Paladino: Goin' All NIMBY on Hydrofracking

When asked to weigh in on whether he supports hydraulic fracturing (a controversial method of extracting natural gas from below the earth's surface), New York candidate for governor Carl Paladino said recently, "Not necessarily in the watershed area for New York City but certainly to the west of it."
 
He'd like to wait until more risk-assessment data come in before giving the go-ahead for fracking where it could harm lots of folks. "We don't want to take any risks in the watershed area [of New York City]," he said.

Looks like Paladino is already itchin' to leave behind his Buffalo roots.

The obvious and inhumane logic at work here is that the lives and well being of rural and suburban residents matter less than the lives of those who live on the isle of dollars. There may be nothing fallacious about his thinking. More likely, it's the kind of unapologetic mercantile reasoning that can dismiss loss of life, or quality of life, as a negative externality to be made up elsewhere on the ledger.

Pot Calls Kettle Black

This is too easy. Sarah Palin says that Pres. Obama does not "grasp the complexity" of the oil spill and its consequences. It's too bad the irony will be lost on SP.

Hasty Generalization

It begins! The hearings haven't even commenced, and--surprise, surprise--Republicans have gone fishing for something slimy on Elena Kagan. What's biting? Why, thee ol' military recruiter story, of course. Unfortunately for those who oppose her nomination, Kagan did permit military recruiters to access students--even when doing so violated both Harvard's anti-discrimination policies and her own abhorrence of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

Why did she cave to the military? Because Congress would have denied the school funding if she didn't. From Slate's Emily Bazelon:

Unless the law school gave the military "equal" access, Congress was prepared to deny the university as a whole $328 million in federal funds. With that much at stake, it wasn't much of a contest. In 2002, Kagan's predecessor as dean, Robert Clark, let the recruiters into the law school's placement office. Kagan did the same thing when she took over in 2003. 

But details are the casualty of partisan thinking.

How to Spot the Either/Or Fallacy

The Either/Or Fallacy: Watch out for arguers who misrepresent their opponent’s ideas. This is dirty politics at its best. Click here for details.

Either/Or Fallacy

In his CPAC speech over the weekend, former Speaker Newt Gingrich [min. 25] used the Either/Or Fallacy to make the claim that you are either fighting to quickly fire teachers who are accused of wrongdoing, or you must not want to help poor children. 

Everybody who believes that we’re better off spending $50 million on people who can’t teach in order to keep them sitting so the union’s happy… they’re on one side. Everybody who believes that $50 million spent in poor neighborhoods to help poor children learn how to read and write so they can go to college instead of prison, they’re on this side.

 

Straw Man Fallacy

Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn) uses the Straw Man Fallacy to oversimplify and misrepresent President Barack Obama's motivation for funding federal programs. See Politico's take.

This is intending to fail.