Here in Missouri, we’ve sent a group of GOPers to Washington who all have in common the fact that they demonstrate considerable spleen when it comes to the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Billy Long (R-7th), for example, has bizarrely characterized the ACA as a “purely socialist single-payer healthcare system unlike anything the nation has ever experienced before.” Nor is Billy alone. Next Tuesday it is probably safe to assume that all of our Missouri GOP House members will stand with the rest of their party and vote to repeal the “job-killing” ACA.

Of course this vote amounts to nothing more than political theater, meant to assuage the GOP Tea Party foot soldiers. The bill will go nowhere in the Senate and, if by some fluke it did, it’s a sure bet that the President would veto it. Nevertheless, no matter what else you may think of them, Grand Old Partiers are no fools; they can see as well as anyone else that the anti-Obamacare ruckus they ignited could get out of hand if they don’t follow-up on the fire-and-brimstone they served up to susceptible Tea Partiers. They may soon, however, find themselves between a rock and hard place when it comes time to take credit for this sad piece of performance art.

It’s that “job-killing” part, particularly as it pertains to small businesses, that could trip them up. GOP pols and fellow-traveling lobbyists have been loudly proclaiming that the ACA will be poison for small businesses. Just do a search on “small business” and “Obamacare” and you’ll encounter a plethora of articles replete with doomsday predictions. Roy Blunt actually promised to repeal the ACA as one of the lynch pins of his putative jobs-plan during his Senate campaign last fall. Ultimately, though, the proof, as they say, is in the pudding.

Which is why it is interesting to note that small businesses are rushing to take advantage of the provisions of the ACA.  The Los Angeles Times reports that:

Major insurers around the country are reporting that a growing number of small businesses are signing up to give their workers health benefits, a sign of potential progress for the nation’s battered healthcare system. …

An important selling point has been a tax credit that the nation’s new healthcare law provides to companies with fewer than 25 employees and moderate-to-low pay scales to help offset the cost of providing benefits. The tax credit is one of the first few provisions to kick in; much of the law rolls out over the next few years

To take an example close to home, Blue Cross, Blue Shield of Kansas City, Mo. reports a 58% increase in small businesses buying insurance for their employees. Thirty-eight percent of those businesses had never offered their workers insurance before. As for those mandates and reporting requirements that many deplore, Rick Ungar of Forbes’ The Policy Page nails it:

If these small businesses found the new law to be so onerous, why have so many of them voluntarily taken advantage of the benefits provided in the law to give their employees these benefits? They were not mandated to do so. And to the extent that the coming mandate obligations might figure into their thinking, would you not imagine they would wait until 2014 to make a move as the rules do not go into effect until that time?

Nor, with apologies to Billy Long, is the ACA proving to be especially “socialistic.” Actually, the folks who might be contributing most to an anti-business climate may be the Republicans with their constant posturing on the topic of the ACA.  As Ezra Klein puts it:

… the health-care industry is having to balance investments that it wants to make against the concern that Republicans will repeal the bill and yank away those opportunities. Before the election, John Boehner said employers “are afraid to invest and hire in an economy stalled by ‘stimulus’ spending and hamstrung by uncertainty.” Now he’s the guy stringing the hams

I wouldn’t be too surprised, as long as Democrats play their cards right, if next Tuesday might be remembered as the day when the GOP tried to effect the job-killing repeal of the Health Care Act, rather than a vote to repeal the job-killing health care act.

MORE:  Steve Benen has a similar take  on the Republican ACA repeal effort. Interesting quotes he includes:

As Kevin Drum noted a couple of weeks ago, “[I]t really is possible that both the healthcare sector and the business community in general, after they take a look at what kind of chaos might ensue from ad hoc partial defunding, will put some real pressure on Republicans to stand down on this. That would be an interesting turn of events, no?”

The WSJ report added, “Talking about repeal of the health law may be a winning political strategy for Republicans, a rare way to please both workers and business executives. As long as they don’t actually succeed in doing it.”

It came to my attention that Mr. Ed Martin, GOP House candidate for the 3rd district,  was all excited that folks 24th State were reading SMP:

RT @24thstate: ShowMeProgress Showing Lack Of Economic Education

I assumed that he was thrilled that 24th State wanted to participate in a  substantive discussion of economic issues that conservatives have so far reduced to slogans and generalities. (You don’t believe me? Take a look at Roy Bunt’s jobs plan – not much there to back up his ideas list of standard GOP talking points.) After following the link to the 24th State post, though, I changed my mind about the reason for Mr. Ed’s enthusiasm.

