FROM CNN's Jack Cafferty:
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.
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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!
In January, President Obama asked Immelt, a self-described Republican, to head up the President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. Tapping Immelt was supposed to provide the Obama administration with a business world perspective on job creation - not in China - here.
The administration also hoped it would give the president a leg up negotiating with the Republican-controlled House on deficit reduction, jobs programs, and health care. And we can all see how that's worked out really well.
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.
Here’s my question to you: General Electric is moving its X-ray business to China. What message does this send Americans?
Interested to know which ones made it on air?
Olga:
It says we can give big corporate perks to companies who ship jobs overseas. The GE situation is a perfect example. How do you expect President Obama to create jobs if the corporate big wigs are "unemploying" our people? We should take the company tax breaks and perks away until they bring back the jobs from overseas.
Eva in Tennessee:
Wait. Isn't the CEO of GE supposed to be Obama's top jobs guy? First they paid no income tax and now this? It's official. No one in power cares about getting people back to work. All they care about is keeping their profits, their offices, and the status quo. The real question is how long will it take the rest of America to realize this and do something about it?
Brad in Portland, Oregon:
It tells the U.S. that free trade is a scam, and we need to have fair trade instead. It's too easy for companies to outsource to China and bring the goods and services back to the U.S. with few restrictions. We need to have tariffs on imports to account for the difference in labor costs between the two countries, and then China can compete with American manufacturers on the basis of quality instead of cheap labor.
Frank in Mill Valley, California:
The message is eloquent and wonderfully concise - it consists of only two words. It starts with the letter "F" and ends with the letter "u."
Donna:
Does anyone see a conflict of interest here? Why would a corporate chief executive move an arm of his business to China when he is responsible for jobs in America? I find it outrageous!
Lori in Pennsylvania:
It says that U.S. company executives and stock holders are greedy, and want to share as little of the profits they make as possible. I guess the national debt crisis hasn't opened their eyes as to what happens when millions of average citizens don't have a paying job.
D.W. in St. Louis, Missouri:
Thanks for all the tax breaks, Suckers!