Numbers tell stories. Based on statistics from 2010, 24/7 Wall St. ranked Missouri eighth for overall gun violence. Missouri had 14 gun injury deaths per each 100,000 people – only 11 states had a higher rate: Louisiana (19.2); Alabama (16.2); Mississippi (16.1); Montana (15.4); Wyoming (15.1); New Mexico (14.9); Nevada (14.5);Arizona (14.6); Arkansas and Oklahoma (14.4); West Virginia (14.1). The story these numbers tell isn’t surprising. Almost all of these states are poor, Southern or Western and deep red or getting redder. Missouri isn’t quite as poor or – maybe – as red as some, but given the inclinations of the Republicans who run our legislature, we’ll soon be charter members of the hard-scrabble, hand-to-mouth, red-state contingent. (You want to see what red-state economic theory does in action, read about the Kansas experiment – which our own GOPers are eager to emulate).

This is true when it comes to rational gun policy as well. Like Missouri, none of the states listed above require permits to purchase handguns or, for that matter, most other types of guns. In Missouri, under the rubric of an almost universally misunderstood 2nd amendment, the good ol’ boys in the state legislature take turns trying to see who can introduce the most extreme laws to deregulate gun ownership. Governor Jay Nixon just vetoed this year’s iteration, Senate Bill 656, which would have “forced Missouri cities to allow teenagers to carry loaded firearms in public, would have allowed school districts to arm teachers, and would have made it impossible for parents to find out if someone is carrying a concealed firearm in their children’s classrooms.”

The bill would also have denied local jurisdictions their current right to forbid open carry which, in the absence of local restrictions, is legal for those who hold a concealed carry permit. Gun religionists claim with – some justification – that a patchwork of local laws can lead to confusion, but more often they just repeat the 2nd amendment mantra and scoff at the fearful reaction that most sane people have when they see guns casually displayed in a commercial setting, often taking major umbrage at what they characterize as “the indoctrinated response in America” to notify the police when folks are scared. I suppose the unindoctrinated response to fear would be to pull out your own gun and start shooting. Somehow, it doesn’t strike me as preferable.

Just for funsies take a look at this trio who were arrested in Cape Girardeau while wandering around a mall sporting holstered handguns. These folks look basically normal if a bit on the hard side and they may be pussycats once one gets to know them, but if I met any of them (including the baby gunsel) in the aisle of a local store with guns on their hips, I’d quickly go the other way and call the police asap. Better safe than sorry. I’ve seen Natural Born Killers – and those folks were downright pretty. There’s something about a carrying a gun in a non-threatening, non-sporting environment that brands the mildest seeming folks as paranoid fools.

You want to get an idea about who belongs to the Missouri gun culture, just note the reaction of some citizens of Lake Ozark when the city recently decided to prohibit open carry in the interest of not scaring away tourists, the main source of local prosperity:

The city should not be treading on the Second Amendment for any reason, said Alderwoman Betsey Browning, who voted against the ordinance. “There are bad people in the world, and by golly if I need a gun I’m going to have a firearm at my side or in my purse,” Browning said. “I’m absolutely against this.”

Audience member Gail Maeder was even more direct.

“Just because somebody felt scared is not a good enough reason to pass an ordinance that violates the Second Amendment,” she said.

Now I would be interested in just how Alderwoman Browning knows that she is surrounded by so  many bad people that she has to go armed, what criteria she employs to recognize them so that she can shoot them, and when or if she ever actually encounters an aggressive bad person, I wonder whether said bad person’s badness will have been enhanced by the ready availability of guns just like that carried by the alderwoman. I seem to read of a constant stream of innocent people who are mistakenly shot when people like Alderwoman Browning get themselves worked up (see, for instance,  here). And guess what else happens in states with lots of guns:

People of all age groups are significantly more likely to die from unintentional firearm injuries when they live in states with more guns, relative to states with fewer guns. On average, states with the highest gun levels had nine times the rate of unintentional firearms deaths compared to states with the lowest gun levels.

Makes you feel real secure knowing that Alderwoman Browning has that gun, doesn’t it?

