected officials to help them better understand our various businesses and how legislation affects our Company and our customers, we must also make sure that candidates who share GE’s values and goals get elected to office.

Our Company is heavily impacted by a number of issues pending in Washington this fall. For example, we are working hard to ensure that financial services reform includes provisions, which provide important new safeguards over the financial system, while allowing GE Capital to continue to be a vital source of lending to small and mid-market businesses in the United States and around the world. In recent weeks, we have made great strides towards convincing key lawmakers that GE Capital should remain a part of the General Electric Company.

On climate change, we were able to work closely with key authors of the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill, recently passed by the House of Representatives. If this bill is enacted into law it would benefit many GE businesses. We are continuing our efforts to make certain that a final bill includes provisions to ensure the United States maintains its leading position in the renewable energy industry, which is an industry sector of vital importance to the future of GE.

And the issue with the most activity out of our Washington, D.C. Government Relations office this month is the Joint Strike Fighter/F136 Engine. GE is working relentlessly to ensure funding for F136 Engine, which is a critically important program for GE Aviation.

I hope that you will take a minute to learn more about GEPAC and read through the attached FAQs. Passion, optimism, and the will to win are mandatory in any GE leader. Please understand, participation in the GEPAC is not mandatory. Participation is purely voluntary.

Thank you for all your efforts and for learning more about GEPAC. Please be on the lookout for further communications this summer.

John

While there’s nothing wrong with businesses lobbying, it’s pretty gross that GE’s profits depend so much the “intersection” of GE’s interests with government action and on lobbying as opposed to innovation. Moreover, the Waxman-Markey bill is nothing short of anti-American.

But such as the depths to which CEO Jeff Immelt has taken the company. Immelt has overseen the destruction of two-thirds of GE’s shareholder value. He only survives as CEO because his other board members are afraid of firing a colleague who shares a symbiotic relationship with President Obama.

What would Thomas Edison say?

General Electric’s political action committee (GEPAC) issued the following letter to GE employees soliciting contributions so that it can support politicians who make money for the company, including with respect to the Waxman-Markey climate bill, financial services reform and military spending.

The e-mail (below) was apparently sent today by John Rice, the CEO of GE Technology Infrastructure:

Dear Colleagues:

I would like to invite you to join me in an important initiative available to GE leaders — the GE Political Action Committee (GEPAC). This year, Senior Professional Band (SPB) employees will have the choice to join other eligible employees to become members of GEPAC.

The intersection between GE’s interests and government action is clearer than ever. GEPAC is an important tool that enables GE employees to collectively help support candidates who share the values and goals of GE. While we must continue to engage elected officials to help them better understand our various businesses and how legislation affects our Company and our customers, we must also make sure that candidates who share GE’s values and goals get elected to office.

Our Company is heavily impacted by a number of issues pending in Washington this fall. For example, we are working hard to ensure that financial services reform includes provisions, which provide important new safeguards over the financial system, while allowing GE Capital to continue to be a vital source of lending to small and mid-market businesses in the United States and around the world. In recent weeks, we have made great strides towards convincing key lawmakers that GE Capital should remain a part of the General Electric Company.

On climate change, we were able to work closely with key authors of the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill, recently passed by the House of Representatives. If this bill is enacted into law it would benefit many GE businesses. We are continuing our efforts to make certain that a final bill includes provisions to ensure the United States maintains its leading position in the renewable energy industry, which is an industry sector of vital importance to the future of GE.

And the issue with the most activity out of our Washington, D.C. Government Relations office this month is the Joint Strike Fighter/F136 Engine. GE is working relentlessly to ensure funding for F136 Engine, which is a critically important program for GE Aviation.

I hope that you will take a minute to learn more about GEPAC and read through the attached FAQs. Passion, optimism, and the will to win are mandatory in any GE leader. Please understand, participation in the GEPAC is not mandatory. Participation is purely voluntary.

Thank you for all your efforts and for learning more about GEPAC. Please be on the lookout for further communications this summer.

John

While there’s nothing wrong with businesses lobbying, it’s pretty gross that GE’s profits depend so much the “intersection” of GE’s interests with government action and on lobbying as opposed to innovation. Moreover, the Waxman-Markey bill is nothing short of anti-American.

But such as the depths to which CEO Jeff Immelt has taken the company. Immelt has overseen the destruction of two-thirds of GE’s shareholder value. He only survives as CEO because his other board members are afraid of firing a colleague who shares a symbiotic relationship with President Obama.

