Even Head Of Obama’s Own Jobs Council Immelt Says Obama’s NLRB Attack On Boeing An Incredibly Stupid Idea

Jeffrey Immelt is Obama’s handpicked chairman of Obama’s jobs and competitiveness council.  He is clearly NOT a rightwing anti-union reactionary.

But get this: even Immelt thinks Obama’s war on Boeing for daring to create jobs in a non-union plant is utterly ridiculous.  From USA Today:

Asked about the fuss over the National Labor Relations Board investigating aircraft maker Boeing for opening a plant in South Carolina, Immelt said he was totally supportive of Boeing in the matter, given that the company is a major jobs creator.

“I can’t see one reason why we’d want to go down that road,” he said.  Immelt added that he felt his company has worked on improving relationships with unions, saying, “They are hungry for jobs.”

Getting good union-employer relationships requires an adjustment, he said. “It’s taken change on both sides.”

The NLRB sued Boeing in April, saying the aeronautics giant illegally retaliated against unionized Washington state workers when it opened a 787 passenger jet manufacturing line in South Carolina, a right-to-work
state.

Boeing hopes more than 1,000 non-union workers will eventually build three of the aircraft per month at the $750 million South Carolina plant, the largest industrial investment in the state’s history.

But Obama would rather see a Great Depression than allow non-union jobs.

Let me simply provide a single quote from the Seattle Times:

“The Machinists union has struck Boeing’s Puget Sound-area factories four times since 1989, most recently in 2008.”

Boeing has contracts to build the plane they are building at this South Carolina plant that specifically guarantee delivery of aircraft by specific dates.  They simply cannot play games with work-stoppage, which the union is documented to have done repeatedly.  The 787 Dreamliner has already had more than enough problems, and the last thing Boeing needs is a bunch of pampered union workers having a hissy-fit and stopping production because even though they get FAR more in salary and benefits than they deserve, it still isn’t enough for them.

Strike and its aftermath
The next major delay in the Dreamliner program came largely as a result of a 57-day machinists strike. The strike, which ended on November 1, 2008, according to Reuters, forced Boeing to delay the plane’s first flight and first delivery yet again, this time until well into 2009.

And then, just a month later, Boeing again announced delays, blaming them on supply shortages due to the strike, as well as problems with assembly. “The new schedule reflects the impact of disruption caused by the recent Machinists’ strike along with the requirement to replace certain fasteners in early production airplanes,” Boeing said at the time.

The problems continued to mount after that, and not all were due to the strike. In June of 2009, Boeing once again announced a delay in the first flight and the first delivery, this time “due to a need to reinforce an area within the
side-of-body section of the aircraft,” it said. “The need was identified during the recent regularly scheduled tests on the full-scale static test airplane. Preliminary analysis indicated that flight test could proceed…as planned. However, after further testing and consideration of possible modified flight test plans, the decision was made…that first flight should instead be postponed until productive flight testing could occur.”

On December 15, 2009, the first Dreamliner finally took air, lifting off from Payne Field in Everett, Wash., in front of a crowd of thousands of Boeing employees, fans, and journalists.

But that didn’t mean Boeing’s problems with the Dreamliner were done.

In August 2010, National Aviation Co. of India, the Indian-state-owned company that runs Air India, announced it was demanding compensation of $840 million from Boeing for delays in the 787 program. The company said the delays were hampering its growth plans, according to Bloomberg.

Boeing said at the time that it was negotiating with carriers over costs related to the delays.

As someone who has been in management, I can well-understand Boeing’s dilemma.  They can’t admit that the union has them by the balls and it really hurts when they squeeze, I mean strike.  That would be tantamount to an open invitation for the union to strike every time there was a significant deadline.  At the same time, these work stoppages are like cancer, and they have to do something to try to innoculate themselves from the cancer of unions even while they carefully try to avoid saying that the unions are bleeding them like particularly nasty leaches.  And the effects of strikes are far worse on the bottom line than they appear on paper; because after a lengthy strike, it takes workers some time to recover the groove they had been in (it’s like that famous Polock joke: “Why is it so expensive to give union workers hour lunches?  Because they have to retrain afterwards”).

So – without laying off so much as a single union worker – Boeing expanded its operation to a right-to-work state, and specifically, to a plant that HAD been union, but voted the union out as a bunch of trouble-making losers.

And that’s when Obama took off his incredibly foul-smelling loafer and began to slam it on the table shouting, “We will bury you!” at Boeing.

Barack Obama would rather see jobs go overseas to China than he would see them go to South Carolina.  That’s the bottom line.

Barack Obama is a fascist.  He is the Cloward and Piven president.  He doesn’t want a thriving America; he wants to control it no matter how small it has to become for fascist progressivist-liberalism to dominate it.

Allow me to give you a rather clear example of how Obama thinks.  As the following video of Obama in a Democrat debate will show, Obama would raise the capital gains rate EVEN KNOWING IT WOULD HURT ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND RESULT IN LOWER INCOME TAX REVENUES.  He would do so in the name of “fairness.”

There is a pathological, reflexive Marxist mindset that forces Obama to punish job creators even though it will result in less job creation.  Because at the core of Barack Obama’s tiny shriveled little cockroach soul, he is a Marxist who believes the central tenant of Marxism: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”  And Obama’s record – and the holocaust of jobs to go with the statements of small businesses that they’re not planning to hire any time soon –

But we don’t need the success of Republican policies, do we?  We don’t need to have unemployment rates of 3 and 4 percent like North Dakota and Nebraska.  We don’t need to have the incredible job creation of a Texas.  We certainly don’t need to ever balance a budget.  We’ve already slit our throats by voting for Democrats, and we really might as well just keep sawing until our heads fall off so that we can end up the way we’ve already basically been since 2006 when we started electing Democrats:  completely brainless and therefore completely clueless.

‘Independent’ NLRB My Foot: Obama Agency Pounds NLRB To Destroy Business’ Right To Locate In Right To Work States

The White House has been hiding behind the assertion that the National Labor Relations Board is an “independent” agency, and that they have nothing whatsoever to do with the lawsuit attacking Boeing for building a new plant in right-to-work state South Carolina:

White House Dodges Questions About NLRB’s Complaint Against Boeing
Posted by: Carter Wood under Briefly Legal, Economy, Labor Unions on May 11, 2011 @ 6:43 pm

From today’s White House press briefing conducted by Jay Carney:

Q    Boeing CEO Jim McNerney, who chairs the President’s Export Council, said the National Labor Relations Board suit against his company for building a plant in a right-to-work state is a fundamental assault on capitalism.  I’m wondering is the President aware of the issue, and does he think the government should be involved in how businesses allocate capital or resources?MR. CARNEY:  Well, it’s obviously been in the news, so we are aware of it, but I would refer any questions about it to the NLRB because it is an independent agency, and we do not get involved in particular enforcement matters of independent agencies.

Q    The President has weighed in on outside issues before, though.  I mean is this something — it’s also coming from someone who is chairing the Export Council, who’s saying this is hurting job creation.

MR. CARNEY:  I don’t have a reaction to this from the President.  And I think the fact that he’s weighed in on outside issues doesn’t mean that he will weigh in on an independent agency’s enforcement action.

Carney then changed the subject to tout the President’s record on the auto industry and hail the growth of manufacturing.

Well, first of all, let me take a moment to ask a question: why is Obama dodging this issue rather than claiming credit for it?  Because it’s wrong; it is un-American; and this radical hard-core union agenda action will hurt the economy by forcing businesses to locate overseas.  If they can’t build factories where they want to in America, then they will go overseas to where they have the freedoms our soldiers fought for.  Amazingly, communist China is actually far more free market and pro-capitalist than the Obama administration.

Now let me get to my main point.

Like absolutely everything else from this lying president and this lying White House, BULLCRAP.  Not only is it absolutely true that Obama has weighed in on virtually every issue under the sun – including bizarre issues such as the “stupidity” of the Cambridge Police Department in Massachusetts – but we now have it in WRITING that the NLRB is anything but an “independent agency.”

Let’s take a look at just how “independent” the NLRB actually is.  First, we find that the agency’s top officials are literally partisan political hacks out there taking partisan political sides to attack Obama’s Republican opponents.  Then – given that obvious appearance of any lack of “independence” – the White House’s OMB literally orders the NLRB to take down the attacking memo and demands that they clear everything with them first.  Which actually goes about as far as you can go to demonstrate that the National Labor Relations Board – which Obama PACKED with radical leftist union types by bypassing even a Democrat-controlled US Senate – is marching to Obama’s drumbeat.  And then, if that isn’t enough, when the NLRB did Obama’s bidding to take down the partisan hack memo, the notice basically said, “The content in this statement has been removed. For further information on this subject, please see what our Messiah Obama says, as we’re really just his minions anyway.”

