By Kevin D. Korenthal

From Big Labor to the Environmental lobby, the American economy has been bled to the point of perpetual anemia for the better part of the last 100 years. These powerful interest groups account for a great deal of the reason that pretty much nothing gets done in Congress anymore and are the main reason that the U.S. economy, having benefited from tax cuts in 2002 and 2003, is now on a collision course with recession.

Often times the President is blamed or credited with the health of the economy. But as the influence of special interest groups has risen in the last 30 years or so, the President's ability to effect policies that swing the economy one way or the other has been blunted. A great example of a special interest group having a major and long-term role in effecting the health of the economy is Big Labor. Though often (and rightly) credited with helping shape the course of not only American, but world rights and wages for workers, today, organized labor plays a very unhelpful role in the American economy.

The single most heavily unionized sector of the U.S. economy is manufacturing. Going back to the 1950's America led the world in manufacturing abilities -- due in great part to the facilities that came online as a result of the 2nd World War - but today our output in this area is a fraction of what it used to be. It is not that America has less access to raw materials - America is still a leader in steel and petroleum-based polymers (plastics to those of you outside of the manufacturing industry). The massive decrease in U.S. domestic manufacturing is also not a result of a lack of domestic product development. With perhaps the single exception of the automobile industry, America has actually increased in recent years the share of globally distributed products that are designed here.

For a decade, the media has covered the exodus of U.S. manufacturers from the shores of the U.S to places like Mexico, Taiwan and China. Since the beginning of his administration, President Bush has been blamed for much of this outsourcing to other nations. The problem with that explanation -- beyond the fact that it is merely unsubstantiated rhetoric - is that the true villain, the real job killer in the U.S. manufacturing sector has been and continues to be Big Labor and the world environmental movement.

Though their goals are totally different, Big Labor and the Enviro-lobby have together played the greatest role in outsourcing the U.S. manufacturing base.

Big Labor has fought since the beginning of modern government to literally control how much workers make and how those wages are reinvested in furthering the goals of the union. The idea of collective bargaining - the act of a central representative force for the workers - is the result of that endeavor. Big Labor has managed over the course of decades to 'collective bargain' U.S. jobs right out of the country.

No greater an example can be made of this than the U.S. auto industry. Once the gold standard for engineering and innovation, today the big 3 auto makers have had to increasingly divert funds for development of new vehicle technologies into picking up the slack that collective bargaining has created in worker payrolls. While other countries successfully began auto industries of their own - free of unions - U.S. automakers were held captive to the demands of Big Labor. So payrolls rose, engineering excellence decreased and BAM! The next thing you know, Japan is the world leader in not only cost effective vehicle manufacturing, but in quality as well. Today, most people will agree that the life expectancy and overall performance of U.S. designed cars is inferior to that of other nations. I recall a time when Acura & Hyundai were first shipping cars to the U.S. People made a lot of jokes at the expense of these foreign manufacturers. But behind the chuckles there was real evidence - provided by Nissan and Toyota namely - that predicted those 2 makes would dominate the luxury sub-luxury categories in 2008.

Environmentalists, like unions once played a productive and necessary role in the development of America. The earliest environmental laws rolled back the growing problems of smog and water pollution. Unfortunately, having solved those problems, the environmental movement went onto bigger targets like saving the planet. Today what we are left with is government bureaucracy, inspired and implemented by liberals that are disgusted by America's flagrant and unadulterated consumption of fossil fuels. But for all of the decades that environmentalists have fought the fossil fuel establishment, very little thought has gone into what we can utilize to replace it. As environmentalists began successfully cutting off oil exploration and drilling here in the U.S., state sponsors of terrorism were smiling all the way to the bank. The enviros probably cheered every time an oil well was shut down or a proposed site was listed as off limits to drilling, but all they succeeded in doing in the long run was outsourcing our energy needs to other countries. And these countries were all too happy for the business. Places like Saudi Arabia and Iran would be desolate and virtually uninhabited if it had not been for America's energy needs.

All of this has put Mullahs and Kings in charge of America's energy policy. In order to become the "green nation" that so many liberals fantasize about, America must put an end to the importation of foreign oil. We must also begin designing and building a massive network of alternative energy sources. We'll need nuclear power plants to power our cities wind and solar farms to will also help but we'll also need Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) and other yet thought of technologies to power our transportation. Hydro-electric and the harnessing of ocean tides will also play a role. But as it turns out, both Big Labor and the Enviro-lobby are standing in the way of mass development and implementation of these technologies as well. There are as many laws preventing and slowing down solar or wind farms as there are preventing oil wells. Furthermore, Big Labor under the pretense of protecting the environment has perverted environmental laws in order to insure that union workers are the only workers that get to build these massive projects. Through environmental extortion, also known as "Greenmail", unions threaten to hold up energy-related construction projects until the authorizing entity signs a union-only Project Labor Agreement.

So now that we have identified the groups that are responsible for the mess we are in we must now answer the question of who - among the two parties that will compete for your vote on November 4th - is going to be able to get us out of this mess. Well, I'm here to tell you bluntly that only one party has the history and policies to do just that.

Democrats, in case you were unaware, are the party most closely aligned and beholden to both Big Labor and the Enviro-lobby. Well yeah you may say but the Republicans are beholden to "Big Business". That may very well be true, but Republicans are also beholden to "Small Business" which is the precise industry we should be calling on to development the technology and build the infrastructure necessary to one day end America's dependence on fossil fuels. And the first step in the plan to accomplish that is to get America weaned off the importation of oil. The plan to do that is simple. America needs to call upon its unparalleled stock of ingenuity and know-how to locate and drill for oil in such a way as not to harm the environment. All of the other forms of energy, nuclear, wind, tide and solar will never become the major sources of energy if America keeps importing oil from dangerous countries. And as much as it may not be pleasant to hear it, these alternative forms of energy are nowhere near the development point to be able to meet our energy needs today.