Two little tidbits from my morning’s reading that strike me as a kind of commentary on the state of much of Missouri’s political elite:

The deluded:  Phyllis Schlafly is worried that cap-and-trade may not be dead enough to suit wingnutlandians given the statutory obligation of the EPA to enforce the Clean Air Act. She bases her fears on the insights of Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe whom – get this – she considers to be “the Senate’s environmentalism expert.” Let’s see  … isn’t Jim “global-warming-is-a-hoax” Inhofe the guy who tried to debunk the “hockey stick” model of global warming in a Senate speech by citing research that actually supported it? Hard to believe that there are any people in this state who take Schlafly seriously.

The doofus: “Just call me Billy” Long (R-7 elect) who ran on a “fed up” platform pledging to “make a difference,” has found a way to do just that: Long, who seems to have a cowboy hat glued to his head, wants Speaker John Boehner to relax the House rules about wearing hats on the floor. And guess what? It’s a bipartisan effort since he and Florida’s Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson have banded together as the sole members of the “cowboy hat caucus.” I guess he could be up to much worse – and he probably will be soon enough.

Kate Sheppard at Mother Jones, writing abut the diminishing chances for meaningful climate legislation, has this to say about Claire McCaskill’s leadership or lack thereof on the issue:

Other senators are just getting testy about the issue. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), one of the few Democrats still considered “on the fence” when it comes to including climate provisions, flatly refused to discuss the issue with reporters. “I’m not going to talk about energy. I got burned twice last week,” said McCaskill, indicating that some unnamed reporter had misquoted. McCaskill is one of the Democrats folks are watching most closely on this issue, since she has yet to weigh in publicly one way or another. I have no idea what quote she is referring to as having been wrong.

She claims she was misquoted so now she’ll say nothing?  Typical McCaskill. I wonder if this Politico article might be what’s got McCaskill clamming up?  The author makes the argument that McCaskill’s allies, the so-called “brown dogs,” are the reason we’ll get a safely neutered climate bill if we get anything at all:

… despite months of legwork by the president’s Senate allies, few of these so-called Brown Dogs are biting.

He continues, quoting McCaskill:

I think it’s still a work in progress,” said Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, who worries that a cap would be a loser for Democrats in November. “You know, it took 50 years on health care.”

…

The party that has moderates is the party that governs,” McCaskill said. “If we don’t have moderates, we’re the minority.

This quote is These quotes are certainly outrageous enough to leave McCaskill feeling burned if she was misquoted. But if she was truly misquoted, why doesn’t she just put the record straight instead of equivocating? All I can say is that if she is not trying to play both sides against the middle, she had better get hustling to do just that – because if this quote is not a misrepresentation of her beliefs, she deserves whatever grief she gets.  

And if this putative statement is an accurate representation of what McCaskill said, she may have inadvertently put her finger on exactly what is wrong with Washington D.C – anyone who thinks that we’ve got fifty years to “fix” the climate problem, or that a party of impotent “moderates” gets points for governing without doing anything of substance in the face of a genuine crisis is right there at the heart of the problem. There is no reason that I can think of  to send folks to Washington to sit on their hands and make mealy-mouth sounds while the crap piles up – or even, as is closer to McCaskill’s case, to make a few prissy gestures about cleaning up around the edges of the mess while shuddering with genteel horror at the thought of tackling the biggest piles.

Claire McCaskill recently wrote a letter to state legislators who have been carping about the stimulus spending that has sustained our state budget. Taking them at their word, she asked them just what the impact would be if unspent portions of the funds were returned to the government, and whether or not these brave souls wish to forgo further stimulus funds, given their strong convictions.

With much spluttering and bombast, State Rep. Allen Icet (R-Wildwood), Chairman of the House Budget Committee, responded today, managing in the process to avoid answering any of the quite legitimate issues that McCaskill posed.  Instead, shaking a metaphorical finger at the errant Democrat, he claimed that he and his fellow anti-stimulus stalwarts could not possibly answer McCaskill’s questions until she and her Democratic cohorts in Washington had performed four magical tasks:

(1) balance the federal budget just as we do every single year in Missouri

Bear in mind that this demand comes from a member of the political party that voted against PAYGO in the U.S. Senate. Does Icet really not understand that if the federal budget were to be balanced right away, somebody would have to answer much harder questions than those that McCaskill put to the state’s budget vultures? Could it be that his brave demand is nothing more than bluster by which he hopes to divert attention from his inability to answer the hard questions without exposing the intellectual dishonesty at the heart of Republican rhetoric?  

(2) take cap-and-trade off the table

First, just what does abandoning cap-and-trade have to do with stimulus spending? Isn’t such a stipulation akin to a banker demanding that you stop watching police procedurals on TV before he will give you a loan?

