Marathon Pundit: NLRB overreach: China fantasy edition

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

NLRB overreach: China fantasy edition

Chinatown, Chicago Marathon

It was President Obama, not Congress, who created a rotten recess.

In today's National Review Online, Andrew McCarthy brings up a liberal dream: China.

President Obama has fulfilled a second Tom Friedman fantasy — the first being that he is, in fact, President Obama. "I have fantasized . . . that, what if we could just be China for a day," the New York Times star columnist gushed for his ponderous fellow travelers on Meet the Press. "I mean where we could actually, you know, authorize the right solutions."

It was May 2010, not long after Obama and a Congress dominated by Democrats had rammed through Obamacare, the most sweeping government usurpation of private industry and individual liberty in American history. Soon they’d be adding Dodd-Frank's paralyzing intrusion into the financial sector. Yet, despite the shock and awe of hope and change, here was the Progressive Poobah, grousing that "my democracy" was failing “to work with the same authority, focus and stick-to-itiveness” as a totalitarian Communist dictatorship. After all, unburdened by our remnants of free-market competition, by the gridlock and sausage-making of two-party politics, the Chicoms produce trade and budget surpluses, state-of-the-art airports, and enviro-friendly high-speed rail. All we can manage, "on everything from the economy to environment," Friedman complained, are "suboptimal solutions" — apparently not to be confused with the optimal Chinese menu of forced abortions, religious repression, secret police, kangaroo courts, and air you could cut with a chopstick.

Friedman is surely smiling today. So, we can assume, are other leftists, such as Peter Orszag, Obama's former budget-overrun director, and Bev Perdue, the governor of North Carolina. Right after the midterm shellacking that swept Republicans into control of the House — a roadblock that has stymied some, but by no means all, of Obama’s transformational agenda — they said aloud what other Democrats were thinking: America's problem is too much democracy. This week, the president solved that problem, shoving another page of the suboptimal Constitution through his made-in-China shredder.

In sum, Obama dissolved the separation of powers, the framers' ingenious bulwark against any government branch's seizure of supreme power — and thus the Constitution’s bulwark against tyranny. The president claims the power to appoint federal officers without the Senate’s constitutionally mandated advice and consent. He does so by claiming unilateral powers to dictate when the Senate is in session, a power the Constitution assigns to Congress, and to decree that an ongoing session is actually a recess. This sheer ukase, he says, triggers the part of the Constitution we’re keeping because he likes it — viz., the executive power to fill vacancies without any vetting by the people’s representatives.

Fred Wszolek of the Workforce Fairness Institute has this to day in Townhall:

President Obama's decision to recess appoint Richard Griffin and Sharon Block to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is but another example of the stark contrast between his actions as president and his words as a candidate. Obama promised the American people that if elected president he would change the tone of politics in Washington, D.C. and turn the economy around.

He has done neither. He recess appointed labor radical Craig Becker after his nomination received bipartisan opposition, who together with Obama’s other nominees have poisoned the atmosphere of labor relations in the U.S. They have engaged in an unprecedented assault against the rights of workers and their employers chilling business investment during an economic downturn.

Why would a president who promised to make the economy his top priority turn his back on workers and small businesses? Big Labor payback and his need in 2012 for still more campaign cash. Less than a year before Election Day, Obama's approval rating is one of lowest in modern times among incumbents seeking re-election. Consequently, he needs to grow his campaign war chest with the help of special interests, particularly Big Labor.

The White House has made the calculation that half a billion in political support from union bosses is more important than the economy and the tens of thousands of businesses struggling to survive and employ workers. The same government that these businesses support with their tax dollars has declared war on them. As much as some believe, the government will not lead us to a real and verifiable economic recovery; the ingenuity, work ethic and industriousness of the American people will create jobs and turn things around. And that will only take place if the engine of American job creation – small business – isn't drowned. Yet, the track record of Obama's labor board demonstrates a deep resentment for the business community. Late last year, the NLRB issued a new, legally suspect rule concerning "quickie" or "ambush" elections that is already being challenged in court. The regulation will limit employer free speech by cutting the amount of time by at least half for workplace elections. Next, the so-called “independent” agency radically redefined what constitutes a collective bargaining unit in every American industry. The NLRB authorized labor to petition to represent "micro-units," small numbers of employees, as few as two or three doing the same job in the same location. The rule change will give Big Labor instant access to an employer and result in increased labor costs and conflict among employees.