What would Thomas Edison say?

Greenpeace recently leaked a memo from the American Petroleum Institute discussing the trade group’s involvement with so-called “Energy Citizen” rallies against Waxman-Markey. Greenpeace likens these grassroots efforts to “astroturf.”

The problem with API — aside from failure to keep its communications confidential — is not that it is funding grassroots rallies against Waxman-Markey. We are for anybody that opposes the bill and would welcome their support with open arms.

The group’s real problem is that, while it opposes Waxman-Markey, it wants Waxman-Markey Lite.

According to this API memo issued in the wake if the Greenpeace kerfuffle, the oil industry association says,

API has a clear position on climate legislation: It opposes Waxman-Markey, and calls for the Senate to get it right. API is not opposed to fair and transparent climate legislation that limits greenhouse gas emissions but protects U.S. jobs and ensures that energy prices are not raised to the point where they threaten the economy.

How the oil industry thinks it can live with greenhouse gas regulation is beyond comprehension. Regardless of how lax they start, greenhouse gas limits will only get more expensive, stringent and draconian.

API’s effort to cut a deal with the carbon devil is reminiscent of France opting for Nazi occupation-lite through its Vichy government. The only sensible — and honorable — thing to do, however, is to fight evil all out.

Chevron’s fondest wish came true in the second quarter of this year. We used less energy, just like it’s moronic willyoujoinus ad campaign urged — as a result Chevron’s profit declined 71% from 2008.

In a Washington Post op-ed today, America’s foremost rentseekers, John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers (Al Gore’s venture capital firm) and General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt, wrote:

We are American businessmen. Our job is building businesses and commercializing innovation. Every year, GE invests 6 percent of its industrial revenue in research and development to produce more efficient and cleaner wind turbines, jet engines, locomotives, power turbines and appliances. Kleiner Perkins has invested $680 million in 48 of the most compelling new clean-energy technologies, with $1.1 billion more to invest. We are trying to do our part. But our government’s energy and climate policies are our principal obstacle to success.

By lobbying for the America-hating, economy-killing Waxman-Markey bill simply to make money, Doerr and Immelt are not businessmen so much as they are thieving parasites. They want a federal law which would enable them to sponge-off taxpayers and rip-off consumers. By forcing Americans to pay more for energy and to reduce their standard of living, Doerr and Immelt will destroy not build America.

In a Washington Post op-ed today, America’s foremost rentseekers, John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers (Al Gore’s venture capital firm) and General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt, wrote:

We are American businessmen. Our job is building businesses and commercializing innovation. Every year, GE invests 6 percent of its industrial revenue in research and development to produce more efficient and cleaner wind turbines, jet engines, locomotives, power turbines and appliances. Kleiner Perkins has invested $680 million in 48 of the most compelling new clean-energy technologies, with $1.1 billion more to invest. We are trying to do our part. But our government’s energy and climate policies are our principal obstacle to success.

By lobbying for the America-hating, economy-killing Waxman-Markey bill simply to make money, Doerr and Immelt are not businessmen so much as they are thieving parasites. They want a federal law which would enable them to sponge-off taxpayers and rip-off consumers. By forcing Americans to pay more for energy and to reduce their standard of living, Doerr and Immelt will destroy not build America.

The rent-seeking companies that belong to the U.S. Climate Action Partnership lobbying coalition have spent $67.4 million lobbying Congress this year.

Carbon Control News reports:

Since the beginning of the year, members of USCAP have spent roughly $67.4 million on lobbyists, according to a Carbon Control News analysis of lobbying disclosures, though with many of its members lobbying on issues such as health care it is not possible to determine how much was spent lobbying specifically on climate legislation. Still, indicative of their overall influence, figures compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics suggest the amount spent by USCAP members on lobbyists is on par—and may actually exceed—the total amount spent on lobbying by defense contractors this year. General Electric and ConocoPhillips alone spent more than $20 million on lobbying between them. BP America, another USCAP member, has spent $7.6 million so far on lobbyists, while utilities Duke Energy, Florida Power & Light, and Exelon have each spent around $2.5 million.

What will they get out of the bill?

According to the report,

[Exelon] CEO John Rowe believes the House-passed climate legislation “will add $700 [million] to $750 million to Exelon’s annual revenues for every $10 per metric ton (Mt) increase in the price of CO2 [carbon dioxide] allowances.”

Not a bad annual return on a one-time lobbying investment of $2.5 million.