Rep. Ann Wagner (R-2) after voting to persist in the GOP government shutdown experiment yesterday:

Our message has been pretty consistent: We want to keep this government open. We want to find a solution for the people we represent and for America. It’s hard to do that when the Senate won’t come to work.

In the same vein Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-3) is upset that the Democrats won’t give in and let the GOP do an end-run around all that democratic, majority rules sort of nonsense when it comes to Obamacare, or, as he puts it, “put aside partisan politics and do the right thing for hard-working families and pass this legislation [i.e., the House’s delay-Obamacare-for-as-long-as-possible budgetary CR] as soon as possible.”

Michael Tomasky paraphrases Richard Pryor on why these representative members of the GOP House can now legitimately be considered to be part of a  terrorist organization:

Back in the late 1970s, Richard Pryor had a routine where he gave a rundown on the various factions he’d encountered inside prison. There were the black Muslims, he said. They were fairly rough customers. Then there were the Double Muslims. The Double Muslims, he said, “can’t wait to get to Allah, and they wanna take a bunch of muthafukkas with them.”

Can  you uess who the Double Muslims are in today’s GOP party? Another part of Tomasky’s GOP-as-terrorists argument aptly cuts through the GOP’s – in this case Luetkemeyer’s and Wagner’s – laughable efforts to escape responsibility for their irresponsible willingness to pull the pin on the grenade as long as they take lots of other, mostly innocent folks with them:

… The complete psychological profile of this GOP also must reference the totalitarian mind. Here I refer to the common totalitarian tactic of accusing the enemy of doing exactly what the totalitarian himself is doing. Every totalitarian dictator from Stalin on down has employed this tactic regularly. There’s no surer way to get away with criminality than to accuse your political opponents of exactly the criminality that you are committing, to get the people looking the other way.

And so of course John Boehner said over the weekend that the Senate, if it fails to accept the House’s terms, “will be deliberately bringing the nation to the brink of a government shutdown for the sake of raising taxes on seniors’ pacemakers and children’s hearing aids.” And of course whip Kevin McCarthy said, “We will not shut the government down.” And of course Sen. Rand Paul said: “We are the party that’s willing to compromise. They are the party that says, no way, we’re not touching Obamacare.”

You don’t even need to have read Orwell to know these are quasi-totalitarian statements that depend on obfuscation, rely on the gullibility of the listening public. The obfuscators all know very well that most Americans won’t stop to realize that their position is a scandal to begin with. They’re trying to undo a law that was duly passed and then upheld by the Supreme Court, as if that were normal in American politics, as if it should be considered an acceptable tactic on its face. And they know that … some Americans (I don’t think most, in this case) will stupidly and dismissively assign equal blame to both sides.

Oh well, at least we can console ourselves with the knowledge that the ever-refined Ann Wagner is “gratified” that the GOP leadership capitulated without a fight to the constantly expanding crazy wing of the party. I’m sure some of the lower-rung federal workers who’ll be hitting the food pantries because they won’t be getting a paycheck will be equally gratified that their suffering, along with that of others who will be sacrificed to this particular piece of GOP hubris, is bringing such peace of mind to GOP Rep. Wagner.

Yesterday, at the Missouri Ethics Commission:

C031159 09/29/2013 MISSOURIANS FOR KOSTER Dollar, Burns, & Becker, LC 1100 Main Street Suite 2600 Kansas City MO 64105 9/27/2013 $25,000.00

C031159 09/29/2013 MISSOURIANS FOR KOSTER Bridgeway Health Solutions Arizona, LLC 7711 Carondelet Suite 800 Saint Louis MO 63105 9/27/2013 $10,000.00

This is all going to add up quite nicely on that quarterly campaign finance report.

Previously:

Campaign Finance: hoist a few brews (September 24, 2013)

Campaign Finance: one of these things is not like the other (September 27, 2013)

From Rep. Billy Long’s (R-7) statement justifying a vote for a budgetary continuing resolution that seeks to delay Obamacare for a year, a vote that guarantees a government shutdown:

“Our military men and women put their lives on the line to protect our country and freedoms.  We owe it to them and their families to ensure they continue to receive their paychecks in the event of a government shutdown.”