I ask you, do you want these folks, with their rigid, comic-strip understanding of the 2nd amendment, coupled with their total lack of respect for others, running around playing at being tough guys and gals in public places, not to mention dictating decisions about perfectly legal, 2nd amendment-compatible restrictions of gun ownership? Thanks to Governor Nixon, and barring an override of his veto, we have staved off the flood of gun craziness for one more year – or to put it more accurately, it won’t get any crazier than it is now – but unless something changes in Jefferson City, that may not continue to be the case and Missourians could find themselves regularly taking shelter from myriad shoot-outs of the O.K. Corral variety.

Next to last paragraph restored after being inadvertently omitted.  

Yesterday when I was researching a post on what Missouri’s Washington D.C. delegation had to say about the latest overblown Obamacare roll-out “crisis,” I came across this claim in an official news release issued by Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-3):

Consider this: the Administration spent a total of $500 million on the Obamacare website and its back end systems. To put this into perspective, Facebook operated for six years before surpassing the $500 million mark.

Unfortunately for Rep. Luetkemeyer’s credibility, his statement is totally untrue and, hence, the comparison between the costs of Obamacare.com and Facebook is so much gibberish.

The $500 million number is probably a riff on an erroneous report in Digital Trends that was subsequently corrected. Republicans, eager to slander Obamacare in any way possible, seized on the initial report, omitting in the process to note that it referred to a decade of work by the company in question and covered many projects other than Obamacare.com. However, Republicans eager to do their special brand of mischief went to town with the false number. As Media Matters reported:

The life of the $600 million figure appears to be the latest example of how misinformation is fermented within the right-wing media and then adopted as quasi-policy by the Republican Party. After all, Rep. Camp is holding a hearing specifically to determine why the government’s $600 million health care website doesn’t work, even though the site didn’t cost $600 million.

Secretary Sebilius, in answer to questions during a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing last Wednesday, set the total costs at $174 million, which coincides with an earlier estimate based on analysis of government documents by the Washington Post Fact Checker, Glenn Kessler, that put total direct costs somewhere in the vicinity of $170 million. Obviously, the government won’t get Obamacare.com set up and running for nothing, but the actual cost so far is nowhere near the $500 million figure Rep. Luetkemeyer and his ilk are presenting as the current cost of Obamacare.com in order, presumably, to gin up outrage over the roll-out of the Website.

Which brings me to the real issue here. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer has sufficient staff and resources to come up with numbers similar to those of the WaPo‘s Kessler if he had cared about accuracy rather than trying to make a partisan point. Actually, since the Luetkemeyer release I referenced above was issued on Oct. 25, he or his staff could have easily found lower estimates if they had performed a simple a Web search. No one is forcing him to promulgate erroneous talking points. The conclusion we are left with is either that Luetkemeyer is so intellectually lazy that he doesn’t care whether or not he gives his constituents the right numbers, or he deliberately used an incorrect number to bolster an anti-Obamacare stance that is so weak that it won’t withstand the truth.

And, given that this is not Rep. Luetkemeyer’s first blatantly overt ofense against the truth, I’d end to go with the latter explanation. In his 2011 skirmish against the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), he cited a totally spurious report that purported to represent the work of 700 scientists whom Luetkemeyer claimed challenged the work of the IPCC on climate change.

Taken individually, these may not be life-and-death issues – although a good case could be made that health care and climate change, in general, are just that. But whatever the case, questions that give rise to worries about either the competence or the honesty of our elected representatives are important. We all know that we’re worse off as a nation because of the misinformation that pervades Fox Nation. What may yet doom us is when trusted officials like Luetkemeyer are willing to abuse their integrity in the name of partisan advantage to the extent that they will play a role in helping to maintain that miasma.  

Republicans are mostly breathless with glee at the faux news “exposé” to the effect that the insurance policies of some folks in the individual health care market will be changed by their providers in such a way that they can no longer be offered under the provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Of course, this is not really news – it was known, debated and covered in the news when the issue first arose in 2010.

Nevertheless, our Republican friends are nearly convulsing with false concern.  What they’re saying:

Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-4) thinks the news offers “more proof that the President’s health care law is unworkable and hurts Americans. ”

Rep. Billy Long (R-7) thinks that this problem is so serious that he needs to offer legislation to delay the individual mandate because “portions of the president’s health care law are harming consumers nationwide.”

Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-3) has made ample use of the generic GOP boilerplate on the topic of roll-out glitches on his Website, adding that his constituents are suffering because of the President’s “empty” promises that are belied by the fact that “currently available plans  are cancelled.” He even offers a vague, unverifiable constituent horror story about the havoc wreaked by the cancelled policies – though he doesn’t answer lots of questions that spring to mind about the actual situation of his annecdotal constituents.

Rep. Ann Wagner (R-2) breathlessly tweeted that “White House finally admits, ‘It’s True’ some Americans won’t be able to keep their health care plan under Obamacare. #MoreBrokenPromises.” Finally? Sheesh! Too hard for her to remember what was going on three years ago? About an issue she putatively cares so much about she was willing to shut down the government down over it? She ought to be able to do better.

Senator Roy Blunt, for his part, is “committed to fighting for Missourians who are being crushed by ObamaCare,” which includes those who are having their  policies cancelled among other individuals in situations that have elicited his misplaced concern trolling.

So what’s the story? Here, via TPM, is a chart that puts these dire claims into a slightly different perspective:

To  summarize, 80% of the people who like their  current, employer-provided plan will see no change, just as the President promised; 3% will change policies but see little difference in cost or coverage; another 3% will probably have to pay more for better policies; while 14%  who were previously uninsured will get affordable insurance and access to healthcare. I don’t know about  you, but government can “crush” me like this any time it wants.

Slightly edited for clarity. Inadvertently garbled content restored in last paragraph.

The GOP House Speaker, John Boehner says the shutdown crisis “isn’t some damn game,” but there’s no doubt that the Republicans in Congress are indeed playing a game, and a very dangerous game it is. And what’s worse, Republican leaders are aware that what they are doing is suicidal as far as their party is concerned and homicidal as far as the nation goes. It’s happening because of a few yeast-brained fools who think that they’re making a grand stand for principles that even they are hard put to describe in meaningful terms. E. J. Dionne puts it perfectly; it’s “the Seinfeld Shutdown: It’s about absolutely nothing, at least where substance is concerned.”

How, you may be forgiven for asking, can responsible legislators lead the country into disaster to satisfy continually shifting and politically undigestable demands? The answer: consider the people doing the demanding. And you don’t have to go far to do it since we have here in Missouri more than a few legislators that suffer from the same delusions as the would-be leaders of the attempted GOP coup d’état in Washington D.C.

Let’s start with state Senator Ed Emery (R-31), who exemplifies the constitutional fetish common to so many GOP legislators who were agitating for the shutdown. To give you an idea about how bad it is, Emery holds that the vetoed gun bill, HB436, widely deemed by legal experts to have egregiously violated the Constitution, was “the most constitutional bill this year, not just in Missouri’s Legislature, but in any state.” Not surprisingly, he also insists that despite the contrary opinion of the Supreme Court, Obamacare is not only unconstitutional, but constitutes an overweening threat to God and Country:

One need know little about the origins and history of America and the origins and history of Obamacare to know that this fight is not about the survival of Obamacare or of a political party, it is about the survival of the Republic. …

I’m willing to bet that this poor schmuck, like plenty of the D.C. Tea Party contingent, really believes this sort of tripe. It’s based on an attitude that views the Constitution as a magical, quasi-religious icon that codifies the deepest wishes of ignorantly genuflecting true believers, rather than a mental construct that has to be intellectually apprehended. How else could Senator Emery ignore the constitutional authority of the Supreme Court ruling on Obamacare? Garrett Epps  points out some of the most common rightwing Constitutional errors and identifies some purely non-existent passages and words that are commonly bandied about by these folks, all of  which allow them, in Epps words, to wave the Constitution “about like great-grandpa’s Confederate cavalry sword to demonstrate that we can’t have health care, or environmental protection, or whatever other policy they oppose today.”  

Not surprisingly, you get a heaping serving of the stupid when you leaven this faux-constitutional fervor with the simplistic economic cliches current on the right – beautifully exemplified by state Rep. Mike Kelley (R-126), who baldly states that “the federal government is shutdown today and the last few days because it’s out of money!” That, of course, is untrue in general terms, and untrue when it comes to the claim that we cannot afford Obamacare; in fact, repealing Obamacare would actually increase the deficit.

So what we’re confronted with are a gang of none-too-bright legislators with a poor grasp of economics, tons of inbred prejudices, and heroic yearnings focused on a poorly digested understanding of the Constitution. In short, ripe for plucking.