Second, just who is this supposed to benefit – coal and energy industry campaign contributors perhaps? In a just world, before Icet could make such demands, he would have to be willing to honestly discuss the real issues involved in cap-and-trade in relation to Missouri’s future prosperity – and by discuss, I don’t mean regurgitate spurious claims and stale talking points.

(3) kill the current iteration of “reform” and instead allow the states wide room to experiment with free market approaches to health care

Like free market approaches aren’t what got us into the fix we’re in. Just think about that 30% Anthem Blue Cross premium increase in California – if Icet gets his way, we’ll be facing similar increases in Missouri soon enough. Then there’s the inconvenient fact that the health care reform bill under consideration in congress right now actually cuts the deficit over the next ten years. I guess reality doesn’t play well at Tea Parties.

(4) take a stand next time President Obama insists on raising the federal debt limit.

Shouldn’t Icet and his Republican buddies take the first step and help out by letting McCaskill know that they are willing to live without the funds that won’t be forthcoming if this should come to pass? And shouldn’t they have to insure that they and their high principles take full responsibility for the debacle that will result if federal funds aren’t forthcoming to bail out the state?

Does it strike you that these unrealistic demands are designed for one purpose only – to let state Republicans off the hook now that their bluff has been called? For once, McCaskill is on the side of the angels, and these clowns need to give her some real answers or shut up and stop acting like spoiled bullies. As she tweeted earlier today:

Going forward,if we pull back unspent stimulus $, how will the budget in #MO be balanced? Who will take the billion $ cut?Impt to be honest

Ah yes, honest … how novel.

 

“Going To The Wall.”

It’s a familiar expression. It means putting out the ultimate effort for family, friends and comrades, regardless of the consequences, without considering failure as an option.

The Alliance for Climate Protection and the Climate Protection Action Fund have teamed up to initiate a new ad campaign based on their joint project at the Repower America Wall, an interactive site where anyone can post a video or photo, and send an audio message to their congress persons about the importance of clean energy. The first iteration of the campaign will use testimonials from residents of four states, Arkansas, Indiana, Maine, and Missouri, and will be widely broadcast in order to reach as many people in those states as possible, with a goal of persuading them to contact their Senators and urge them to take positive action on pending clean energy legislation. Other states will be emphasized in later weeks.

This campaign comes not a moment too soon. The bad guys have gotten a big head start and have, so far, done a bang-up job of painting the whole issue as the hysterical ramblings of a few out-of-touch environmentalists whose obsession with a fantastical climate change scenario could cost lots of Missourians, particularly farmers, their livelihoods – claims that seem to have already had the desired effect and turned the spines of many of our Democratic legislators to quivering jelly.

The outstanding question is how effective the Repower America campaign will be in the face of what will, no doubt, be a massive corporate onslaught against any meaningful energy legislation. In a conference call today, Garrett Russo from the Alliance on Climate Protection attempted to address this issue, describing the Wall and the ads as a way to level the playing field and enable “everyday” Americans to speak out and be heard in an environment which, especially after the recent Supreme court decision on corporate political spending, now privileges big money over individual citizens.

During the call, two Wall contributors from each of the four targeted states spoke briefly about why reforming our energy policies is important to them. Reasons included sustainability arguments, quality of life concerns – clean air makes for healthy humans – and worries about the effects of fossil fuel dependency on national security. The predominant theme, though, was job creation, as seen in this ad from the group of three that will be shown in Missouri:

A retired official of the Maine AFL-CIO, Ed Gorham, talked about the steady loss of manufacturing jobs that the U.S. has experienced over the past decades, and pointed out that the transition to green energy could create thousands of new jobs to take their place. La Donna Appelbaum of St. Louis, a small business owner, stressed the importance of transitioning to a cleaner, sustainable energy source in order to create jobs and enable small businesses to survive. Gretchen Wieland, Missouri Communications Director of Repower America, described the potential importance of the wind turbine industry, both as a source of energy and as a source of new manufacturing jobs in Missouri. She claimed that clean energy industries could create 29,000 new jobs in Missouri.

The ads themselves are vague about specifics – but that is inherent in their nature; they are, after all, a “branding” exercise, intended to create a perception that job creation and clean energy go together. But because there are claims to the contrary out there – Kit Bond’s report, Yellow light on Green Jobs, was indirectly alluded to by one reporter, it will be interesting to see if this approach proves effective.

Part of the answer may lie in the media response.  For example, the Bond report’s conclusions are highly questionable, but as long as media figures, such as the reporter on the call, cite the report without questioning its sources – without even indicating that the report has generated controversy – it’s going to be a hard slog ahead.  

Roy Blunt just won’t stop twittering; most recently:

Made case on the panel that cap & tax, govt-run health care, failed stimulus will be big issues in MO & across country. People are fed up.

Damm straight, Roy, I’m fed up!

Fed up with cute little slogans like “cap-and-tax” and the coy fools who use them.

Fed up with politicians who refuse to acknowledge reality.

And you better believe I’m fed up with Republican lies and obstruction … and by the beneficiaries of big bucks lobbyists  who try to manipulate the fears of the terminally ignorant so that they can go on congressional panels and talk about all the trouble that will be stirred up if legislators actually try to do the people’s business for once.

We hear a lot about what will happen in the future if nothing is done to stop anthropogenic climate change, and we also regularly witness the on-going efforts of the big corporte stakeholders and their tame politicians to pretend that it isn’t so, or, when that line won’t wash, that the “anthropogenic” part can’t be proven. However, deny it until the cows come home, there is no way to avoid the fact that increased CO2 results in warming, and that humans have been pumping historically unprecedented amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. Nor is there any way to avoid the fact that we are experiencing the catastrophic effect of escalating climate and weather changes right now:

* Many citizens of the island nation of Kiribati have relocated to New Zealand because the rising sea level has washed away their villages.

* The President of the Maldives Islands is making desperate plans to forestall the effects of rising water levels, and to relocate thousands of Maldives citizens if his endeavors prove futile – if nothing is done and palliative measures come too late, “we will die” he says.

* Last summer, one of the increasingly more frequent and more violent tropical storms, Cyclone Aila, left the entire island of Gabura off Bangladesh completely submerged, displacing over 20,000 islanders.

These are only a few examples of what has happened last year, is happening this year, and will happen next year – not twenty, thirty, fifty years in the future. If nothing is done the future will be worse, thousands more will be displaced, and all of us will likely live in a world where massive starvation, epidemic disease, and war are commonplace.  

The U.S. will not be exempt – say good-bye to New York City, write off the Eastern third of Maryland.  Don’t believe me?  How about when you hear it from a hard-edged business trying to save its profit margins:

In 2006, Allstate announced it was no longer issuing new homeowners’ policies in states up and down the East Coast. In Maryland, the company shut its doors to new customers across 11 eastern counties, including parts of Anne Arundel and Prince George’s counties. Why? First, the company said, sea levels are definitely rising worldwide based on irrefutable science. Second, Atlantic hurricanes are getting bigger and more intense as the planet warms.

Meanwhile, here in Missouri, too many of our intellectual and political leaders temporize, equivocate, pander and lie, while others seem too stupid to actually understand the urgency of the problem with which we are faced. Consider the following examples:

* University of Missouri President Gary Forsee thinks cap-and-trade legislation isn’t good for the University system’s bottom line – so to hell with the rest of the world!

* Rep. Roy Blunt, taking full advantage of the confusion engendered by climate denial goons in order to help out all the nice folks who keep his campaign kitty overflowing, asserts that “There isn’t any real science to say we are altering the climate path of the earth.”

* Rep. Todd Akin, who assures us that his science advisors have passed high school science, thinks it’s all a big chuckle, and is looking forward to the time when there will surf at the steps of the capitol building.

* Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer has introduced legislation to forbid U.S. funds going to the  United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which represents the thought of the majority of the world’s leading climate scientists, because, he asserts confidently, it “is engaged in dubious science.”

* Sam Graves voted against the House cap-and-trade legislation on the basis of a questionable claim that it would constitute a “national energy tax” that would “devastate rural America.” Wasn’t he aware of measures in the bill that were explicitly designed to mitigate any potential hardships?  Or was it just too inconvenient to explain why he opposed trying to making cap-and-trade work for everyone.

*  According to Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, cap-and-trade is risky because “Now the only experience that we’ve seen on this is what Europe has, and they have a cap and trade program that is not doing well, and so I think it is a stupid idea… .”  Of course, maybe Emerson’s just a bit too quick to put down the European experience; she probably ought to read up on what initial European cap-and-trade efforts have taught us.    

* Senator Kit Bond cites junk reports in his effort to destroy cap-and-trade legislation.

* Claire McCaskill, who claims to share progressive values in her fundraising letters, is insistent that climate legislation demands a “very gradual implementation,” otherwise Missourians might have to pay somewhat more for electricity.

* In Jefferson City, state legislators, whom Senator McCaskill so aptly described as a “vast sea of neanderthals,” have begun rumbling about the evils of cap-and-trade; a  trio of freshmen state representatives, Sue Allen, Cole McNary, and Andrew Koenig, have been working up the rural and tea-party contingent with state-of-the art climate denial propaganda. Probably much worse will be coming down the pike in the months ahead.