If Mr. Ed were interested in substance, he couldn’t have been that taken with the 24th stater’s smug response to a recent post by Sarah Jo in which she offers evidence that the the low tax, low regulation elixir that the GOP snake oil salesmen are peddling hasn’t racked up such a great record in the past when it comes to the welfare of anyone but billionaires and corporations. 24th State seems to think that Sarah Jo is claiming that “rich people cause depressions.”  Sheesh! Somebody needs to work on their reading comprehension skills.

Apart from demonstrating a common right-wing misunderstanding of JFF’s “supply-side” tax cuts, our 24th Stater mostly contents himself with several convoluted ad hominem assertions. No doubt it’s this exercise in deflection that has the slippery Mr. Ed so excited – evading real issues seems to be something of an art form among GOPers.

Progressives, if this post were to be believed, are academic types whom Mr. Ed’s blogging friend characterizes as economic failures too naive to understand the difference between the “rich,” who are the “producers,”  and the “super-rich” whom he insists are – wait for it – Democrats. Evidently our confrere on the right has never heard of the Koch brothers, Richard Mellon Scaife, Phillip Anschutz, Missouri’s own Rex Sinquefield, and a host of Republican billionaire donors who keep the struggle against us ineffectual, progressive failures perking along.

Of course, no one denies that there are Democratic “super-rich” too. You can tell them from the other kind because they’re usually willing to pay their fair share. Shucks, some Democratic billionaires actually campaign in favor of tax policies that work for everybody, not just their own financial class.  

While this crude stereotyping suggests the resentment of intellectual elites that pols like Mr. Ed encourage, fanciful speculation about Sarah Jo’s mental life and that of progressives in general does not refute the points she makes. It does, however, raise an interesting question that speaks to the point of the post. Who in this economically complicated world should be labeled a “producer”? If creating jobs is the criteria, then government at all levels qualifies, yet the very idea seems to horrify Tea Party conservatives.

As for academia, Mr. Ed, as a person who wants to represent Missourians in Congress, should know about the role of academic technology transfer in fueling the prosperity of many of those entrepreneurial “producers” with whom his 24th state surrogate wants to identify the Tea Party “leadership.” Academic technology transfer is the process whereby academic research is spun-off into the private sector, and which, in 2008 alone, was responsible for the creation of 595 new companies and the introduction of 648 new commercial products – and that’s only the tip of the iceberg. So, you tell me, are academics also producers?

I also wonder if Mr. Ed thinks that the folks who work in the jobs that he believes Tea Party “producers” produce are producers as well?  Certainly, if it weren’t for them, business men of all types would be up the creek. They’re one of the groups that Sarah Jo focused on, arguing persuasively that they’re also the individuals who lose in each iteration of the laissez-faire capitalism that Mr. Ed champions.

In a statement that I am sure leaves Mr. Ed all starry-eyed, the 24th Stater asserts, speaking of his cohort of choice, those Tea Party leaders who own or hope to own small businesses:

… none of us are the super rich.  Heck, none of us are the rich.  Some of us are downright poor, today, but we won’t be tomorrow.

Hate to be a downer here, but I’ve got some news for this aspiring Tea Party capo. If he gets his way in the next two elections, his future may not be as rosy as he hopes. Nothing more or less than the Bush economic policies of lower taxes and minimal regulation are on offer from the GOP and by extension, the Tea Party. And, in line with Sarah Jo’s post, during the Bush years, poverty levels increased in a steady trajectory from 11.7% to 12.5% in spite of the very modest economic growth his policies managed to create, prompting Ezra Klein to observe:

This was the first period since we began keeping records in which the economy expanded but poverty went up — usually, economic expansions bring the poverty rate down.It’s more evidence that the pre-crisis “normal” was an economy that wasn’t working very well for a lot of people, even when it was growing.

This is what rings Mr. Ed’s bells? Kinda make you wonder what type of rich he’s really cultivating, the wannabe rich or those “super-rich” GOPers who fork over all the lobbying money.

A recent ad put out by Roy Blunt smugly invites us to read his job creation plan which he summarizes as lower taxes, less red tape, and more American energy. So I took the time to look at the specifics and found, sad to say, nothing more than the expected plate of stale bread and cold potatoes.

