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Top Conservative Cat ‏@TeaPartyCat

After Obama renamed Mt. McKinley to Denali, House GOP votes to name a molehill Mt. McKinley to symbolize their outrage. 10:41 PM – 1 Sep 2015

Heh.

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump

So many “politically correct” fools in our country. We have to all get back to work and stop wasting time and energy on nonsense! 7:29 AM – 8 Aug 2015

Not even close.

After Mitt Romney’s humiliating defeat in 2012, many pundits explicitly or implicitly agreed with bloger Ted Frier who wrote that the GOP had deteriorated into a party of ” elderly conservative whites who year by year are a shrinking share of the national electorate.” And it’s true. How do I know? The last-ditch war over light bulbs.

As a result of legislation passed during he Bush administration, The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, incandescent light bulbs that fail to meet higher energy efficiency standards are on the way out. The new standards were phased in, first 100- and 75-watt bulbs bit the dust, and starting this month the popular 60- and 40-Watt bulbs will not be replaced on store shelves after they are sold out. Republicans have been fighting this event tooth and nail. There’s been efforts at legislation such as Rep. Jeff Duncan’s (R-S.C.) bill, H.R. 3818 which attempts to repeal the ban. And now victory of a sort – the new omnibus appropriations bill contains a rider that will defund efforts to enforce the new standards. Of course, American manufacturers have, in anticipation of the new rules, almost completely ceased manufacture of the less efficient bulbs, but, with no prospect of enforcement, such bulbs could conceivably be purchased from foreign suppliers and sold in the U.S. to the folks who just can’t let go.

Stopping the new rules, believe it or not, has been one of the GOP’s leading priorities. When it first came to my attention in 2011, I wrote:

Did you scratch your head when the GOP House, faced with a deteriorating economy, decided to concentrate their energies on light bulb standards a few weeks ago? Did this suggest nothing so much as the crankiness of some of your elderly family members who curse as they try to figure out how to circumvent car seat belts, wax furious when they can’t smoke in restaurants, and carry on about the fools who buy “five-dollar” cups of coffee? …

Yup. You know just who it is who can’t let go. Geezers. I hate to say it because I think – technically at least – I qualify as one, but most of the carpers are undoubtedly geezers. Represented by the GOP, a.k.a. Geezers Only Party.

I noted back in 2011 that there’s more to the great light bulb war than how we get our light. What’s in play is the same impulse Charles Blow was talking about when he wrote that “Republicans are trying to hold back a storm surge of demographic change with a white picket fence.” The GOP plays to a constituency filled with nostalgia for a past that is changing, desperate to hold back a future they don’t understand and fear. Is it any wonder that the future of a GOP so constrained is itself imperiled?

2nd and 3rd paragraph slightly edited for clarity, link added to 3rd paragraph.

I admit it. I like making my own end-of-the-year lists, and I like to see how my opinions line up with other list-makers. It’s silly maybe, but it can help to refine one’s perspective. So here’s my first end-of-the-year list which names the political actors and/or acts that struck me as the most absurd and/or inexcusable during 2013, hence the titular worst of the worst. (In order to balance the negativity, though, I’ll be following it with a list of the best of the best.) It goes without saying that my selections are entirely subjective and reflect my opinion only – nobody else is implicated by my judgement, although I invite anyone so inclined to take issue with my selections or offer their contrary assessments in the comments. And with that, away we go:

1. Rex Sinquefield: Sinquefield is a retired billionaire financier whose hobby is buying up Missouri state government in order to provide a staging ground for his libertarian theology. He plays a long game, lavishing tons of dollars on politicians of every stripe as long as they show even some teeny-tiny signs of sympathy for a small sliver of his goals.  What does he want long-term? Just a Missouri with all the attractions of the brutish Randian paradise for wealthy Übermenschen that excites today’s conservatives.

But hey, perverting the political process for the benefit of the rich and powerful is nothing new and, on its own, wouldn’t merit more than an honorable mention among the worst of Missouri’s recent worst. Mr. Sinquefield has been taking full advantage of the Supreme Court’s destructive endorsement of the idea that money equals speech for a long time. This year, however, plantation master Sinquefield found it necessary to crack the whip; he quickly helped launch a lawsuit to stop a campaign finance reform bill that would have reduced the decibels of his green-backed free speech to a level more in line with that enjoyed by less wealthy citizens of the state. And what does he do with this free-speech? He lies – as in his recent Forbes Magazine op-ed, an overtly counterfactual apotheosis of Kansas Governor Brownback’s tax free policies.

