Vox Populi: The Fox Nation

Fox News is debuting "Fox Nation," a new online community. On "Fox & Friends," Gretchen Carlson just called it "America's town hall," and Steve Doocy has been interviewing "Founding Fathers" in front of Fox Plaza.

The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz writes about it here, playing it big on the front page of the WaPo's "Style" section.

And in fact, as Kurtz notes, while Fox is #1 among the cablers in TV ratings, it is #3 online. But that can change fast--as Fox demonstrated. Kurtz quotes FOX SVP Joel Cheatwood:

"We felt that giving people a real destination to go and express themselves would give them a feeling of belonging...People feel they're dictated to a lot by the media."

That sort of community, of course, is powerful. And what's most interesting is the Fox Nation Statement of Purpose:

The Fox Nation was created for people who believe in the United States of America and its ideals, as expressed in the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Emancipation Proclamation.

It is a community that believes in the American Dream: Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. One that believes being an American is an honor, as well as a great responsibility—and a wonderful adventure.

This is a place for people who believe we live in a great country, a welcoming refuge for legal immigrants who want to contribute their talent and abilities to make our way of life even greater. We believe we should enjoy the company and support of each other, delighting in the creativity, ingenuity, and work ethic of one and all, while observing the basic rules of civility and mutual respect and, most importantly, strengthening our diverse society by striving for unity.

The Fox Nation is for those committed to the core principles of tolerance, open debate, civil discourse--and fair and balanced coverage of the news. It is for those opposed to intolerance, excessive government control of our lives, and attempts to monopolize opinion or suppress freedom of thought, expression, and worship.

We invite all Americans who share these values to join us here at Fox Nation.

Those are good words for Fox, and more to the point, good words for America.

Keith Olbermann: "A Junior Assistant to White House press secretary Robert Gibbs"

Finkelblog nails it: Keith Olbermann's sees it as his duty to cover for Barack Obama and his gaffes. After Obama cracked on the disabled--a crack that led even hardcore Democrat Maria Shriver to protest--Olbermann Freudian-slipped as he played damage control, saying, “What do we do–what does he do, about that?"

As far as The Cable Gamer can tell, the first blogger to pick up on Olbermann's comment was Jennifer Rubin, a blogger for Contentions, the Commentary magazine blogsite. As Rubin put it:

Definitely not comedy gold: Obama insults the disabled on the Tonight Show. When it rains it pours.

Keith Olbermann worries what “we” should do about it. Hmm, nothing like that ferocious independent media.

But it was another blogger, Mark Finkelstein, who used to be at Newsbusters, but is apparently now an indy, who put the best spin on Olby's words:

Does Keith Olbermann see himself as some sort of Junior Assistant to White House press secretary Robert Gibbs? Over at Contentions, Jennifer Rubin has noted that in discussing the Obama “Special Olympics” comment, the Countdown host asked a guest “what do we do–what does he do, about that?” Translation: how do “we” repair the damage?

And obviously, at MSNBC, sister network to NBC, there is insider-trading. As Finkelstein further noted:

By the way, Olbermann scooped his own network on the gaffe. “Tonight” had already been taped by the time Olbermann went on the air at 8 PM EDT last night, and as you’ll see from the YouTube, he had somehow gotten an advance look and rough transcript of the show.

GE Annual Meeting in Orlando, April 22: Time to Talk About More Bailouts. And Those Salary Caps. (What Salary Caps?)

Mark it on your calendar, anti-bailout activists and muckrakers: GE's annual meeting will be held in Orlando, FL on April 22nd. That meeting is everyone's chance to ask why it is that a company whose stock has gone down by three-fourths in the last year, and which would took hundreds of billions in subsidies and guarantees from the Feds, is still paying its top officers eight-figure salaries.

And oh by the way: Whatever happened to those $500,000 salary caps that President Obama and Treasury Secretary Geithner said that they were imposing back in February?

GE needs p.r. help in the worst way. But happily for GE, it has an in-house propaganda arm, in the form of MSNBC, the semi-official "news" network of the Obama Administration and the Democratic National Committee.

