Crony Capitalism: Obama Names GE CEO Jeffery Immelt to Economic Panel; JP Morgan Exec Daley to Chief of Staff

I fleetingly saw on the front of some of the fish wraps this weekend that the punditocracy is reassuring us President Obama is supposedly going to move to the center in his upcoming State of the Union address by making job creation and the economy his top priority [Hmmmm....didn't we hear the same thing from the Administration right after the inauguration and then when 0bamacare passed?- NANESB!]. Apparently one of these indicators of a shift in the Administration's priorities is supposed to the selection of General Electric CEO Jeffery Immelt to head an economic panel. While CEO, General Electric was one of the top donors to Obama's 2008 Presidential Campaign while it's subsidiaries at the networks of NBC, MSNBC and CNBC gave favorable, nearly uncritical coverage to both Obama the candidate and Obama the President. Immelt had also come out in favor of cap & trade in 2009, along with the NBC/Universal subsidiaries promoting week-long programming like the 'Green is Universal' media blitz during 'Green week'. GE was also the recipient of a number of grants and government contracts under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act- aka the stimulus. According to the Alliance for American Manufacturing, the conglomerate has been steadily outsourcing jobs to China and elsewhere overseas under Immelt's watch as General Electric closed down 29 American factories in the last two years alone. The naming of Immelt to the economic panel comes about two weeks after the White House announced former JP Morgan Chase executive William Daley as the new White House chief of staff. William comes from Chicago's dynastic Daley family- his late father was the mayor for 21 years and his brother, Richard M Daley, is the outgoing mayor of Chicago. Prior to being selected for chief of staff, Daley was the Midwestern Chairman for JP Morgan Chase. The banking giant that Daley recently left is presently embroiled in a scandal where they overcharged active duty military personnel on mortgages and improperly foreclosed on homes of at least a dozen more military families.