It is something of an understatement to say that Blunt’s plan doesn’t deviate from current and past GOP orthodoxy. Speaking of John Boehner’s “two-step” job creation plan, Ezra Klein remarks

So on the one hand, a measure that will make a small dent in the deficit. On the other hand, a measure that will lead to a huge  increase in the deficit. There’s no theory of the economy in which this really makes sense.

This criticism applies equally to the Blunt plan if one adds that there is also no way in which it makes sense to claim that it will actually create jobs. To give Blunt credit, he does offer somewhat more detail than Mr. Boehner – six steps (missteps?) instead of two, which I’ll write about in greater detail in individual posts over the next couple of weeks – there are, after all, lots of little side embellishments – like destroying net neutrality –  not to mention questionable assertions, that deserve to be pointed out and considered in greater detail.

The short version is that Blunt proposes to extend the Bush tax cuts and cut corporate taxes even more; cancel the unexpended stimulus funds; re-deregulate, gutting financial reform legislation and deep-sixing the new consumer protection agency; repeal the Affordable Care Act and “replace” it with a few giveaways to the insurance industry (which he calls “sensible” health care reform); pare down welfare spending, cut entitlements (Social security? Medicare? Blunt quite carefully doesn’t spell it out); and enact measures like subsidizing nuclear power and making sure that coal producers get theirs. All that’s left to do is to tie the package up with a pretty ribbon and hand it over to the corporate biggies who have paid Blunt’s campaign bills lo these many years.

Did I already say this is all old news?. Like maybe a recipe for a rerun of the Bush years?  Surely you remember those  eight years of anemic job growth, culminating in economic disaster and massive job loss?  Roy Blunt was, of course, one of the chief enablers of similar measures then, which is why it is almost inexplicable that anyone is taking him seriously when he asks us to give him a do-over using the same tools from the same tarnished economic tool-box. (If you doubt the effect of the Bush policies on the American middle class, just take a look at this chart comparing how different economic segments of the population have fared under recent Democratic and Republican administrations.)

President Obama made the same point far more eloquently when he described the GOP economic philosophy that is exemplified in Blunt’s putative economic blueprint in a speech yesterday in Cleveland:

… There were no new ideas.  There was just the same philosophy we already tried for the last decade – the same philosophy that led to this mess in the first place:  cut more taxes for millionaires and cut more rules for corporations.  Instead of coming together like past generations did to build a better country for our children and grandchildren, their argument is that we should let insurance companies go back to denying care to folks who are sick, and let credit card companies go back to raising rates without any reason.  Instead of setting our sights higher, they’re asking us to settle for a status quo of stagnant growth, eroding competitiveness, and a shrinking middle class.

There you have it – Blunt in a nutshell.

Image from the GoldGuys Blog via Wikimedia Commons.

I haven’t had time to take a careful look at the “jobs” plan Roy Blunt unveiled yesterday. At a cursory glance, it seems like the same recipe that cost us 9 million jobs in the worst recession since the 1930s: gut regulation, cut taxes for the wealthy, roll back health care reform and let costs escalate, etc. Par for the course.

This lack of substance is, of course no surprise to those of us who have followed Blunt’s career as a corporate toady doing latrine duty in the Senate – take, for instance, the total lack of product, other than conservative platitudes, that emanated from the Republican Healthcare Solutions Group that Blunt chaired.

Think Progress‘ Pat Garafalo offers some initial insights into the lack of there there that tend to confirm my initial impression. Garofalo faults Blunt’s plan for the predictable emphasis on “fearmongering about the deficit,” and argues that Blunt’s desire to rescind the unspent stimulus funds would amount to a tax on the middle class. More interestingly, Garofalo notes that in spite of all the deficit rhetoric, one of the few substantive proposals involves extending an expensive stimulus benefit for the real estate industry. Should we believe that it is just a coincidence that real estate is one of Blunt’s ten largest donor groups when his receipts are broken down by industry, having gifted him with more than $150,000 during the 2009-2010 election cycle?

But, you ask, ever ready to extend the benefit of the doubt, the important question is whether or not this benefit will actually create jobs? According Garofalo:

… the home buyer’s tax credit was enacted as part of the stimulus and then extended a couple of times, and by all accounts it was a complete and total boondoggle, costing taxpayers billions to subsidize activity that was going to happen anyway. Even the credit’s staunchest supporters have said that its “sunsetting is an incentive to drive people to the marketplace” and poo-pooed the notion of extending it forever, which clearly turns it into a permanent subsidy to the real estate industry.