Somebody needs to break it to Billy that he’s had two opportunities within the last week to ensure that our military men and women get what’s due to them, and he bungled both for no reason other than to make a stink about a duly enacted law that he and a few of his friends don’t like.

Maybe Billy doesn’t understand that votes have consequences and that this particular vote might very well create difficulties for lots of Americans, including the military members that he’s so worried about. This supposition may be correct since he doesn’t seem to understand that elections, such as the two that brought Barack Obama to the White House and then retained him in the presidency, should have meaningful consequences.

Or alternatively, maybe Billy just doesn’t like democracy. That’s right, democracy. The will of the people. Which is what 65 million Americans spelled out clearly last fall when they voted for the man who gave us Obamacare. Further, many of us who exercised our democratic perogative last November are also part of the ca. 69% of Americans who think Billy and his GOP pals should give the anti-Obamacare tantrums a rest. How democratic is it to thwart the will of the people?

The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) regional convention was held yesterday (Sept. 28) in St. Charles, Missouri, just outside of St. Louis. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch report, the main activity at this conference was not a measured consideration of conservative policy ideas, but rather railing at the dreaded liberals and plotting the rightwing battle strategy. The invective seems to have run high. One of the organizers of the conference, though, held forth on the liberal decadence of contemporary Americans in a way that points out all too clearly one of the main failures of conservative ideology, which is its lack of an accurate historical compass:

“Conservatives are angry,” Al Cardenas, chairman of the American Conservative Union, told the gathering. “We’re witnessing the first generation of Americans who, instead of asking what they can do for America, are far too eager to accept liberal platitudes about what America can do for them.”

Liberal platitudes? That’s rich coming from characters who like to beat drums, tootle on fifes and refer to themselves exclusively as “we the people.” Where I come from, folks are pretty sure that government by and of the people means government for the people – we know our Constitution just as well as any conservative and we know what government “for the people” entails. We know that in the first sentence of the Constitution, “we the people” set government the task of securing the “general welfare.”

Nor is the current generation the first to believe that securing the general welfare, making life better for Americans, is one of the most important tasks of government. We know that we are part of a proud tradition that views government as responsible, first of all, for the needs of its citizens.    

My generation, born in the 1940s, was the beneficiary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and of Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society,” which brought us Medicare, The Office of Economic Opportunity, The National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities, The Wilderness Protection Act, and extensive consumer protection regulations, as well as a “War on Poverty” that was, despite rightwing claims to the contrary, measurably successful in improving the lives of many Americans.

My mother’s generation, born in the 1920s, was  saved from the horrors of the Great Depression by the many government programs of the New Deal – in my mother’s case, literally saved from childhood starvation thanks to a government helping hand. And later, Social Security, one of the many products of Franklin Roosevelt’s brain trust, insured her a secure old age – as it does for me.

My father’s generation, born in the first decade of the twentieth century, participated in the Progressive Movement that saw the expansion of public education, government regulation of business to insure fair practices, electoral reform that targeted the corruption of the Gilded Age pols, income taxes to insure that the obscenely wealthy capitalists of the era paid their fair share, along with the expansion of labor unions.  

Liberals and Progressives know that the work of insuring the general welfare is an important part of government. That’s why we elected a President who promised to reform a moribund, “free market” health care system that served fewer and fewer people at greater and greater expense. We know from sad experience that we can’t leave our welfare to the workings of a blind, free market whose ascendency still animates rightwing wet dreams. From the Gilded Age to the Bush recession, our history tells us that the radical conservative prescription does not work.  

Sadly, Mr. Cardenas and his angry conservatives would like to take us back to the bad old days: no taxes, no regulations, massive financial inequality, horrendous working conditions, a government that exists only to serve the needs of a wealthy elite. They claim to be worried about a culture of dependency. Cut food stamps, they say, but hand out agricultural subsidies to rich farmers and Big Oil; cut cancer research, but throw tax “incentives” at corporations. Mr. Cardenas is right; there are Americans who expect government handouts – and you’ll find them writing the checks that support the political aspirations of many of the politicians who attend CPAC.