No wonder Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, and all the rest are singing such a pro-Obama song on MSNBC--MSNBC is not only the "cash cow" for the company, in terms of keeping the bailout money coming, but MSNBC's leftward bleatings are also needed to change the subject away from the absurd over-compensation of GE execs when they have put in a performance that rivals that of AIG in its money-losing badness.

And as for CNBC, well, they've been in the tank for the Obama administration all along--Obama AND the bailout. That's the new Wall Street mantra: We need the Democrats to be in charge, because we need a steady stream of bailout money. So yes, Jim Cramer has taken a whack at Obama, but Cramer also said that he voted for Obama. And as for Rick Santelli, he does seem to be an honest voice, so don't expect him to last too long as GE settles in on its suck-up-to-power media strategy.










As you can see below (you can click on each of these images to expand them and make them more legible) from GE's Proxy Statement, looking forward to its April 22 Annual Meeting, the top seven officers of the company, including Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt, all "earned" more than $12 million in 2008, at a time when GE's stock price fell in half, from 36 in January 2008 to 37 at the end of December 2008. (All images in this post are screen grabs from the Proxy Statement.)












But of course, that's not all that these folks got. Let's not forget the additional stock bonuses. It's a little hard to read, but it shows that each of these worthies is getting another $1-3 million.



But wait! There's more! These GE-ers all seem to have access to companies cars and airplanes, too, for their own personal, taxable use:







Once again, all these are images are simply screen grabs from the Proxy Statement so have a look there, if you wish--or just click on the image and take a closer look.

And finally, last and not least, here's the "all other" compensation table:








There you have it, folks. One of the biggest and worst-run corporations--a company poisoned by the reckless lending of its GE Capital unit, just like so many banks and brokerages--is now planning on flouting the salary caps, and also to retain its incompetent management. This isn't just an issue for GE shareholders. It's an issue for taxpayers, because we are all on the hook this waste and abuse.

UPDATE: On the nightly newscasts tonight, ABC News pounded on the Obama Administration for not being on top of the AIG bonuses issue. But NBC was strangely silent about the administration's role. So no mention, on the MSNBC-driven Peacock Network, of Geithner being in the middle off all these bailouts, going back to the fall. Instead, NBC's Kevin Tibbles merely noted, in passing, during the course of a sidebar feature on AIG, Obama's supposed "outrage" at the bonuses.

But hats off to Jake Tapper for some tough questioning, and even better, some tough reporting.

David Frum, "Branch Davidian Republican," Attacks Fox News

David Frum is an odd duck. And not because he's Canadian, which makes him a little less unlikely to understand American politics--and perhaps a bit more humble. But no such luck: As the leader and sole trumpeter in his own one-man-band, Frum now pontificates on the state of the conservative movement--preaching, of course, mostly to liberals, who lap up his anti-GOP criticism.

Having toiled in the think-tank vineyards in the 80s and 90s, he got a job as a speechwriter to President George W. Bush in 2001. Whereupon he took credit for the phrase "axis of evil," uttered by W. in early 2002--and which was at best only the partial author--and was pushed out of the White House shortly thereafter. That short experience, with very limited contact to the President, didn't stop Frum from writing a book, of course. And then he co-wrote a genuinely strange book, entitled, An End to Evil, the title of which gives away the presumptuous preposterousness of the author.

The American Spectator's Daniel Flynn wrote a great takedown of Frum, noting:

Frum supported the banker bailout. He wrote last September, "I say 'aye' to the proposed national debt bailout -- and a big shout out to Rep. Barney Frank, one of its early authors, who has been a prescient early voice on the need for a big solution to a big problem." He is pro abortion-rights: "I am not pro-life. I think abortion ought to be legal for the first 12 weeks of a pregnancy and available to protect the health of the mother during the weeks thereafter. I don't see this as a matter of fundamental human rights, so much as one of accommodating reality." In his latest volume of advice to conservatives, Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again, he advises them to get over their fixation of lowering income-tax rates and offers a massive "carbon tax" as a way of promoting "green conservatism." David Frum, in other words, isn't very conservative these days.

But it's actually weirder than that, because Frum is the favorite "conservative" of many liberals--the go-to "conservative" for bashing real conservatives, such as Rush Limbaugh.

And one AmSpec reader went further, labeling Frum a "Branch Davidian" Republican--that is, a tiny sect, with no legitimate connection to the larger whole.

