Marathon Pundit: Newt hails NLRB dropping case against Boeing in South Carolina

Boeing HQ, Chicago

Newt Gingrich is pleased with this afternoon's decision by the NLRB to drop its overreaching case against Boeing. The former House Speaker issued the following statement an hour ago.

Gingrich Hails Dropped Case Against Boeing as Victory for South Carolina and All Right-to-Work States

Arlington, VA - Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, upon learning that the National Labor Relations Board has dropped its case against Boeing, issued the following statement:

The NLRB's suit was a politically motivated assault on the rule of law by President Obama and his big labor allies. The founding fathers warned that when government grows too big the law would be usurped for political purposes. This case was an example of that.

This is a victory for South Carolina and all right-to-work states, and a reminder that the American people will not be dictated to by out-of-control bureaucrats in Washington.
In May, during a speech to the 5 Points Rotary Club in Columbia, SC, Gingrich said the following about the NLRB's case:

What Reagan didn't have to confront, but we have to confront today – and more so the citizens of South Carolina -- is the systematic assault on the rule of law by this Administration.

There is to begin the blatantly unconstitutional and unprecedented expansion of federal power by Obamacare –with its so-called "individual mandate."

If the federal government can coerce individuals—by threat of fines—to buy health insurance, then there is no stopping the federal government from forcing Americans to buy any good or service. It would mean the end of limited government as envisioned by our founders.

That's why I have publicly supported the efforts of Attorney General Cuccinelli of Virginia in his lawsuit and the 26 attorneys-general throughout the country who have challenged the constitutionality of Obamacare, -- and why I will fight for the repeal of Obamacare until it is repealed in its entirety.

It is the unprecedented grant of over one thousand nine hundred discretionary powers to unelected bureaucrats in the Obamacare legislation that guarantees the rise in arbitrary and corrupted decision-making by the federal government.

Most of these discretionary powers are granted to the Secretary of Health and Human Services and her bureaucracy. The Obamacare law also creates 159 new boards, agencies and other government entities to administer health decisions that should be instead up to the individual in consultation with their doctor.

James Madison, in the Federalist Papers, underscored the importance of the rule of law, which he defined as government exercising its power in predictable and evenhanded ways, as a defense against tyranny.

It's worth recalling the grievances contained in The Declaration of Independence – the very grievances that fired the fury of American patriots and justified the American Revolution. The fact that the bulk of them -- -twenty-one out of twenty-seven -- concern violations of the rule of law shows that the Founders believe the rule of law to be indispensable to a just society.

The founding fathers would have immediately recognized the danger of so much arbitrary power invested in unelected bureaucrats, like we find in Obamacare.

Indeed, we are already seeing how the American belief in the rule of law is betrayed in the implementation of the president's new health care regime.

To date, the Obama Administration has issued over one thousand waivers to exempt companies and organizations from complying with the law's expensive mandates, including Big Labor and other powerful supporters of the Democratic Party.

Last week, a report showed nearly 20 percent of the latest round of waivers are in former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's congressional district.

This process provides glaring proof of the corrupting nature of big government and why our Founders distrusted centralized power.

Here in South Carolina you are witnessing first hand and up close another glaring proof of the corrupting nature of big government and it ability to destroy jobs.

I'm speaking, of course, about the effort by the Obama administration's National Labor Relations Board to stop Boeing’s Dreamliner plant from opening up in Charleston.

The facts are well known by everybody in South Carolina and are beginning to be known across America.

South Carolina is one of the twenty-two right-to-work states in America, where workers cannot be forced to join a union.

Washington state, where Boeing's main production plant is located, is a comulsory union state.

The NLRB's complaint, which was made on behalf of the machinists' union in Boeing’s Washington production plant, comes a full seventeen months after the company announced their choice of Charleston.

Boeing has already begun construction of the new facility and has already created over 1000 jobs for South Carolina. In total, the plant is expected to create 8000 new jobs.

This illegal NLRB action puts all those jobs at risk.

Even Bill Gould, who was Chairman of NLRB under President Clinton, has denounced the attack on Boeing as "unprecedented."

If the Obama administration's hand-picked NLRB is successful in blocking the opening of the Boeing plant in South Carolina, it won't just be South Carolina that suffers.

Such a ruling would put tens of millions of future jobs in all 22 right-to-work states in jeopardy. It would make it effectively impossible for U.S. companies to choose to open new facilities in right-to-work states if they are currently located in a state that allows forced unionization.

In fact, a ruling against Boeing would put jobs at risk in all fifty states by increasing the flight of capital out of our country. Many companies, if they are prevented from investing in right to work states, will simply look overseas. It wouldn't save union jobs. It would simply prevent new jobs from being created here in America.

Faced with our current slow economic growth, we should be making it easier for companies and entrepreneurs to create jobs in the United States, not harder.

This complaint is all the more disturbing when you learn that it is being led by the NLRB’s acting General Counsel, who has not yet received confirmation from the Senate, and is only on the Board because of a recess appointment from President Obama.

The President also recently used a recess appointment to get Craig Becker on the Board. Becker is so radically anti-business he could not even get approved by a Democratic Senate. Becker has previously written that the federal government should be able to control where companies choose to direct their capital and resources to give unions an advantage in labor negotiations.

Obviously this bears directly on this case with Boeing. It is clear that President Obama is stacking the deck against South Carolina and other right to work states at the behest of his union allies.

Your Senator, Lindsey Graham, was exactly right when he characterized the NLRB's complaint as "one of the worst examples of unelected bureaucrats doing the bidding of special interest groups that I've ever seen."

This complaint is an explicit and devastating example of the Obama administration's reckless and dangerous use of the power of big government to reward its political backers.

It is a textbook case of the corrupting power of big government that the founding fathers warned against that erodes the rule of law.

But in a larger sense, the Obama administration's action against Boeing is even more audacious than the corrupting of our political institutions by big government.

We know from the 2010 census that the South led the nation for the first time in terms of population growth, adding 14.3 million people.

People are voting with their feet for better economic opportunities. And a large part of the reason for the better economic opportunities in the South is the right for workers not to be forced into a union if you don't want to be. It is the right to work.

And one of the most underreported stories of the large migration to the South has been the large number of African-American moving to the South in search of economic opportunity and a better quality of life.

The South is winning the future. The right to work states are winning the future. They have pursued the right policies and they are leading to the right results. There is no greater proof that these states are winning the future for their citizens than the willingness of millions of Americans to move to these states in search of a better future for themselves and their children.

Boeing's move to set up operations in South Carolina follows the same logic of moving to more promising opportunities.

And what the Obama administration is saying in response is that they are going to block economic progress and say no, while millions of Americans and thousands of companies are saying yes to a better life.

There is no clearer example of this administration's willful disdain for the consent of the governed.

The Republican House should cut off all funding for the NLRB until President Obama withdraws the nominations of Lafe Soloman and Craig Becker, and appoints replacements who pledge to uphold the rule of law instead of the rule of big labor.