Garofalo especially disdains Blunt’s willingness to extend this benefit given his jump-on-the-bandwagon bleating about the dangers of the deficit. I would add that a person who spends so much time trying to paint a moderately successful round of stimulus spending as a failure, should be really, really careful about selectively extending it for favored campaign contributors. Though Blunt’s two-faced response to the stimulus is, I guess, kind of an old story by now – he has been more than willing to claim credit for the goodies it brought the state – but it still stinks when he tries to use those funds to do his benefactors a solid on the public dime. It’ll be interesting to see just what other giveaways are tucked into Mr. Blunt’s loudly ballyhooed jobs plan.

( – promoted by Clark)

Every now and again, an idea or concept or product comes along, spreads out all over the place and sets a new standard. Take, for example, ATM machines or UPC Barcode or even the internet; looking back, it’s hard to imagine those innovations not being ubiquitous and ever-present. We just accept them today as being an integral part of the modern landscape, like wallpaper or furniture, cars.

“Energy efficiency” is quickly becoming the latest standard centering around new retrofit construction techniques reducing the energy consumption of homes, offices and buildings.

Energy efficiency generates multiple benefits:

* Massive job creation and domestic economic stimulus

* Good for the environment

Last week, Efficiency First organized over a 100 small business contractors from across the nation to travel to Washington DC to champion the Home Star Energy Retrofit Act in the US Senate, which had previously passed the US House with bi-partisan support. Home Star is a jobs bill, but it doesn’t stop there. It also supports the development of smart energy strategies and jump starts the energy efficiency industry. Home Star has sometimes been called “Cash for Caulkers” loosely named after the well-known “Cash for Clunkers” program. But whereas Cash for Clunkers often went to purchase foreign cars, just about Home Star’s whole kit-and-caboodle stays in the US.

Congressman Peter Welch (D-VT.), who had authored the US House version of Home Star, addressed the contractors, saying,

“We want to build up manufacturing in this country and 90% of the materials that are used in this work are manufactured in this country — so even without the whole debate about ‘buy American’ — it will be bought in America. This work will be done in America.”

Representing Missouri as chair of the Missouri Association of Accredited Energy Professionals (MAAEP), I advocated with other efficiency business owners to the offices of eight US Senators, including personal exchanges with Missouri’s Sen. Claire McCaskill and Sen. Sam Brownback of neighboring state Kansas. I applauded Senator Brownback on recent Kansas City successes with the number of energy efficiency retrofits leading the Midwest, including Kansas City Missouri’s Green Impact Zone.

Sen. Brownback indicated his support for Home Star, and said,

“Let’s try to find a way to get this done.”

Many potential solutions to get Home Star passed were talked about in the offices of Senators Tom Coburn (R-OK.), Tom Harkin (D-IA.), Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-TX.), Kit Bond (R-MO.) and Jeff Sessions (R-AL.) , to name a few our group visited (there were 8 Efficiency First groups).

Matt Golden, President of Recurve, Inc. and policy chair of Efficiency First had a lot to say about the struggling construction trades; how Home Star acts as a ‘shot in the arm’ building up a new industry that puts underemployed workers back on the job.

“For hundreds of thousands of American construction and manufacturing workers who have been sidelined by the recession, the proposed Home Star program – which now awaits Senate approval – represents a lifeline to good jobs with living wages in a growing 21st-century industry. While much of our economy appears to be on the road to recovery, the outlook for American construction workers is truly grim. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly 2 million construction jobs dried up between December 2007 and January 2010, leaving around one in five experienced construction workers unemployed. And with demand for new buildings stalled at historically low levels, there’s little hope that these workers will be rehired in traditional construction jobs any time soon.”

This is where Home Star comes in.

Slated to begin creating 168,000 jobs the moment President Obama signs into law, Home Star is not just throwing money at a wall to see what sticks, it builds a market-driven rebate model that rewards home owners who reach higher levels of efficiency performance, which is good for our nation as a whole. Home Star also leverages private investment giving more bang for the buck. Home Star is a $6 billion program, so a state like Missouri is pro-rated to receive a potential $120 million dollars.

For details on the Home Star rebate program click here.

