General Electric’s Jeff Immelt Surrenders

Since last fall, FreedomWorks has led the charge against cronyism and rentseeking regarding General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt and the Obama Administration. Immelt is the face of government-corporate cronyism in America today, and Obama’s appointment to Immelt to the Council on Jobs and Competitiveness was a blow for the free market.

We even attended the GE shareholder meeting last month in Salt Lake City to protest. Immelt abandoned the tenets of free enterprise to lobby on behalf of rent-seeking General Electric, and restricts its competitors in the marketplace. This is detrimental for business, for our country’s economy, and for the thousands who could lose their jobs.

Immelt bet the farm on GE’s green enterprise, at the expense of American jobs. Now that he is realizing the political ramifications of advocating policies that will bankrupt our country and continue to put Americans out of work, he’s started to walk it back. Via Reuters:

At an event at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Tuesday, Immelt said:

“If I had one thing to do over again I would not have talked so much about green… Even though I believe in global warming and I believe in the science… it just took on a connotation that was too elitist; it was too precious and it let opponents think that if you had a green initiative, you didn’t care about jobs. I’m a businessman. That’s all I care about, is jobs… I’m kind of over the stage of arguing for a comprehensive energy policy. I’m back to keeping my head down and working.”

Now if only we could get President Obama and other legislators through the stage of arguing for comprehensive energy policy…