Tag Archives: Ann Wagner

The sufferings of Ann Wagner

17 Saturday Jun 2017

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There’s nothing like making hay while the sun shines. And for some Republicans, Missouri’s Ann Wagner (R-2) for instance, an angry shooter with frustrated liberal inclinations who went after Republicans a couple of days ago seems to have brought out the haymaking sunshine. She’s been taking heat for her adamant refusal to meet with constituents in a public forum. Now she’ll have an excuse – it’s just too risky.

Reading a St. Louis Post-Dispatch article where Wagner gives her account of the suffering she and the “twenty-nothing-year-olds” (??) on her staff have had to endure from maddened progressives made me wonder what it is with Republicans and the cult of victimhood. As far as I’m concerned the only victims in this instance are the folks mowed down on the playing field last week – and the issues behind the shooting go far beyond a progressive sympathizer’s attack on retrograde GOP politicians.

Wagner reports that she has received death threats. But, as one of her colleagues, Joe Barton (R-TX), observed, it goes with the territory: ” I am an adult” he remarked “and I made a conscious decision to run for Congress,” adding, somewhat ironically under the circumstances, that “nobody puts a gun to our head and says we have to run.”

Of course, Wagner makes it clear that she’s not  worried for herself. She’s just too selfless and caring. But she does unctuouslly emote about the travails of her staff of near children – those twenty-nothing-year-olds – and her neighbors, none of  whom I believe have reported any death threats, although I am very sure that her staff members are having to field some pretty angry calls. But again, it goes with the territory.

Wagner whines that protestors are “vandalizing my home, showing up with masks and gravestones, and laying down on my driveway and drawing chalk outlines of dead bodies. Picketing my church at 8 and 10 o’clock Mass.” A comment on the Post-Dispatch Website offered a different perspective, however:

…I think her descriptions of these events are largely overblown. The small group of people at her church held signs with biblical quotes about caring for the sick and poor. The chalk drawings on her street were not death threats, they were symbols of people who will die under the health care plan for which she cheered on national television. Police were present in her neighborhood and will tell you the protesters obeyed all of their directions. If there was threatening behavior I’m sure they would have known or stepped in. The town hall meeting she called “radical” was a group of well-behaved old folks at a community center talking about why they didn’t support that health care plan or her other decisions. …

While I’m not sure I’m totally happy to be characterized as part of a group of “old folks,” I have to accept the description as apt, as least in regard to me, and the “well-behaved” part is an equally apt description of the group as a whole. The account above fits better with what I know about the growing opposition to Rep. Wagner than her own rather obviously self-serving efforts to “go public” about the persecution she wants us to think she endures. It’s more than likely that the protestors pose less threat to Wagner’s well-being than she poses to their freedom of speech – a value Republicans seemingly espouse only when it comes in the form of a big check.

I’m sure that outlines of dead bodies in one’s driveway are distressing – but not as distressing as the prospect of real death for those of us who will be left with no access to healthcare if Wagner  has her way. The images are harsh, but the truth behind them is equally harsh and should fall heavily on Wagner’s shoulders. She needs to learn that very few individuals will kiss her feet for doing yeoman’s duty with the GOP wrecking crew.

Wagner’s histrionics aside, it is indeed a sad fact that politicians, like entertainment figures, make easy targets for the detritus of emotionally unmoored individuals inhabiting our increasingly gun-ridden and violent society. Ask Gabby Giffords. No sane person condones violence, but given the failure of Republicans such as Wagner to address the thriving gun-culture and their encouragement of the angry paranoia that feeds it, she ought to be one of the last to complain.

For my money Tom Sullivan of Hullabaloo got it right when he wrote today that;

… People like James Hodgkinson don’t buy guns to attack politicians. They attack politicians with guns because they feel helpless, adrift in the world described above. Guns make them feel powerful again. Al Qaida? ISIS? Similar reasons, one suspects. […] Violence towards family members, politicians, and society at large is an outgrowth of an economic system that relentlessly transfers not only wealth upward, but democratic and personal power. …

In the next few days, until the event is safely forgotten, we’ll hear lots happy talk about “coming together,” a “return to civility,” and, of course, there will be the folks like Wagner, looking to escape responsibility for what they’ve done by falsely assuming the aura of victim. What we won’t hear is an intelligent discussion about the root causes of the anomie that animates the shooters.

