Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Obamanomics vs. Boeing; or, The Incredible Vanishing Workforce

This quote from Senator Lamar Alexander during a Hugh Hewitt interview, re: the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) attempt to shut down Boeing's new manufacturing plant in right-to-work South Carolina:
I don't see how the president allows this to go on for very long. Killing job creation in a jobless recovery isn't a great way to persuade people of your fitness for a second term.
Good point. It is astonishing just how easily the unions and the environmento-freaks pull President Obama's puppet strings. Boeing's vicious, Seattle-based factory union workforce has been notorious over the years for threats and strikes against its employer. When they happen--and they do--not only are the union members themselves out of a job. The entire Seattle support system suffers as do Boeing's numerous suppliers. The ripple effect has historically been wide-ranging and damaging to many sectors of the economy.

But no matter. Obama appointees of NLRB are actually dragging Boeing to court for: constructing a new manufacturing plant in South Carolina that will employ non-union labor. I.e., for engaging in capitalism, not to mention interstate commerce. Not to mention creating thousands of jobs directly and indirectly in economically hard-hit South Carolina. Now at this late stage, when the factory is already built and the moneys expended, the Administration is trying to deal a crushing blow to Boeing on the eve of one of the largest aerospace build cycles of all time: the building of the new Dreamliner.

In an economy that is deeply in debt and still reeling from the still-ongoing Great Recession (don't let the economics professors tell you it's over because it isn't for the average Joe), this administration, time and again, destroys many times over the jobs that it keeps promising to deliver. Let us count the ways. Besides the current Boeing brouhaha:
  • The Gulf of Mexico fishing industry is still reeling because the administration has still declared large areas off-limits to fishing due to the 2010 BP oil disaster. But there's no hard evidence that tainted fish and shellfish are being caught in a large chunk of the off-limits areas. Cost: at least hundreds of jobs.
  • Adding to the Clinton administration's brilliant idea of taking thousands of oilfield acres permanently out of production to satisfy the eco-freaks, the Obama administration continues to refuse drilling permits in Alaska and on America's East Coast. Meanwhile, the administration essentially has used the BP spill as an excuse to continue to deny new drilling permits in the Gulf. Cost: tens of thousands of new and existing jobs.
  • The administration is making it tough to open new drilling for America's spectacularly rich deposits of natural gas, citing the eco-freaks' groundwater-contamination scare tactics. Largely disproved, these groundwater contamination theories are thwarting the creation of tens of thousands of jobs in America's hard hit Rust Belt and Appalachian economies and robbing the average American of a cheap and abundant fuel that could dramatically lower our imports from the Al Qaeda-Chavez oil cartel.
  • With regards to the above, the administration, arguably, is deliberately goosing the price of gasoline so that Americans will give up and stop driving. Refer to candidate Obama's specific crap and trade reference to this, circa 2008. ("I'll make energy prices skyrocket.") This, of course, will also destroy large sectors of the economy and the jobs that go with them. All the better to make us even more dependent on the nanny state.
Such behavior is typical of this doctrinaire, Marxist administration. True Marxists, like Obama, really have no idea how capitalism works. They regard it as a system that creates wealth for the few, so it's their job, like that of Robin Hood, to take the profits from the few and give them to the many their supporters--like the unions and the ecofreaks. They have no clue that they're simply doing what other socialistas have done before them. They are destroying the golden goose that actually helps enrich us all by providing a comfortable living to the many.

Like Lamar Alexander, I'm not sure how much longer the U.S. can stand this before it collapses.

No comments: