Two days ago via Twitter:

Rep. Vicky Hartzler ‏@RepHartzler

#Sequestration would not only put Americans out of their #jobs, but it threatens our #NationalSecurity: [….] 10:48 AM – 13 Feb 13

Apparently, this is now the only authorized form of corporate welfare in the republican economic policy pantheon.

From 2011:

Stutzman and Job Creators Caucus Propose Jobs & Growth Agenda

Washington, D.C. – Congressman Marlin Stutzman (IN-03) and three freshman members of the Job Creators Caucus today participated in the unveiling of the House Republican’s Plan for America’s Job Creators with Speaker Boehner, Leader Cantor and the entire GOP Leadership team.

“Government doesn’t create jobs,” stated Stutzman “Americans create jobs.  I appreciate the philosophy that our leadership has shown here, that we need to get government out of the way.”

[….]

Links to remarks from Speaker Boehner, and caucus members Rep. Ribble, Rep. Rigell, and Rep. Hartzler.

The Congressional Job Creators Caucus is made up entirely of freshman small business owners, and focuses on practical, legislative solutions that promote growth, expand our economy and create jobs. Current members of the caucus include: Rick Berg (R-SD), Diane Black (R-TN), Rick Crawford (R-AR), Robert Dold (R-IL), Stephen Fincher (R-TN), Bill Flores (R-TX), Bob Gibbs (R-OH), Richard Hanna (R-NY), Vicky Hartzler (R-MO), Mike Kelly (R-PA), Billy Long (R-MO), Reid Ribble (R-WI), Scott Rigell (R-VA), Bobby Schilling (R-IL), Steve Southerland (R-FL), and Marlin Stutzman (R-IN).

[….]

[emphasis added]

But, but, government doesn’t create jobs, right? Wait a minute, if government spending doesn’t create jobs, how would government spending cuts lose jobs? Just asking.

Before the last election:

Rep. Vicky Hartzler (r) and Rep. Joe Wilson (r) in Warrensburg on defense sequestration (September 18, 2012)

[…]

Representative Vicky Hartzler (r) (left) and Representative Joe Wilson (r) (right).

[….]

Rep. Vicky Hartzler ‏@RepHartzler

#sequestration slated to raise unemployment by another percent. #MO would lose over 33k jobs. 4:45 PM – 18 Sep 12

Who knew that the defense budget was a stimulus plan for local economies?

[….]

Ah, yes, consistent cognitive dissonance.

Yesterday, in an NPR interview, retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor promoted an interactive Website, iCivics. Although it is intended as a tool to educate middle school students about government, it’s still worth a moment of time from those of us who left middle school many years ago.  

iCivics was developed, O’Connor says, because “few states make civics and government a requirement anymore.”  I can think of another big reason that tools like iCivics are sorely needed: The Tea Party. Consider the following:

— The Salem Missouri Tea Party Webpage identifies Tea partiers as, among other things, citizens who:

… believe in smaller government, & responsible government. We support the American Dream, & believe in upholding the Ideals as set forth in the Constitution of the United States of America.

— At one of the first local St. Louis appearances of the Tea Party, an AFP-brokered meeting between a representative of Senator Claire McCaskill and several hundred Tea Partiers, a young man who grandiloquently attacked health care on constitutional grounds was the biggest hit of the evening with the rambunctious crowd.  

Emphasis on the constitution is a common theme with Tea Partiers, although one suspects that few of those cheering when the constitution is rhetorically flourished, know much more about the document than, as we recently learned, many avowed Christians know about the teachings of their own churches. Stanford Law School’s Larry Krammer contends that the Tea Party understanding of the Constitution often tends toward “some loose, ill-informed version of originalism.”

One could argue that the Tea Partiers’ constitution also carries the burden of their anxiety and resentment in the face of social change. An NPR report on the subject observed that:

Tea Party members are often vague about exactly how their constitutional rights are being denied. But they all believe the federal government has expanded far beyond what the Constitution intended.

The same report later asserts that though Tea Party “constitutional arguments may sound abstract, they are grounded in something visceral,” and quotes a Columbia Law Professor whose polls of Tea Party supporters leads him to conclude more specifically that:

A lot of this taps into people’s objections to Obama personally – you know, we’ve had all kinds of constitutional arguments that have been raised against Obama,” he says, “whether you’re pointing to the birther movement, for example, or constitutional objections to individual policies.

The upshot of all this commotion is simply that the Constitution is our newest bone of contention. A retrograde political element is trying to appropriate the document to assuage their social angst, and if progressives want to hold the line against their encroachments, they need tools like those the iCivics Project provides. If we don’t want people jerking their knees in time to canned Tea Party (or any other party) noise about the constitution or any other government topic, we are responsible to see that they get sufficient information – and preferably from sources a little more unbiased than the Glenn Becks of fringedom who are rushing in to fill the vacuum we have allowed to develop.

When I read the St. Louis Post-Dispatch‘s account of the Tea Party rally in Kiener Plaza last Saturday, I was struck by the claims of one Mike Carey, President of Ohio Coal Association and the Chief Executive of of the American Council for Affordable and Reliable Energy (ACARE), newly formed to fight clean energy legislation:

Mike Carey … blasted the proposed climate change legislation, saying it would allow Congress to dictate what Americans ate, where they lived and what kinds of vehicles they drove.

Given the now familiar strategy of both the health and dirty energy industries, which is to rev up the seemingly inbred paranoia of the Tea Partiers, Carey’s evocation of overweening government control was to be expected – just more of the general Tea Party hokum.

However, in the same edition of the Post-Dispatch, I came across an article that described the events that followed Tuesday, Nov. 28, 1939, “Black Tuesday,” when the city of St. Louis  was darkened by a fog of coal smoke so dense that “Motorists drove slowly with headlights on. Streetlights, still on, made ghostly glows.”

The cheap, high-sulfur coal responsible for the miasma of pollution that had made St. Louis one of the “filthiest” cities in the nation was mined nearby in Illinois, and there were numerous local interests that had a stake in maintaining the status quo. Efforts to do something about the problem were effectively thwarted until Black Tuesday made it clear that there had to be a change. Sound familiar?

Thanks to the shock delivered by Black Tuesday, St. Louis was finally able to take the necessary steps to insure an acceptable quality of life for its citizens. I doubt that many people in the city at that time felt that government was curtailing their liberty when it stepped in and refused to give local mining interests their druthers.  

Yet last Saturday, 1500-2000 people, some of whom are probably descended from those who experienced Black Tuesday, were thumping their chests and gibbering about how “big government” wants to take away their “liberty” – all because a majority of the citizens of this democracy elected a government based on its plan of action to safeguard our quality of life and health.