The National Labor Relations Board, in a spasm of uncontrollable zealousness, has told Boeing it cannot locate a plant in South Carolina because it is unfair and harmful to the workers at plants in Washington State. It is not unreasonable to argue that, if allowed to stand, this NLRB ruling will have an incalculably harmful effect on the future of American industry and the U.S. economy. The precedent will have been set for the government telling businesses where in the country they can locate operations. Piled on top of all the other onerous regulations businesses already face and the high corporate tax rate in the U.S., this new government power will chase even more investment and jobs out of the country-an ineffably stupid and inexcusable self-inflicted wound.
Unfortunately, the Boeing episode is just one more manifestation of the virulently aggressive anti-business, anti-free market posture of the current administration and its agency appointees. It reflects a bias towards ever bigger, more intrusive government and overt, unquestioning loyalty to unions. Coming on the heels of extravagant and dangerous spending, running up massive deficits, curtailing domestic oil exploration, failing to safeguard the southern border, the union favoring bailout of GM and Chrysler and the passage of Obama’s health care bill, the interference with Boeing’s freedom to invest where it sees fit reveals an undisguised contempt for the rule of law and freedom. It also indicates the utter disdain the administration holds for states that did not vote for it or that might be unwilling to vote for it in 2012. Is it even imaginable that the NLRB would have issued the ruling against Boeing if the new plant was being constructed in Illinois or California?
Like the proposed card check law-arrogantly and flagrantly dishonestly called the freedom of choice act by the bill’s authors-the Boeing decision is an attempt to run roughshod over those who have shown a willingness and ability to stand up to unions and successfully push back. If not defeated, these actions will lead to the wholesale destruction of property rights and freedom in the country. And the result will be fewer jobs, not more, a weaker and far less competitive economy. Qui bono? Who gains from such an outcome? In their minds, it will be the party that promises to take care of everyone’s needs even though it will be rapidly running out of resources to do so.
The NLRB ruling on Boeing could be the nation’s economic Rubicon. The willingness of the administration’s justice department to ignore truly egregious cases of law breaking while suing states that are trying to protect their own citizens from what amounts to a foreign invasion points to an administration whose insatiable appetite for power will not and cannot be deflected or deterred. Not even a major repudiation of its party at the polls in November has had more than a momentary effect on the pursuit of massive and irreversible changes to the American economic and social landscape. In another year and a half of more and increasingly egregious efforts to undermine the economic foundations of the nation, will the country be able to recover? With the willing accomplices in the media and academia, the administration is emboldened in its relentless work of fundamentally transforming the U.S. as it promised when campaigning. Never mind what the majority of the American people want now that they have had a chance to see what transformation means.
The NLRB’s Boeing decision simply cannot be allowed to stand. We are imperiled economically and morally by the threat to property rights and freedom imbedded in the ruling.