bizarreville

In the theory of Obamanomics, heavy industry is just plain undesirable.  Steel mills, paper mills, Febreeze plants, breweries, textile mills, auto plants are just ugly, stinky pockmarks on the landscape.  They cough up nasty micro-particles that kill fish and dogs.  They look so much better when they have been bulldozed, and replaced with nicely landscaped strip malls with free parking.  These old-fashioned edifices need to be moved to other spots on the globe where the inhabitants don’t know any better, and are stupid enough to actually welcome them with incentives.  Let ’em have ’em.  In fact, we will provide our own incentives to help them pack in a new program called “Pack and Blow”.  The destinkification of the nation will be applauded by not just enviro-whackos, but all citizens seeking a better something-or-other.

To help drive them out, Obamanomics has a foolproof strategy.  It starts with legislating some new “get tough” rules on the environmental front.  The government will partner with some liberal-leaning, research universities to concoct studies on the adverse health impacts of any kind of process emission…any kind os substance that could conceivably come out of a pipe or stack.  They will conduct thousands of government-sponsored laboratory studies subjecting test animals to concentrations 100 thousand times higher than normal, and watching them croak.  Pictures and video will be taken showing the disgusting deterioration of these previously lively creatures as their lungs fill up with various nasty gook.  When enough data has been gathered, final reports will be edited to properly slant the findings to support the conclusions sought.  Splashy liberal media coverage will be on hand as the government enacts new regs that are beyond tough, and clearly economically unachievable…obvious to even the dumbest CEO of a black smoke company.  All will watch gleefully as these companies spin around like tops trying to defend their right to spew nasty pollutants that will do such harm to kids, grammaws, and their pooches.  Protestors will be staged outside corporate offices wearing gas masks and wielding signs of babies wearing gas masks.  It will be great comedy under a pretense of seriousness.

The second step in the heavy industry purge plan is to invoke some new changes in national Labor rules.  This will start by requiring that all employees who take Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) absence get their full salary while away.  The current FMLA law is fairly punishing to companies as is, with plenty of goldbricks finding any excuse under the sun to lay out of work.  But making this goldbricking fully compensable will spur even more deadbeat workers to make their sore backs and grampaw’s hemmoroid condition a reason to shirk work.  Why work if you’re getting paid to stay home and watch soaps?  People will catch-on, absenteeism will skyrocket.

The next element is to step up OSHA wall-to-wall inspection audits of all manufacturing plants.  It has been proven that bringing in an army of OSHA inspectors for a month to any manufacturing plant will discover a long laundry list of alleged violations, which can (and should) result in hefty fines.  Followups every 6 months with more violations and fines will eventually persuade companies to shutter the facilities.  If, however, a facility is stubborn to closure, it may be necessary to step up the followup inspections to every 3 months…that should probably put them over the edge.  But in the rarest of cases, the ultra-stubborn manufacturers who just cannot see the light, it may be necessary to threaten them with criminal prosecution for “Willful” violations.  Any good OSHA inspector worth his/her salt should be able to connect the dots to take these followup inspection results, and create a Willful scenario of some sort.  Government lawyers will be dispatched to quickly develop the prosecution paths.  The fear of a little jail time will most certainly do the trick.

Replacing a smoke-belching manufacturing plant with a new modern strip mall probably creates more jobs than it loses, on balance.  Each small store in the strip mall will create 10-20 fresh new jobs.  A large anchor store might add 50-100 clean jobs…jobs where employees can come to work in dressy new fashions, rather than dungarees and stained tee-shirts.  It’s better for society in so many ways.

Disclaimer:  all stories in Bizarreville are fiction, even the lessons in economics.