On Wednesday, Boeing dropped a bombshell on the state of Kansas, announcing that they were closing their plant in Wichita, sending ripples throughout the region.

What makes this plant closure announcement different from others, however, is that in the battle to win back the military tanker contract, Boeing’s CEO promised Kansas Senator Pat Roberts, then-Senator (and now governor) Sam Brownback, and other members of the Kansas Congressional delegation that Boeing would build the tanker in Wichita if the Kansas delegation could prevail on their colleagues to award them the contract.

Roberts and the rest of the GOP is not pleased that after winning the contract, Boeing decided to build elsewhere and close the plant.

Imagine that. A corporation would deceive members of Congress when it suits them. Awwwww . . .

The Machinists union reached tentative agreement on a new four-year contract with Boeing, in a move that probably ends the dispute over moving a factory from Washington State to South Carolina, which prompted action from the NLRB against what they saw as an illegal labor violation.

Sen. Lindsey Graham openly threatened the National Labor Relations Board before they filed a complaint against Boeing for illegally moving their plant from Washington state to South Carolina, according to notes taken by the NLRB’s general counsel, Lafe Solomon.

The war industry stood back with glee when it released a shoddy study that produced the sought-after deceptive headlines about defense spending, the magic sauce of job creation. There was no balance to these reports, and the War Industry should know, because they funded it!

Unnamed sources and materials discovered in Tripoli, where the regime’s spies monitored telecommunications, show Amesys, a unit of the French company Bull SA, assisted in the spying. Sources and materials also indicate Chinese company ZTE Corp provided equipment to Gaddafi.

Just to get back to this drive for regulatory reform that you’ll see from the House GOP over the next several months, with spending de-emphasized, take a look at Eric Cantor’s memo on the upcoming agenda from the chamber. About 80% of it concerns repealing “job-destroying regulations,” which suddenly have become the core reason for the lack of jobs. I thought it was all about runaway spending, but I guess that was last week.

Of all the many, many disappointments the Obama administration has brought us, this personally ranks pretty high. As a candidate, Barack Obama really seemed to grasp the potential of a “green recovery” to make economic and environmental progress at the same time — more so than the mere expedience of being a political candidate seemed to require. But despite ongoing noises in that general direction, there has been the all-too-familiar lack of results.

President Obama was asked today about the decision by the National Labor Relations Board with respect to Boeing, and you can see his answer in the video. He said that the NLRB is an independent agency and that there’s a pending judicial matter. “So I don’t want to get into the details of the case. I don’t know all the facts. That’s going to be for a judge to decide.”

However, he then spoke broadly about the fact that corporations need to have the “freedom to relocate,” although they have to follow the law, and that if that relocation occurs in the United States, “that’s a good thing.”

Predictable and bland, Charles Krauthammer claims that Democrats are trying to appease Labor. All I can say is that I wish that were the case!

The crux of this dispute: Was Boeing’s decision to build their new plant in South Carolina just a case of the company wanting to be assured that there would be less union activity, and thus less chance that strikes would delay the production of the 787’s? Or was it done to weaken the power of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, the union representing 25,000 Boeing workers?