2. The Missouri anti-Obamacare obstructionists: And by obstructionists I mean the Republicans who control the state legislature. Thanks to these jerks, 193,000 Missourians will be out in the healthcare cold. These are the people who don’t make enough money to qualify for subsidies on the Obamacare exchanges since those in their income range were were meant to to get coverage through an extension of Medicaid eligibility, an extension that the state’s GOP, taking advantage of another gift from our conservative Supreme Court, have refused to enact. The same folks have refused to set up Obamacare exchanges, tried to hinder use of the federal exchange and pushed one dishonest story after another about the imagined perils of the law. Talk all you want about the initial failures of the Obamacrare Website or Obama’s rather tame “lie of the year,” the folks who’ve done the real damage are quite simply the politicos who are busy patting themselves on the back because they have saved Missouri’s poor from the moral hazard represented by actual health care.

3. Members of the Missouri GOP congressional delegation: These folks, many of them multi-millionaires, came home to enjoy their cushy Christmas celebrations after refusing to extend benefits for unemployed American workers. As a result, last Saturday 21,329 jobless Missourians lost the meager stipend (averaging $242) that often meant keeping food on the table. If nothing is done, 35,400 more workers will lose this cushion in the first months of 2014. The people’s Republican representatives felt free to cut benefits off even though currently there are, according to some sources, three applicants for most jobs and over 4 million long-term unemployed nationally. Missouri’s current unemployment rate is 6.1%.

4. Rep. Ann Wagner (R-2): Wagner makes it onto this list due to her emergence as one of the aspiring leaders of the GOP House membership, in which role she stood behind the recent government shutdown, welcoming the “fight” on behalf of “the American people,” while simultaneously trying to lay the blame on the Democrats who, for some inexplicable reason, wouldn’t roll over and play dead after winning a major election. This shutdown cost taxpayers $24 billion at a conservative estimate. Thanks alot, Ann. If Wagner represents the new face of the GOP, the concept needs some work.

5. Governor Jay Nixon: Nixon arguably doesn’t belong on a list filled with boneheads and charlatans – but he landed here because I expect more of him when it comes to looking out for the long-term welfare of the state as opposed to selling us out for a short-term, politically attractive “get.” I’m talking about the Boeing giveaway here. There’s plenty of evidence that massive incentives such as those offered to Boeing are bad economic policy, particularly in a state that like Missouri is already starved for revenue. It leaves a particularly bad taste when one takes into account the sort of underhanded back-room deals that seem to have been required to bring it into being. But no matter how you cut it, $3.5 billion in tax breaks is a bit much to pay in order to buy bragging rights for a handful of jobs – especially when we’re talking about jobs that were probably never going to come  here in the first place. When politicians you have no choice but to trust are influenced by corrupt, corporatist thinking about the allocation of cost and benefit, it makes it just that much harder to believe that change will ever be possible. You want to know why Democrats don’t turn out in off-year elections, why there’s an enthusiasm gap? Look no further.

6. The Greater St. Louis Labor Council: This one hurts. It hurts because it’s more evidence of the demise of labor. It’s clear that Boeing’s effort to spike a bidding war for its 777X manufacturing facility, as the Kansas City Star’s Mary Sanchez noted, is “just leverage for Boeing Co. to go after the jugular of a labor union.”  Now, I’ve always believed that what made unions work was a little thing called solidarity – and that its exercise is not defined in regional terms. Yet not only were local unions willing to undercut their brothers and sisters in Washington, but they quickly squelched Gordon King, a representative of the  local Machinists District 837, when he attempted to stand up and do what union members are supposed to do for each other. When it becomes “my workers first” and not “all workers together,” unions have truly lost the war, and the unbecoming eagerness of the local labor council to kiss up to Boeing is just one more step along the way. I understand the desperation that has brought our local labor leaders to this point, but it still hurts.

7. Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-4): No list of worsts would be complete with the stench of hypocrisy – of which Hartzler is redolent. And make no mistake, it takes chutzpah to vote to cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), part of the safety net for the poor, wile keeping sacrosanct massive agricultural subsidies for rich farmers that Hartzler and her family continue to receive. Hartzler, author of a book titled Running God’s Way that is described as “a must-read for everyone interested in serving God through political involvement,” has shown herself again and again to be unwilling to put into practice Christ’s admonition in Matthew 25:34-36 to minister to those in need, and has, instead, allied herself with the wealthy about whom Christ declared “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God” (Mark 11:25).

