Quid Pro Cuomo: NY Gov Gets Campaign Cash, Polluter General Electric Gets $50 Million In Tax Subsidies And A Greenwashing

More Cuomo corruption:

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo last week proudly declared that he had successfully lured General Electric into “coming home.” It took $50 million in taxpayer subsidies to convince the company to build a new manufacturing facility in upstate New York, but this was money well spent, Cuomo asserted, noting that GE used to be “such a big part of this community and provided so many jobs and was such a vital player in this community.” Cuomo is now pushing to authorize an additional, undisclosed amount to entice GE to also relocate its corporate headquarters from Connecticut back to New York, some 40 years after it left.

The welcoming rhetoric from the New York governor, a Democrat, presents a stark change from recent years, in which GE was known throughout the state as a large-scale industrial polluter: During the mid-20th century, the company dumped more than one million pounds of chemicals linked to cancer into the Hudson River.

Since 2009, the technology and manufacturing conglomerate has contributed more than $466,000 to Cuomo’s campaigns and political groups that have supported his bids for governor, according to state and federal campaign finance records.

New York state and federal authorities have for decades sparred with GE over the pace and extent of its promised cleanup of the Hudson from years of manufacturing-related chemical dumping, a battle that continues even as Cuomo now extends the state’s largess. In the same week Cuomo was promoting his plans to subsidize GE, federal officials told New York authorities that the company had been underreporting the volume of toxic chemicals that are still in the river’s ecosystem. Meanwhile, New York lawmakers, businesses and environmental groups have been raising concerns that the company is now moving to prematurely abandon the cleanup operations, while a report from federal government scientists said GE needs to conduct additional dredging to fully clean up the river.

PCB's remain in the Hudson, but GE is claiming the clean-up's all done, it's time to move on.

 Cuomo's move here essentially greenwashes them from responsibility.

Hey Andy, why not see if Union Carbide is looking to move headquarters next?

I hear they're owned by Dow Chemical - I bet you can get some campaign cash in return for tax subsidies and some greenwashing from them too.

Carmen Farina Should Be Honored To Be Criticized By A Criminal Like Jack Welch

The NY Post reports that former General Electric CEO Jack Welch criticized Chancellor Farina for hiring superintendents from "failing schools":

Former GE chief Jack Welch lit into Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña’s management skills on Monday, questioning why she hired superintendents who had run struggling schools.

“She just appointed 15 superintendents — seven from failing schools, five from disasters, 10 percent passing tests, et cetera — as superintendents,” Welch said on CNBC.

“When you have a philosophy of putting people in place without a meritocracy, without differentiation, you get bad performance.”

Welch argued that major corporations would never promote “flunkies” and “hacks” the way the Department of Education did.

“You couldn’t run CNBC, you couldn’t run GE, you couldn’t run Apple, you couldn’t run Google, you couldn’t run any company if you took of your 15 appointments of division managers and made them flunkies, hacks, and stuck them in the schools,” Welch said.

“[In] that system of no meritocracy, of no differentiation, we’re all equal, you don’t get performance. You can’t do it. You just can’t do it.”

We're going to get to a personal critique of Welch in a minute, so hang on tight.

Before we do, let's deal with Welch's assertion that there's a meritocracy in business.

Because there isn't.

What there often is in business is an old boy's network that rewards people - mostly arrogant white men like Welch - over everybody else.

Take a look at the guys at the top of nearly every major company, look at their boards - see many women there?

See many people of color?

Can't be a true meritocracy when all you see are white men everywhere, with a very few brown and black men thrown in to keep the whole thing from looking like a Klan meeting.

The gender disparity in business is quite striking, since women are more than half of the population and have been training for top positions for decades now, as this factsheet by the Center For American Progress shows:

Women make up a majority of the U.S. population

Women are 50.8 percent of the U.S. population.

• They earn almost 60 percent of undergraduate degrees, and 60 percent of all master’s degrees.
• They earn 47 percent of all law degrees, and 48 percent of all medical degrees.
• They earn more than 44 percent of master’s degrees in business and management, including 37 percent of MBAs.
• They are 47 percent of the U.S. labor force, and 59 percent of the college-educated, entry-level workforce.