“Independence” my butt:

Obama official ordered labor board to pull rebuke of GOP budget
By Kevin Bogardus – 05/29/11 07:40 AM ET

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) had an independent agency take down a stinging press release aimed at the House Republicans’ budget proposal, according to a newly released document.

In an e-mail obtained by The Hill under a Freedom of Information Act request, an OMB official told a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) officer she should have checked before sending out a Feb. 18 press release titled, “Top NLRB officials respond to House budget proposal.”

The NLRB statement slammed what was then the GOP’s proposed continuing resolution to fund the government for the rest of fiscal year 2011.

On the day the labor board’s statement was published, Michael Lazzeri, OMB’s examiner for the NRLB, wrote to Shanti Ananthanayagam, the labor board’s budget officer, and asked her to take it down.

“In case didn’t get my vmail. That press release needs to come down from your website. In the future you guys have to clear that stuff with us,” Lazzeri wrote to Ananthanayagam in the e-mail.

The press release quoted NLRB Chairwoman Wilma Liebman and Lafe Solomon, the board’s acting general counsel, as saying the funding cuts would lead to agency delays and “would occur at a great cost to working people and responsible employers trying to survive in this difficult economic climate, and would have the potential to destabilize relations between labor and business.”

They also said the proposed budget cuts would reduce the agency’s annual funding by 18 percent, or $50 million, which could lead to furloughs for all of the labor board’s 1,665 employees for 55 workdays.

The press release was subsequently taken down. In its place on the labor board’s website is a bland statement that says, “The content in this statement has been removed. For further information on this subject, please see the President’s Statement of Administration Policy (SAP) regarding the budget, which can be found on the OMB website.”

OMB asking the labor board to take down the press release was first reported by The Huffington Post.

Asked why the press release was taken down, a spokeswoman for the labor board referred questions to OMB.

“In accordance with longstanding clearance procedures in Circular A-11, agencies are asked to clear such comments through OMB. In this case, the language on budget-related legislation had not been cleared, so it was taken down,” said Meg Reilly, an OMB spokeswoman.

Circular A-11 is a memo sent by OMB to federal agencies regarding the president’s budget proposal. The memo states that communications to Congress or the media about the president’s budget proposal need to receive clearance from OMB before being sent out, including “proposed press releases relating to the president’s budget.”

Despite the fears the labor board expressed in the original press release, the Republican-proposed budget cuts for the agency did not come to pass.

In the compromise deal to prevent the government shutdown, the labor board’s annual $282 million budget received only a 0.2 percent haircut — a reduction in line with other administrative agencies. The cut took $500,000 from the NRLB’s fiscal year 2011 funding.

Further, an amendment to the continuing resolution by Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) that would have defunded the labor board entirely failed to pass earlier this year. Sixty House Republicans voted against axing the labor board’s budget in a 176-250 vote.

The agency has recently become a source of controversy. NRLB’s April 20 complaint against Boeing for allegedly retaliating against union workers has incensed GOP lawmakers and business groups.

Under scrutiny is Boeing’s decision to establish a second production line for its new Dreamliner jet in South Carolina — a right-to-work state that generally prohibits mandatory union membership or dues — instead of in Washington state, where Boeing has unionized operations.

The labor board cited statements made by Boeing executives expressing fear that work stoppages could hurt production as the reason the complaint was issued.

Republicans in both the House and Senate have threatened to hold up Solomon’s nomination as general counsel over the Boeing complaint and are pressing the NRLB to hand over the documents that explain the reasoning behind it.

Democrats have defended the labor board from the attacks. They say it is an independent agency that is performing a law enforcement action and should be free of political pressure.

The complaint is set to go before an administrative law judge at a June 14 hearing in Seattle.

“Should be fre of political pressure”?  In the age of Obama?  Not likely.  He is a fascist.  Fascism is simply one viral species of socialism.  And “NAZI” stood for “National Socialist German Worker’s Party“).  Obama is waaaaaayyyyyy on the left side with the SEIU Andy Stearns (“Because workers of the world unite it’s not just a slogan anymore“; and “We’re trying to use the power of persuasion. And if that doesn’t work, we’re going to use the persuasion of power “) and SEIU Stephen Lerner (“There are actually extraordinary things we could do right now to start to destabilize the folks that are in power and start to rebuild a movement“; “you could put banks at the edge of insolvency again“).  The mantra of Obama’s labor union buddies is “Forget about the law.”  These are people who are perfectly willing to “Get a little bloody” to get their way – no matter who else gets hurt or how badly. And Obama has been deeply involved behind the scenes in stirring up rowdy unrest in states like Wisconsin and Ohio.  Obama is one of them.

