Who will be the president’s next straw man?

The reliance on strawman arguments to answer questions is a common practice for this administration.

He said that the Republicans were all about doing nothing on the economy when it came to the stimulus when every Republican in the Senate voted for a republican alternative stimulus plan that according to barack Obama’s own model created twice the jobs as half the price.

The GOP Conferance has figured this out and is having some fun with it.  

GOP Conference:

Even the Washington Post has reported on the President’s use of straw man tactics to scare away criticisms of his policies.  Despite the fact Republicans have repeatedly offered better solutions:

$786 billion so-called stimulus

President’s Straw Man
“There seem to be a lot of folks… who just believe that we should do nothing.” (Washington Post, 2/11/2009)

Republican Better Solution
Republicans offered an alternative that created twice the jobs at half the cost compared to the President’s plan. (republicanleader.house.gov)
 
$410 billion omnibus loaded with wasteful spending

President’s Straw Man
“Opposition is always easy. Saying no to something is easy.” (Washington Post, 3/12/2009)

Republican Better Solution
Republicans called for a resolution that would have checked the growth of government spending and eliminated thousands of wasteful earmarks. (www.gop.gov)
 
A budget proposal that spends, taxes, and borrows too much

President’s Straw Man
“…they’ve [Republican Party] just decided ‘we’re going to be against whatever the other side is for.'” (Louisville Courier-Journal, 3/24/2009)

Republican Better Solution
Republicans call for a budget that protects jobs, lowers taxes, provides universal access to affordable health care, and ends taxpayer bailouts. (www.gop.gov)

A case study in prosecutor abuse.

Prosecutor Abuse. It is a real problem. The Duke rape case, the Ted Stevens Trial, the Randy Weaver trial, Tom Delay, Kay Baily Hutchinson, Martha Stewart, Scooter Libby and believe it or not, even the OJ trial (where the police tried to help the case along…) and countless others are examples.

Getting a big conviction is such a political goal for some police and prosecutors that the public is endangered. We need laws that help protect people from this. We need “looser pays” when the government initiates a lawsuit or criminal action and loses. As this study points out, citizens who do not have the hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs to defend against a government prosecution often take plea deals to avoid long sentences….all because they cannot afford to defend themselves. And here is the dirty little secret, far too many public defenders advise their innocent “clients” to accept a plea deal when the case for the defense is very winnable and many attorney’s and victims of these prosecutions have communicated that reality.

The Heritage Foundation has a case study in “over criminalization” where overzealous government prosecutors charged an art professor with bio-terrorism in the press, took his money, ransacked his home, stole his research and abused him with reckless zeal while admitting the whole time that his actions were harmless.

Here is the last paragraph of the study:

In short, prosecutors still wield the unbridled discretion to bring criminal charges against almost any individual, whether or not he or she has done anything typically regarded as a crime. Most of these defendants, like Dr. Ferrell, accept plea bargains to avoid the risk of lengthy sentences. A few, like Kurtz, have the resources and stamina to fight the charges, at great personal expense, and actually win–but they are the rare exception that proves the rule.

The study will anger you and might even bring you to tears, but it is a MUST read and it is not very long. Link HERE.

Some complain over lack of transparency at the State Department

Barack Obama promised more transparency over and over and over again in the campaign and has all but waged a war against more transparency in practice as we have been reporting in the following five links (1, 2, 3, 4, 5,).

The latest in this lack of transparency comes from the State Department.

Politico:

The incident’s aftermath was one in a series that roiled the State Department press corps as it adjusts to a new administration whose tendencies – in this one area – are more restrictive than its predecessors. This may not be by accident: One government official said State and the White House have been discussing reducing the amount of information the State Department releases about the secretary’s words and meetings, which by long tradition is more expansive than what’s released by some other agencies.

Reporters who deal with the State Department wouldn’t voice their complaints on the record. Those who spoke on background said they had enjoyed what they saw as excellent access to Clinton during a previous trip to Asia.

But the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler let some of the dissatisfaction show on his blog during the trip to Europe and the Middle East.

He reported from Sharm el-Sheikh that Clinton was the first secretary of state in seven years not to brief reporters at the beginning of a trip. “We got off the plane, wordless. This was a big deal for the press corps,” he wrote.

Kessler declined to comment and referred to his blog items, but others on the trip said they blamed Reines, who remains the press corps’ main point of informal contact for Clinton, for the tightening of information and access.

This is not a huge surprise since the gaffes and mistakes from the State Department in regards to Russia, Poland, and the insulting treatment that the British PM and delegation received have left the administration trying to lessen the PR damage coming from the State Department, but it violates this campaign promise yet again and is worthy of note.

U.S. Government stops buying American made condoms. 300 out of work. – A lesson in basic economics.

Capital and money goes where it is treated well and this is as good of an example of this simple economic lesson the left fails to understand as any.

China sells the condom for 2 cents while we have to sell if at 5 cents. So I pose this question to the anti-business, “punish the rich (and by rich they mean the producer” left. If this company didn’t have to pay a whopping 35% corporate income tax, not to mention the cost of excessive regulations, how much could they sell the condoms for? Three cents maybe… and the government would get some of that money back in tax revenue.

The left often denies that raising tax rates results in lower government revenue. Well here is a company and 300 citizens that the government wont be getting a dime from and will likely now need government assistance.

China has no capital gains tax, ours is 20% and you wonder why everything seems to be made over there and we have growing unemployment. Think about it.

Kansas City Star:

At a time when the federal government is spending billions of stimulus dollars to stem the tide of U.S. layoffs, should that same government put even more Americans out of work by buying cheaper foreign products?

In this case, Chinese condoms.

That’s the dilemma for the folks at the U.S. Agency for International Development, which has distributed an estimated 10 billion U.S.-made AIDS-preventing condoms in poor countries around the world.

But not anymore.

In a move expected to cost 300 American jobs, the government is switching to cheaper off-shore condoms, including some made in China.

The switch comes despite implied assurances over the years that the agency would continue to buy American whenever possible.

“Of course, we considered how many U.S. jobs would be affected by this move,” said a USAID official who spoke on the condition that he would not be named. But he said the reasons for the change included lower prices (2 cents versus more than 5 cents for U.S.-made condoms) and the fact that Congress dropped “buy American language” in a recent appropriations bill.

How Radical Environmentalism Destroys an Oregon Town

We have some of the most fruitful forest land in the world and we are importing wood and putting our own out of work.

We have said before that “environmentalists” don’t care about the environment at all. They are anti-capitalists. This fact was proved with even more certainty given the fact that it is “environmentalists” that have opposed wind and hydro-electric power. They have even successfully opposed solar panel farms. They know that plentiful, affordable energy is the fuel of capitalism. These same groups are also perfectly happy to see Mexico and China make oil wells off our shores.