I would say to Mr. Cardenas that liberals are angry too. We’re more than angry; we are sick-at-heart that in the light of our history there are still people in this country willing to stand with Al Cardenas and his cohorts and say I’ve got mine, the rest of you chumps can go to hell.

Cross-posted to the DailyKos.

We’re just not quite sure what it is. Then again, neither are they.

Missouri’s Attorney General Chris Koster is the lead signatory  of a letter signed by 47 AGs in other states that asks Congress to make a small change – two words – in a federal statute that exempts online services such as Backpage.com from any liability for the material posted on their sites. This provision of the 1996 law have been called into question in the wake of recent court rulings holding that state efforts to target online ads that offer minors for sex conflict with the federal law. According to Koster the changes are necessary because when:

… corporations are knowingly generating revenue from what is widely or universally viewed as criminal conduct, the (federal law) should not stand as a shield for corporate revenues.

Koster and his AG pals are on the side of God and family values here, right? Who could fault them for going after human trafficking, particularly when it involves minors? Republicans who, publicly at least, asiduously curry favor with the sexually repressive religious right ought to really like this initiative. If the fact that Democrats like Koster are behind it is a downer for the more avidly partisan of the GOPers, we could at least expect them to hold their peace on the topic.

Well, if that is what you think, you’d be wrong. To start with, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has the AGs’ initiative in their sights. Add in lots of the state-level GOPers who are well-compensated ALEC groupies and you’ve got a good picture of who Koster and his colleagues are up against. These folks are already preparing their counter offensive:

The [ALEC] task force drafted a resolution for adoption by state legislators urging Congress to reject the attorneys general’s request. It could be ratified by the association’s executive board as soon as October.

It’ll be interesting to see if the strongly ALEC-attuned GOPers in the Missouri legislature brings this model resolution or something similar to the floor next session. If they do, don’t say I didn’t warn you it was coming.

What is it that ALEC and its minions object to about efforts to protect sexually exploited children? Most obviously, of course, ALEC is notable for its resentment of any government intrusion into corporate mores unless it takes the form of taxpayer subsidies, tax credits, etc. The specific objections in this case are that regulating the sex ads would pssibly be ineffective, and would impose a unnecessary burden on businesses because it could “force startup companies to keep track of thousands of specific state laws and could lead to government intrusion into other Internet areas.” This, in turn, ALEC claims, would stifle investment in Internet businesses and slow growth in a developing economic sector.

First of all, thousands of state laws? Seems like an awful lot of legislation on one topic – human trafficking – to come out of fifty states. And do you think folks who might turn a profit on an online business wouldn’t invest because the owners might have to do due diligence in regard to relevant regulations? Don’t businesses that function across state lines have to do this type of thing all the time? It does seem credible that folks might not be inclined to invest in operations that derive profit from what Koster described as “criminal conduct” if it put them in the cross-hairs of the law, but isn’t that as it should be? It all seems a little far-fetched to me. But that’s just the way I think. Who knows.

What I really wonder about is how GOP legislators who go along with ALEC on this issue are going to square support for tools that assist in the sexual exploitation of minors with their insistence on trying to regulate women’s reproductive health down to the nth degree, or their rabidly moralistic response to issues of LGBT equality. If they are so worried about female promiscuity and gay sex how can they give the okay to abuse kids in the name of the free market? Will their family values base understand?  

From Representative Vicky Hartzler’s (r) congressional web site:

View From the Capitol – Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler’s Newsletter for the Week of September 23-27, 2013

Good Day,

As of this writing, the next phase of the ObamaCare health care takeover is set to take effect on October 1st, with the launch of the new health insurance exchanges for individuals.

It has been more than three and a half years since ObamaCare was jammed through Congress, and Americans are painfully learning more about the hostile takeover of the best health care system in the world. Although multiple reports of computer glitches and pricing uncertainties with the exchanges have surfaced, the Obama Administration has decided to march forward, anyway. The Administration has buckled due to criticism from major companies and has ordered a one year delay for the employer mandate, But it has refused to grant any relief for average Americans who are now forced to comply with a law that is confusing, at best, and unworkable, at worst.