And to the extent that Obama is dishonest about his deep involvement in hard-core leftist union agenda issues, that aint a good thing.

Obama, the White House, and Democrats in general ROUTINELY lie.  These are the type of people who disingenuously, falsely and maliciously attack Republicans with “Mediscare” tactics when in fact Republicans are trying to save Medicare while Democrats are intent on seeing the system collapse into total bankruptcy while they attack anybody who tries to prevent that documented future fact from happening.

The National Labor Relations Board case – again, said board packed by Obama behind the US Senate’s back – against Boeing is a case against business.  It is a case against freedom.  It is a case against America.  It is a case against everything this country stands for.  It is certainly a case against the right to work without having to say “Yes sir” and “No Ma’am” to a union boss.  The unions want to have the power to shut down any business that doesn’t toe their socialist line – as they have repeatedly done with Boeing.  They would rather corporations relocate all their operations overseas than see those corporations build plants in right to work states.

I can understand why this fascist president wouldn’t want the American people to really know what he stands for and what he is doing to destroy their way of life.

 

Obama Keeps Attacking Businesses, Yet Keeps Demanding They Create More Jobs While He Attacks Them

It’s not all that unlike a drunk husband punching his wife in the face every day while constantly saying she needs to love him more:

Editorial: Dems Blame Business For Own Bad Policies
Posted 07:02 PM ET

Economy: President Obama says he wants businesses to “step up” and hire more. If he’s really sincere about wanting more jobs, he should stop demonizing and punishing American corporations for their success.

‘Companies … (are) making a lot of money,” President Obama told a town hall meeting Thursday, “and now’s the time for them to start betting on American workers and American products.”

But the fact they’re not “betting” more isn’t their fault. It’s Obama’s — and his Democrat allies in Congress. Their tax-and-spend policies have pushed our nation to the brink of financial ruin, creating uncertainty and an unstable investment environment for companies.

The president let his true feelings slip later Thursday, telling a laid-off government worker there’s “nothing more important” than working for the government. He then blamed “huge layoffs” in government for our current job ills. So why do businesses have to “step up”?

There are, as a matter of record, 418,000 more government jobs today than when the recession began, as noted by the National Review’s Jim Geraghty. And face it, government “jobs” are mostly a waste, far below the private sector in productivity.

Even so, Democrats have in recent weeks implied repeatedly that companies are somehow unpatriotic for refusing to invest the $2 trillion in cash on their books.

But what sane company would invest at a time when it’s in the government’s greedy cross hairs? Or when both the White House and Congress repeatedly criticize “millionaires and billionaires,” and threaten to crush small businesses — the engines of job growth — with higher taxes and new regulations?

As Obama spoke about jobs Thursday, oil CEOs were being grilled by Senate Democrats at a hostile hearing. Their crime? They’re making fat profits. Time was, profits were a sign of success. Today, far-left Democrats think “profit” is a dirty word.

For the record, oil companies’ profits are up because oil prices have soared. This isn’t due to “speculators,” but to the White House’s foolish policy of keeping hundreds of millions of barrels of offshore oil off-limits — driving up prices and boosting foreign dependence.

Instead, the White House subsidizes money-losing alternative energy sources, none of which is ready to replace our current energy supply. Prices can only go up.

Then there’s Boeing, one of America’s great companies. It wants to open a $2 billion factory in South Carolina, creating thousands of new jobs. A cause for celebration by the White House? Hardly.

The National Labor Relations Board has charged Boeing with a labor-law violation because South Carolina is one of 22 right-to-work states. If you look at which party gets union donations, you’ll understand why.

Fact is, we’re 7 million jobs short of where we were when the recession began, there are eight unemployed people for every job opening and, despite April’s gain of 244,000, we still aren’t creating new jobs fast enough.

Yet Obama & Co. continue to play games, destroying jobs and blaming others for the economic carnage.

I learned today that the oil companies receive 13% of the tax subsidies for the energy industry.  And produce 67% of all the energy America uses.  All the other energy sources combined – including all the “green” energy sources the left loves so much – receive 87% of the tax subsidies.  Even though they produce only 33% of all the energy America uses.  So Democrats want to drive the producers of two-thirds of our energy out of business and reward the remaining third of our energy with massive tax subsidy boondoggles.

And apparently businesses are supposed to say, “Hey, that’s brilliant!  We need to climb on board THAT kind of brilliant-mobile!!!”