While most of the Missouri establishment has joined the chorus of the self-serving and the brain-dead, a few courageous souls deserve our thanks – at least for the time-being.  Ike Skelton, Lacy Clay and Emanuel Cleaver all come to mind.  One wonders, however, as the pressure builds, as the denialist lies proliferate, and the teapartiers rage, how long they will manage to hold out against expediency which seems to trump the ugly reality of global warming.

Missouri’s Republican politicians are are working overtime to kill cap-and-trade. They insist that taking rational steps to move the U.S. off fossil fuels will cause the economy to crater. Even some Missouri Democrats who ought to know better,  Claire McCaskill, for instance,  voice concern about the economic impact of cap-and-trade on “Missouri families.”

Given all this wailing over the economic ruin that we face if cap-and-trade is enacted, it is instructive to learn, via FiredUp, that according to a new survey economists who have looked at the numbers conclude that

…the “significant benefits from curbing greenhouse-gas emissions would justify the costs of action,” . .. In fact, the survey of economists finds 94% believe the U.S. should join climate agreements to limit global warming.

This information should be especially reassuring to Sentor Kit Bond who explained his boycott of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee markup of cap-and-trade legislation by declaring:

Missouri families and workers expect me to know what this 1,000-page bill will cost them before I start voting on it …

Now that there is a consensus among economists, perhaps Bond can get back to work.  Of course, he and his fellow Republicans weren’t willing to accept the numbers offered in a study of the economic impacts of the legislation carried out by EPA economists, so maybe they don’t really care what most other economists think about cap-and-trade either.  

Say what you will about the current Republican strategy in their ongoing war against reality, but they are disciplined.  Give them their cue and they respond right on time with the set pieces they have committed to memory and to which they will will hear no dissent, or, God forbid, any competing facts.  

Missouri’s Todd Akin (R-2nd) and Kit Bond are no exceptions. Today, they both mounted their favorite hobby horses, respectively health care reform (a.k.a. “big government”) and  energy policy, especially cap-and-trade legislation.

Speaking in the House today, Akin voiced his opposition to:

…socializing healthcare in America regardless of any so-called “opt out” provisions.

Congressman Akin noted that giving states the alternative of “opting out” of the proposed public option is a misnomer in the sense that is does not insulate the residents of state form increased taxation, Medicare cuts] and overall drag on the U.S. economy.

The key word above is “socializing,” as in socialism,  and it has the effect of drowning out any real-world issues for Akin and his fellow alternative reality enthusiasts.  

Of course, since not everybody has been trained to salivate upon hearing the magic words, Akin must manufacture claims about taxes, chimerical Medicare cuts and persistently ignore the real drag on our economy that will result if nothing is done abut the spiraling costs of our current, out-of-control health care delivery system.

Bond’s shtick is a little more subtle if just as narrow in focus. It consists of an appeal to cupidity with unfounded assertions about the costs of cap-and-trade. During his weekly conference call with Missouri reporters today, he once more cited bogus studies that assert that cap-and-trade would raise electricity rates.

If you are curious about how Bond thinks we need to go about fixing the climate crisis which, to his credit, he does not entirely deny, he offered this prescription:

Add a hundred new nuclear power plants, use electric-powered vehicles, conserve more energy and we could add jobs, produce more tax revenues, and avoid expending very expensive taxpayer subsidies on things like wind and solar which only work when the wind blows and the sun shines

Sounds familiar doesn’t it?  It’s all seems so easy when Bond puts it out there – go nuclear and just ignore long-term problems with safety and increasing piles of radioactive waste.  In a similar fashion, pretend that you don’t know that solar power, for example, contrary to the assertions of our Republican friends, is proving so viable that France plans to build solar plants in every region  and that even China recently jummped  on the bandwagon.  

If you listen to Mr. Bond, you would think that cap-and-trade is intended to happen in a policy vacuum. Bond is getting really good at banging that one-note drum to rally the forces against clean energy.  Too bad, as Media Matters demonstrates, he isn’t as good at facts.

Do contact these and other Missouri congress members and make sure they have their facts straight, but don’t expect Akin and Bond to change their tune.  Inconvenient facts only disrupt the harmonies that both these sons of Missouri like so much. No matter what arguments you raise, rest assured that Akin knows no other tune than his signature “Big-Government Rag,” while Blunt will continue to croon the “No-Cap-and-Trade Blues” no matter how often you show him he is wrong.  

Claire McCaskill has been sending out some rather clever tweets lately, targeting the inconsistency of those on the right who seem to be obsessed with Obama in conjunction with communists, socialists and every other “ist” they don’t actually understand.  Most recently:

RT @schwanderer: @clairecmc What commie pinko POTUS wanted intrusion in 1957 public schools? Thinking that was Gen DD Eisenhower

I appreciate the irony.  However, I am still waiting for the tweet in which she admits that cap-and-trade will not really “unfairly punish businesses and families in coal dependent states like Missouri.” Maybe soon?