8. Brian Nieves: In a state legislature filled with chuckleheads and bozos, if one had to single out one supreme example of the resentment-fueled, raging white doofus, it would have to be state Senator Brian “Mad Dog” Nieves. Sharia law, Agenda 21, drones spying on farmers, gold-buggery, tentherism, you name it, if it’s crazy Nieves is for it. Add to the mix his eagerness to physically and verbally attack opponents, constituents, you name it, and you’ve got a disaster ready to happen. He’s on this year’s list, though, because he’s one of the brains (and I use the term loosely) who responded to the Sandy Hook massacre by pushing a gun bill so irresponsible that even members of his own party ultimately refused to over-ride its veto by the Governor. In his own words:

… If we, as a nation, would collectively take a few short minutes, maybe even an hour, to actually research what our Founding Fathers said, in their own words, about gun ownership and gun control, we would see that what we arbitrarily refer to as “Assault Rifles” would fit squarely with what they wanted us to have! …

Now that constitutional scholar Nieves has devoted an hour or so to researching the issue, I should probably run out and buy my assault weapon today! Then I can wave it around and act tough just like “Mad Dog.” Just in case you’re worried, there’ll be lots more fun and games ahead. And like last year, very little attention to important business.

Slightly edited for clarity.

As per Wikipedia:

Psychological projection was conceptualized by Sigmund Freud in the 1890s as a defence mechanism in which a person unconsciously rejects his or her own unacceptable attributes by ascribing them to objects or persons in the outside world.

Now for the fun. GOP state Senator Brian Nieves, while commenting about a “drewel” worthy gun,  casually let drop the opinion that  “liberalism is indeed a mental disorder.”

This from the man who thinks that the 2nd amendment guarantees his right to use a gun to restrain and threaten his political foes.

Of course, it’s also coming from the representative of a party that dabbles in opinions to the effect to that African-Americans are the worst racists in America, not to mention that Christians are more persecuted than gays.

The moral: always consider the source.

I noted last week the comments of a Guardian correspondent, Michael Cohen, that the most interesting aspect of recent politics was the “rapid descent of the Republican Party into madness.” Today Steve Benen remarks that “there’s a strain of madness in today’s GOP, and it remains terribly unsettling.” Benen’s comment was occasioned by  Missouri Governor Jay Nixon’s veto of Brian Nieves’ “Second Amendment Preservation Act,” the mother of all nullification bills. Benen derided the bill itself as well as Nieves’ – described as “a deeply confused Republican state senator” – response to its veto  

Benen aptly summarizes the gist of the bill:

Many of us have grown accustomed to a certain degree of nuttiness in Republican policymaking in the 21st century, but even by today’s GOP standards, this was just insane: “The bill seeks to nullify any and all past and future federal laws that might infringe upon Missouri’s interpretation of the Second Amendment, which is very different from the Supreme Court’s and which can be summarized thusly: Anything goes.”

And yet, it passed the GOP-led state legislature anyway. …

See where we’re all going when it comes to to the question of GOP lunacy? Neives’ entirely bonkers response to the veto was perfectly in character, replete with the emotive capitalization, and lavish use of exclamation marks that seems to characterize all his writing efforts:

I just couldn’t resist sharing this! Here we see our esteemed governor B___slapping BOTH the 2nd AND 10th Amendments at the same time! He then has the Gall, the Nerve, to stand in front of the people of Missouri and “say” he supports the 2nd Amendment?!?! … *

These words not only reveal the superficiality and ignorance of Nieves, but the reflect the fevered mental processes of a person who has moved so far beyond rationality that he should excite fear. Instead, fellow Missourians in the heavily Republican 26th district continue to elect him to state office. When it comes to the idea of collective madness, need one say more?

* The RiverFront Times offers a screenshot of the Nieves Facebook rant from which the quote above was taken; the RFT notes that cooler heads seems to have prevailed and the post has subsequently been removed (or RFT access was blocked). If your’re in the mood for a laugh, there’s more on the Facebook comments here.

The fallout from the 2013 legislative session ought to give Missourians pause. To date, Governor Nixon has vetoed 23 bills that made it out of the session – and he still has 10 days in which to increase that total. And given that the infamous gun bill that seeks to nullify all federal gun legislation is still outstanding, we can only cross our fingers and hope that our governor will go for at least one more veto.  