Now Frum is attacking Fox News, specifically Glen Beck. Well, consider the source--Frum hilariously calls his site "New Majority," but the fact is that he is the leader of a cult that seems to consist mostly of him, a few liberals, and his trust fund.

Jon Stewart, J'Accuse! Now the Ball Is In CNBC's Court. And Maybe the Securities and Exchange Commission's Court, Too!

The Cable Gamer sat down today and watched, for a second and third time, the epic smackdown of Jim Cramer by Jon Stewart on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show."

You can read about Stewart clobbering Cramer here, here, and here, but the real wallop comes from watching the video. Indeed, it's worth watching more than once because this March 12 event is going to be remembered as one of the great televised confrontations of all time, right up there with the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings,where Joseph Welch so legendarily smacked down Sen. Joe McCarthy.

And it will also be remembered as the moment when Stewart entered, with both feet, into the political culture, where his hard-earned and well-deserved reputation as a truth-teller make him welcome, indeed.

Stewart started the interview by letting Cramer dump on his fellow CNBC-er, Rick Santelli and Cramer jumped at the opportunity: "I disliked what he said, it was bad." That left Stewart to say that at least Santelli had been consistent in his opposition to bailouts. (Cramer vociferously supported the "TARP" bailout last fall, which Barack Obama voted for, and has been generally supportive of the Obama administration's big-spending plans.)

Moving into the nature of Cramer's "Mad Money" show on CNBC, which touted so many losing stocks, Stewart quoted Cramer's fellow CNBC-er, Erin Burnett, as saying "he has to make these [stock] picks." To which Stewart asked, "Is that a genetic condition?" As in, Cramer had no choice but to tout stocks, no matter what their quality?

And that led Stewart to move to the heart of his critique, noting: "The gap between what CNBC advertises it as, and what it is,"
adding, "we're both snake oil salesmen, to a certain extent, but on this show we label ourselves as snake oil."

For his part, Cramer didn't attempt to extricate himself from Stewart's charge that he was a snake oil salesmen, perhaps because he was afraid of what Stewart would say. But Cramer did have his own attempted p.r. counter-offensive to roll out, telling Stewart, "I am trying to expose this stuff."

Which led Stewart to press Cramer on his own expressed history of short selling--he called it "really rewarding"--at a time when CNBC was promoting stocks as a long-term investment. As Stewart put it, "CNBC could be an incredibly powerful tool of illumination" for what he called "the two markets"--the "long term" market for ordinary investors and the "short term" for Cramer-type professionals and gamblers. That latter market, of course, is "dangerous and dubious," Stewart said, which is why regular investors should be advised to stay out--and to avoid investments that could be damaged by speculation.

But instead, Stewart suggested, Cramer-type speculators took advantage of the ordinary investments--they didn't help them, they hurt them. "We are capitalizing your adventure," Stewart chided, in which Cramer & Co. go on TV and talk up stocks that they themselves are shorting (that is, betting that the stock will go down). As Stewart put it in his own blunt way, regularly folks "can't recognize the intricacies of your knowledge with the crazy bullshit."

And then he pointed his rhetorical gun right at CNBC: "The financial news industry is not just guilty of a sin of omission, but of a sin of commission." Now that's a strong charge; once again, Cramer didn't say anything in protest against this attack on his good (sic) name.

Instead, Cramer stuck to his argument that he, Cramer was trying to investigate skullduggery. Speaking of his guests, Cramer said, "I wish that people would swear themselves in ... I've had CEOs lie to me." To which Stewart, several times over the course of the 18 minute interview, said variations of, "If you knew that they were lying to you--why didn't you say so?" "Why not report that?" he asked Cramer.

But on top of that, Stewart rolled some video of Cramer speaking at some sort of panel event from 2006, in which Cramer described the tactic of short selling. And then Cramer went further, describing the way that it's done: "You can't foment... but you do it anyway, because the SEC doesn't understand it ... that's the only sense that I would say it's illegal." Cramer went on to describe how rumors could be spread about one particular company, Apple, concerning the then-pending release of the iPhone. Cramer suggested that it would be possible to spread rumors that the carrier companies, AT&T and Verizon, didn't like the iPhone, with the implication being that if the telcos didn't like the iPhone, it would be a bust, and Apple stock would be hurt. Such tactics are always dubious, ethically and legally, of course, but in this case, such trash-talking would not even have been smart--because AT&T and Apple linked up on the iPhone, to the enormous benefit of both companies.

