The favor of the royal court.

The favor of the royal court.

Click here to listen to the broadcast of You Tell Me on KTBB AM & FM, Friday, June 24, 2011.

In medieval England in order for one to get ahead, one sought the favor of the king. If you wanted to quarry stone or cut timber or perhaps be given a license to operate a wool market in the village, you first had to gain the king’s permission. If the king didn’t like you, or woke up on the wrong side of the bed, or drank some bad mead the night before, that permission would not be forthcoming and there was no appeal.

Not everyone even had the right to seek the king’s favor in the first place. Peasants had no access to the king no matter what they might be seeking. If not born of noble stock, no amount of enterprise and no idea of yours that might make the kingdom better could ever get you into the privileged circle that had access to the monarch.

Such government was a government of men. You were either in favor or you weren’t and the king made no pretense of objectivity or fairness.

The country that emerged on the North American continent decisively changed this arrangement. The U.S. Constitution was revolutionary. It, at last, recognized the obvious; that men are not angels. The document thus sought as far as it could to take men out of the equation, enshrining instead the rule of law.

Under a government of laws, it is supposed to matter much less who happens to be the head of the government. With laws in place, a president or governor or mayor is limited in the favors he may bestow upon you if he likes you and is limited in the harm that he may inflict upon you if he doesn’t.

Or so Boeing thought when it decided to assemble airliners in South Carolina.

Boeing has invested some multiple of a billion dollars and has put many hundreds of South Carolinians on the payroll of a new assembly plant that will produce Boeing’s next-generation 787 airliner.

South Carolina wasn’t picked by accident. It is a right-to-work state, like Texas, meaning that workers cannot be forced to join a union as a condition of employment.

This has enraged the unions in Boeing’s facilities in Washington state where most Boeing airplanes are assembled. Big Labor does not want companies like Boeing to expand by hiring non-union workers and they have gone to the king for redress of their grievances.

The king in this case is the Obama administration. In a way reminiscent of feudal England, Big Labor enjoys the favor of the royal Obama court, perhaps more than any other single group, and the court helps those that it favors.

In a breathtaking abuse of regulatory authority the presidentially appointed National Labor Relations Board has filed a complaint against Boeing that has as its ultimate aim the prevention of the company from assembling the 787 using non-union workers. If the NLRB prevails, every company in America will have to look over its shoulder. Nominally we all have the freedom to do business wherever we choose. But in its case against Boeing the government is seeking to take that freedom away.

This has implications for Texas. Big Labor has noticed to its great dismay that employment in Texas has grown but union membership has not. Thus the NLRB, acting not as an impartial referee but rather as a participant on the side of Big Labor, has taken the occasion of the opening of Boeing’s plant in right-to-work South Carolina to send an unmistakable message.

Play ball with the unions or get hurt.

If allowed to prevail in its case against Boeing, the NLRB will re-establish the capriciousness of royal favor in the place of the certainty of law. A company thinking about expanding into a non-union state like Texas will have reason to fear the weight of the federal government dropping upon it like the hammers of hell.

In medieval England, the king cared little for the peasants because the peasants couldn’t organize an army.

In a similar way, Obama cares little for workers – except those that can be organized to pay dues that can be laundered into political cash for the benefit of the royal court.

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Paul Gleiser

Paul L. Gleiser is president of ATW Media, LLC, licensee of radio stations KTBB 97.5 FM/AM600, 92.1 The TEAM FM in Tyler-Longview, Texas.

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6 Responses

  1. L Miles says:

    One thousand Dittos! Freedom and Liberty (American style) is the enemy of the Tyrant that sets himself above the Natural Laws of God (Unalienable Rights from the Creator). Give this regime enough time and our peasant status will be fully realized. Don’t forget that the Divine Right of Kings never died in the despicable heart of the would-be Tyrant.

  2. Linda E. Montrose says:

    During the campaign in 2008, I just could never understand WHY people could not see OR HEAR the arrogance of obama. He looked down upon the people as he stood there reading from his teleprompter…just like the king looking down upon his subjects. Either people were too awestruck to see or hear or they were denying what they saw and heard. Either way, a huge mistake was made and this is the result. We have a dictator and his czars in our palace, the Whitehouse and no one seems to mind.