And plucked they have been, as the the New York Times made clear in a recent article on the evolution of the shutdown which traces its roots to months of planning on the part of rightwing groups such as Americans for Prosperity, Heritage Action for America and others, all generously funded by titans of industry like the Koch brothers, and happily steering the equally dim-witted federal analogues of Emery and Kelley into our current disaster. The goal? To destroy any legislation that would slow progress towards a United States of America that more closely resembles those third-world, free-market paradises where many of these “job-creators” have already gone to do their low-cost creating.  

Today Rep. Marsha Haefner (R-095) expressed her concerns about the over-burdened and under-staffed Department of Social Services (DSS). More exactly, she expressed outrage that the DSS was devoting resources to register its clients to vote:

“I had no idea that that was the function of Missouri (Dept. of) Social Services,” Haefner said.  “We are paying state employees, who are having a problem getting their paperwork so we can get reimbursed from the federal government, we’re paying them on our nickel to register voters.”

Perhaps if Rep. Haefner had been paying attention to the issue back in 2009, she might have remembered a successful suit that was brought against the DSS precisely because it was not fulfilling its legal obligation under the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) to assist its clients to register to vote – and that many counties were, in fact, obstructing registration through actions such as failing to maintain adequate supplies of voter registration forms and not turning in registration forms that had been filled out. As the Acting DSS Director Brian Kincade noted, Missouri must comply with the federal law and “not registering voters is not an option.”

The intent of the NVRA is to make it easier for citizens to exercise their right to vote. Surely Rep. Haefner must agree that it is important to facilitate voting for everyone, especially for those who might experience difficulties getting information about, or access to voter registration. Missouri benefits when its citizens are heard in Washington and when their true interests are represented – and quibbling about whose nickel is involved is a stupid waste of time. We get what we pay for, though political representation for all is priceless.

An easy way to deal with the problems of the DSS would be to allocate sufficient funds for its staff to carry out all their duties in a timely fashion. That would mean raising revenue which would require real tax reform – and by tax reform I don’t mean corporate giveaways like SB253. Instead, Rep. Haefner, during her campaign in 2012, went on the record with a solution that involves that good old GOP standby, downsizing the client population:

… We must work on developing systems that do not provide incentives to remain dependent.  There has to be a reasonable path to eliminate the need for state and federal assistance.

God forbid that folks in need who get kicked off public assistance might vote – they just might kick out the politicians who think that government does too much for those on the bottom and not enough for the one percent.  

Mitt Romney will be in St. Louis tomorrow. He’ll be speaking at 12:15 at Production Products, a military contractor in North County. He’ll attend a fundraiser in Clayton later, but one assumes that he will be using the earlier campaign stop to attempt to symbolically kiss-up to the assuredly small number of Latinos who might consider voting for a representative of the (brown) immigrant-allergic GOP. Productions Products is an Hispanic-owned business, a fact that is surely no accident.

I won’t be able to attend this event, but I am assuming that folks will attempt to translate his covert, GOP base-directed dog whistles into plain English for those of us who won’t be there. At his June 1 fundraiser at the exclusive, Balboa Bay Club in Orange County, California, this demanding job was undertaken by the Orange County branch of Billionaires for Romney. The Richie Rich guys and gals made sure that Romney’s message was rendered down to its essence into bromides like “tax our poor,” and “poor people get a clue, democracy is not for you.” We can only hope that like-minded folks do such an impressive job for us Missourians. If anyone reading this should happen to mosey over to Production Products at 12:00 tomorrow, please feel free to report back here.

I case you wonder why it’s important that somebody parse Mitt’s words for us, this AFL-CIO video which analyses Romney’s intentions – and how they stack up to those of Barack Obama – may be just the ticket:

In case you’re interested in the billionaires who weren’t out doing yeoman’s duty in Orange County, but the ones who want to buy the election for Mitt, take a look at this Rolling Stone article. It names names. Specifically, the names and profiles of sixteen billionaires who have ponied up a million dollars (or more) each to put Mitt in the White House.

And if this doesn’t worry you, consider yesterday’s gubernatorial recall election in Wisconsin. Scott Walker outspent the Democratic challenger 7 to 1. He hung on to his job thanks to some of the same 1 percenters who are going to bat for Romney. Big money has really come into its own, and unless you’re rich, rich, rich and very corrupt, you need to be very afraid.