So what exactly was Cramer saying on this videotape? Was he saying that he had done these things? Or was he describing tactics that he deplored? Watch the tape, the decide.

For his part, Stewart told Cramer, "I understand that you want to make finance entertaining, but it's not a fucking game,' and added--clearly pointing his own finger of accusation at Cramer--"when I watch that, I can't tell you how angry it makes me."

When Cramer againg repeated that he was opposed to what was happening, Stewart shot back that it's "very easy to get on this, after the fact." And then Stewart jabbed, "You knew that the banks were doing, and yet were touting it, for months and months--the entire network [CNBC] was." Speaking of larcenous CEOs, Stewart snapped, "they were on a Sherman's March through their own companies... they walked away rich as hell."

Interestingly, the Stewart-Cramer confrontation made ABC World News on Friday, but not NBC Nightly News.

But more to the point, this video will be seen everywhere there's interest in American financial markets. And everywhere that there's interest in honest journalism. Which is to say, Stewart 1, Cramer 0. Although the big losers are the American people.

Which leads to my final point: Where's the Securities and Exchange Commission? Cramer, perhaps shrewdly, volunteered that he voted for Obama, but will the Obama administration really let the likes of Cramer continue to mislead investors? Sure, loyalty to campaign supporters is important in Washington, but surely keeping faith with the American people is much more important. That 2006 videotape should arouse at least some curiosity on the part of the SEC.

"The Stewart Dip? Ratings Down for CNBC, Cramer"

The great Jon Stewart did it to "Crossfire," now he's doing it to another mindless yell-fest show, the aptly named "Mad Money" which "stars" the execrable Jim Cramer.

So sez a Cable Game fave, Jeff Bercovici(pictured above) of Conde Nast Portfolio.

MSNBC Flunks Obama--OOPS!

Somebody is in trouble over at MSNBC, for letting an online poll get out of hand. "Give President Obama a grade," MSNBC asked websurfers. And they did, as observed by WorldNetDaily.

Of course, these results, "flunking" the President, were not what MSDNC had in mind.
And probably not what the loyal-liberal audience had in mind. Most likely, some clever conservative with a computer program figured out how to game the poll, and did so. Fair enough, that's the online world for you.

The Cable Gamer is old enough to remember that the "MS" in MSNBC stood for Microsoft. The original MSNBC was supposed to be a collaboration between the software giant and NBC. But obviously none of MSFT's computer savvy lingers in the revised MSNBC, which, having abandoned any pretense of competent geekery, is now simply the Air America of TV.

But hey MSNBC, if you know what's good for you, you'll pull this poll down--because it's badly off-message for the next bailout that your parent company, GE, needs from the Obama Administration.

So it's time for a "reset"! Done right this time!!

Frank Rich Invokes Jon Stewart--and Thornton Wilder--To Call Out CNBC

Frank Rich writes well in yesterday's New York Times:

Last week Jon Stewart whipped up a well-earned frenzy with an eight-minute “Daily Show” takedown of the stars of CNBC, the business network that venerated our financial gods, plugged their stocks and hyped the bubble’s reckless delusions. (Just as it had in the dot-com bubble.) Stewart’s horrifying clip reel featured Jim Cramer reassuring viewers that Bear Stearns was “not in trouble” just six days before its March 2008 collapse; Charlie Gasparino lip-syncing A.I.G.’s claim that its subprime losses were “very manageable” in December 2007; and Larry Kudlow declaring last April that “the worst of this subprime business is over.” The coup de grâce was a CNBC interviewer fawning over the lordly Robert Allen Stanford. Stewart spoke for many when he concluded, “Between the two of them I can’t decide which one of those guys I’d rather see in jail.”

Led by Cramer and Kudlow, the CNBC carnival barkers are now, without any irony whatsoever, assailing the president as a radical saboteur of capitalism. It’s particularly rich to hear Cramer tar Obama (or anyone else) for “wealth destruction” when he followed up his bum steer to viewers on Bear Stearns with oleaginous on-camera salesmanship for Wachovia and its brilliant chief executive, a Cramer friend and former boss, just two weeks before it, too, collapsed. What should really terrify the White House is that Cramer last month gave a big thumbs-up to Timothy Geithner’s bank-rescue plan.

