In an earlier post I noted that the efforts to gin up outrage over a heavily edited video purporting to catch Planned Parenthood officials out was likely part of a strategy to help insulate Republicans from Democrataic war-on-women rhetoric while they go after reproductive health rights. Missouri politicians wasted no time proving me right. And, as is often the case, Missouri Democrats are lending a helping hand.

Although Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Springfield, which is the sole Planned Parenthood abortion provider in Missouri, has pointed out that, in accordance with Missouri State Law, they do not participate in the organ donation program, rendering questions about the heavily edited video “moot,”  droves of Republican pols have jumped on the bandwagon, calling for investigations of imagined “atrocities.” Just to make sure that everyone knows what’s going on, State Rep. Sue Allen (R-100) is even sending her constituents via e-mail a copy of the misleading video earlier distributed in the same way by Rep. Ann Wagner (R-2). Way to whip those ponies into a lather!

This angsty GOP urgency is escalating in spite of the fact that the unedited, three hour version of the video is easily available and, according to reputable sources who have viewed it, fails to substantiate the claims of illegal activity made by the extreme anti-abortion group responsible for the tape. It seems that one of the two videos released explicitly mentions St. Louis Planned Parenthood as an offender. But would  you trust fanatics with a track record of dishonest harrassment of Planned Parenthood? Consider the source.

However, the real news isn’t the entirely predictable behavior of Republicans, but the haste of our ostensibly Democratic Attorney General to get in on the investigation circus, thus making the faux-scandal big-time – or at least as big-time as Missouri can get. AG Kris Koster is joining with the baying Republican hounds in the legislature who have decided to, in the words of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Jordan Shapiro, “propel Missouri into the forefront of a national uproar caused by the video.”

Koster’s decision to investigate resulted in a front page article in the Post-Dispatch today – and, doubtless, lots more publicity for a bogus video for a lot longer than would have been generated by the frothings of the usual suspects alone. In effect, Koster has endorsed what the evidence indicates rather conclusively to be a put-up job, endowing it with the pseudo-legitimacy of an “investigation.”  

It’ll be interesting to see how other state Democrats come down on this issue. So far as I can tell legislative Democrats are huddling in terrified silence; no one seems to have what it takes to publicly point out the obvious fraudulence of the entire episode – including the genteel “horror”generated by the frank discussion of what doctors actually do when they try to preserve donated tissue so that it can be effectively utilized. So far nothing from senatorial candidate Jason Kander. Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill is commenting, though at this juncture she is sounding fairly neutral, ready to jump to either side:

I’m sure that there will be many hearings about it, and I’ll continue to try to be engaged and involved in understanding exactly what occurred. Obviously, if they’ve broken the law, that’s a problem. But the law says they cannot sell any tissue for profit and they’re assuring the public they have not done that.”

What our Democrats do right now is important. Remember Acorn? Remember when Claire McCaskill, along with other Democrats fearful of the power of disinformation, basically endorsed an equally obviously manufactured video? Remember what happened to Acorn? We can’t afford to let that happen to Planned Parenthood. What can we do? Write Koster – say shame, shame on you. Write your state and federal representatives and our senators. Let them know we don’t want to watch this charade any longer. And right about now might be a good time to send a donation to Planned Parenthood. They need our support.

Update 4: Quoted from ChadLivengood’s Twitter

“Rep. Sue Allen was on Rod Jetton’s clients list. But Rep. Allen says she just had Jetton send out invitations to the inaugural ball for her. / “I don’t know how my name got on the list. He wasn’t consulting with my campaign,” Rep. Sue Allen tells me.”

Of course the client list is exaggerated, J&A was trying to get more money. And the story is on Talking Points Memo.

Update 3: And Rod Jetton will be closing down his political consulting business in order “to deal with false allegations and spend time with his family” (his lawyers words). Not a stunner.

Update 2: Rod Jetton’s mug shot suggests that there were no combs in the Cole County Sheriff’s office last night. And that Rod didn’t pay Tom DeLay for consulting on how to look for a mugshot.

Update 1: RodJetton.org has gone offline, and a link to the Google cache of that page has been posted to replace that link in this post.

Former Representative Jetton is innocent until proven guilty. But realistically, his public influence amongst Jeff City Republicans is gonna vaporize. The Republican General Assembly may be arrogant and overconfident, but they’re not that stupid.

It’s for the purposes of posterity  and public knowledge that the Representatives who have paid Jetton & Associates in the year 2009 (and what they paid for) are displayed for you, the reader, and their constituents to know.