  3. And what is the deal with the Obamacare waivers? Same issue? If you pass muster the rules can be suspended for you. They obviously know that the rules of the ruling class are onerous.

  4. Brad Evans says:

    I was hoping you got around to this one. Nothing has infuriated me more since the refusal of the Justice Department to deal with the New Black Panthers voting intimidation in Philly, 2008

  5. Dr. Randolph Terry says:

    The arrogance of this administration’s NLRB would be unbelievable, if not so consistent with all of the previous actions they have taken to destroy free enterprise. I do not think that this is just incompetence, but rather a calculated effort to bring our economy down to the level of third world countries. His Marxist father would be very proud of how this “affirmative action” president has implemented his plan. Sadly, this was all very predictable; however, the voters were too anxious to show that we are not a racist country, and they elected someone who would not have had a chance had he been any other race. So much for reparations!!

  6. C M Solomon says:

    Having listened to the BHO press conference today, I am convinced beyond all doubt that this President is hell-bent on turning this country into a Socialist/Marxist society by destroying the economy, currency, private enterprise, personal and corporate wealth, and State sovereignty in favor of an all-powerful, centralized government. This new government would “transform” our society into one that is ruled by man (the Elite Ruling Class), not law (the Constitution), in order to dispense “positive rights (favors)” according to the religious beliefs of Marxism and the Social Justice dogma. This dogma is infested with the promise that a better society will result in the elimination of poverty by forcing an equitable redistribution of the wealth as decreed by the BHO regime and his followers in the press, the courts, academia, and the Socialist/Democrat members of Congress.

    How can he possibly do this? The answer is: the same way that all demonic demigods have fooled many countries and societies in the past. They portray false compassion for the downtrodden while creating the very circumstances that create economic Armageddon behind the scenes with deception and outright lawlessness, which in the private sector, would otherwise put them in the penitentiary. Part of the deception is to demonize the very forces that have brought prosperity and the economic freedom for most Americans to succeed as independent and productive members of our society.

    For this philosophy to succeed the BIG LIE must be proclaimed that unfettered individual pursuit of wealth without government controls results in vast economic discrepancies due to selfishness. Wholesale ignorance of basic economics by a working majority of the general public must be in place, also. If the mass media, courts, and academia support this LIE, then this “transformation” has a good chance of succeeding.

    How can you explain the astronomical rise in the national deficit and debt since BHO has been in office without any positive results? He has no intention of fixing this problem, and to the contrary, proposes only greater growth in the federal government expenditures as it takes over an even greater portion of the private economy. He will ignore all rational economic policy in favor of unlimited spending to “solve” the economic mess we are in. It is just a matter of time that this policy will result in “emergency” measures to confiscate ALL personal wealth in order to “save” the country from economic ruin. Anyone that opposes this would be demonized as “selfish and unpatriotic”.

    BHO has obvious Delusions of Grandeur. Having obtained his basic beliefs from his Socialist/Marxist confidants, and his practical experience as a Chicago street thug organized to bring about Social Justice, he has developed a megalomaniac’s fervor to ignore basic Constitutional law and bully his way to bring about a NEW society in His Own Image. No amount of deception is beneath his sense of right and wrong. The end justifies the means. He accepts the premise that the present system must be destroyed in order to rebuild it into a Socialist/Marxist utopia. He uses the art of fear mongering as a valid tactic of political persuasion. He has a full team of hacks to help delude the general public that his brilliance and wisdom as President can lead this country to the “promised land”.

    Never in the history of this country has a Presidential election produced such an arrogant, irresponsible, condescending, propagandist of such low character. If this Marxist ideologue is not driven from office in the next election, I fear that our future as a free society is in severe jeopardy. I don’t blame BHO. He is being himself. I blame the American voting public that was fooled in the last election. It is up to us that believe in a free and prosperous America to educate our fellow citizens not to make the same mistake, again, and to help us roll back the damage done to this great country!

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