In one way, though, the remaining vestiges of the past decade’s excesses, whether they live on in the shouted sophistry of CNBC or in the ashes of Stanford’s castle, are useful. Seen in the cold light of our long hangover, they remind us that it was the America of the bubble that was aberrant and perverse, creating a new normal that wasn’t normal at all.

The Cable Gamer isn't particularly a fan of Frank Rich's politics, but when Rich writes about theater he is always compelling, and when he connects theater to politics, he can be positively illuminating. And so I felt enlightened after Rich connected Our Town," the great play by Thornton Wilder (pictured above), to the current financial/economic debacle:

The true American faith endures in “Our Town.” The key word in its title is the collective “our,” just as “united” is the resonant note hit by the new president when saying the full name of the country. The notion that Americans must all rise and fall together is the ideal we still yearn to reclaim, and that a majority voted for in November. But how we get there from this economic graveyard is a challenge rapidly rivaling the one that faced Wilder’s audience in that dark late winter of 1938.

This is a great country, Rich, Stewart, and Wilder agree--it's just that we have our share of knaves and thieves to deal with. And CNBC seems to have been part of the problem.

A point underscored, here, by Gawker:

CNBC personalities like Rick Santelli and Charles Gasparino have done their loudmouthed best to hone the financial network's laissez-faire bonafides. Good luck holding that stance if CNBC's troubled parent company seeks a bailout.

In his column this weekend on General Electric, New York Times columnist Joe Nocera never actually uses the word "bailout." He doesn't have to.

CNBC owner GE just cut its dividend for the first time since the Great Depression after denying it would do so. The company's stock price was cut in half in less than a month and by nearly two-thirds over two months.In April the company missed earnings by $700 million two weeks after assuring investors it would meet its numbers.

Now in fairness to Santelli, he opposed the bailout last year. Not sure about Gasparino.

MSNBC's Leftward Gambit Pays Off Big Time, For Corporate Parent GE. Only One Catch: General Electric Now Trodding The Same Faustian Path as Enron!

What if we were to wake up and see that MSNBC's leftward lurch has been a veil, a cloak of disguise, covering up one of the great corporate money-grabs of all time? That's right: What if Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, David Shuster--and all the other sneering, snarking lefties on the channel--were simply fronts for crony-capitalist lobbying and looting?

But hey, it's not me who is writing articles with headlines such as "GE Bailout Chatter Begins." The Cable Gamer has noted GE's effective money-mulcting of federal funds as part of TARP-type bailouts, but there's a lot more money-grabbing going on under the cover of environmental policy. In other words, GE's green-grabbing is hidden behind a green wall of politics.

And it might work. As The Washington Examiner reports, it looks like GE is about to get handsomely rewarded by Uncle Sam, thanks to GE's political connections. What has GE done to deserve such federal largesse? Well, it spent $19 million in lobbying in 2008--that surely helped. But lots of companies spend even more money than that on lobbyists, and get a lot less. What makes GE different is that it has a propaganda arm with, seemingly, one mission: suck up to the Obama Administration, and to the Democrats on Capitol Hill. And that propaganda arm, of course, comes in the form of GE's media properties, most obviously, MSNBC--sometimes called "MSDNC," as in MSDemocratic National Committee. Now it looks like that media-propaganda outreach is going to pay off in billions for GE and other connected-in companies, even as it costs the US economy, and all the rest of us, trillions.

The Washington Examiner's Timothy P. Carneyhas made a career out of combing through the lobbying efforts of big companies, figuring out how they seek to advance their own corporate interests at the expense of the rest of us. He should be applauded in general for his muckraking efforts, but Carney's excellent digging and explaining only becomes immediately relevant to The Cable Game when it involves a company that plays in the cable-news sphere--and that certainly includes GE. Led by CEO Jeff Immelt, Obama became the top recipient of GE money in the last election cycle.

But of course, GE's symbiotic relationship with Uncle Sam isn't limited to lobbying, or to MSNBC--GE is part of a huge corporate-funded network that helps shape popular understanding of scientific and political issues, the

The US Climate Action Partnership is a hybrid organization: on the one hand, the members are some of the largest corporations in America, including GE, Ford, Dow, and DuPont; and on the other hand, members also include such green groups as the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and The Nature Conservancy. Obviously it's a mixed marriage--further made ridiculously cynical by the presence of such big polluters as BP, Shell, and Rio Tinto. As the group describes itself:

United States Climate Action Partnership (USCAP) is a group of businesses and leading environmental organizations that have come together to call on the federal government to quickly enact strong national legislation to require significant reductions of greenhouse gas emissions. USCAP has issued a landmark set of principles and recommendations to underscore the urgent need for a policy framework on climate change.

Which is to say, a bunch of giant corporations--including some of the worst polluters on earth--have gotten together to create a front group that lobbies for rules that will make these giant corporations even more gigantic.

It's a complicated tale, to be sure, but to understand it is also to understand why MSNBC has turned itself into such a cheerleader for the extreme liberalism of the Obamans and the Democrats on Capitol Hill.

So to get that understanding, let's go through Carney's article carefully:

While many companies hire lobbyists to win earmarks, General Electric’s unmatched lobbying force has secured a tax increase — or its equivalent — in President Barack Obama’s budget.

Labeled “climate revenues” and totaling $646 billion over eight years, this line item in Obama’s budget has inspired confidence in GE Chief Executive Officer Jeff Immelt. As Immelt put it in a letter this week, he believes that the Obama administration will be a profitable “financier” and “key partner.”

A relevant term here is "rent-seeking,"which has a specific meaning to political economists: "In economics, rent seeking occurs when an individual, organization or firm seeks to make money by manipulating the economic and/or legal environment rather than by trade and production of wealth."

Carney dives into the details:

On page 115 of Obama’s fiscal 2010 budget is Table S-2, titled “Effect of Budget Proposals on Projected Deficits.” The chart forecasts the costs of Obama’s spending proposals and the added revenue of his proposed tax increases. It also forecasts, beginning in 2012, billions of dollars a year in “climate revenues.” This budget line, which has struck fear into some lawmakers from coal-dependent states, could spell salvation for GE in these times of uncertainty.

How can Obama generate “climate revenues”? By forcing companies to pay for the right to emit greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.

A tax on greenhouse gas emissions could accomplish this, but Obama’s preferred policy — and the approach embraced by a few congressional bills in recent years — is called “cap and trade.” In short, cap and trade requires businesses to spend “credits” to pay for their emissions. Businesses can buy or sell these credits, and the market — not the government — would directly set the price of a credit. Government would initially auction them off, generating revenue.

And here comes General Electric:

GE — a member of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, which advocates cap and trade — leads the push for greenhouse gas restrictions.

In the fourth quarter of 2008 as the company’s stock fell 30 percent, GE spent $4.26 million on lobbying — that’s $46,304 each day, including weekends, Thanksgiving and Christmas. In 2008, the company spent a grand total of $18.66 million on lobbying.

And now we begin to see why MSNBC had to move left, embracing Obama, and his idea for an 80% cut in CO2 emissions by 2050--GE and the rest of USCAP have a long wish list:

Reviewing their lobbying filings, you might think you were looking at Al Gore’s agenda. GE’s specific lobbying issues included the “Climate Stewardship Act,” “Electric Utility Cap and Trade Act,” “Global Warming Reduction Act,” “Federal Government Greenhouse Gas Registry Act,” “Low Carbon Economy Act,” and “Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act.”

This isn’t altruism or public relations. GE has started a joint venture called Greenhouse Gas Services, which invests in — and hopes to manage the trade in — greenhouse gas credits. But these investments and this trading floor are of basically no use and nearly no value without government restrictions on greenhouse gases.

Hence the lobbying, buttressed by generous campaign contributions: Employees and executives gave $1.35 million to politicians in the past election while GE’s political action committee shelled out $1.55 million. About 64 percent of this $2.9 million went to Democrats, with Obama easily the top recipient of GE money.

