Shocker: General Electric Gets Waiver From EPA Regulations

A lot of these major industrial corporations have been co-conspirators in the passage of many of the federal regulations.

Here is how it has worked for the past several decades:
When EPA or Bureau of Mines, or Dept. of Energy, or Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or whatever other federal agency proposes a new rule, national organizations that represent heavy industry, mining, petroleum, and chemical manufacturers in the U.S. lobby congress and the agency for exemptions to their own operations in trade for not challenging or fighting the rule in court.

If a new rule is proposed and the implementation date “grandfathers” in all of their existing sources, then that rule becomes a “barrier to entry” and protects existing industry from competitors.

(We’ll make this new rule, but you don’t have to comply with it, since you are already up and running, but anyone else who comes along and want’s to do the same thing you do will not be allowed to. They will face much higher operating costs than you.)

This has happened over and over again since the 70’s with waste water rules, air regulations, solid waste regulations, drilling regulations, mining regulations, etc., etc., etc.; and has allowed the environmentalists to incrementally tighten the screws bit by bit by bit over the years.

When their old factories, mines, and refineries had worn out and needed replacement, or upgrading, or expansion, the co-conspirators were hit with those same high operating costs that had prevented them from having fair competition all of those years. Many of them closed down because they would no longer be profitable.

This is but one of the reasons that new start up manufacturing is much much easier to do in China or Indonesia or India or Mexico instead of here in the U.S.

Where the precise effects of government policy on particular people are known, where the government aims directly at such particular effects, it cannot help knowing these effects, and therefore it cannot be impartial. It must, of necessity, take sides, impose its valuations upon people and, instead of assisting them in the advancement of their own ends, choose the ends for them. As soon as the particular effects are forseen at the time a law is made, it ceases to be a mere instrument to be used by the people and becomes instead an instrument used by the lawgiver upon the people and for his ends. The state ceases to be a piece of utilitarian machinery intended to help individuals in the fullest development of their individual personality and becomes a "moral" institution----where "moral" is not used in contrast to immoral but describes an institution which imposes on its members its views on all moral questions, whether these views be moral or highly immoral. In this sense the Nazi or any other collectivist state is "moral", while the liberal (classical liberal) state is not.

F. A. Hayek "The Road To Serfdom"

The reason they can do this blatantly is that they have already established through the media that Republicans have done the same thing, ala Haliburton. In other words a setup. A bigoted leftist will never concede (and doesn't have to) this is any more corrupt than GWB.

The fact is that Fascism and Communism had always incorporated "companies" into the government leftist heirarchy, ala Messerschmidt, Gazprom, Aeroflot, Siemens, etc. And now in the US, Goldman-Sachs, AIG, GE. Indeed GE is now a near perfect model of say the union of Volkswagon and the Nazi Party.

This model has re-established itself in current decades as the "Third Way" out of the London School of Economics, Soros' old alma mater. These "intellectuals" really do believe in this mutual management of corporation and government, and think it a viable pathway. And certainly in the past these authoritarian appointed companies did indeed still accomplish technical innovations, witness the jet plane and V-2's of Germany.

All the time however it really is simply a front for communism, authoritarian leftism; just as the CEO of GM was "appointed" by the Obama administration. To the contrary, in a free entrepreneurial society, small business(es), i.e. ones not "too big to fail," compete dynamically with all, generating a dynamic, creative, albeit dog-eat-dog, competitive theater of opportunity. The greatness of this is quite obvious in the US today in the software industry, one not controlled by the federal government and one of the few remaining vestiges of US free enterprise.

To the energetic and enterprising this latter is the preferred pathway, rather than the kiss-ass, yes-man, obsequiousness (Immelt) of corporate leftism. Unfortunately I'm not sure the youth of this nation see it. And the old, who should, don't seem to speak up.

Laziness, Cowardice, Self-occupation, Leftism.

Johnny Suntrade

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.