As I’ve said in the past, I believe in less than ten years, an energy audit and retrofit for an existing home or office will become as commonplace as the safety and emissions test for your car. It will be a new standard and this is a new industry taking hold the nation. Efficiency is about jobs, and domestically manufactured products like weather-strip, insulation and caulking. Estimates fly around about the size of this national revolution of retrofits, from 1 trillion dollars of economic activity to a recent figure I heard from the Department of Energy roadshow in Kansas City, a gargantuan 6 trillion dollars coast-to-coast! (presumably including commercial Real Estate)

In an era of incessant dismantling of entire legacy industries stateside, all Americans should lower their shoulders to help launch the energy efficiency industry into the mainstream–and all Americans can participate in its rollout. These jobs are quality American jobs that are insulated from outsourcing and as job creation is the prevailing social issue of the day, our collective support of this emerging new standard becomes the moral, patriotic and smart thing to do.

Conventional wisdom – you know, those clichés that animate corporate media analysis – has it that you can’t raise taxes in tough times when revenues shrink, so you must cut spending in order to balance your budget. Republicans, as authors and seminal propagators of these clichés, are firm about this tenet. Consequently, Governor Nixon, a realist faced with a majority Republican legislature, is going about the business of “fixing” our state budget problems by slashing essential spending – while the legislature plans an orgy of tax cutting that is sure to bring a smile to the faces of their I-got-mine-but-I-want-more constituency.

Meanwhile, everybody agrees that the issue is jobs, but nobody seems to notice that the budget cuts that are being made will mean lots of lost jobs – real tangible jobs, lost right now while we are struggling hardest to keep our heads above water. To be precise, Mark Zandi of Moody.com estimates that state budget cuts will cost the U.S.  900,000 jobs unless more stimulus funds reach the states in time.

The proposed tax cuts, on the other hand, might or might not mean a few more jobs sometime in the future. Objective data does not really confirm that lowering tax rates necessarily leads to job creation. As a case in point, Missouri has seen mediocre job growth over the last decade when compared with many states with higher taxes.

Still our Missouri Republicans insist dragging us all, as Zaid Jilani at Think Progress puts it, down:

… the path of the “deficit peacocks,” who demand cutting social spending while ruling out tax increases on those who have benefited immensely from years of conservative policies.  

This choice has not been universal; Jilani describes states such as Oregon and Wisconsin where progressive policymakers have decided that:

… at a time when the tax burden between the wealthy and the middle class is “narrower than at any time in modern history”  …[to] look for ways to responsibly raise revenues while protecting their states’ spending on vital programs.

Looks like we will get another chance to test Keynesian solutions against “free market” business giveaways – and one can only shudder when thinking about how, if the tax cutting mentality continues to prevail, the Missouri misery index will almost surely soar in the coming months.

Paul Krugman compares the deficit scare talk that is becoming ubiquitous to the false “groupthink” that led us into the Iraq War. At the opposite pole, the St. Louis Post-Dipsatch printed a story about how attendees at the Tea Party convention are seeking to define their hitherto diffuse, rage-impelled “movement” as a “push for limited government and fiscal conservatism” where “Criticism of the deficit and debt is a growing rallying cry.”  

Where do our local politicians come down on this choice between the views of a reality-based Nobel laureate, and sound bites and fury from the same corrupt fools who sold grandma on death panels? The Republicans, of course, have all been pre-programmed to grunt in unison about evil taxes, wasteful spending, and deficit horrors (often, oddly enough, while putting holds on vital appointments in order to get their earmark money). Sadly, however, when it comes to some members of the Missouri Democratic congressional delegation, the answer seems to be pretty clear – they’ll go for the short-term pander as well.  

Take, for instance, Claire McCaskill, who loves to talk about how tough she is – she claims she “has never shied away from taking on the special interests, and she has never feared asking the tough questions.” But when it comes to the spending necessary to prime the economy and create the jobs, this is what she has to say :

The friction between job creation and watching our spending, getting control of deficit is huge.

As McJoan at Dkos correctly observes:

Why that should be so, particularly for a Democrat, is a mystery. People with jobs pay taxes, which creates revenue. People with jobs cost the government less in unemployment benefits, in Medicaid, in any number of necessary social services. People with jobs drive our economy.

Want to fix the deficit? Do what is necessary to create jobs – by which I don’t mean more of the voodoo tax cuts of our Republican past – and the deficit will take care of itself. And while that is happening, the job of politicians like McCaskill is to use their considerable communication skills and access to the media to help their constituents understand how it works.