Ann Wagner dances on what she hopes is Obamacare’s grave – with two left feet showing

30 Tuesday May 2017

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Maybe it’s just me, but Ann Wagner (R-2) seems a bit defensive about her “full-throated” support of the latest House health care abomination, the American Health Care Act (AHCA). In the latest, mostly anodyne, installment of Rep. Ann Wagner’s regular constituent email newsletter, she indulged in a little victory dance on what she evidently hopes will be one more shovelful of dirt on the grave of Obamacare:

Last week, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas City announced that it is leaving the Obamacare exchange, leaving approximately 30,000 Missourians without health insurance. It is unacceptable that 25 counties will have no health insurance option next year. Additionally, the Department of Health and Human Services released a report showing that because of Obamacare, monthly insurance premiums for Missouri families have skyrocketed 145% since 2013.

Obamacare has failed Missouri families, and politicians who continue to defend this broken system are ignoring their needs. Washington created this nightmare, and the solution is not more government health insurance from Washington, D.C. The answer is to make the American Health Care Act law and give Missouri families—not Washington bureaucrats—freedom and control over their own healthcare decisions.

You can quibble with her figures. Other sources say that only 19,000 people in Missouri stand to lose BCBS coverage.  – what’s a little GOP number fudging amount to in the Trump era after all – but Wagner’s right about the effect of insurers leaving the market. The situation for Obamacare isn’t good. But you already knew that. There are, however, a couple of points she and fellow GOP hustlers, such as Senator Roy Blunt, have neglected to mention.

  1. President Trump and Ann Wagner’s Republican Congress are actively trying to “blow up” the Obamacare exchanges. Republicans have opposed, and Trump, for his part,  refuses to commit to either ending or continuing the cost-sharing reductions (CSRs) that subsidize lower-income people who purchase insurance on the exchanges. In response, insurers have explicitly stated that, because of the resulting uncertainty about risk levels they will likely be raising premiums or, as in the case of BCBS,  leaving the exchanges altogether. Wagner has some chutzpah talking about the collapse of Obamacare when, as WaPos Greg Sargent observes:

… This whole dynamic shows that one of the leading GOP health care talking points is also complete nonsense. Paul Ryan loves to say that Republicans are performing a “rescue mission” by stepping in to save people from the allegedly collapsing ACA by replacing it, and that they don’t want any people to be hurt in the transition. As it is, their “rescue mission” would result in 23 million people losing insurance over 10 years, and in soaring premiums for sick people, with many priced out of the market. But that aside, if their own stated goal is to avoid hurting people during the transition, it’s unclear why they would not fund the CSRs, since the failure to do so is going to hurt untold numbers of them.

2. In The Atlantic Olga Khazan argues that “there is one thing Republicans usually leave out of their indictment of Obamacare, though: Insurers might have been less likely to exit if more states had expanded Medicaid under Obamacare.” The reasons behind this claim are complex and I suggest that if you’re interested, you should read the article which presents persuasive evidence that, as a Kaiser Family Foundation study on the subject asserts “state policy decisions – in particular, on Medicaid expansion and allowing transitional (“grandmothered”) plans to continue for a period of time – have had an effect on the risk pool in the private individual market.” Missouri, of course, was too ideologically blinkered or too spiteful towards President Obama to expand Medicaid. And the sins of the leaders are always visited on the citizens.

Given the dishonest pablum that we receive from elected representatives like Ann Wagner and the rest of the Missouri GOP contingent, somebody has to get the story out about what these heartless liars are up to. They don’t get to harm so many Americans without taking responsibility for what they are doing. In the words of Khazan, “Republicans might live to see the Obamacare “death spiral” they have long been prophesying. But insurance markets don’t just collapse on their own. Decisions by states, Congress, and the Trump administration can—and have—given them a hefty nudge.”

And maybe the day of reckoning will soon be coming for Wagner and her ilk:

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is also running six-second, non-skippable YouTube ads targeting 12 Republicans who voted for the House bill: West Virginia Reps. Alex Mooney and McKinley, Indiana Reps. Todd Rokita and Luke Messer, Missouri Reps. Ann Wagner and Vicky Hartzler, Pennsylvania Reps. Mike Kelly and Lou Barletta, Rep. Pat Tiberi (Ohio), Rep. Evan Jenkins (WV.), Rep. Kevin Cramer (N.D.) and Rep. Fred Upton (Mich.)

