"Wait, now the right hates General Electric?"

[pampango]

What is going on here? How did a venerable left-wing target become an apparently convenient right-wing target?

There are three political aspects of the right’s attack on GE which, while a little sudden and certainly open to charges of hypocrisy, are easy to explain. First, in many cases, the attackers try to establish an explicit link between GE and the Solyndra affair, hoping to whip up voter anger over the idea that government in general, and the Obama administration in particular, is throwing money at companies and thereby reviving that scary industrial-policy no-no of picking winners and losers. The logic here is questionable—with $12.6 billion in profits last year, GE is no Solyndra—but the issue of how much money the federal government should invest in private companies is certainly open to debate.

A second political motivation has to do with who’s inside the GE charm circle and who’s outside. GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt may not have calculated just how much political capital he was investing when he decided to become the Obama administration’s “job czar” last January—or exactly what the return on that investment would look like...

Finally, remember the all-important independent voter. There’s long been a small overlap between left-leaning populists and right-leaning independent voters (think Ralph Nader), and right-leaning populists and left-leaning independent voters (think Ross Perot and Ron Paul—you’ll see more than a few “End the Fed” T-shirts and drug-legalization sympathizers at the Occupy Wall Street camp). These may not be viable long-term strategies, but if you’re Newt Gingrich at this stage in the GOP contest, you get your votes by any means necessary.

GE’s meager tax bill remains an issue; perhaps it should be considered progress that the right has now joined the left in thundering over it. The issue of “crony capitalism,” however, is loaded in a way that makes political consensus seem unlikely. Back in the days when the Pentagon was signing GE’s checks, there were few cries from the right about anything improper. Surely believers in the free market don’t expect the federal government to build its own nuclear weapons, and since only a handful of companies can do that anyway, well, cronyism seems like a necessary byproduct.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/13/idUS404696369420111013

[Aerows]

1. The "right" doesn't know what they are for or against

at any given moment. They only know who they are instructed to attack, or because a Democratic person approves of something. I don't care if they are "against" GE - I'm certainly not going to defend GE because they don't "like" GE. GE should quit outsourcing jobs and start paying taxes - that right there tells me that the "right" ought to be in love with GE.

[DFW]

5. Here's their official anthem

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtMV44yoXZ0

Sing along with Groucho!

[DFW]

2. Why not?

The American extremist right is comprised of Equal Opportunity Haters.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

3. What would St. Ronnie say? nt

[banned from Kos]

4. The wingnuts have long hated GE - they owned NBC, Immelt supports Obama

and GE produces green energy products.

(Comcast bought 51% of NBC recently)

[Old and In the Way]

9. NBC should be more like Fox News!

Have your Australian parent company, Newscorp, leveraged by it's #2 investor - Kingdom Holdings - House of Saud's investment company. Do they ever wonder if the House of Saud has a vested interest in the formulation of US ME foreign policy, energy policy choices, and defense policy? I sure do...and it's basically, lets keep the status quo intact - through cultural and economic warfare, to keep us divided and pitted against each other so we can't change the direction we are headed in.

I swear, the disconnect grows daily...

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

6. Immelt!

:woohoo:


:patriot:

[OHdem10]

8. Immelt advises Obama---that is enough to make the Righties

scream.

In speeches seen on C-Span Immelt spoke the truth on
some issues. Regarding the Joblessness, Immelt
said that when this government decided to make the
US Economy a Service Economy, a serious mistake
was made. The US cannot be sustained on a Service
Economy and we must bring our Mfg Bsse up to 13-15 Percent GNP.

When he says the Service Economy was a mistake, this
goes against RW GOSPEL on FREE TRADE.

Before Immelt, Jack Welsh pushed the RW. So now
they are not to happy with Immelt.

[JaneQPublic]

7. Some right-wingers believe GE is the majority owner of MSNBC.

Some have posted ridiculous charges on certain forums that Obama's appointment of Immelt as Job Czar was payback for positive coverage on MSNBC. (The thread kind of fizzled when I noted that Comcast is now the majority owner of the channel.)