Sue Allen: $214, mailing

Chuck Gatschenberger: $160, invitations

Timothy Jones: $3599.95, consultant services, mailing costs

Shelley Keeney: $788.50, consulting

Rob Mayer: $734, consulting

Brian Nieves: $188, consultant

Don Ruzicka: $189, expenses

Dwight Scharnhorst: $1000, fundraising expenses

Shane Schoeller: $5405.69, fundraising event, mailing/postage, consulting

Jason Smith: $613, direct mail

Steven Tilley: $46806.67, lots of stuff (23 entries, so far)

Will the guy who could be the next Speaker of the Missouri House continue his hand-in-hand relationship with Jetton & Associates in the year 2010? You don’t need a political consultant to figure out the answer to that question.

It’ll be around a month from now before we figure out the 4th quarter spending from candidates to J&A. Will Floor Leader Tilley (R-da plane da plane) top $50K in payments to Jetton in 2009? Can’t wait to see.

Addendum: Reaction #1 is from Shane Schoeller:

“This is barely two hours old. I’m not going to be making any hasty decisions, These are serious allegations that have been made. And obviously, if it’s true, we’ll part paths.”

Few individuals would grudge the costs or inconvenience of childproofing cupboards to protect small children from stored poisons.* Most of us would laugh angrily at anyone who tried to tell us that poison is not really that dangerous when ingested by toddlers, that  it might even be beneficial since repeated small amounts could create immunity, or that rational measures to protect our children will create weak and dependent individuals who can’t look out for themselves.  

However, when the issue is anthropogenic global warming, which could effectively poison our children’s and grand-children’s future, many of us are willing to listen to climate change contrarians who tell us that global warming isn’t really all that dangerous, it costs too much to do what is necessary to stop it, and that we will destroy capitalism if we try to do anything about it.

This message is exactly what Reps. Sue Allen (R-92) and Cole McNary (R-86) are sending to their constituents as they attempt to gin up opposition to cap-and-trade legislation. In a follow-up e-mail to those who attended the showing of the film, Not Evil, Just Wrong, that they sponsored in October, they confuse climate issues that only science can authoritatively address with theoretical economic and political concerns:

It is our view that the best alternatives [i.e. to addressing climate change]  lie in an understanding of science and history. How did the West, particularly the United States, become so much wealthier and cleaner than the rest of the world? Life expectancy has doubled since the beginning of the 19th century – truly remarkable.  A political system that protects our individual rights to life, liberty and property has a lot to do with our progress. It’s a system that leaves scientists free to study and report their findings.  It allows businessmen to innovate and produce, and it allows individuals free to buy and sell goods and services of value in a free-market.

Nor do they forget the right-wing strategy du jour which is to suggest that inconvenient scientific truths can be ignored or reformulated  because they pose a threat to the American Way of Life (and wealth):

Sadly, we are eroding the very systems that have lead to such widespread prosperity especially for the average working man.

The concerns that Allen and NcNary raise have no bearing on the cause of global warming, and do not contribute to solving the problem. So, to provide a veneer of scientific respectability to their ideological rabble-rousing, they provide links to  a talk delivered  by climate-change skeptic Richard Lindzen, and to a  panel discussion featuring presentations by astrophysicist Willie Soon, and physicist Keith Lockitch of the Ayn Rand Istitute.

Soon, whose research is funded by the American Petroleum Institute, clings to a thoroughly debunked theory that climate change is not man-made, but the result of variations in solar radiation. Lockitch, a fellow at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights (ARI), approaches the climate change debate from an Objectivist perspective that reflects  hostility to environmentalism rather than compelling scientific argument.

Richard Lindzen is a somewhat different matter.  He is the only one of the three who is actually a legitimate climate scientist, and, although his persistent critiques have been roundly rejected, he still retains some shred of respectability. Scientists writing at RealClimate and LogicalScience offer critiques of his positions here, here and here. As his arguments fail to gain traction, he has increasingly resorted to individual and collective ad hominem attacks on his colleagues.  

Why, we ask, are our State Representatives promoting the views of discredited scientists, fools and charlatans. One answer is money. In Missouri, the coal-industry has lots to lose if meaningful cap-and-trade legislation is enacted. And certainly, if you look at the source of campaign funds for both Allen and  McNary, you will note that, electric utilities, energy and natural resources sectors were among their most generous contributors in the past, although the sums were relatively small overall.  Of course, apart from past support, it obviously doesn’t hurt freshmen representatives to cultivate their friends with an eye to the future.

