We don’t hear so much about the Tea Party these days, but it’s had a good run in Missouri, dominating the political narrative for a few years and managing to elect a slew of John Birch Society retreads who have joined forces with the rest of the GOP to work their backwards magic in Jefferson City. Although I would argue that many if not most of the Tea Party adherents were a bit confused about just what they stood for apart from the resentment occasioned by the first black president, some did talk the talk when it came to big banks and big money corruption in government. As recently as the last election, Virginia’s Tea Partying David Brat was able to defeat incipient GOP congressional star Eric Cantor in part by harping on big banks and the bailout.

Missouri’s Tea Party also vented about banks and bailouts. Nevertheless, when it came to selecting their representatives, Tea Partiers sent Wall Street’s dream team to Washington, Rep. Ann Wagner (R-2) and Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-3). Both are charter members of what the Center for Public Integrity has dubbed the “Banking Caucus.” According to Alison Fitzgerald writing in Slate:

The group has been central to efforts […] to undo many of the financial reforms enacted in the Dodd-Frank law of 2010. At least 30 bills have been proposed to the House during the 113th Congress, aimed at chipping away at aspects of Dodd-Frank. Members of the banking caucus sponsored or co-sponsored 20 of those laws, […]

Wagner has done an especially enthusiastic job for Wall Street – most recently she got so worked up over a proposed Department of Labor rule that would require financial advisers to put their client’s welfare before their own bottom line that she proclaimed at a meeting of brokers and financial advisers that “we are at war.” And she quickly jumped into battle, introducing a bill, the Retail Investor Protection Act, to take the rule-writing ability away from the Labor Department and give it to the more easily swayed (by Wall Street) SEC.

In return, Wagner has been well paid by banking giants like Goldman Sachs, Oppenheimer Funds and big insurance trade groups. Between 2011 when Wagner was first elected to office and 2014, she took in $776,511 from the financial industry. I’m willing to bet that when you add in this year’s take, well over a million dollars of the reported $1.88 million] she now has in the bank come from similar sources, making her the “most prolific money-raiser” among the members of Missouri’s congressional delegation.

Luetkemeyer, for his part, hasn’t been a slouch. Not only does he carry water for Wall Street, he’s a go-to guy for the sleazy payday lending industry. His Clear Relief Act, has been characterized as a “sweeping deregulation bill for community banks.”He has also proposed several bills intended to chip away at the power of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Elizabeth Warren’s brain-child, which was created under Dodd-Frank to protect consumers from the worst depredations of the financial industry. For these Herculean efforts he reaped $788,181 from the financial industry between 2010 and 2014.

While Wagner and Luetkemeyer are working hard for Wall Street, they clearly aren’t working for everyday Missourians or any of the millions of Americans hit hard by the financial crisis of 2008 – unequivocally the result of the type of wholesale deregulation our dynamic duo are now peddling. Nor do their priorities seem to line up with the rhetoric of the Tea Partiers who helped elect them.

Jeff Spross suggests that the solution to this seeming contradiction may lie in the relatively privileged status of many Tea Partiers:

Much of the American right’s understanding of economics and its relationship to government is characterized by a lack of desperation. The idea that questions of security or starvation, dignity or destitution, could trump the abstract principles of “how capitalism works,” is just absent. The Tea Party arguably views Wall Street not as manipulative overlords, but as competitors in the sport of capitalism. Richer and more powerful competitors, obviously. But competitors still. And while they don’t want their competitors getting unfairly bailed out by the referees, they don’t want the game to be changed, either.

It is for less fortunate and less privileged Americans that the game itself is the problem.

Essentially, crony capitalism doesn’t mean the same thing to Tea Partiers that it means to you and me. As David Weigel has observed, “the Tea Party, after all, is not wholly set against the GOP’s business class. It’s just the latest populist movement funded and fueled by the Big Business.”  He implies that the Tea Party has functioned as an unwitting front:

[…] What’s the business-friendly label that’s going to be more potent than the Tea Party? Every successful movement of economic conservatives has been led in public by the non-rich, from the anti-tax farms of the 1920s to the property-tax-hating suburbanites in the 1970s to the “family farmers” who are, we’re told, the real victims of the estate tax. How do you make Rove-ism or Goldman Sachs-ism as popular as the Tea Party is, even now?

