Don't just shrug away this mess

Consider this scenario:

A well-established company that is profitable in a highly competitive industry wants to expand and decides to build a $1 billion factory in another state to produce an expensive sleek new jet called the Dreamliner. The factory is almost completed when suddenly a federal agency intervenes and tells the company it can’t build the jets after all. Why? Because the new state won’t require the company to employ union workers. In other words, the federal government wants to make business decisions in a major industry and turn a job-creating plant into an almost certain business failure as the company loses contracts to an overseas competitor that is allowed to make business decisions based on business needs.

Sound like something out of “Atlas Shrugged”?

You bet it does, but unfortunately this isn’t a chapter in a novel; it’s the latest wrinkle in the increasing effort of the federal government to control every inch of our lives.

Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” is many things to many people, but mostly it is a warning of just how bad things can become when people allow the government to micro-manage the economy in the name of social justice.

We are getting a close-up example of that in real life in South Carolina, where Boeing has spent millions of dollars to begin production of the 787 Dreamliner, only to be halted in its tracks by the National Labor Relations Board — a leftover entity from the New Deal that has now reared its ugly head to bite Boeing during the worst economy since the Great Depression.

The facts are all on Boeing’s side. The company is engaged in a time-sensitive battle with European-based Airbus to produce the next generation of supersized passenger jets. Back in 2008, however, Boeing ran into a roadblock when its employees in Washington went on strike and delayed production. As soon as the strike was settled, Boeing announced that it would build a second production facility in South Carolina — a “right to work” state. It’s true that the company wanted to minimize the threat of strikes killing the new production line, but it’s also true that this was a SECOND production facility. It meant more jobs for more workers and more reliability of continued employment by making the company more competitive.

Sorry, no. Can’t have that. Instead, the NLRB’s general counsel filed a complaint against Boeing saying that the decision to build in South Carolina was a retaliatory move against union workers — and that Boeing had to shut down its BILLION DOLLAR plant.

This complaint is so outrageous that even President Obama, a union supporter and former community organizer, can’t quite fathom how it could be right. As he said in June, “companies need to have the freedom to relocate... and if they’re choosing to relocate here in the United States, that’s a good thing.”

Darn right.

Almost everyone — whether conservative or liberal — would agree with the president. Because if you can tell a company where it can build a factory, then what can’t you tell a company? Congress could even pass something like an Equalization of Opportunity Bill that would prevent a person from owning more than one company.   

Oh wait, that really IS from “Atlas Shrugged.” But it’s getting hard to tell the difference between reality and really scary fiction. Maybe we should just let the government handle something it understands — like running up a $15 trillion debt — and let businesses try to make a profit on their own.

Now that’s a thought.