America’s Leaders Have Turned On Business. Will Business Turn Off America?

Every movement that seeks to enslave a country, every dictatorship or potential dictatorship, needs some minority group as a scapegoat which it can blame for the nation’s troubles and use as a justification of its own demands for dictatorial powers. In Soviet Russia, the scapegoat was the bourgeoisie; in Nazi Germany, it was the Jewish people; in America, it is the businessmen.  Ayn Rand

Despite his orgiastic media followers and popularity polls still pushing 60% approval ratings 100 days into his presidency, one thing that President Barack Obama has made certain from his teleprompter-scripted bully pulpit, as well as behind the scenes:

The official but unstated policy of the government of the United States of America is open hostility toward business.

Since January 20th, Americans have seen:

• The nationalization of banks (which has included the the Treasury Department’s refusal of repayment of TARP loans)
• The passage of multi-trillion dollar deficit-spending budgets
• The commitment to the hallucinogenically-named Employee Free Choice Act
• A government bailout and imposed bankruptcy which will include the subsequent give away of Chrysler to the United Auto Workers.
• And, lastly, an announced, but yet-to-be seen, plan to move America toward socialized-medicine

As disturbing as all of these “bold” moves may seem, the Left has convinced many Americans that these are “needed”  changes due to the current economic mess America finds herself in.

However, some under-reported appointments in the last few months make it abundantly clear that the policy of the U.S. government (which includes the Democrat-controlled Congress) is to  do everything in its power to make doing business in America as difficult and undesirable as possible.

Since his inauguration, President Obama has given clear signal that America’s business community will have lower than second-class status in the collectivist mind of his Administration.

Indeed, though the president recently told bankers at a White House meeting that his Administration “is the only thing between you and the pitchforks,” it has become clear that he and his union handlers (like SEIU boss Andy Stern) are the pitchfork-makers-in chief.

On Inauguration Day, President Obama named long-serving union sympathizer Wilma Liebman to chair the National Labor Relations Board.  Liebman, a former staff attorney for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, as well as the International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftsmen is as partisan as they come and, as the National Right to Work Foundation points out, has “an ugly disdain for employees’ individual rights.”

Another of the President’s anti-business appointments was Ellen Moran to the position of  White House Director of Communications.  Prior to her appointment to the White House, Moran managed the AFL-CIO’s Wal-Mart corporate accountability campaign and also served as the AFL-CIO’s voter contact coordinator, working with union affiliates to devise voter targeting and contact strategies in battleground states before becoming Executive Director of the nation’s largest political action committee, the liberal and pro-abortion Emily’s List.

On April 21st, the former union campaigner Moran made a surprise transfer from the West Wing to the Commerce Department, where she will be Chief of Staff for Commerce Secretary Gary Locke.  

As the historic mission of the U.S. Commerce Department is to “foster, promote, and develop the foreign and domestic commerce,” having a liberal, union advocate (and Wal-Mart hater)like Ms. Moran as the Chief of Staff of this cabinet-level postion is much like having a fox in the hen house full time.  There is little doubt that Ms. Moran will use her dubious-but-effective campaign skills to further target her former union targets like Wal-Mart and others.

A few days later, on April 24th, President Obama appointed another union demogogue to a key position in the Department of Labor.  Mary Beth Maxwell, executive director of the union-funded American Rights at Work (ARAW), has spent the last five years pushing the hallucinogenically-named Employee Free Choice Act, the bill before Congress that would foist no-vote unionization on approximately 100 million workers and four million businesses.  Now, Maxwell (who spearheaded the unions’ disingenuous campaign for EFCA) will be working as a senior advisor to former ARAW board-member and current Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis.

The same day (April 24th), the president announced two more appointments to the National Labor Relations Board from the union movement that provide more evidence that the policy of the U.S. has turned against business.  Craig Becker,  current Associate General Counsel to both the Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of Labor & Congress of Industrial Organizations and union-side labor attorney Mark Pearce.

As the NLRB has been operating with three vacancies for the last year due to the Democrat-controlled Senate refusing to confirm Presdient Bush’s nomination to the Board, it can be assumed that President Obama will leave one vacancy unfilled as, by law, that vacancy must be filled by a Republican.

With union appointees filling cabinet and sub-cabinet level positions, as well as key agencies like the NLRB, the path is clear for the government to begin putting a greater stranglehold on American business.

While those on the left may argue ‘it’s about time,’ the problem lies in the fact that unions do not create jobs—businesses do.  Unfortunately, too many on the left ignore this fact but businesses do not. 

The question, therefore, becomes:  Why would business invest in America (and American jobs) when the federal government is now openly hostile toward business?