The vote today to finally approve funding for Homeland Security through September 30, 2015:

FINAL VOTE RESULTS FOR ROLL CALL 109

     H R 240      YEA-AND-NAY      3-Mar-2015      3:14 PM

     QUESTION:  On Motion to Recede and Concur in the Senate Amendment

     BILL TITLE: Making appropriations for the Department of Homeland Security for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2015, and for other purposes

—- YEAS    257 —

Clay

Cleaver

—- NAYS    167 —

Graves (MO)

Hartzler

Luetkemeyer

Wagner

—- NOT VOTING    9 —

Long

Smith (MO)

Previously:

Rep. Vicky Hartzler (r): Were you there? (February 28, 2015)

I visited the Web pages of the entire Missouri Republican House delegation, Reps. Ann Wagner (R-2), Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-3), Vicky Hartzler (R-4), Jason Smith (R-8), Sam Graves (R-6), and Billy Long (R-7). I wanted to see what they had to say about the President’s State of the Union Address (SOTU).

So how did the Missouri arm of the carping and always obstructionist Party of No react to the President pointing out a few facts. Are they embarrassed about how they behaved in the past now that Obamacare seems to be performing as intended, the United States economy is ginning up and putting the lie to the austerian economic policies still advocated by the GOP although they are failing dismally in Europe, slow and cautious foreign policy is showing signs of succeeding in a dangerous world where  military bluster of the sort advocated by the GOP has proven disastrous, and French economist Thomas Piketty has shown us that we need to rescue the middle class with a big dose of redistributive religion, which is just what the President has ordered?

The answer is not much. There was only one notable coinage; Rep. Wagner has dubbed the new GOP Congress The New American Congress. I think she hopes it’ll catch on. Otherwise our Republican guys and gals in Washington followed the rulebook and kept their statements short, simple, and on the tried and true message. The basic themes: Washington is the source of all bad, they are only going there to clean it up. Then they all thumbed their collective noses at the President’s hubris in suggesting that he could initiate any new programs since the Grand Old Poobahs have said no, and they were elected by the majority of the 33 percent of Americans who bothered to vote in 2014, an overweening mandate in their eyes. They conveyed this message with lots of repetition, using the same words and phrases almost interchangeably, with only minor stylistic fillips to distinguish them from each other. For instance:

— Phrases used to describe Obama, his goals and policies:

“expand the reach, size, and scope of the federal government”

“tax and spend”

“redistribute ” (i.e., income, prosperity, etc.)

“trying to divide us along class and income lines”

“same old, tired, Washington-based ideas”

“a top-down economy controlled from Washington”

“politics as usual”

” big-government policies”

“ill-conceived vision”

” failed policies”

“the American people deserve better.”

“political score-keeping”

“my way or the highway”

“the president wants to go at it alone”

“hurt our nation’s family farmers and small businesses”

“burdensome regulations”

“health-care costs are skyrocketing”

“premums skyrocket”

“Americans are struggling to find jobs”

“ignore the will of the people”

“policies and proposals that the American people rejected”

Phrases used to describe GOP, their goals and agenda:

“Government must get out of the way”

“job creation”

“a new direction”

“grow America’s economy – not Washington’s economy”

“remove burdensome regulations like Obamacare”

“unleash America’s energy resources”

“get Americans back to work”

“placing America’s priorities first”

“a healthy system marked by a legacy of opportunity”

“we can get Washington out of the way”

“we can do better”

“forge a new direction”

“a pro-growth, pro-jobs agenda”

“bipartisan solutions”

— Phrases used to describe what Republicans want from the President:

“work with us”

“work with this Congress ”

Obama must “stop issuing veto threats before common-sense pieces of legislation even get to his desk”

Given the relevant context it isn’t hard to interpret those last points. Translate “work with” into “roll over” and you’ve got the gist. As for the rest, I know, I know. You’ve heard them all before. And there’s lots of obvious fibs, misrepresentations, and wrong-headedness. Obamacare is doing just fine, jobs are being created faster than since before Bush, healthcare costs are going down, etc., etc. I’m sure you’re all getting as tired of trying to set these folks straight as I am, especially since it doesn’t do any good.  

I’m tempted to suggest that the GOP needs to convene some new focus groups, get some new material. They don’t have to make it complicated; we know slow, simple and familiar works with the folks they try to please. But do they have to be so predictable? But then, who reads press releases anyway – apart from bloggers with OCD.

*Corrected; last item from 2nd list moves to last list.

Yesterday:

….Voting in an effort to apply political pressure for the approval of a pipeline to transport corrosive Canadian tar sands across the United States to be refined in Texas for export to China benefits energy availability in the United States and carbon emissions in China (and the world) how?

