Why your job went overseas

In yesterday's post about the thugocracy, I mentioned that the Fed had been "taking" for years using various environmental laws. Geek with a .45 has a post up here that expresses it vary well.

"Beneath your feet is a world class waste treatment facility. Though it was once used in operation, we put in this particular place in case any of this " he nodded over his shoulder at the collection of tanks and towers "ruptured. There is enough volume of space down there to hold the contents of that entire chemical plant, on the assumption that all vessels ruptured simultaneously. In that event, the output of that treatment facility would be clean water that you could drink, separated from several hundred gallons of highly concentrated toxic nastiness. It cost us millions to build that hole in the ground, and now we use it to process lavatory waste." The president held his tones in neutral businesese, but there was no mistaking the bitterness he kept in check. "The structure behind me also cost us millions, it was once the heart of our operation. At one time, we made our own circuit boards and some electronic components, which as you know, is less of a mechanical and more of a chemical operation. While it would have been reasonably cost effective for us, it's no longer feasible for us to do this."

Now that was a very unusual statement that caught my interest. I'm fairly used to hearing how vendors find it cost effective to farm out components whose fabrication was outside of their expertise and only tangential to their mojo, but this was a new one on me.

I have highlighted the words in bold.

What follows is a tale, all too frequent, of what happens as a result of over zealous regulators "on a mission from gaia" who do not know, nor care what they do to their fellow citizens. Nor do they care that where the work is sent overseas is probably less environmentally clean than the place shut down. It just proves the need for more UN regulations that will be ignored everywhere else. Meanwhile, the MSM will decry the "corporations" that cruelly make the decision to send jobs overseas to reap cheaper labor, never realizing, or in many cases caring, that the real reason is our own government.

What is needed is for Congress to have to write, defend, and pass every law, rule, and regulation that the Fed enforces on people and companies. Every one. There can be no exceptions.

If I can find it, I will post the hair raising tale of Hooker Chemical, which company has been forever vilified as the antagonist in the myth of Love Canal. Except that they were the innocent party.

Update: From Reason Magazine, Februrary 1981, Eric Zuesse writes Love Canal: The Truth Seeps Out. Hooker Chemical may not have been so forward thinking in all cases, but ironically, in this case, they were the victims. For one thing, they buried these chemicals in a landfill designed in the 1940s that would become standard practice only in the 1980s. They held onto them, and only sold the landfill when forced by the School Board under threat of eminent domain. Even then, there were dire warnings about digging into the site on multiple documented occasions. That they, and not the School Board would be held responsible for the subsequent disaster was a miscarriage of justice. That the EPA would lie about it unconscionable. That the MSM would buy into the lies without really investigating just goes to show how untrustworthy the MSM is. The MSM had a template: evil big corporations ruin the lives of the little guy then try to skate on paying him off. Unfortunately, in this case the template was wrong. Now, I am not saying that the template is never correct, but rather that there shouldn't be templates at all. Uncovering the truth of who did what to whom when should be the goal of every story the MSM tells. If they did this ruthlessly, the obvious bias of the press would largely disappear.

Finally, this case showcases the unjustness of the Superfund act. Hooker here was trying to do the right thing. To be subjected years later for things that were perfectly legal at the time, and for things done by government entities after they were forced to give up control of the chemicals seems to me to be grossly unjust.