Make GE Pay

06/07/2019

https://www.utilitydive.com/news/ge-badly-misjudged-the-clean-energy-transition-costing-investors-almost/556420/

The company bet big on natural gas when it purchased Alstom in 2015, but the market for new turbines has since crashed and it is working to grow its renewable energy business.

05/09/2019

Corporate giveaway plan falls through: GE sells their property in Boston! This was a huge waste of time and (public) money. Now will Governor Baker focus on affordable housing, public schools, and public transit instead of the next corporate giveaway?

According to Jon Chesto in the Globe piece below the state will "reap a tidy profit" from the sale. First, we'd like to see the receipts on that. Second, we'd like to see the profit go to funding the public good: schools, transit, housing, etc.

A coalition of 30+ groups from Alternatives for Community and Environment to Massachusetts Peace Action to Corporate Accountability to Jewish Voice for Peace Boston
to United for a Fair Economy to Asian American Resource Workshop (AARW) opposed the GE deal. We the people of Massachusetts knew better than Walsh, Baker, and pretty much every reporter besides Jason Pramas at DigBoston.
Listen to the people.

02/18/2019

Thank you Boston City Councilor Michelle Wu! This is the kind of action we need from our elected officials: trying to protect citizens rather than sell us out as happened with the GE deal, the Amazon deal in NYC, and many others.

With the Olympics and the GE deal Mayor Walsh and Gov Baker were working on it for months before the public was asked for any input. Councilor Michelle Wu'ss ordinance calls for transparency. We have to look at the ordinance more carefully and talk with coalition members before commenting on specifics. But this is the type of leadership we want to see.

Under current city law, private organizations who receive tax breaks aren’t required to disclose whether or not they’ve fulfilled the commitments required by in their agreement — …

02/15/2019

"Research indicates there’s no major correlation between a state’s giveaways and its unemployment rate or income levels, Bryce Covert wrote in the New York Times in November, and incentives also don’t have much influence over the chosen location. About two-thirds of incentives are given to companies that would have moved to the location offering them anyway.

A study in December from subsidy watchdog Good Jobs First found that schools in 28 states lost at least $1.8 billion in tax funding that was diverted to corporations."

General Electric is going to pay back $87 million to Massachusetts after downgrading plans for its Boston headquarters.

02/14/2019

Everyone deserves to be thriving in their community with affordable housing, fully-funded public schools and quality public transportation. Unfortunately, some elected officials have disinvested in neighborhoods of color and places bets on multi-million dollar tax incentives for huge corporations. These corporations are not invested in our communities, and GE and Amazon demonstrated that today.

We refuse to stand by and let wealthy people and corporations buy up and push out our communities.

But by uniting together and fighting back, our communities can claim that which every human deserves: fully funded public schools, equitable and quality transportation and infrastructure, and the ability to thrive without fear of displacement or deportation.

We hope this is a message to all elected officials that games and gimmicks and massive taxpayer giveaways to corporations is no longer a game that we can afford to pay.

The company plans to sell the site of its future Fort Point headquarters, but is staying in Boston.

01/23/2019

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/jan/22/the-new-elites-phoney-crusade-to-save-the-world-without-changing-anything

The long read: Today’s titans of tech and finance want to solve the world’s problems, as long as the solutions never, ever threaten their own wealth and power

12/14/2018

https://highlandscurrent.org/2018/12/14/pcb-dredging-areas-in-hudson-still-polluted/

New questions on effectiveness of river cleanup

10/31/2018

https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2018/10/30/new-ceo-takes-first-big-steps-slashing-dividend-revamping-power-unit/yPhj6rJwWb8WM7fc1rBs8H/story.html

General Electric slashed its quarterly payout to just a penny a share and said it plans to reorganize its ailing power division.

10/10/2018

https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2018/10/09/tax-breaks-could-survive-regardless-tower-fate/3ipXGRj8GHuatMpLmfZXzJ/story.html

GE might skip the expensive second phase of its headquarters project, Those tax breaks for the new building? GE could still land millions.

10/01/2018

Is giving GE free money still a good deal for Boston?

General Electric Co. ousted CEO John Flannery just over a year into his tenure and replaced him with a renowned turnaround expert -- a surprise move that stoked the biggest rally in nine years for the company’s depressed shares.

06/27/2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-about-amazon-dow-industrials-dumping-ge-for-walgreens-reflects-indexs-dilemma-1529533470

Our city has prioritized corporations that are more impacted by external forces than by our communities. Why doesn't investment include public entities and goods?

The Dow Jones Industrial Average has ejected numerous blue-chip industrial companies over the past decade in an effort to adapt a 19th-century index to a 21st-century economy. That path has become increasingly fraught, in part because of the limitations of how the index is constructed.

05/03/2018

Idea: maybe we should respond to dire infrastructure needs in the interests of citizens, not the interests of corporations.

Amazon held postmortem phone calls with almost all of the cities it rejected for its second headquarters shortlist, to explain why they didn’t make the cut. Now, some are trying to address those weak spots.