Another, and possibly more compelling answer is ideology – that same furious, simple-minded, fringe conservatism that is responsible for retarding economic and social development across Missouri. This time, however, the stakes are too large;  we cannot afford to permit failed ideology to prevail at the cost of our future.

*Sentence corrected.

When I fume, I just sputter. WillyK spouts sense. Of course, it helps that she has a firm grasp of facts on a wide variety of topics.

At the end of the showing of “Not Evil Just Wrong” Wednesday night, a docufictionary pretending that there’s solid reason to doubt that humans are causing global warming, the three Republican state reps who sponsored the evening–Sue Allen, Andrew Koenig, and Cole McNary, all from West County in St. Louis–took questions. Willy, after listening to a few audience members make remarks indicating they trusted the film’s nonsense, raised her hand and succinctly skewered the movie’s–well, to be charitable–inaccuracies.

The filmmakers had painted a grim picture of job loss because of precipitate switches from good ole dependable coal to such will o’ the wisp energy sources as solar and wind. Indeed, Representative Allen remarked afterward that those sources would not work in Missouri because we do not have enough sun or wind.

Willy responded that part of the point of the new energy legislation (ACES) is to construct a nationwide, standardized grid so that energy could easily, efficiently be moved from, say, sunny Arizona to Missouri when we need it or from windy Wyoming to our state. What’s more, strides are being made at storing such energy for future use.

Willy felt that the film’s misrepresentation of the intent in the cap-and trade legislation echoed its misrepresentation of climate and environmental concerns in the film, one of the most egregious examples being the claim that DDT had been banned for  purposes of malaria eradication.  In the U.S. legislation banning the use of DDT and in the later Stockholm convention, DDT was banned only for agricultural uses but its use was permitted for “medical vector” purposes,  and indeed its use has continued outside the U.S and Europe where other factors had made use of DDT unnecessary.  One of the reasons that DDT is not used more widely at present is that because of its overuse, mosquitoes are becoming resistant.

Willy suggested that if the elected officials conducting the discussion really wanted to discuss cap-and-trade in a fair way, rather than mislead in the same way that the film misled about global warming and DDT use, they  should have  also mentioned that the cap-and-trade provisions will take place slowly in order to allow people to transition to alternative energies. Furthermore, the legislation offers subsidies to help states with high coal use adapt to other kinds of energy.

Rep. McNary accepted her remarks graciously, urging her to send him links by e-mail to verify her claims. Later, though, when she made a second, briefer comment, he ran out of patience and suggested that perhaps she should rent a hall and arrange to hold her own event. Oops. He was finding  her facts inconvenient. The liberal bias of reality can be annoying.

Despite that and other minor tensions between us and the organizers, Willy and I spoke to Representative Allen at the end of the Q & A, and Willy expressed her concern at seeing Rep. Allen associating herself with a film so riddled with inaccuracies. It’s a fair admonition, but I don’t hold much hope that she and the other two representatives will shun such bad company.

Wednesday night, State Reps. Sue  Allen (R-92), Andrew Koenig (R-88), and Cole McNary (R-86) presided over a gathering of about 50 mostly true believers at a presentation of the film Not Evil Just  Wrong. The showing, at Maryville University in West County, was clearly meant to set the stage for an attack on the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) now pending in Congress.

Cole McNary effectively established the evening’s tenor, declaring in his opening remarks there is no need to be misled by claims of a scientific consensus that confirms anthropogenic global warming, because, after all,  the scientific method is not consensus, but the process of verification and duplication of results.  (He also, shades of Todd Akin, offered  up the rather obvious fact that he is no scientist – though he has studied science – which leaves one wondering how he thinks all those scientists reach a consensus.)

Not Evil Just Wrong was, as one might expect, just more of the same, although somewhat more sophisticated in its presentation.  In an interview on Fox with Neil Cavuto, one of the film’s creators, Irish filmmaker Phelim McAleer, speaks of the movie as the emergence of  “the cinematic wing of the tea party movement,” so you would be correct if you expected lots of high dudgeon and little substance.  A fuller account of its contents and methods can be found here.

The real evil that this film does, though, was only fully on display when the three state lawmakers lined up at the conclusion and attempted to use the misrepresentations and fuzzy equivalencies presented by the filmmakers to trash ACES.  The gist:  cap-and-trade (which Koenig seemed to think equivalent to a carbon tax), will hurt working families, result in lost jobs, higher taxes, all to no purpose, and alternative energy sources, with the possible exception of nuclear, are non-starters.