And here's Immelt, explaining the strategy:

Obama’s budget includes the payoff, promising to start a multibillion-dollar greenhouse gas industry by 2012. In a letter this week, GE’S Immelt told shareholders that current events present an “opportunity of a lifetime,” because “capitalism will be ‘reset.’ ”

Immelt wrote: “The interaction between government and business will change forever. In a reset economy, the government will be a regulator; and also an industry policy champion, a financier, and a key partner.”

In short, GE plans to get rich by being one of the government’s closest partners — which it has always been, thanks to its unmatched lobbying efforts.

Next Carney puts the issue in larger context, which should even enviros pause:

The environmentalist at this point might respond, “Well, good for GE. if they can get rich while helping the planet, more power to them.” But this ignores important issues. First, restraining greenhouse gas emissions will cost Americans dearly. Gas, electricity and heating prices will all go up. The prices of manufactured and shipped goods will go up. A Clemson University report on similar cap-and-trade proposals forecast a 1 percent decline in he U.S. gross domestic product by 2015 if they were implemented.

There are environmental costs, also, to such a focus on greenhouse gases: Ethanol’s damage to water supplies, soil health and air quality are the fruit of government pushing the product as a climate-friendly fuel.

Carney concludes:

When the lobbying fingerprints of GE and other well-connected firms are considered, it’s not hard to conclude that the policy that will finally emerge won’t be the one that is best for the planet and least bad for the economy, but the one that is best for General Electric.

OK, so GE plans to get rich--or at least recover some of the nearly 90% of shareholder value that's been lost over the last eight years, as the stock from nearly 60 to around 7--by rent-seeking the rest of the US economy. To most Americans, that's not a very attractive plan, but at least it's a plan, right?

Well, actually, no, it's not even a good plan. And why not? Because the whole global warming scheme is collapsing, a victim of increased scientific skepticism, decreased temperatures, and increased realization that a weakened economy can't take any more punishment.

So if GE is betting big, as Immelt says, on "green rent-seeking," then GE and its boss are due for an unpleasant surprise--just like Enron, which went belly up in 2002, after betting big on being able to manipulate the Kyoto Treaty into a windfall for itself, by trading "carbon futures" and the like.

But unfortunately for Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, et al., any prospect for the world-government that Enron was counting on to guarantee its insider-profits collapsed after 9-11, and so Enron itself soon collapsed.

And now the worldwide recession (we hope that's all it is) is going to put the kibosh on Kyoto, and other similar climatic foolishness. Which is to say, all the green rent-seeking that GE has been counting on is not going to come to pass, as countries realize that they can't afford green foolishness.

Yes, Olbermann, Maddow, et al. will continue to huff and puff their lefty cant--no doubt because they really believe it. And all the while, their corporate masters will encourage them. (Do you suppose that MSNBC staffers ever wonder why it is that GE continues to support the #3 rated cable news network? Do they really think that it's because of their talent?)

But the ultimate joke may be on Immelt and his cohorts at the top of GE. After all, the worst kind of cynicism is failed cynicism. And, in a way, the worst kind of ripoff is the failed ripoff. That is, many times we grudgingly admire the successful rogue, who wheel and deals his way to system-beating riches. But it seems like GE is making the same bet as Enron.

In which case, the deeper problems of GE, as closely documented by Henry Blodget and his team at The Business Insider are likely to drive GE's stock down even lower. Yes, GE's Immelt is currently counting on green rent-seeking to save his bacon, and many on Wall Street believe him, but when that prospect evaporates, GE could be left with nothing more than toxic financial shock, from all those toxic "assets."

And then, one imagines, Keith and Rachel will head to NPR.

What's Going On With GE?

Henry Blodget, writing for Yahoo's TechTicker, suggests that GE might survive, or might not. It's very possible, of course, that GE will get bailed out by Uncle Sam--that would explain the adoring coverage of the Obama administration on MSNBC in particular. Here's Blodget, in his own words:

Tim Geithner and Jeff Immelt meet in some secret back room and hash out a plan whereby the taxpayer backstops GE Capital's losses and the western world is saved. Something tells us that this one won't go over too well. The public has already had it with bailouts and Geithner, and the idea of bailing out a company that still throws of tens of billions of dollars of cash a year from an industrial business might be the last straw.

And Blodget, always a contrarian, puts at least some of the blame on Jack Welch, who retired back in 2001. TCG finds that a little strange, but then, these are strange times.