ObamaCare is an obstacle to the growth of small businesses as employers are keeping payrolls under 50 employees to avoid expensive compliance requirements that are triggered when 50 or more workers are employed. The unintended consequence is that businesses considering expanding have put those plans on hold. Additionally, employers are cutting hours to avoid ObamaCare’s 30-hour full time trigger that forces employers to provide government approved health insurance or face heavy fines. This is an unacceptable recipe for economic turmoil.

It’s bad enough that this law is not ready for prime time; if left intact, over the next decade, ObamaCare will impose at least $500 billion in new taxes on the American people. Clearly, the Affordable Care Act is neither affordable nor caring. The people of Missouri’s 4th District deserve better….

[….]

Oh, please. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, to quote an American icon.

“…the next phase of the ObamaCare health care takeover is set to take effect…”

“…the hostile takeover of the best health care system in the world…”

[….]

OBAMACARE IS A FEDERAL TAKEOVER OF HEALTH INSURANCE. Let’s be blunt. The word for that is “lie.” The main thing the law does is deliver millions of new customers to the private insurance industry. Indeed, a significant portion of the unhappiness with Obamacare comes from liberals who believe it is not nearly federal enough: that the menu of insurance choices should have included a robust public option, or that Medicare should have been expanded into a form of universal coverage.

Under the law, to be sure, insurance will be governed by new regulations, and supported by new subsidies. This is not the law Ayn Rand would have written. But the share of health care spending that comes from the federal government is expected to rise only modestly, to nearly 50 percent in 2021, and much of that is due not to Obamacare but to baby boomers joining Medicare.

This is a “federal takeover” only in the crazy world where Barack Obama is a “socialist.”

[….]

“…ObamaCare is an obstacle to the growth of small businesses as employers are keeping payrolls under 50 employees to avoid expensive compliance requirements that are triggered when 50 or more workers are employed. The unintended consequence is that businesses considering expanding have put those plans on hold. Additionally, employers are cutting hours to avoid ObamaCare’s 30-hour full time trigger that forces employers to provide government approved health insurance or face heavy fines. This is an unacceptable recipe for economic turmoil…”

[….]

10. Under Obamacare, “75 percent of small businesses now say they are going to be forced to either fire workers or cut their hours.” Pants on Fire.

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., July 25, 2013 in a FoxNews.com op-ed

Suggestions that business are laying off workers because of the health care law have so far proven to be largely unfounded. Most small businesses — those with fewer than 50 employees — do not have to provide health insurance to their employees. (In fact, some very small businesses with fewer than 25 employees may qualify for tax credits under the law.) The claim here that 75 percent of small business were reducing their workforce was based on a misreading of a study from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The study actually found that less than 10 percent of small businesses said they will be forced to reduce their workforce or cut hours. We rated the claim Pants on Fire.

[….]

[emphasis added]

“…It’s bad enough that this law is not ready for prime time; if left intact, over the next decade, ObamaCare will impose at least $500 billion in new taxes on the American people. Clearly, the Affordable Care Act is neither affordable nor caring….”

11 facts about the Affordable Care Act

By Ezra Klein, Published: June 24, 2012 at 6:25 pm

[….]

1. By 2022, the Congressional Budget Office estimates (pdf) the Affordable Care Act will have extended coverage to 33 million Americans who would otherwise be uninsured.

[….]

9. The law is expected to spend a bit over $1 trillion in the next 10 years. The law’s spending cuts — many of which fall on Medicare — and tax increases are expected to either save or raise a bit more than that, which is why the Congressional Budget Office estimates that it will slightly reduce the deficit. (There’s been some confusion on this point lately, but no, the CBO has not changed its mind about this.) As time goes on, the savings are projected to grow more quickly than the spending, and CBO expects that the law will cut the deficit by around a trillion dollars in its second decade.

[….]

[emphasis added]

Interestingly, Representative Hartzler (r) neglects to mention the cost shift of the uninsured to the insured in the present “best health care system in the world”.

Because leaving thirty-three million Americans without access to affordable and timely health care is the caring republican alternative.

Cut the deficit by a trillion dollars, eh. We can afford that.

“…The people of Missouri’s 4th District deserve better…”

Yes, we do. Just not in the way Representative Vicky Hartzler (r) thinks.

