From Erik Telford at Human Events:
When is a bailout not a bailout? When the company being bailed out: a) is politically well-connected; b) owns major media properties, including two national television networks; and c) has friendly ties to the current administration. In other words, when you’re GE.
Since the onset of the current financial crisis General Electric, one of America’s biggest companies, has seen its corporate bonds underwritten by the FDIC to the tune of $41 billion — a number that, under current commitments, could rise as high as $126 billion. Yet company flaks continue to insist this does not constitute a bailout, even though it’s a federal guarantee that leaves taxpayers holding the bag if things go bad. If it quacks like a duck….
The idea that federal loan guarantees are not bailouts would be pretty big news to folks like Lee Iacocca, the former Chrysler chief who used a federal loan guarantee (which everyone at the time agreed was a “bailout”) to save the company back in the 1980s. And it would be big news to Mexico, famously bailed out with loan guarantees by the Clinton administration in 1995.
Until GE started spinning the facts like they were in a washing machine, loan guarantees were synonymous with bailouts. But GE, one of the more environmentally and politically correct companies under the leadership of CEO Jeffrey Immelt, has two news organizations — NBC and MSNBC — under its control. And they give the Obama Administration and its allies a valuable platform from which to speak to the public in a “non-partisan, informative manner”. (emphasis mine)
Now, even before the bailout, GE was not exactly a good corporate citizen, and our tax dollars are being used to prop up a company that — through a complicated series of corporate loopholes and offshore bank accounts — violated U.S. prohibitions against trade with Iran to the tune of $270 million. Disturbingly, this took place in the years immediately following 9/11, with a country that the State Department has labeled the most active state sponsor of terrorism in the world.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=31793
GE, for all intent and purpose, is a company wing of the Democratic Left.
Recently, some GE shareholders tried to confront Immelt on MSNBC’s bias and were promptly censored.
http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2009/04/23/ge-shareholders-censored-for-criticizing-msnbc/
Its media machines are a propaganda outlet for Obama’s unfettered bullshit. Preferential treatment comes with the territory.