And yet…

Although they hold almost 52 percent of all professional-level jobs, American women lag substantially behind men when it comes to their representation in leadership positions:

• They are only 14.6 percent of executive officers, 8.1 percent of top earners, and 4.6 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs.
• They hold just 16.9 percent of Fortune 500 board seats.
• In the financial services industry, they make up 54.2 percent of the labor force, but are only 12.4 percent of executive officers, and 18.3 percent of board directors. None are CEOs.
• They account for 78.4 percent of the labor force in health care and social assistance but only 14.6 percent of executive officers and 12.4 percent of board directors. None, again, are CEOs.
• In the legal field, they are 45.4 percent of associates—but only 25 percent of nonequity partners and 15 percent of equity partners.
• In medicine, they comprise 34.3 percent of all physicians and surgeons but only 15.9 percent of medical school deans.
• In information technology, they hold only 9 percent of management positions and account for only 14 percent of senior management positions at Silicon Valley startups.

Furthermore…

• Although women control 80 percent of consumer spending in the United States, they are only 3 percent of creative directors in advertising.
• Their image onscreen is still created, overwhelmingly, by men.
• Women accounted for just 16 percent of all the directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers, and editors who worked on the top-grossing 250 domestic films of 2013, and were just 28 percent of all offscreen talent on broadcast television programs during the 2012-13 primetime season.

Further putting a dent in Welch's "businesses are meritocratic unlike schools under Farina" assertion is the history of how the collapse of '08 came about.

A lot of it was brought about by arrogant white men, with a token man of color or two - and a lot of these guys were known to be not too bright before the whole mess came down.

Like Stan O'Neal at Merrill Lynch, who brought about the financial collapse of the firm and his replacement, John Thain, who spent $1 million remodeling his office with federal bailout money.

Or Jimmy Cayne at Bear Stearns, who famously played bridge and smoked dope as his firm collapsed. 

Or Chuck Prince at Citibank, who claimed his firm was "still dancing" even as its risky loans and bad bets were taking it to the brink of collapse.

The Peter Principle certainly seemed at work with these guys. 

Lots of inept guys are running or have run companies not associated with the '08 financial collapse of the country.

Let's look at just one - Eddie Lampert, the Ayn Rand fan, who has nearly destroyed Sears by trying to run the company the way Ayn Rand would.

Here's his record:

• Sears has amassed a mountain of debt; its debt to equity ratio was 8.406% in July 2014.
• Sears’ TTM revenue fell by $3.68 billion between July 2013 and July 2014.
• Sears CEO Eddie Lampert is trying to protect the chain’s real estate assets by transferring them to a REIT.
• Sears is closing stores so fast that observers are having a hard time keeping count.
• Sears is actually planning to close dozens of stores during the critical holiday shopping season. 

How's that for meritocratic?

Lampert's still making calls on Sears even though he has brought the once-proud company to near collapse by bad call after bad call.

OK so the "Business Is Meritocratic" argument Welch uses is obviously untrue.

Now let's deal with Jack Welch the man.

Because that matter's too.

This is a guy whose company knowingly polluted the Hudson River for decades.

Welch did the best he could to a) hide his company's actions b) shield his company from having to clean up the mess it made and c) claim PCB's aren't a health hazard or cancer-causing, citing jive studies from 30 years that were rigged to give GE the results it wanted.

The Times-Union published a piece on General Electric, PCB's and Welch back in March - it is unflinching in its depiction of Welch as a apologist for GE:

For years, as it fought against being forced to clean up the Hudson River, General Electric Co. argued that an oil-like insulating fluid that had seeped into the river from its Washington County capacitor plants wasn't harmful to humans.

Besides, GE officials said, the river was cleaning itself.

Yet newly uncovered documents reveal that as early as the 1960s — decades before the government ordered GE to undertake the river dredging that is scheduled to resume this spring — company officials were warned of the potential serious health threats of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which their engineers described in confidential memos as "hazardous waste."

The documents also indicate that GE flushed far more PCBs into the river than government regulators have estimated, and that nearly a million pounds a year of additional PCBs were carted away by scavenger crews, dumped with an attitude characterized by a GE engineer in 1970 as "out of sight, out of mind."

...

Jack Welch also doesn't believe PCBs have harmful health effects, despite scientific evidence that they may. Much of his position on that, he said, comes from studies that GE commissioned as early as 1976, in which the health trends of its factory workers were studied by scientists.