Some of these bills are truly, horrendously dangerous and the governor had no other option but to veto them. I’m mainly thinking here of the corporate tax cut bill that aimed to take us down the same road as Kansas – which just had its economic development credit rating downgraded as a result of its tax “reform.” Others, while potentially harmful, are little more than exercises in fantasy. Here I’m referencing bills like those that sought to ban Sharia law or Agenda 21, you know, major threats that keep us up at night – at least those of us who’re both brain dead and paranoid.

Some bills, however, failed the smell test because they were, as the Governor noted, “shoddily drafted.” In other words, the whiz kids we sent to Jefferson City can’t manage to write legislation that doesn’t overshoot its goals or isn’t so carelessly crafted that it could withstand a legal challenge. I guess it’s just too hard to write laws when you don’t have some outside lobbyist or the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) handing you model legislation you can crib off of.

So far, I’ve just been describing what the Republican majority in the legislature actually did. What they didn’t do is equally remarkable. Transportation infrastructure funding, tax credit reform, the state’s outstanding education needs, you name it, they couldn’t deal with it effectively – and given their favored solutions, we should all probably hold our tongues and hope the stalemate continues.

Finally, in addition to what the legislators did that they shouldn’t do, and what they couldn’t do, there are the things they wouldn’t do. Foremost in that category is make sure that over 260,000 uninsured Missourians get health care. In order to keep these folks uninsured, our brilliant lawmakers had to turn down big wads of federal money – money that Missouri tax payers send to the federal government that would have been returned to the state. And that money would not only have helped the uninsured, but would have boosted the health care industry and created jobs.

To be fair, House Speaker Tim Jones has appointed some study groups to consider “Medicaid reform” prior to the next session. There are those who think that this action may be a ploy to escape the possibly very bad consequences of not taking the Feds’ Medicaid offer. What these groups will manage to produce, though, remains to be seen and if there’s a way to punish those who have to rely on Medicaid and to pare benefits to the minimum, I’ll bet Jones’ pals will manage to find it.

So all this leaves us with the question: Why do you suppose that our lawmakers are working to destroy the quality of life in our state? Why do they want Missouri to be a laughing stock? Do you think it might have something to do with the Republican majority in Jefferson City? Michel Cohen of the Guardian, speaking of the national level GOP, suggests that there could be some truth to that answer:

What is the single most consequential political development of the past five years? Some might say the election (and re-election) of Barack Obama; others might point to the passage of the most important piece of social policy (Obamacare) since the 1960s; some might even say the drawing down of US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But in reality, it is the rapid descent of the Republican party into madness.

Never before in American history have we seen a political party so completely dominated and controlled by its extremist wing; and never before have we seen a political party that brings together the attributes of nihilism, heartlessness, radicalism and naked partisanship quite like the modern GOP. In a two-party system like America’s, the result is unprecedented dysfunction.

Add comically ignorant and it sounds like Missouri’s GOP to me.

I was struck by this paragraph in an article by Michael Tomasky on the GOP poison-pill amendment put forward by Eric Cantor that scuttled the Farm Bill in the House last week:

It’s just amazing to me the way they [i.e., the GOP] keep finding new ways to kick poor people. One, deregulate everything so that banks can start placing bets against their own securities. Two, destroy the economy, so that millions more people lose their jobs and have to go on food stamps in the first place. Three, decide that poor people have to pay the penalty for all this financial hanky-panky, and cut the federal programs they depend on to the bone. Four, cut food stamps even more, and make the recipients work more.

It made me think of the recent special election for Jo Ann Emerson’s House seat in the 8th congressional district, which was handily won by Tea Party fellow-travelor Jason Smith, who promises to be just the type who will promote policy directions of the sort Tomasky decries. Pertinent fact here: according to Wikipedia, the 8th district “is the poorest district in Missouri and the 11th poorest congressional district in the country.”

It’s hard to believe that racism, trumped up rage, paranoia and conspiracy fears can be so potent when it comes to getting folks to vote against their own interests, but the evidence is hard to deny.  Obama was just telling the truth in 2008 when he talked about the power of guns, God, and, by implication, gays, to rile up folks who are scared silly by a changing world. You can call such language elitist all you want, but since we all have to live with the consequences of this silliness, we get to call it the way it is.