Couldn’t happen to better people. After years of trying to buoy up our Missouri Democrats to withstand such ads coming from conservative groups, it’ll be great fun to watch Wagner – and the equally reprehensible Hartzler – take some heat.

Ann Wagner wants to fool us with a shiny object

16 Tuesday May 2017

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Rep. Ann Wagner (R-2) has been in the news recently over healthcare issues. And not in a good way.

First, she did a Howard Dean impersonation that was captured on video and widely circulated. Images of a harpy-like Wagner hoarsely screaming “freedom” after voting for the House Obamacare replacement bill which will, if enacted in the form Wagner endorsed, free millions of their healthcare and perhaps their lives, excited only disgust and derision.

Second, when constituents eager to talk to Wagner about her efforts to deprive them of their healthcare tried repeatedly to get her to come to a constituent meeting over the recent congressional recess, they finally reconciled themselves to going it alone in hopes she would pay long-distance attention. She not only remained true to her convictions however, by staying away, but, in the words of the Riverfront Times, responded by “deriding a bunch of old people attempting to hold a town hall at the Lodge Des Peres over the health care issue as ‘radical leftists.'”

I’m hoping that the criticism that Wagner’s “acting out” has received may give her some pause – reports are that she wants to take Claire McCaskill’s place in the Senate next year, and if any of those healthcare chickens come home to roost too soon, she may be out of luck. So I wasn’t too surprised when I received her email newsletter dated May 15 and read this paragraph describing what a caring person Wagner is when it comes to sick people, specifically, sick children:

During my time in Congress I’ve met with too many children suffering from debilitating and deadly diseases. Our country is on the forefront of innovative medical research, but more needs to be done to improve pediatric disease research. This is why I co-sponsored the Kids First Research Act which would transfer approximately $320 million in funds from the Presidential Election Campaign Fund to the Pediatric Research Initiative Fund at the National Institutes of Health. Recently, I met with 8-year-old Ava, who lost her twin brother Sam to rhabdomyosarcoma, and their mom to talk about the need for pediatric cancer research funding. Cancer remains the leading cause of death from disease among children, and I believe this bill can help lead to medical breakthroughs that will save lives and empower our children.

Helping children with cancer. Oooh and ahhhh. What better way to wash away the nasty taste of that AHCA Freedom yodel. Especially since, while it’s no doubt a goodish thing for children with cancer, it’s not really a big reach. The bill simply redirects funds allocated for another purpose. It does not require any new spending, but allows Wagner to pat herself on the back in constituent communications. And since the funds in the Presidential Election Campaign Fund are a total joke in these post-Citizens United days nobody is likely to protest too heartily about the loss. Politicians like Wagner know that as long as they secure a stable of generous corporate clients whose interests they can represent they’re good,

Of course the $320 million is a drop in the bucket when it comes to cancer research. And it is precisely this bucket that will be considerably reduced in size if Wagner’s GOP president, Donald Trump gets his way. The budget plan that Trump presented in March would cut $5.8 billion from the current cancer research funding, debilitating President Obama’s cancer “moonshot” initiative, and bringing cancer research to a near standstill – except for, perhaps, the handful of pennies Wagner and her other co-sponsors propose to redirect towards pediatric cancer research. According to the American Society of Clinical Oncology, “cutting the [cancer research] funding in this way will have devastating and generation-long effects.”

Now, I may have missed it, but I don’t believe I’ve heard Wagner take The Donald to task for his effort to virtually eliminate new cancer research. She certainly didn’t address the issue in her newsletter when she tried to take credit for helping to halt the scourge of childhood cancer. So far, she’s lined up right behind Trump, voting with his position 96.6% of the time, so I don’t really expect her to take a radically different tack on down the line when it comes to his budget priorities.