Today GOP Senator Roy Blunt voted to shutdown the government. He’s made noises in the past that indicated he knew just how wrong and stupid such an event would be. But he did it anyway. Last Wednesday I wrote about Blunt’s effort to confuse us with his fancy dancing around the issues:

No matter what, though, don’t let him sell you any of his equivocating mumbo-jumbo; when push comes to shove he will have told us by means of his vote on the Continuing Resolution whether or not he’s decided that, discretion being the better part of valor, it behoves him to kiss the ring on Rush Limbaugh’s hand and cede the Republican Party to big, bad Ted Cruz.

So now we know what it means to be Republican in this day and age and suffice it to say it isn’t pretty. Duane Graham of The Erstwhile Conservative understands just why Blunt migrated from the dark side to the pitch-black GOP netherworld:

… even though Democrats prevailed on the vote, I’m sure that all the soldier-loving, Social Security-sucking seniors in Missouri who put Blunt in office are as happy as can be that he voted with 43 other Republicans, many with grossly undeserved reputations for “reasonableness,” to show the world that the United States government is just one Republican-friendly election away from Tea Party disaster.

Disgust at Blunt’s craven behavior aside, this whole situation has lots of potential to burn Republicans badly – no matter how they attempt to squirm and wiggle their way out of the trap they have built for themselves. As Michael Tomasky aptly puts it:

You can only set so many houses on fire before people finally figure out that this isn’t happening by accident and you must be an arsonist. The GOP is now flirting with that moment. It can’t come soon enough.

Blunt seems to have some primitive awareness that something really, really bad could be waiting at the end of the current GOP trail, which could be why, although he has conceded the budget fights to the Cruzians in his party, he has refused to endorse the ugly suggestion of Missouri’s fully insured (at taxpayer expense) Lieutenant Governor, Peter Kinder, that uninsured Missourians boycott the Obamacare exchanges. Blunt, unlike Kinder, is not a total idiot and I am guessing that he’s figured out that if too many innocent bystanders get burned in the GOP Götterdämmerung, even agile corporatist equivocators like himself might go up in smoke come election time.

Today, at the Missouri Ethics Commission:

C111150 09/27/2013 FRIENDS OF TOM SCHWEICH Lewis & Clark Ozarks Mountain Forum 2974 East Battlefield Springfield MO 65804 9/27/2013 $25,000.00

[emphasis added]

C031159 09/27/2013 MISSOURIANS FOR KOSTER Centene Management Company, LLC 7711 Carondelet Avenue Saint Louis MO 63105 9/26/2013 $10,000.00

C031159 09/27/2013 MISSOURIANS FOR KOSTER August A Busch III 1 Mid Rivers Mall Drive Suite 210 Saint Peters MO 63376 Retired Retired 9/26/2013 $10,000.00

C031159 09/27/2013 MISSOURIANS FOR KOSTER Clayco 2199 Innerbelt Business Center Drive Saint Louis MO 63114 9/26/2013 $25,000.00

C031159 09/27/2013 MISSOURIANS FOR KOSTER Gephardt Group Government Affairs, LLC 1101 K Street, NW Suite 310 Washington DC 20005 9/26/2013 $10,000.00

C031159 09/27/2013 MISSOURIANS FOR KOSTER Integrated Mental Health Services 7711 Carondelet Avenue Suite 800 Saint Louis MO 63105 9/26/2013 $7,500.00

C031159 09/27/2013 MISSOURIANS FOR KOSTER Pyramid Home Health Services PO Box 1927 Cape Girardeau MO 63702 9/26/2013 $25,000.00

[emphasis added]

Well, someone is having a good fundraising day.

Consider this, today:

C031159 09/27/2013 MISSOURIANS FOR KOSTER August A Busch III 1 Mid Rivers Mall Drive Suite 210 Saint Peters MO 63376 Retired Retired 9/26/2013 $10,000.00

And this, on Tuesday:

C111150 09/24/2013 FRIENDS OF TOM SCHWEICH August A Busch III One Midrivers Mall Dr. Ste 210 St Peters MO 63376 Retired 9/23/2013 $10,000.00

Hedging a bet? Just asking.

Previously:

Campaign Finance: hoist a few brews (September 24, 2013)