Update:  This graph (via TPM) makes the relationship of jobs and stimulus spending pretty clear:

The red bars show the rate of job loss during President Bush’s last year in office; the blue bars show job loss slowing during President Obama’s first year of office … and McCaskill thinks that the deficit is the big problem for our economy right now?

( – promoted by Clark)

All over America, the news is spreading that long-term investment in our national infrastructure, is — amazingly — a good idea. I guess people start to wake up when bridges start to fail, schools fall apart, etc; the writing’s on the crumbling wall, so-to-speak. Rebuilding America is a trillion dollar plus project. Levees, roads, bridges.  

But while we’re in the infrastructure inventory mood, why not look at some upgrades? God knows, whenever my computer takes a dive and I’m forced to replace it, I always look to moving my specs up a notch or two, don’t you?

Current infrastructure upgrades include:

* the high-speed rail initiative catching up to technology already in wide use in other countries,

* replacing our automotive fleets and buildings with cleaner and greener options that make a real contribution toward our nation’s sustainability portfolio.

But another infrastructure upgrade, possibly the most obvious, is simply making our homes and offices more energy efficient. And this is a project that will stimulate the economy and create 2,000,000 jobs over 10-15 years. Like health care reform, infrastructure repair, energy efficiency upgrades are a trillion dollar project.

Yesterday, in Missouri, 150 concerned citizens lobbied state legislators with the common sense idea behind improving our homes to higher levels of efficiency. Politically practical approaches were laid out featuring game-changing economic initiatives to make all this improvement work and job-creation possible.

Renew Missouri and Missouri Coalition for the Environment brought together small business owners, activists, green energy experts and other stakeholders to sound these sensible arguments and deliver important information about the latest developments in energy efficiency:

Missourians Tell Legislators: Energy Efficiency Now!

New “Game-Changing” policies will save home owners money on utility bills and create thousands of in-state jobs…

Jefferson City, MO – Citizens from across Missouri convened at the State Capitol on Wednesday to urge legislators to update the state’s outdated energy efficiency policies. Participants carried signs calling for Energy Efficiency Now! while listening to state energy efficiency policy experts and Missouri home energy auditors speak of the benefits of efficiency and of legislative solutions for efficiency improvement.

PJ Wilson of Renew Missouri explained that Missouri currently ranks 41st in the country for energy efficiency, which costs Missourians millions of dollars on their electric bills each year. Missouri also has one of the nation’s fastest rising energy rates, only made worse in the struggling economy. “Energy efficiency addresses high electric bills and creates in-state jobs,” says Wilson.

PACE (Property Assessed Clean Energy) is one of four proposed solutions. PACE is proving to be successful in 14 states and is often consider a “game-changer” for energy efficiency and renewable energy.   PACE is state-enabling legislation that allows cities to pursue bonds to pay for a revolving loan program that lends money to both commercial and residential property owners for energy efficiency and renewable energy improvements. It alleviates the upfront cost of efficiency and renewable upgrades by allowing home or business owners to pay for over time through an additional charge on property tax.

PACE’s revenue neutral characteristics make it an easy win for legislators and municipalities; it is already receiving bipartisan support in Jefferson City. “PACE provides a longer-term financing scheme for energy efficiency upgrades, so home-owners will make improvements with very low up-front costs. By spreading out the payments over the course of 15-20 years, the energy savings gained each month on electric bills often make the upgrades net positive from day one,” says Marc Bluestone, of Missouri Association of Accredited Energy Professionals (MAAEP).

Beyond lower electric bills, pursuing energy efficiency also increases a home’s overall value. “Homes with efficiency sell faster, spend fewer days on the market, and sell for a higher percentage of the listing price. People are starting to figure out that efficiency pays while you live in a home — and when it’s time to sell a home,” said Bluestone.

Damien Flaherty, of EnergyAudits.com and MAAEP, described the overlap of economic and security benefits of efficiency. “Currently, Missouri imports 95% of its energy resources — coal, natural gas, oil — we can’t change that geological reality. But what we can improve are the 2 million homes already built in Missouri. We can make these buildings more efficient and therefore use less imported fuels. And updating our housing stock will undoubtedly create tens of thousands of in-state jobs that can’t be outsourced or sent overseas.”

After, the citizens met with legislators throughout the day encouraging action on efficiency. The Energy Efficiency Now! rally on the Capitol steps was a part of Conservation Lobby Day, an annual event sponsored by the Missouri Coalition for the Environment, Missouri Votes Conservation, and the Missouri Sierra Club.