Childhood cancer is indeed, a terrible thing. But so is adult cancer. Lack of research dollars is going to hurt all of us, children and adults. And a few pennies thrown at pediatric cancer research isn’t going to fix the problem for any of us. But – and this is the real issue – we’re also going to be hurt, children and adults, when the AHCA pre-existing condition provisions kick in and we can’t get or afford coverage. Even if we had all the research dollars for cancer in the world – and what Wgner is taking credit for giving us is a pittance – it won’t help us if we can’t afford the treatments that that research discovers. That inconvenient fact doesn’t seem to bother our freedom yodeler, Ann Wagner, at all.

Speaking as an adult with chronic cancer, as far as I’m concerned, Wagner’s endorsement of the Kids First Research Act is nothing more than a shiny object intended to direct our attention away from the meat cleaver she’s more than willing to apply to our health care. And I aim to tell her just that if she ever gets over her allergy to her constituents and manages to make it to a real town hall meeting instead of the stage-managed telephone jobbies she uses to divert our attention from her fear of real interaction with a diverse group of constituents.

*Last sentence slightly changed (5/17/2017, 12:17 am)

True believers

15 Monday May 2017

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There’s no such thing as a “moderate” republican.

FiveThirtyEight (Nate Silver’s place) is keeping a running tally of the votes in Congress and how they align with Donald Trump’s wishes:

Tracking Congress In The Age Of Trump
An updating tally of how often every member of the House and the Senate votes with or against the president.

Representative Blaine Luetkemeyer (r) [2014 file photo].

In the House of Representatives [How often a member votes in line with Trump’s position]:

Jason Smith R MO-8 96.6%
Billy Long R MO-7 96.6%
Sam Graves R MO-6 100.0%
Emanuel Cleaver D MO-5 12.0%
Vicky Hartzler R MO-4 100.0%
Blaine Luetkemeyer R MO-3 100.0%
Ann Wagner R MO-2 96.6%
Wm. Lacy Clay D MO-1 14.3%

Representative Vicky Hartzler (r) [2015 file photo].

Representative Billy Long (r) [2013 file photo].

Voting for Donald Trump’s agenda 96.6% of the time is an unqualified endorsement. 100% is a true believer.

In the U.S. Senate [How often a member votes in line with Trump’s position]:

Roy Blunt R MO 100.0%
Claire McCaskill D MO 45.0%

Well, look at that, Roy Blunt (r) is no moderate.

Roy Blunt (r) [2016 file photo].

There’s no such thing as a “moderate” republican. They own Donald Trump (r) and his agenda.

“Freedom” Ann Wagner Style

06 Saturday May 2017

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Well, they did it. The Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives put Obamacare on the butcher’s block and started blindly hacking. The bloody mess that they’re now serving up would deny healthcare to millions of Americans, but, hey, at least, Big Orange got his ego stoked with a big “win.”

One of the prime ego stokers was Rep. Ann Wagner (R-2) who celebrated – perhaps at Big Orange’s Rose Garden beer-bust victory lap? – by screaming the word “freedom,” which she identified as “the line of the day, out of Braveheart.” As you will note if you check out the video, Riverfront Times‘ s Paul Friswold aptly captured Wagner’s tone, declaring that “she preened and cooed,” and seemed “positively giddy with anticipation at ripping healthcare away from millions of American citizens.”

Tasteless, yes. But it also suggests that Wagner’s conception of freedom is very special. Enumerating some of the actual provisions of Trumpcare 3.0 (which I base on Paul Waldman’s thorough summary, quoting directly at times) gives us the following anatomy of Braveheart Annie’s idea of healthcare freedom:

  • Freedom from healthcare for everyday Americans:
    • Frees upwards of 24 million from their insurance coverage:
    • Frees states from the Medicaid expansion that covered a considerable portion of those 24 million Americans if their legislators are, like those in Missouri, inclined to say that only rich folks folks deserve healthcare.
    • Frees states from a big portion of their federal Medicaid funding by cutting $880 billion dollars from the program over 10 years.
    • Frees states to kick “otherwise eligible” people off Medicaid once federal funding becomes block-grants – which are likely to diminish over time.
    • Frees middle income people from the ACA subsidies, “replacing them with far more meager tax credits pegged not to people’s income but to their age. Poorer people would get less than they do now, while richer people would get more.”
  • Freedom for insurance companies to run wild:
    • Frees insurance companies from constraints that kept them from charging older people as much as five times more than they charge younger people for insurance.
    • Frees insurance companies to impose yearly and lifetime caps on what they will pay to cover illnesses – a provision that could also affect those who get their insurance through their employers.
    • Frees insurance companies – in states that seek waivers – from requirements that they offer plans that cover essential benefits guaranteed under Obamacare, things like “such as emergency services, hospitalization, mental health care, preventive care, maternity care, and substance abuse treatment.”
    • Frees insurance companies from having to give coverage to those with preexisting conditions and will allow them to charge them dramatically more if they do offer such coverage. It establishes expensive and inefficient “high-risk” pools for those with preexisting conditions while failing to offer adequate funding to cover the number of people who suffer from chronic illnesses.
    • Frees insurance companies to set higher deductibles for patients.
    • Frees insurance companies to reinstate medical underwriting so that when “you apply for insurance you’ll have to document every condition or ailment you’ve ever had,”  which in turn allows the insurers to identify your preexisting conditions and either deny coverage or charge you a fortune.
  • Freedom for rich people to sock it away:
    • Frees families making more that $250,000 a year from paying billions of dollars in taxes.

So much freedom. This version of Trumpcare isn’t too likely to survive the Senate. But we better never forget that Rep. Wagner tried to give us freedom Donald Trump style. Someone, somewhere (I can’t recall where) called her freedom scream her “let them eat cake moment.” Me, personally, I think of the Howard Dean scream – if her opponents don’t play this nasty little performance over and over again in TV ads next year, they’re fools.

Maybe Trumpcare might just help free Ann Wagner too. Free her from her current job, that is.

Predicting the future: After the Trumpcare 3.0 vote

03 Wednesday May 2017

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There are rumors that the 3rd iteration of the Obamcare repeal and replace bill, GOP Dump& Dupe, will be voted on this week – perhaps tonight, and – brace yourselves – this totally terrible, cruel bill might pass the House and be sent to the Senate. It’s likely that it won’t pass in the Senate, at least not in its current incoherent form, but, who knows? As Steven Benen observes, lots of us cheered when Big Orange got the GOP presidential nomination – no one thought such a clown could ever in a million years win the general election.

But console yourselves. There are some existential bedrocks you will always be able to count on:

After she votes for the revised bill – and she’s not currently counted among the holdouts – those of us who subscribe to Rep. Ann Wagner’s (R-2) email newsletter will get a gushing account of how she battled to save us from that bad, old Obamacare. And she won’t even ask for thanks – she just wants us to stop phoning her about the damn thing, please, and, for god sakes, quit asking her to come to an in-person town hall and actually listen to random concerns of the hoi polloi. Mama did what she had to do to save us from ourselves and no matter how many time we’ve asked her to leave Obamacare alone, she knows that we really don’t mean that at all. After all, St. Louisians stop her in the grocery all the time to tell her to keep on keeping on. At whatever she keeps on at. Working to help bankers, I think.

GOP Senator Roy Blunt will hem and haw in order to persuade us he isn’t as dumb as the rest of his party, but he won’t even require that push comes to shove to make him go along with GOP leadership when/if the bill comes to the Senate – when the inevitable fallout begins, though, he’ll remind you about the hemming and hawing.

Rep. Billy Long (R-7) will carry on about how he held out until he got a dinky little pittance as a down-payment for ineffective high risk pools (along with a in-person goosing from the Big Guy in the White House). He’ll try to persuade you (using standard talking points developed by somebody else ) that this particular thirty pieces of silver makes up for voting to take away protections from folks with preexisting conditions. Nobody but the terminally stupid will be fooled. Oh wait, those are the people who vote for Republicans like Billy Long.

And Vicky Hartzler (R-4) will let us know that Jesus told her to vote for Trumpcare 3.0. She’ll do it indirectly, as befits a congresswoman who has to pretend to serve the heathens too. She runs with Jesus after all and Obamacare was just full of provisions that were hurtful to the Christian Taliban members who worry that they’ll go to hell if they contribute to a common insurance pool that also funds contraception for those who don’t share their beliefs.

Sam Graves (R-6) and Jason Smith (R-8 ) will vote as expected. And if they say anything about it all, they’ll do it in the usual way which consists of whispering over in the corners with safely like-minded supporters. Nobody else actually knows who they are, so no big deal.

But It’s good to know that you can rely on Republicans to be Republicans. Isn’t it?

*Third sentence of 2nd paragraph edited slightly for clarity (5-3-1, 9:51 pm)

Ann Wagner’s Missouri values

20 Thursday Apr 2017

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Word is that U.S. Rep. Ann Wagner (R-2) may be planning to challenge Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill in next year’s midterm election. She’s also taking lots of heat for refusing to hold real, in-person town halls – and, no, hyper-managed tele-town halls don’t count. This fact explains her defensive response to Senator McCaskill’s recent jibe indirectly referencing Wagner’s now-notorious fear of being confronted by less than tame constituents in an environment that she cannot control. McCaskill – who spent the recent congressional recess on a listening tour of the state has plenty of standing on this issue. She’s held numerous Town Halls and listening sessions, even during the most virulent Tea Party period, which means that she’s earned the right to assert that folks who haven’t got what it takes stand up before angry constituents in an open forum and take responsibility for their actions aren’t fit to hold office.

The nettled Wagner promptly attempted to deflect McCaskill’s very palpable hit. She rushed to attack, peevishly declaring that, “I believe what makes you unfit for office is when you don’t represent Missouri values; and Sen. McCaskill’s vote against [Supreme Court] Justice Gorsuch last week told millions of Missourians that she simply doesn’t share their values.”

So what are these “Missouri values” of which Wagner speaks? Based on her performance over just the last few months, I’m willing to make an educated guess that Wagner’s own special Missouri values include the following:

— Shafting Missouri consumers, especially senior citizens: Wagner’s untiring efforts over the past few years to repeal the Obama era fiduciary rules and to weaken the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) speak for themselves.

— Standing up for her big political donors: See the above point and then consider the piles of dollars that Wagner has raked in from the likes of Edward Jones and other big hitters in the financial services industry.

— Going along to get along, decency be dammed: During the campaign, Wagner made it clear that the stench of Donald Trump made her gag – until she realized that the red-meat folks she had to rely on to get elected thought he smelled like chateaubriand. Now she’s all smiles and compliance.

— Talking feminism while shafting women: Wagner makes a big deal about her efforts to fight sexual assault, rape and sex trafficking. But she voted against the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) – because it was too comprehensive. And issued a public statement that made it sound like she hadn’t. Hypocrites, we shall know ye by your words.

And then there’s Wagner’s vote for Neil Gorsuch a corporatist in originalist clothing– who is straight-out bad news for women and a disaster for working and middle class Missourians. If that vote represents Missouri values, it’s only because a lot of poor fools have been sold a bill of goods.

No wonder Country Club Ann is scared to face the rowdy hoi polloi in an unconstrained environment. She clearly knows nothing about our values.

Ann Wagner’s tele-townhall. Pt. 1: Who made the cut? Why? How?

23 Thursday Mar 2017

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Rep. Ann Wagner is showing signs that constituent pressure might be getting to her. Many of us who’ve been writing and calling her, asking that she meet with us and take a little time to hear our concerns and take our questions, learned via her email newsletter that she held a “tele-townhall,” a tried and true dodge to avoid risking a little in person give-and-take. And she clearly thinks that that’s done the trick. Here she is patting herself on the back in a recent email newsletter:

With so much happening in Washington under President Trump’s new administration and our Republican-led Congress, it is important that I continue to hear what is on your mind at home. I am thrilled that more than 9,000 of you joined us for a tele-townhall conversation Thursday night, where we discussed issues ranging from healthcare to pro-life legislation.

Just to give you a little perspective, over 400,000 folks voted in the last 2nd district election but nobody I’ve heard from seems to be very clear about how the 9,000 folks who “thrilled” Annie by “joining” her on the call were selected for the honor from among that 400,000.

I’ve personally called Wagner’s office several times to ask that she hold a public town-hall – she’s right that there’s lots going on that will affect people in the 2nd district in very serious ways and we want her – hell, we need her – to hear and respond to our concerns. The response? I was told that I could sign up for her newsletter if I wanted to know what was going on chez Rep.Wagner – never mind that, as I told her “tele-staffer,” I’ve been signed up to receive them for a long, long time and Annie’s coy little newsletter driblets don’t really do the trick. Nobody mentioned a tele-townhall to me as a possibility. Which makes sense given that the latest event – which is the only one I’ve personally ever heard about, thanks to some generous Facebook info sharing – seems to have been a surprise for even the participants.

Nor are many of us, including, by all accounts, Wagner’s staff, sure about what it takes to get in on these surprise parties, at least according to some 2nd district residents who’ve been calling and asking how to be included. One person said that she called, left contact information, and asked to participate in the next tele-townhall, and, though the actual telephone event Wagner boasts about above was held later that day, the staffer taking her information said nothing at all about it. Nor was she called. Wonder why?

I have read a report from one person who participated in that call and have heard that another just missed the surprise call inviting her to join the event. But the fact that some folks had the opportunity to listen to Rep. Wagner does not mitigate the problem. If these events are meant to substitute for actual town-halls, why can’t constituents sign up for them? Why wait to be selected? An even more basic question is why aren’t constituents being notified ahead of time that one of these events is imminent so they can do whatever is necessary to participate? Why can’t anyone tell us what it takes to be included?

Wagner has email addresses for all of us who subscribe to her newsletter – which itself indicates interest in what she has to say. It would be easy to let us all know in advance and invite our participation when she’s planning to tele-gift  us with her insights into the Trump world she seems to be embracing so wholeheartedly. It would actually be relatively trivial to set up a web-page form we could use to register for the teleconferences. Other folks do such things. I really bet that if Wagner actually cared about communicating with constituents, she could implement some process that would let us decide if we want to participate, rather than leaving us to wait breathlessly to be tapped whenever she feels like getting us – or some of us – on the line.

You don’t think she’s cherry-picking participants , do you?

The news has been full of reports about how “ugly” some Republican town halls have been over the past few weeks, prompting, comparisons to the boisterous town halls that Democrats endured during the nascent Tea Party years. There’s a big difference though, at least for Missourians. I well remember how valiantly, resolutely, and, yes, respectfully, Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill handled the worked-up Tea Partiers – and some of them were, to put it mildly, really ugly.

Questions of how to conduct tele-townhalls aside, though, isn’t the real issue still that Rep. Wagner needs to take similar, face-to-face responsibility for what she is doing in Congress if she wants our respect – and our votes? Isn’t answering our questions – especially the ones that have got us hot and bothered – her job? If Wagner’s really a “representative” shouldn’t she do some representing? And if she isn’t going to represent all of us, at least by listening and responding to us, maybe she should retire. Or be retired.

Time to exorcise the NRA’s 2nd amendment demon?

03 Friday Feb 2017

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Representatives Sam Graves (R-6), Vicky Hartzler (R-4), Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-3), Billy Long (R-7), Jason Smith (R-8), and Ann Wagner (R-2). The entire Republican Missouri U.S. House lineup. Remember each one of these names next time there’s a mass shooting and Republican Senator Blunt or some other NRA apologist comes out and says, as Blunt did after one or another in the spate of mass shootings we have experienced in the past few years, that the problem isn’t guns, it’s mental illness.

These five congresspeople voted today to rescend an Obama administration rule that prohibited the sale of guns to mentally ill persons. Specifically:

The House voted 235-180 largely along party lines Thursday to repeal an Obama-era rule requiring the Social Security Administration to send records of some beneficiaries to the federal firearms background check system after they’ve been deemed mentally incapable of managing their financial affairs.

The rule, when implemented, would affect about 75,000 recipients of disability insurance and supplemental insurance income who require a representative to manage their benefits because of a disabling mental disorder, ranging from anxiety to schizophrenia. It applies to those between age 18 and full retirement age.

What’s really rich is that GOPers explained their vote by saying they were worried that the rule “stigmatized” folks with disabilities and “unfairly” deprived them of their 2nd amendment rights. This, mind you, is coming from the very people who think every Muslim is a terrorist until proven otherwise. Folks who  don’t turn a hair when 100,000 people with totally legal visas are denied entry to the U.S. because they are Muslim. And they’re worried that denying guns to people too ill to handle their own affairs is overkill.

Maybe we should give blind drivers licenses so that they don’t feel unduly stigmatized.

Or we could permit folks on the terrorist watch list to purchase guns – oh, wait. I forgot the same cast of characters made sure that we already do just that.

No flies on Ann Wagner when it comes to fighting against “Obamacare” for investors.