Mainstream Media Show They’re The Propaganda Mouthpieces Of The Professional Left. Again.

This is a tale of two events, with said events being only three days apart.

Let us begin with Sunday’s coverage of Barack Obama’s address announcing Osama bin Laden had been killed:

How Photos from Obama’s Speech on Bin Laden’s Death Were Staged
By Ujala Sehgal on May 4, 2011 2:08 PM

There is a fascinating piece at Poynter that describes how since the Reagan era (and possibly before) it has been the standard operating procedure that during a live presidential address, like the one President Obama gave announcing the death of Osama bin Laden, still cameras are not allowed to photograph the actual event.

Photojournalists from Reuters and AP described how President Obama basically had to silently re-enact part of his speech for the still cameras after giving it.

Reuters White House photographer Jason Reed writes:

As President Obama continued his nine-minute address in front of just one main network camera, the photographers were held outside the room by staff and asked to remain completely silent. Once Obama was off the air, we were escorted in front of that teleprompter and the President then re-enacted the walk-out and first 30 seconds of the statement for us.

The reason still cameras are not allowed during live presidential addresses is because of the noise from the camera shutters and the placement of the teleprompter, not for any sinister conspiracy-type reasons like we were hoping. And it’s been going on a long time.

The problem, according to Poynter, is that while many newspapers disclose that the photo they use is a re-enactment, some do not. And publishing these photos goes against the National Press Photographers Association Code of Ethics, which includes this relevant passage: “Resist being manipulated by staged photo opportunities.”

We had no idea there was an ethics code for photojournalists, and we’re thrilled to find out there is one. How dare the White House force them to abandon it! We feel shocked and lied to! This practice of re-staging must come to an end.

So to whatever extent that there is an “ethics code” for journalists, they were only to happy to waive it for their liberal messiah-in-chief.

But let’s see how willing they were to waive the exact same “ethics code” only three days later, for Wednesday’s first Republican debate in South Carolina:

AP, Reuters to sit out South Carolina GOP debate
by Jim Romenesko
Published May 5, 2011 8:07 am
Updated May 5, 2011 8:11 am

Politico.com
The Associated Press cites “restrictions placed on media access.” Debate sponsors Fox News and the South Carolina Republican Party will only allow photos to be taken in the moments ahead of the debate tonight and not during the event itself, says the news service. “This is about whether visual journalists will be treated with the same respect that text journalists are treated,” says AP senior managing editor Michael Oreskes.

Keach Hagey writes:

Reuters confirmed that it would not be covering the event photographically, because it shared concerns about access. However, Reuters did not confirm whether it would be going as far as AP and not filing text either.

Nope.  The self-righteous high-horses were out and promenading across the dance floor when the mainstream media got a chance to denounce the same conditions that they gladly overlooked for their messianic hero Obama.

The same exact issue was at stake: Fox News, the host of the debate, said there would be no still camera photography allowed during the debates.  And the same people who rushed to overlook their “ethics” the one time determined to rigidly adhere to them only three days later.  And, I suppose, it was nothing more than a complete coincidence that they were so willing to overlook their “ethics” for a liberal president and so determined to rigidly adhere to them for Republicans who want said liberal president’s job just three days later.

Just remember that most of the people who “report” the news are hypocrites and liars who are far more interested in distorting the news than they are in reporting it.

Democrats Attack Sarah Palin for NOT Having Had An Abortion

It is time to realize that liberal feminists Democrats are ugly, hateful, and evil.

S.C. Dem chair: Palin primary qualification is she hasn’t had an abortionSouth Carolina Democratic chairwoman Carol Fowler sharply attacked Sarah Palin today, saying John McCain had chosen a running mate “whose primary qualification seems to be that she hasn’t had an abortion.”

Palin is an opponent of abortion rights and gave birth to her fifth child, Trig, earlier this year after finding out during her pregnancy that the baby had Down syndrome.

Fowler told my colleague Alex Burns in an interview that the selection of an opponent of abortion rights would not boost McCain among many women.

“Among Democratic women and even among independent women, I don’t think it helped him,” she said.

Told of McCain’s boost in the new ABC/Washington Post among white women following the Palin pick, Fowler said: “Just anecdotally, I believe that those white women are Republican women anyway.”

And if you’d like me to, I’ll tell you what I really think.

Sarah Palin’s former preacher – who suggested that people who vote for Democrats like Fowler are going to hell – has a damn good point.