Renew Missouri recommends a suite of four “best practice” priorities, and more information can be found at http://www.RenewMo.org. Renew Missouri is a project of the Missouri Coalition for the Environment, has successfully transformed renewable energy policy in Missouri with its work on the Easy Connection Act in 2007 and on Proposition C, a renewable electricity standard, in 2008.

The news of energy efficiency is spreading, and as I’ve said before, I predict that not only will every building in our country be audited and analyzed to diagnose what improvements can be made, but eventually, the idea of an energy efficiency audit and retrofit will be as commonplace as the safety and emissions test for your car — you heard it here first!  

On Christmas, I wrote an article called “Health-care bill will stimulate economy and create tens of thousands of jobs“.

Within hours it had gone semi-viral with over 3000 hits on the web. Progressive Democrats of America posted it on their home page and I cross-posted at Show Me Progress and Polizeros.

In it, I posed the question, “How is it that throughout the entire health care debate the issue of job creation and economic stimulus has not been brought up?”  And offered the plausible conclusion that adding 30 million people into the health care system will translate into an abundance of economic activity and opportunity for millions of Americans: i.e. JOBS.

Suggesting this outcome summoned a hail storm of criticism from opponents of health-care reform, asking rhetorically what kind of “dope” us Democrats/Obama were smoking and how what I had authored must have been satire or else it was pure “hogwash”. Evidently, I touched a nerve by countering head-on a primary talking point of health-care bill adversaries, namely, that it’s a “job killer”.  It was as if I’d dipped a few of those tea-bagger’s sweet tea-bags in tart mustard — “Grey Poupon”, of course.  

My favorite response I received went beyond shutting down health-care reform and advocated dismantling most of the entire social services system:

“The US Postal Service was established in 1775. You’ve had 234 years to get it solvent, it is broke. Social Security was established in 1935. You’ve had 74 yrs. to get it solvent, it’s broke. Fannie Mae was established in 1938. You’ve had 71 yrs. to get it right, it’s broke. The War on Poverty was started in 1964. Taking trillions through taxes and transferring it to the poor; has not improved their lot. Medicare and Medicaid were started in ’65. You’ve had 44 yrs. to get it solvent. Future baby boomer promised funds are at a deficit $106 trillion. Freddie Mac was born in ’70. You’ve had 39 yrs. to get it right. It is broke. TARP, the Stimulus, not helping the grassroots. Help France, not us!!”

What is bringing on this extreme reaction to an initiative seeking better care for folks? We spend ten times as much on defense, why so much resistance on guaranteeing care for poor and rich alike?

We have public education, public libraries — where’s the difficulty in metabolizing a mixed system of public and private health care, like our schools or the way we mail stuff to one another? (private and public options in a mixed-market economy, what every Western democracy embodies including the US)  

First, a couple of straw-mans for the naysayers to digest illustrating a clear case of why we need to change the status-quo now — and why that incremental change alone will stimulate economic health and lead to job creation.  More mustard.

(You can answer yes or no.)

Q: Do you think health care should be a for-profit enterprise with folks being denied care because they’re poor?

Q: Do you think it’s tolerable that 70% of personal bankruptcies in the US are due to a lack of health-care insurance coverage?

Q: Do you think it’s okay for people to never consider changing jobs — thereby disrupting market forces — because they fear losing their health-care by switching employment?

Q: Do you think folks should live in fear — negatively impacting work productivity — because they’re forced to wade through so much red tape dodging efforts to dump their insurance or deny claims because it makes more profits for health insurance corporations to not provide care?

Those dilemmas listed above are common occurrences in US health care — perpetuation of the status quo will:

1. cost lives needlessly

2. damage productivity in the workplace

3. disrupt and distort market forces in regard to job mobility

4. damage US companies’ ability to compete in the global market

5. continue to cause an epidemic of health-care related bankruptcies

These flaws of our current health care crisis are JOB KILLERS right now, today. So, tea-baggers, unless you can address these issues, put your job-killing talking points away, we are already there.

The health care reform efforts will positively affect each of the above five bullet points, which, in turn, would help strengthen our economy and invigorate all of our livelihoods.

A lift from my health care paper from two years ago,

“Our country is the only industrialized nation without coverage for all her citizens and we spend twice as much per capita than any other nation for our health care – 17% of our GNP. That’s 90% more than Germany, France or Canada. And don’t think that America is paying a premium for quality because the World Health Organization ranks us at 37th, sandwiched between Slovenia and Costa Rica. An overemphasis on corporate profits has swept away the most basic human needs of the American people.