21 Monday Nov 2016

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It was remarkable how fast some GOP pols geared up to take advantage of our know-nothing President-elect to push their favorite hobby horses. We’ve not only got folks revving up the endless Obamacare repeal effort, but Paul Ryan has signaled that he has Trump’s thumbs-up to go forward with his Medicare privatization plan. Nor did Missouri’s Ann Wagner waste any time, immediately signaling that she is going after Department of Labor (DOL) regulations designed to protect small investors and retirees.

The DOL rules that have kept Wagner and her banking friends all lathered up are intended to keep investment professionals from giving advice that serves their own interest rather than their clients. As I noted in an earlier post on this topic, “a report (pdf) from the Council of Economic Advisers estimates that retirees are defrauded of $17 billion a year by unscrupulous advisers who fail to disclose conflicts of interest or the hidden fees they are charging the unwary.”

Wagner has fought this rule relentlessly, submitting and resubmitting legislation designed to repeal it, going so far as to threaten DOL funding if it finalized the rules. Trump’s victory has only revitalized her efforts.

In Wagner’s regular constituent’s newsletter, which was emailed to me today, she is signaling that the effort to rescind this rule, which she shamelessly terms “Obamacare for investors,” will be part of a larger effort to keep the Obama administration from finalizing new regulations during the period before the Trump ascendancy. She writes:

For the past 8 years, President Obama has used his pen and phone to create a fourth branch of government, imposing executive orders and federal rules and regulations to benefit his own radical political agenda. President-elect Trump must have the opportunity to enact policies without regulatory hindrance from the previous Administration.

This is why the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Midnight Rules Relief Act last week, which would halt President Obama’s ability to rush through politically motivated regulations during the remainder of his term. I have spent my time in Congress fighting for our families, fighting to repeal regulations that are hindering business growth, and fighting to provide a voice to the voiceless. I am proud that we came together to ensure our new President, Donald Trump, has the support in Congress that he has earned.

If the president has relied on the rule-making powers of agencies subject to executive control, it is simply because a Republican-controlled congress consistently obstructed his goals – even going so far as to shut-down the government at great cost to tax-payers. Why in Hades, then, would Wagner expect Democrats to do anything to assist President-elect Trump (or even President Trump) in the great corporate giveaway that lies ahead?

The Midnight Rules Relief Act that Wagner refers to will undoubtedly be vetoed by President Obama – if it even makes it to his desk. It’s superfluous at any rate, since retrospective efforts to kill regulations issued during his presidency will likely be ongoing under the 20 year old Congressional Review Act.

It is also apropos to note that the regulations likely to be finalized during the remaining months of President Obama’s term have almost all been in process for a long time, having undergone extensive review and open-comment periods. These are not, as some assert, hasty and “politically motivated” regulations. Far from constituting a “fourth branch of government,” making and enacting such agency-specific regulations is a part of the function of executive agencies. The administration is just doing its jobs.

As for Wagner’s self-proclaimed advocacy for “families” and the “voiceless,” I hardly think that the banking industry, the interests of which she has been well-compensated  for representing so ardently (see also here), hardly qualifies under either rubric. But hell, she’s a Republican. If they told the truth, nobody would ever vote for them.

I’m sure that from Wagner’s perspective it’s much better to present consumer fiduciary protection as another example of government interference in ordinary families’ lives, a condescending elite belief that “the American people need to be protected from themselves, that they are not smart or capable enough to control their own retirement savings.” Of course, when investment professionals don’t have to tell you the truth, it hardly reflects on your intelligence or capacity when they take advantage of you. And, despite Wagner’s condescending effort to manipulate perception, most small investors, many of whom are elderly retired folk, don’t always know what they don’t know.

But what I want to know is where does Wagner get off conflating a rule that protects consumers with “Obamacare” as if its the all-time scare label? I know she claims that requiring investment advisors to act in an honest and above-board fashion would discourage them from working with small investors because, evidently, they won’t work for folks they can’t bilk. And that’s a pretty dumb pitch. But just because she can’t think of any better justification, does Obamacare have to take all the weight for her mendacity just because her equally mendacious colleagues managed to smear an overall good health care delivery reform by tying it to the  first black president?

*5th and 6th paragraphs from bottom were slightly revised for clarity and style.