GANGSTA GOVERNMENT
DECEMBER 2011
We have reported extensively on the National Labor Relations Board vs. Boeing travesty. We need to inform you that the episode has come to its conclusion. Chalk up a big win for the crony socialist extortionists. Not only did Boeing lose, but anyone who believes in liberty and the free markets did as well. The government of the United States, for lack of a better analogy, played the part of the evil gangster shaking down a successful American business. Next time you see a picture of Uncle Sam, I want you to instead picture the gangster Massimo Fanucci from Godfather Part II.
From our August 2011 article Red Tape Nation…
The Boeing Corporation, which just so happens to be our nation’s largest exporter, decided that it wanted to build brand new shiny airplanes in South Carolina. They have a new plane design they are about to start building called the Dreamliner. This plane already has a backlog of orders worth over $162 billion.
Boeing has traditionally built its aircraft in Puget Sound, Washington with a unionized workforce. Many of the Dreamliner’s will still be built in Washington, but due to the backlog, Boeing decided to invest more than $2 billion in a new plant and hire 5,000 new workers in South Carolina.
That was the plan, build, create, grow, innovate; ideas and traits that should make us all proud.
Not so fast, said the Obama administration. There will be no happily ever after for you Boeing!
This past April, the National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint against Boeing, accusing it of opening the South Carolina plant to retaliate against the union. The NLRB wants Boeing to shut down the plant, fire all the workers and move it back to union friendly Puget Sound so in my opinion, they can keep the union dues cash register ringing.
The Obama administration has stated that its hands are tied in this case. The NLRB is an independent regulator, they say. That statement can best be described in the eloquent words of none other than South Carolina Representative Joe Wilson…“YOU LIE!”
First, Obama appointed the top blood-sucking bureaucrats at the NLRB. Second, In a press conference this past June, Obama stated, “As a general proposition, companies need to have the freedom to relocate.”
Really? Could have fooled me, because in a formal statement of Administration policy this past July, the chosen one, the one we have all been waiting for, came out against a bill sponsored by South Carolina Representative Tim Scott that would have reduced the power of the NLRB and forbid it, “from ordering any employer to relocate, shut down, or transfer employment under any circumstance.”
Let’s review…
The Obama administration wants to order a private business, dictate to a private concern, where they can set up shop, where they can build, where they can expand, where they can hire within the United States of America. Our nation’s greatest exporter is being urinated on by this administration. That also goes for the State of South Carolina, and its people as well.
Could anyone fault Boeing if they decided that the United States of America is too unfriendly to private business and they would be better served moving production to the Far East? Could anyone blame Governor Nicki Haley if she decide to withhold tax revenues from going to Washington D.C.?
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Massimo Fanucci was an extortionist who operated in the neighborhood where the young Vito Corleone lived at the turn of the 20th century. Fanucci would go around and demand protection money from the various businesses in the neighborhood. In one scene the young Vito Corleone witnessed Fanucci threaten to cut up the face of the daughter of a man who refused to pay Fanucci proper tribute. Vito eventually lost his own job when Fanucci demanded from his boss that he provide a job to his nephew.
The International Association of Machinists approved a new contract with Boeing in which the company agreed to make its 737 Max jet with union labor in the state of Washington. After signing this deal and getting union approval, the NLRB all of a sudden dropped its lawsuit against Boeing’s plant in South Carolina.
A few questions to ponder…
The NLRB is supposed to be an independent arbiter of all things labor. If that was the case, why did they drop the suit?
Has anything changed in regards to the South Carolina plant since Boeing decided to open another in Washington?
Do you think the Mafia-like actions of our government will persuade more companies to set up shop overseas?
The NLRB and our gangsta government has sent American business a message, don’t you dare set up plants in right-to-work states. We have government lawyers on the payroll and we will make it very costly for you. The reality is that Boeing would have more than likely won the battle in the end. The Wall Street Journal reported, “It would have first however, had to have been run through an administrative law judge, then the politicized and Obama-stacked NLRB, and only then would it get to an appellate court. Meanwhile, its investment was in jeopardy and its legal bill was rising.”
If we wish for our chronic unemployment to dissipate and if we desire for our economic dynamism that has defined us to return, these thug-like policies must stop. When your nation’s policies are starting to echo the Mafia or a thug state like Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela you are in serious trouble.
Markowski Christopher Red Tape Nation Markowski Quarterly 8/2011
Editors The NLRB Boeing Sham Wall Street Journal 12/10/2011