Our health-care is too expensive and it’s broken. Why is it that Health Care in America costs so much?

In our current privatized system, over 30% of the cost pays for expensive Washington lobbyists, exorbitant salaries of CEOs, extravagant corporate jets and flashy advertising campaigns. Money skimmed right off the top before any care is ever provided.”

Simple fact is, the US health care system is broken because of an overemphasis on the profit-side of the business of taking care of folks; a uniquely American affliction as evidenced by the less ‘profit-frothy’ examples of universal health care coverage in the rest of the Western industrialized democracies, with coverage for all and producing significantly better medical outcomes for the average patient. Turbo-capitalism is at odds with the humane-healing part of health care, and in the worst instances, negates the healing mandate of general medicine. In legalese, we have a classic conflict of interest.

Approximately 45,000 people die every year due to preventable causes; they die because of lack of access to a doctor, hospital and medicine. This is inhumane, unjust and unacceptable.

Why? What’s driving the trend of rising premiums, co-pays and deductibles? Costs going up three times faster than wages? People unable to see a doctor? What are the root causes?

Mike Hall cites, “Profits at 10 of the country’s largest publicly traded health insurance companies rose 428 percent from 2000 to 2007, while consumers paid more for less coverage.”  Ca-ching.

Can you imagine an initiative that could actually stop all violent murders in a year? Or stop all deaths due to drunk driving? Miraculous, right? Well, getting everyone access to care could save as many lives as these fantasy scenarios. It is real and currently before our nation for consideration — it needs your support.  

Many health care opponents are so xenophobic, unable to accept the possibility that another nation besides the US may have a better handle on solutions toward delivering more effective care for their citizens. We should all listen more and let go of an unholy attachment to broken economic theories that do not reconcile with the art of healing and providing care in an equitable manner. Or is it the rich survive and the poor die? Law of the jungle dot com? Too much of any one thing is bad — we need a balance between ’empathy / compassion’ alongside ‘competition and individual comparative advantage’. Finding tha
t balance is where wisdom comes into play. If a project one tenth of the cost of the Pentagon can save 45,000 lives a year, well, that’s no-brainer to me. Imagine one of those 45,000 being your father, your mother, your sister. Sure, you’d want coverage then wouldn’t you?  

I wish we’d all do a little more research, open our minds and resist the temptation to stop parroting Limbaugh-Beck-isms for a moment. Yes, they’re entertaining and stoke so successfully the knee-jerk defensive reaction to protect all the nuts we’ve buried in our backyards. But that’s a button they push like selling beer with attractive blonds. Just because it feels right, doesn’t make it right.    

My article on job stimulus through health care reform was simple. We will see more economic activity to provide preventive care for the 30 million or so that will be added to the health-care insurance roster. More economic activity means more work hours, transactions and the provision of additional services. It means jobs — it means stimulus.

We have over 10% unemployment and need job creation to put folks back to work. It’s a positive side to the health care reform package that hasn’t been emphasized to date and I think it should be. BTW, I like French’s, the Grey Poupon is way too horseradishy.

Representative Denny Hoskins (r – noun, verb, CPA) has removed his Twitter updates from the public eye: Denny Hoskins (r) Twitter Block: was it something we mocked?

But, today a little bird tweeted something that Denny Hoskins (r – noun, verb, CPA) posted on the federal stimulus on Twitter:

http://bit.ly/eXdQd via @addthis Obama’s Stimulus Plan to cost $7.9 Billion about 1 hour ago from web

The federal government is going to spend on avg $1.3 million to create one new job? Wow, what a deal!?! about 1 hour ago from web

Obama’s stimulus plan: Fed. Govt spends $7.9 billion in “stimulus” funds, divided by 600,000 new jobs = $1,311,666. about 1 hour ago from web

A little bird sent us this screen shot of the tweets.

Yes, yes, let’s do the math:

7,900,000,000 divided by 600,000 = 13,166

Uh, Denny, you missed that by a few places.

Uh, that’s quite an error. Maybe Denny really should ask for his CPA school tuition money back.

Update – a purging of sorts:

The same little bird sent us this screen shot of the purge tweet.

Uh, Denny, if you’re gonna purge your old tweets, you might not want to refer to them in the replacement. Or does that “correction” refer to your position on HB 82? Just asking.

Heh. The Internets are forever.