Of course none of these contentions can be accepted at face value – although most of those present seemed prepared to do just that. Comments ranged from references to the Heritage Foundation’s flawed analysis of ACES costs, to libertarian contentions that, while anthropogenic global warming may or may not be real, it is not proper for the government to play a role in mitigating its effects. Doubtless, many of those present will respond to the request to phone and write their congresspersons to express their opposition ACES.

Too bad that the audience did not get to hear their representatives discuss the actual content of ACES, explain to them that the cap-and-trade provisions are designed take effect gradually, that there are provisions for alternative energy research and development, and funds to soften the transition to clean energy for coal-dependent states like Missouri.  

Too bad that their representatives, who are so concerned about the hypothetical evils of environmental extremism, don’t see fit to inform themselves and their constituents about those third world citizens who actually will suffer if global warming continues on its current trajectory. Why weren’t our lawmakers, on whom we rely for intelligent policy, talking about the effect of global warming on the Maldives, for instance? Or, to really bring it home, why no discussion of Missouri’s future in a warmer world? Why was there no mention of the security implications of global warming that our military have identified?

Perhaps it is because they were too busy trying to help energy industries paint a false picture of what is entailed in clean energy policy? Can we perhaps agree that such irresponsibility is both wrong and just pure evil?

As I reported in a related post, State Reps. Sue  Allen (R-92), Andrew Koenig (R-88), and Cole McNary (R-86) did their little bit for Missouri’s coal and electric industry Wednesday night by trying to make a case against the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) with a showing of the film Not Evil Just  Wrong.

The film, created by Irish filmmakers Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney, who describe it as the advent of “the cinematic wing of the tea party movement,” is so full of factual errors that it would be impossible to catalog them all. Take a look at the trailer in the video above if you want an idea of the atmospherics.  

As you might expect, the film pulls out the tried, if not so true, arguments of climate change skeptics: the earth is actually cooling; the analysis of the data supporting global warming is flawed; Greenland was once warm, which is how we know global warming is part of an inevitable, natural cycle that we might just as well sit back and enjoy.

However, the real aim is to trivialize the claims of those who worry about the effects of anthropogenic global warming and present them as dangerous to the well-being of the poor and down-trodden. Although not quite as hyperbolic, the argument is akin to Glenn Beck’s claim that progressives are equivalent to “slave owners.”

To present the global warming “scare” as overblown, the film suggests that worries about climate change are similar to the sensational media hype surrounding the Y2K problem, and the British mad-cow disease (BSE) epidemic of the mid-80s.  The film ignores the fact that these were legitimate issues, and that their impact was lessened by government action – which is why BSE resulted in few deaths and Y2K caused only minor snafus. Of course, to bring up that fact would be to admit that global warming disasters might be averted by appropriate action as well.

It is in their presentation of the old, right-wing DDT fiction, however, that the filmmakers pull out all the stops.  DDT regulation is meant to be understood as parallel to that of carbon emission regulation. To make sure we don’t miss the point, we are bombarded with images of dying, malarial children, disconsolate mothers and miserable, third-world living conditions that, it is implied, might be ameliorated if only DDT could be used. Juxtaposed are carefully selected and edited clips of fatuous-seeming, first-world environmentalists.  

On one side you have an American “environmentalist”(?) living in comfortable circumstances in fertile, warm Uganda, who applauds the DDT ban, comparing the potential destruction of Uganda’s birds to “Elton John without his piano.” On the other, an Ugandan mother exclaims, “You’d rather save the birds and lose the people.”

Cute filmmaking, but unfortunately the premise is false.  DDT was banned in the U.S. in 1972 for agricultural use only, and in 2004 it was banned worldwide for agricultural use only.  Although controversial, its use has never been banned for disease vector control and its overuse has resulted in DDT resistant mosquitoes.

False though it may be, this bit of film chicanery is important since it sets the tone for the gist of the movie: Al Gore, and by extension, the entire green energy community are elites promulgating bad science at the least and a cruel hoax at the worst (cue images of Hollywood actors, mansions, and poor Gore’s well-fed face). Their callous, environmental extremism, we are told, will have immediate negative, consequences for working Americans who depend on coal energy for their livelihoods (cue images of small town main street, children playing with kittens and running to catch a school bus, poor but honest and loving parents).

Enough to bring a tear to the eye if any of it were true. Perhaps those who wish to piggyback on this film to make the corporate case against ACES should familiarize themselves with the validity of its claims as well as the actual content of ACES first.