Last spring, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, which first warned of PCBs' adverse health effects in 1978, declared that certain PCBs, including the type flushed into the river by GE, "have reproductive, toxic, and carcinogenic consequences." The EPA, based on past practice, is expected to adopt that finding once the World Health Organization adopts it.

"EPA," Welch scoffed, waving his hand dismissively during his deposition last year. "I was completely satisfied as to the safety of PCBs. In my time I studied it. I looked at it. I made my judgment and I was completely satisfied. ... I haven't seen any PCB studies that convince me there was another side to it."

But the studies that Welch cites have drawn scientists' questions. In one study commissioned by GE, scientists examined the health patterns of workers at the Washington County capacitor plants and determined that they had a lower rate of cancer than the general population.

"It followed people for only five years ... (and) included all the secretaries, all the people that weren't anywhere near where the PCBs were," said Dr. David O. Carpenter, who has studied PCBs for decades.

"The point about those studies is they were included in the review by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, along with all of the other studies, many of them occupational, and they were found to be unconvincing," said Carpenter, director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University at Albany. "The issue is that in addition to cancer, we now have such strong evidence that PCBs alter a large number of other organ systems. PCBs affect the brain and reduce learning ability. This has been demonstrated repeatedly in children exposed to PCBs, often exposed even before birth where they get PCBs from their mother's body and from breast milk."

Learning and memory functions also diminish for adults exposed to PCBs, Carpenter said. He added that some scientists suspect PCBs cause adverse effects to the thyroid glands and health risks that include diabetes, high blood pressure and effects on human reproductive systems.

"PCBs are very dangerous chemicals and anybody that says they are not dangerous simply is not telling the truth, or just does not know what studies have been done," Carpenter said.

Ah, but not to Jack Welch they're not.

And he's studied this issue, so he assures us we should take him at his word, even though the study he cites to back up his claim was rigged by limiting the length of it and by putting people who were nowhere near the PCB's into it.

Jack Welch is quite literally one of the most evil men on the planet.

His company polluted the Hudson for decades with PCB's, but in order to save his company money, he argues PCB's aren't harmful despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, then cites a rigged study to back up his claims.

Who the hell cares about anything a criminal like this says about anything?

How many cancers, how many deaths is the guy responsible for because he refused to take responsibility for the damage his company did to the river?

I'm not here to defend Farina and her choice of superintendents.

I am here to call Welch out for his horseshit.

His "Business Is Meritocratic" argument is horseshit and any rudimentary look at the quality and track records of some of the people running businesses show that.

On top of that, Welch's own track record places him squarely as one of the worst human beings on the planet.

Quite frankly, Farina should consider it an honor to be criticized by someone like Welch.

New York Number One in Income Inequity

All right - WE'RE NUMBER ONE!!!:

Within its borders and around the world, New York is known for its contrasts -- urban grid and Adirondack expanse, hard-charging finance and farm life, the very rich and the crushingly poor.

That last divide can be seen once again in U.S. Census data that concludes the Empire State has the highest level of income inequality in the nation. The census employs a statistical tool known as the Gini coefficient, which measures inequality of distribution -- in this case, income.

Taken from 2009 surveys, the findings were recently compiled by the financial website 24/7 Wall Street.

Used by economists and statisticians to measure income inequality, the Gini coefficient is scaled to run from 0 to 1, with 1 being the highest level of inequality.

It starts by taking the pool of money in a given state or nation and creating an imaginary model in which everyone has an equal share, set at 0. That share-and-share-alike model is then plotted against the real distribution of income. (In Census surveys, household income above $200,000 is the highest bracket offered to respondents.)

New York rates a 0.502 on that scale, followed by Connecticut at 0.480 and Texas at 0.474.

This latest sign of the sharp gaps between rich and poor in the state was no surprise to those involved in public policy. "There are lots of people with very high incomes, and lots of people with very low incomes," said Algernon Austin, a sociologist at the Economic Policy Institute, which has done similar studies looking at individual metropolitan areas.

...

Here are the top two states ranked by the inequality of income:

1. New York

Median income: $50,216 (22nd highest)

Households earning $200,000 or more: 6.15 percent (5th highest)

Population living below poverty line: 14.20 percent (25th highest)

2. Connecticut

Median income: $63,851 (highest in the U.S.)

