Saturday November 03, 2012

BULLSHITTING THE BULLSHITERS. At National Review, Jillian Kay Melchior complains that Sam Brownback's gone RINO. How?

Late last week, Kansas’s staunchly free-market governor, Sam Brownback, gave his approval to a flagrantly partisan, protectionist proposal from Democrats in the state Legislature. It’s bad policy — and an unfortunate aberration for a governor who’s been a champ for fiscal conservatism.

Last Thursday, Kansas’s Democratic leaders, the legislative minority, proposed new “buy American” legislation that would force state agencies to buy American-made products, exempting them only if there’s a domestic shortage or if it would raise project costs by more than 25 percent.

Requiring government -- not private citizens, but government -- to buy American is socialism or something, and Melchior doesn't bother to explain why, instead citing authority:

A Buy America provision “essentially increases costs for Kansans and for taxpayers, at least potentially, as opposed to promoting the best value,” said James Franko, communications director for the non-partisan Kansas Policy Institute.

The "non-partisan" Kansas Policy Institute! From SourceWatch:

The Kansas Policy Institute (KPI) is a "free market" think tank, one of many listed as members of the State Policy Network (SPN). Both KPI and SPN are members of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)... KPI was founded in 1996 as the Kansas Public Policy Institute and was later called the Flint Hills Center for Public Policy before receiving its current name. Kansas' Flint Hills also lent their name to the Koch brothers' Flint Hills Resources, a subsidiary of Koch Industries.

They also founded the Kansas Reporter, one in a chain of connected rightwing propaganda mills.

You may be moved to wonder, "National Review's a safe zone, why is Melchior misrepresenting KPI to her own people?" Could be she's just reading off a sheet they put in front of her. Also, it may be that even some wingnuts might recoil at the idea that buying American is treason to one's corporate masters -- which might remind them, to their horror, that their current Presidential champion is pretty much running on that as a platform.

Oh, and at the same time Romney's accusing Obama of the same thing -- thereby moving news about his own offshore activities off the front page. I never said it wasn't clever.