Speaker’s company name registered for parody web site.
Tonight at the Republican National Convention, small business owner and Delaware Lt. Governor candidate Sher Valenzuela will address the crowd.
The theme of the day is “We Built It”, playing off of Barack Obama’s remarks about how the government plays a role in society.
Valenzuela helped build her business First State Manufacturing into a successful small business.
The company proudly displays its accomplishments at FirstStateMFG.com. I can understand the domain name; it’s much shorter to type than spelling out ‘manufacturing’.
But there’s a problem. No one at the company thought to go ahead and register the long version FirstStateManufacturing.com. And with Valenzuela taking center stage on “we built it” day, someone has registered the domain name to create a parody site.
As it turns out, First State Manufacturing has received quite a bit of help from Uncle Sam, and the parody site makes light of that.
When I google “First State Manufacturing”, the real web site shows up first and the parody second.
I’m not sure if Valenzuela could have prevented a parody site from going up even if her company owned the domain name. There are plenty of possible variations and top level domains. But it sure made her an easy target.
(Hat tip: Bill Sweetman.)
DR.DOMAIN says
Hilarious…but then often the typical “story” of those who claim to be “free market” / “up by the boot straps” entrepreneurs.One usually does’nt have to dig deep to find that they were beneficiaries of some government handout.
S says
I agree, accepting grant money is stupid, but $30K is a few government toilet seats. The SBA Loans that total 3 million are guarantees by the government. The actual money is loaned by your local or national banks, the government is basically acting as a co-signer only. Also, the government contracts are probably a small portion of the companies overall revenue on an annual basis. If they bid on the contract and won fairly there shouldn’t be anything wrong with that and it isn’t a government handout or welfare. Like most political positions there is a grain of truth, but a ton of spin to make their point. Makes you wonder who paid for all the research Mr. Sweetman used on the website? I’m assuming it’s all accurate, so it must have taken some time and money.
Bill Sweetman says
@ “S”
I had zero involvement in this parody Website. I can’t even vote in the US! (I am Canadian.) I merely tipped Andrew off about this funny domain SNAFU.
S says
Sorry Bill. I should have verified it first!
Jeremy Leader says
@ “S”, the point of the parody isn’t that Valenzuela was wrong to accept all the various grants, guarantees, and assistance she could find, it’s to point out the absurdity of her then proclaiming “I built it myself”, and campaigning to end similar government assistance to other small businesses.