Roy Blunt, who’s known for doing a good deed now and then for his fossil fuel benefactors, wants us to believe that he’s turned over a new leaf. Since President Obama announced his new clean air regulations for coal-fired plants, the Senator seems to have got himself all worked up about the hardships that these regulations will cause Missouri’s poor working folks:

If Blunt is so worried about how rate increases will affect low-income folks, where was he when Ameren raised electrical rates six times between 2006 and 2014? The St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote in 2014 that:

Rates will have risen more than 50 percent since 2006 if the PSC grants the latest request in full. In recent years, the regulator has approved Ameren’s rate increase requests, but a lower amount than originally proposed by the utility.

A full 50%! Seems like that imposition on hard up Missourians might have reduced Blunt to outright sobbing. But I don’t remember that he had much to say about these rate increases.

And did you notice? Not one word about Ameren’s very generous donations to his campaign war chest:

Ameren is a top contributor to Blunt’s campaigns. People associated with the company have contributed more than $100,000 to Blunt, according the Center for Responsive Politics, good for 8th on the list of Blunt donors.

There’s more. Guess what really hurts poor Missourians? Pollution from coal-fired plants which disproportionately affects low-income people. And sorry, Senator Blunt, it’s not at all a sure bet that energy prices will rise, given the flexibility built into the new regulations. Some folks think we might see just the opposite result:

The rules give states a wide menu of policy options to achieve the pollution cuts. Rather than immediately shutting down coal plants, states may be able to develop plans that make plants more efficient so they burn less coal. In addition, natural gas – which is cleaner than coal – renewable energy and energy efficiency will play major roles in the state plans.

[…]

The Natural Resources Defense Council said consumers will actually see electric prices decline as energy efficiency reduces the amount of electricity used.

Of course, we’ll have to get ol’ Roy out of the way first since he claims that when it comes to the new regulations he’ll “fight the president and his administration every step of the way,” doubtless financing the fight with big checks from Ameren.

*First sentence after video changed, first thirteen words added.

I’ve just returned from a lovely and isolated vacation in the Canadian Rockies and, lo and behold, as soon a I got back to Missouri I think that I may have seen one of those proverbial winged piggies flying just over the spot where Hell froze over. What I’m talking about is the response to President Obama’s proposed new carbon emission standards. Of course that flying piggy isn’t from Missouri’s Senate contingent, all of whom seem to be oinking along the same old muddy road.

Start with Republican Senator Roy Blunt who couldn’t wait to go to bat for the energy industry sugar daddies who love him so generously. Blunt  has promised a heroic battle against these standards. He says they will – what else – “kill jobs and raise electric rates.” This, of course, is what Blunt says about anything that emanates from the Democratic administration that saved us from the GOP engendered financial crisis of 2008. The only thing different is that this time he tried to put some numbers to his claims of economic hardship to come, numbers that could be double-checked, and lots of very public merriment – at poor Blunt’s expense – ensued when a journalist at Roll Call did just that. Of course, I noticed some yahoo quoting those same figures in a recent letter the editor published in a little local newspaper so I guess Blunt knows how to please his main audience.

Democratic Senator Claire Mcaskill, on the other hand, is trudging along in her same old rut as well – the one that runs down the middle of any controversial road and avoids veering in any meaningful direction. She’s “withholding judgement while she studies the proposal and gathers public input.” Even before the standards were made public, she’s was a busy little equivocator:

I believe that climate change is real, I believe that it is dangerous, I believe that it is the result of man-made activity, and I trust science.

“I’m not happy about this,” she added, “but Missouri is incredibly coal-dependent for its energy needs. Which means that any aggressive changes in the availability of coal-fired electricity will have a direct impact on whether or not people with fixed incomes and small businesses can afford their energy bills.”

Gee, what does the destruction of the Missouri agricultural ecosystem, not to mention the planet itself, matter if it adds a few dollars to the old utility bill. Since our Missouri politicians are more than willing to subsidize farmers right now, perhaps they could extend some energy subsidies to those who really need them – if I remember correctly, the cap-and-trade bill McCaskill voted against a few years ago proposed to do just that. (McCaskill shares her reluctance to deal with the true costs of coal-generated electricity with Rep. Billy Long (R-7) who also wails about the potential higher utility bills. That alone ought to persuade her to rethink her rhetoric.)

But apart from the question of subsidies, don’t you think that a politician as savvy as McCaskill might figure out that it’s not an all or nothing proposition, that there are ways to mitigate the difficulties inherent in reducing the indirect subsidies that prop up coal use – maybe it’s time for the McCaskills in our Congress, those nefarious Red State Democrats, to take a chance, take a real stand, do the right thing and get real abut renewables instead of hemming, hawing and, in the end, pandering to a destructive status quo. The European Union is now producing so much energy from renewables that it has to figure out how to deal with structural problems caused by oversupply. Why can’t that be Missouri’s problem?

No, the piggy that seems to be sprouting a tiny, feathery winglet or two is Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-7). Usually Vicky is a good little soldier who marches in lock-step with the radical right wing, anti-science base. However, she’s on the record saying that the proposed rules “aren’t as bad as once feared,” and, unlike Senator Blunt’s rhetorical overreach, actually seems to be willing to point out that the rules permit the states some flexibility that can be used to mitigate their impact.

Of course, those may not be incipient wings on that pig, but just lipstick smears. Hartzler did make these statements at a panel discussion dominated by speakers from Missouri’s coal-dependent utilities who tried to sound reasonable and scientifically literate while doing their utmost to keep the renewable energy genie tightly under control lest it upend their their very profitable business models. As research into mechanisms that will store energy generated by renewable sources begins to show serious results, these folks don’t want to be left holding an empty bag. Among them are the same Ameren types who a few years ago proposed a surcharge for consumers who cut their energy use.

But still, it is something when righteous rightwing Vicky Hartzler, of all the politicians in the state, actually acts like she is aware of what the new regulations really propose to do – no matter whose bottom line she wants to protect. And unlike our Democratic Senator McCaskill, who seems to understand the issues even more fully, but who willfully ignores the call to action, Hartzler has struggled to give a coherent response, albeit one that befits an honest conservative. As Paul Krugman observes apropos the Republican reaction to the proposed regulations:

Claims that the effects will be devastating are, however, not just wrong but inconsistent with what conservatives claim to believe. Ask right-wingers how the U.S. economy will cope with limited supplies of raw materials, land, and other resources, and they respond with great optimism: the magic of the marketplace will lead us to solutions. But they abruptly lose their faith in market magic when someone proposes limits on pollution – limits that would largely be imposed in market-friendly ways like cap-and-trade systems. Suddenly, they insist that businesses will be unable to adjust, that there are no alternatives to doing everything energy-related exactly the way we do it now.

So maybe I was right. Maybe I did see a pig lift off, just a little bit. Perhaps Vicky Hartzler is more honest than I had thought. Given the clouds of lies and distortions  consistently rolling in from the rightward direction, that’s at least refreshing.

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.

When I learned via Prime Buzz that Ike Skelton and Minnesota’s Collin Peterson have introduced legislation that would “veto the EPA’s finding in December that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare,” I was not really as surprised as Caesar was by Brutus’ nasty knife in the back. Just another Missouri Democrat out to establish his credentials as a running dog for big coal – first Claire McCaskill, and now the ever-predictable Mr. Skelton. Nevertheless, I did wonder if he couldn’t have just waited and voted on some other jerk’s bad legislation? Did he have to initiate?

The real eyeopener, though, can be found in the comments on the Prime Buzz article. One blighted-in-the-bud intellect declares that no matter what Skelton does, the voters of his district will never regard him as anything other than “just another Pelosi lackey.” Too bad nobody told Pelosi – she could surely have made much better use of Skelton had she known that he is just another one of her lackeys. Of course, on the other hand, some of us are more concerned about Peabody Coal’s lackeys than Pelosi’s.