Households earning $200,000 or more: 7.87 percent (highest)

Population living below poverty line: 9.40 percent (4th lowest)

Listen, consumerist culture is near collapse. Income disparity is growing, it is the largest it has been since the Gilded Age, the middle class is disappearing, the working class is growing larger and larger, job security has all but disappeared and long-term unemployment is a reality of life for a lot of people.

The oligarchs of our society - including Sarah Palin's favorite socialist, Barack Obama - blame the income inequity, the disappearance of the middle class, and the long-term unemployment problem on public education and teachers.

But that is NOT who and what has caused the problem.

The problem, plain and simple, has been caused by globalization and a capitalist society that privileges the predatory bankers, brokers and hedge fund traders over everybody else.

Until people go and TAKE BACK BY FORCE what the hedge fund criminals are STEALING every day, until people go and FORCE the corporate politicians from Scott Walker to Mitch Daniels to Rick Scott to Little Andy Cuomo to Barack Obama to stop shilling for the top 1%, until people force General Electric to STOP forcing employees to take pay and benefit cuts while it rakes in more money than ever, THIS WILL NOT STOP.

The oligarchs, the bankers, the hedge fund criminals and the politicians they own will NOT stop grabbing more and more until they are AFRAID that if they continue, they will be destroyed.

Power and money does not cede power and money willingly.

It must be forced to do so.

We can start this process by boycotting the industries that promote some of the worst policies.

Start with Brawny, Northern Tissue and other products made by the Koch Brothers.

Move on to General Electric and all the products and services they provide.

Buy less, consume less, spend less, debt less.

As Arlo once said about something else, if one person does this, they'll think you're sick, and if two people do it, they'll think you're a couple, but if a whole bunch of people do it, they'll think it's a movement.

And it can be.

The Anti-Consumerist/Anti-Oligarchy Movement.

In four part harmony, of course.

It's time to take back by force the power that the oligarchs have seized over the last thirty years (and especially the last ten.)

Their oligarchy CANNOT exist if nobody buys the shit they make.

Study: Illegal Immigrants Paid $11.2 Billion In Taxes, General Electric Paid $0

But illegal immigrants are the freeloaders, right?

I bet most of you didn't know undocumented immigrants contributed more - much more - to the national treasury last year than General Electric. Surprised? Yet it's true.

While GE - which earned a whopping $14 billion last year - is reported to have paid nothing, nada, zero in taxes (GE denies it), the undocumented paid billions in state and local taxes in 2010.

No, it's not me talking; it's the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy (itepnet.org), a prestigious, nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization that works on federal, state and local tax policy issues.

Obviously the old saying, "Nothing is certain but death and taxes," is not to be believed anymore. Or rather, only half of it can be believed.

Because death, of course, remains as dreaded and inevitable as ever, but with taxes the story is different.

"The rich are different from you and me," the famous F. Scott Fitzgerald quote, is a much more accurate description of what's going on in the country.

To no one's surprise, taxes are still as certain for working people - and whatever is left of the middle class - as they ever were. But for, well, GE and other corporate giants, the only certainty is that many found ways to contribute as little to the country's coffers as possible.

At the same time, Republicans in Washington are involved in a mighty struggle to protect the tax breaks of the country's richest 2%, while happily proposing to cut the most basic social services to Americans who really need them.

Closer to home, Gov. Cuomo has announced the so-called millionaires tax will not be renewed once it expires in December, although since it was established in 2009 it has brought in as much as $5 billion annually.

There is no doubt, when it comes to taxes the rich are really different.

Ironically the vilified undocumented population, among the poorest and most vulnerable in the country, does its part when it comes to taxes.

They pay sales taxes and property taxes - even if they rent, ITEP said. At least half of them pay income taxes. And, I believe, if they were ever legalized, close to 100% would do the same. "Add this all up," ITEP said, "and it amounts to billions in revenue to state and local governments."

ITEP estimates that households that are headed by undocumented immigrants (which may include members who are U.S. citizens or legal immigrants) paid $11.2 billion in state and local taxes last year. That included $1.2 billion in personal income taxes, $1.6 billion in property taxes and $8.4 billion in sales taxes.

New York is fourth in the country in tax revenue - $662.4 million - from households headed by undocumented immigrants, after California, Texas and Florida.

"These figures should be kept in mind as politicians and commentators continue with the seemingly endless debate over what to do with unauthorized immigrants already living in the United States," ITEP wisely advises.

