But, you know, at least they weren't Green Jobs...Yet...From Boston.com :

General Electric Co.’s health care unit, the world’s biggest maker of medical imaging machines, is moving the headquarters of its 115-year-old X-ray business to Beijing.

The headquarters will move from Wisconsin amid a broader plan to invest about $2 billion across China, including opening six “customer innovation’’ and development centers.

The X-ray business, whose financial results aren’t reported separately by GE, will hire 65 new engineers and support staff at a new Chengdu facility, the company said. GE has hired “a large number’’ of engineers who are in training, LeGrand said. GE, based in Fairfield, Conn., also has a global research center in Shanghai.

If you recall, GE's CEO, Jeff Immelt, is the Chairman of President Obama's Job Council; a group committed to creating new jobs.  But who knew they were talking about creating jobs overseas?  Especially considering all of the Sturm-und-Drang one hears about "outsourcing jobs" coming from "Big Labor", one of Obama's vital constituencies, and indeed from the entire progressive left in general whenever the opportunity presents itself.

Look. I've been a free-trading free-market guy all my life; in my opinion any business can do business wherever they'd like.  But really, above and beyond the irony of this story and its concomitant sweet, sweet, schadenfreude there are more important points to be made here.

First and foremost, Americans will not be getting these jobs.  Good Jobs.  High-tech, high paying jobs.  The ones the transnational globalists always said we'd retain here, so it was OK to shop all of those nasty ol' smokestack industry jobs to the developing nations.  And what should be important to the DC politicians is that now they'll be missing out on the tax revenue from these jobs and the associated supply chain activity.  But wait, there's more.

See, what most people don't realize are the details of the Faustian bargain that must be made by any US businesses that wants to set up shop in China.  In most cases they have to cede 51% of the ownership to a Chinese partner, so Hello, GE shareholders-any objections to this?  But far worse is that they have to agree to transfer both the device's operating technology and the expertise associated with manufacturing it to China as well; in other words they're not allowed to just ship the parts there to be assembled, and import tech's to service the units sold.

And really it's the technology transfer, both electronic as well as industrial process related, the Chinese crave.  That way they can be saved the taxing step of actually buying enough units to successfully reverse engineer the device, and associated process, themselves; just ask the Russians about the SU-27 and SU-33 military aircraft.  For a while the Chinese built them under Ukrainian license, (which the Russians protested-they knew better), for a while, and then they simply stopped paying the license fee, renamed the airplanes, and that was all there is to that.

People may think this imaging technology to be a benign transfer at best; which, Bill Clinton thought the same about missile guidance technology transfer to China in the 90s.  We can see today how that's worked out for us...

The same technology that allows for the 3-d imaging of babies in the womb, on a different scale, has applications underwater, which is all I'm going to say about that...

The Chinese are our "frienemies" at best.  Their aggressive, mercantilistic, monetary policies have cost Americans untold numbers of jobs.  We are indirectly paying for their defense expansion and modernization via our monthly trade deficit with them, which most months is equal in magnitude to the amount of money we send overseas to pay people who hate us for oil (we could be producing here).  It's bad enough we're paying for their military build-up. Let's not give them technology that may be useful in doing so to boot!

What do you think, kind reader?

[Cross posted at The Conservatory]

Rocketman

Despite getting $24.9 million from U.S. taxpayers, GE decreased its U.S.-based employees by 18,000 in 2009, according to the company’s 2009 annual report.

According to Standard & Poor's, GE took in $156 billion in revenue in 2009.

First of all, if GE enjoyed 156 billion dollars in sales last year, why did they need 25 million dollars of stimulus money?

Second, considering that they were the number one benefactor of the TARP federal loan guarantee program, parlaying thier ownership of two small Utah banks and thier "close relationship" with the Administration into being allowed into the program and subsequently issue more than 70 billion dollars of federally guaranteed debt:

Few corporations better represent the crony capitalism business model than GE. Hardly described as a bank, GE became a major recipient of the bailout, issuing some $74 billion in debt backed by taxpayers under the Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program-a program that GE persuaded the government to expand so it qualified as a recipient. At the same time, GE managed to avoid new federal restrictions on executive compensation required under the TARP program. [emphasis-ed.]

So, you know, I'm really thinkin' they really didn't need the extra stimulus money.

And I'll point out here that they still reduced thier work force by 18, 000 employees.  Hmmmmm, I wonder if any of those jobs were outsourced overseas?  I guess we'll never know for sure, at least in the short term.  But, since some of the stimulus money they recieved was from the Dept. of Energy for "green jobs" research, and yet they actually reduced the number of employees, does this portend America sharing the same economic "benefit" as Spain did for going green?

Let's hope not, becuase I'd hate to see even more folks losing thier jobs in the name of progress ...

Rocketman

The logic of statism assumes that politicians are a superior breed, better suited to run industries than any corporate CEO, and qualified to spend the stupendous amount of money extracted from taxpayers more intelligently than they could. Once the functions of government move beyond essential expenses, such as national defense and border security, the rationale behind every additional tax dollar is based on the greater wisdom of the political class. You cannot be trusted to support the arts, care for the indigent, respect the environment, or do any of the other things Washington spends your tax money on.

For your Sunday half time reading, another great essay by Doctor Zero that's short, sweet, and full of red meat!  Do yourself a favor and read the whole thing...

UPDATE: Michael Gerson is realizing that it's all about the O!:

I can recall no other major American speech in which the narcissism of a leader has been quite so pronounced. It might be compared to Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s “I shall return” -- which made it sound like MacArthur intended to reconquer the Philippines single-handedly. But MacArthur, at least, imagined himself as embodying his country, not transcending it. He did not assert that while the Japanese invasion was certainly excessive, America had been guilty of provocations of its own -- and now, in the MacArthur era, things would be finally different.
...
At the United Nations, Obama set out to denigrate American goodness so he can become our rescuer. The speech had nothing to do with the confident style of Democratic rhetoric found in Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy. It insulted that tradition. And no one is likely ever to quote the speech -- except to deride it.

He really nails it in his discussion of the narcissist-in-chief, read the whole thing.

Rocketman