"[These] immigrants - and their family members - are adding value to the U.S. economy; not only as taxpayers, but as workers, consumers and entrepreneurs as well."

General Electric of course has added value to the economy as well.

Think about all the money people will make trying to clean up the nuclear holocaust the GE-designed power plants in Japan have wrought.

General Electric Rolls In Dough, Pays No Taxes Even As It Forces Unionized Employees To Take Cuts

How is President Obama's favorite multinational corporation, General Electric, doing these days?

Pretty damned well:

General Electric, the conglomerate that is regarded as an economic bellwether, started the year with first-quarter results on Thursday that easily topped Wall Street’s expectations.

Net income was $3.4 billion in the first three months of 2011, or 31 cents a share, compared with $1.9 billion and 17 cents in the quarter a year ago.

Excluding one-time items, earnings were 33 cents a share, topping the average estimate of 28 cents from analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters. Earnings from continuing operations were $3.5 billion compared with $2.4 billion in the quarter a year ago.

With the results, G.E. joins other companies in the manufacturing sector that have topped forecasts this quarter, including United Technologies, Eaton and Honeywell.

The chief executive of G.E., Jeffrey R. Immelt, said in a statement that the company had emerged from the recession a stronger company.

“GE Healthcare, Transportation and Aviation delivered strong results,” Mr. Immelt said. “Strategic investments in high-growth segments have strengthened the company’s energy portfolio and position that business to return to growth in the second half of this year. We ended the quarter with a record high backlog of $177 billion.”

“GE Capital also had a strong first quarter, earning $1.8 billion after tax,” he said.

Over all, revenue rose 6 percent, to $38.45 billion in the first quarter, exceeding analysts forecasts of $34.64 billion. Revenue in the same quarter a year ago was $36.2 billion.

Are all General Electric employees sharing in the wealth?

Uh, no:

Last week, the New York Times reported that, despite making $14.2 billion in profits, General Electric, the largest corporation in the United States, paid zero U.S. taxes in 2010 and actually received tax credits of $3.2 billion dollars. The article noted that GE’s tax avoidance team is comprised of “former officials not just from the Treasury, but also from the I.R.S. and virtually all the tax-writing committees in Congress.”

After not paying any taxes and making huge profits, ThinkProgress has learned that General Electric is expected to ask its nearly 15,000 unionized employees in the United States to make major concessions.

This year, 14 unions representing more than 15,000 workers will negotiate a new master contract with General Electric. Among the major concessions GE has signaled that it will ask of union workers is the elimination of a defined contribution benefit pension for new employees, a move the company has already implemented for its non-union salaried employees. Likewise, GE is signaling to the union that it will ask for the elimination of current health insurance plans in favor of lower quality health saving accounts, a move the company has already implemented for non-union salaried employees as well.

In addition, General Electric may ask some workers for a wage freeze. Since the recession began in 2007, GE threatened to close plants in Schenectady, NY and Louisville, KY unless workers took wage concessions and adopted two-tier wage structure. In an interview with ThinkProgress, Mark Haller, a machinist at General Electric locomotive factory in Erie, PA, said:

The company I work for paid no federal taxes last year, but we all get these mass emails from GE asking us to call our Congressman to fund the useless, alternative GE engine for the F-35. As taxpayers, we are subsidizing the profits of this company to a huge extent and now after making the company even more profitable, they are asking us to make concessions on pensions, benefits, and perhaps even wages. You wonder why there is a jobs crisis in this country with a guy like G.E. CEO Jeff Immelt heading the President’s Jobs Commission.

In 2003, union workers at 16 different General Electric factories engaged in a strike when G.E. proposed to cut their health care. Workers are mobilizing again this year. They have planned a rally that is expected to attract 10,000 workers from all over the country at the General Electric Locomotive Factory in Erie, PA on June 4th.

So General Electric is now, in the words of its own CEO (and Obama's jobs czar), a "stronger company" post-recession than before the economic collapse, pays no taxes and actually received a $3.4 billion tax credit from the government, and is forcing its employees to take wage freezes, benefit cuts and other concessions or they will move these jobs out of the United States.

A very able emblem of EXACTLY what is WRONG with capitalism in general these days and the American economy specifically these days

What "General Electric Doesn't Pay Taxes"? Story

If you're getting all your news from an NBC outlet, you'd never know about the story that the Times broke about General Electric paying NO federal taxes at all.

The Kaplan Post in Washington, itself embroiled in scandal over it's for-profit education division, delights in tweaking NBC over this story:

It’s the kind of accountability journalism that makes readers raise an eyebrow, if it doesn’t raise their blood pressure first. General Electric Co., reported the New York Times last week, earned $14.2 billion in worldwide profits last year, including $5.1 billion in the United States — and paid exactly zero dollars in federal taxes.

The front-page story drew widespread commentary in newspapers and on many Web sites. ABC News and Fox News, among others, were all over it.

But the story was conspicuously absent from the reportage of one news organization: NBC.

During its Friday broadcast, “NBC Nightly News With Brian Williams” had no time to mention that America’s largest corporation had essentially avoided paying federal taxes in 2010. Or its Saturday, Sunday or Monday broadcasts, either.

Did NBC’s silence have anything to do with the fact that one of its parent companies is General Electric?

NBC News representatives say that it didn’t. “This was a straightforward editorial decision, the kind we make daily around here,” said Lauren Kapp, spokeswoman for NBC News. Kapp declined to discuss how NBC decides what’s news or, in this case, what isn’t.

But to others, NBC’s silence looks like something between a lapse and a coverup. The satirical “Daily Show” on Monday noted that “Nightly News” had time on Friday to squeeze in a story about the Oxford English Dictionary adding such terms as “OMG” and “muffin top,” but didn’t bother with the GE story.

Ignoring stories about its parent company’s activities is “part of a troubling pattern” for NBC News, said Peter Hart, a director at Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), a liberal media watchdog group that often documents instances of corporate interference in news. He cited a series of GE-related stories that NBC’s news division has underplayed over the years, from safety issues in GE-designed nuclear power plants to the dumping of hazardous chemicals into New York’s Hudson River by GE-owned plants.

What’s more, Hart notes, NBC News has covered corporate tax-avoidance stories before — that is, when they didn’t involve GE. All three networks’ news divisions, according to Hart, have become reliable sources of publicity for their parents’ other corporate interests, doing news stories about upcoming sporting events or new TV shows carried on their own networks.

“It’s very curious,” Hart said. “Imagine if a different company were involved. If you changed the name to Citibank or Goldman Sachs, would NBC be interested in the story then? I suspect they would be.”

I stopped watching NBC News years ago, but I think they used to run some jive-ass gotcha thing called the "Fleecing of America" where they'd catch some corporate or government crook stealing big-ass money.

This GE/tax dodge story sounds perfect for that segment, doesn't it?

Put up a picture of Jeff Immelt's face with the words "Tax Cheat" slashed across it like a bad sunburn.

The fleecing of America indeed.

Jon Stewart Calls Obama, General Electric, And Tax Dodging American Corporations On Their B.S.

Indispensable viewing:

Jon Stewart was befuddled last night by a report that General Electric had paid no federal taxes in 2010 despite many commentators' claims that an oppressive corporate tax rate was killing jobs in America.

"But I thought the corporate tax rate had to be lowered?" Stewart asked. "And I'm not sure you can lower it from nothing."

Stewart then noted that GE has at the same time laid off much of its American workforce and shifted its operation overseas.

"I know the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are people," Stewart said. "But what I didn't realize is that those people are assholes."

And who did Obama hire to chair his jobs council because G.E. has so much to teach American business?

That would be G.E. CEO Jeff Immelt - tax dodger and mass outsourcer.

More change we can believe in.

Time to call these companies and their CEO's what they are - tax dodgers and cheats.

General Electric Brings Good Things To Life

Until they melt down - and then the stock plunges:

LONDON (MarketWatch) -- Shares in General Electric Co. /quotes/comstock/13*!ge/quotes/nls/ge (GE 18.73, -1.19, -5.97%) slumped 9% in premarket trading Tuesday as the situation at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant worsened. GE designed the reactors used at the plant, where there has been a "substantial" radiation leak, according to Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan. The Wall Street Journal reported late Monday that GE is ready to offer technical assistant to the Japanese government and has has kept engineers on standby in a Wilmington, N.C., command center. Shares in GE fell 2.2% on Monday.

I bet there are some high school science teachers who can be scapegoated for this at some Education Nation Summit.

Let's get working on that right now!