We were just asking.

From Bloomberg News:

Keystone Weirdonomics Means Gas Prices Won’t Be Getting Any Cheaper

By Tom Randall Apr 25, 2014 2:40 PM CT

….The answer is that Keystone isn’t meant for U.S. consumption.

In Keystone’s weirdonomics, the pipeline would actually increase prices of gasoline for much of the country, according to at least three studies that have looked into it. Keystone would divert crude from Midwest refineries to Gulf Coast refineries, where it would then be shipped to more expensive markets. Bypassing heartland refineries could drive up prices at home.

For people living in the Midwest, Great Plains and Rocky Mountains, it could add 20 cents a gallon to the price at the pump…..

….It would also add to the threat of climate change by speeding up production of oil-sands crude, which is about 17 percent more carbon-intensive than the conventional barrel.

One thing that’s not at stake: cheaper gas prices.

Be sure to thank the republicans (and Missouri republicans) in the U.S. House of Representatives for voting yesterday to raise our retail gas prices.

It certainly won’t save Mary Landrieu’s seat in the United States Senate.

Previously:

We need the Keystone XL pipeline because? – part 2 (November 14, 2014)

Charles P. Pierce is meaner (November 14, 2014)

And then all hell broke loose (November 13, 2014)

We need the Keystone XL pipeline because? (November 13, 2014)

Darn that President Obama and his totally misguided national energy policy… (September 29, 2014)

Rep. Vicky Hartzler (r) – in Warrensburg – August 22, 2014 (August 23, 2014)

Sounds of silence (gasoline) (December 16, 2013)

What cost, you say? (November 15, 2013)

Still going down… (November 7, 2013)

It upsets right wingnuts… (November 4, 2013)

Thank goodness that Keystone pipeline is up and running (October 28, 2013)

We’re on an express elevator to…going down (October 14, 2013)

Water is wet (October 9, 2013)

Rep. Vicky Hartzler (r): we don’t need no stinkin’ objective reality (January 21, 2012)

Rep. Vicky Hartzler (r): not especially prescient (January 9, 2013)

Rep. Vicky Hartzler (r): strange silence, still (December 19, 2012)

Quick, blame Obama! – part 3 – trickle down (December 8, 2012)

Quick, blame Obama! – part 2 (December 5, 2012)

Quick, blame Obama! (December 1, 2012)

Rep. Vicky Hartzler (r): make it stop… (November 18, 2012)

Rep. Vicky Hartzler (r): the price keeps dropping and we’re running out of gas puns (November 15, 2012)

Rep. Vicky Hartzler (r): on an express elevator… (November 12, 2012)

Rep. Vicky Hartzler (r): wait, wait, don’t tell me (November 8, 2012)

Vicky Hartzler (r): it’s so quiet when the price keeps dropping (October 31, 2012)

Vicky Hartzler (r): What’s that? Did you say something? Apparently not. (October 29, 2012)

Vicky Hartzler (r): the sound of silence (October 23, 2012)

The past, the gas, and isms (September 24, 2012)

Rep. Vicky Hartzler (r): let’s pass the gas – part 2 (June 6, 2012)

Rep. Vicky Hartzler (r): let’s pass the gas (May 27, 2012)

If you think that the Ebola is coming to get you, read Blue Girl’s commonsensical response about how diseases are spread. Or take a look at this CNN debunking of the media and political hysteria-mongers. Or you can read Ezra Klein’s effort to quell the crazy in Vox. There’s lots of information out there if you want to avoid getting caught up in the Foxification of Ebola.

There are now three individuals who have contracted Ebola in the U.S. To give you a little perspective on the situation, Influenza kills about 36,000 people a year in the U.S. There’s no influenza travel ban, no quarantines, just the same old routine response every year. There are on average about 32,000 deaths in the U.S. from gun violence each year – yet the same politicians who want to close the borders or whatever because they think you’re dumb enough to think that will stop the spread of Ebola are often the very loudmouths opposing any common sense regulation of gun ownership. Go figure.

It’s not the absurdity of the media-promulgated Ebola panic, though, that concerns me the most, but the willingness of politicians to try to ride the panic into the midterm elections. On the PBS News Hour Michael Gerson, a conservative Republican, recently stated “that people who directly politicize this issue may well, in my view, be demonstrating their unfitness for office.” My hat’s off to this conservative who, without flinching, told us what we already mostly, sort of knew about almost the entirety of the Grand Old Party, the excesses of which he has often supported in the past. The political response to Ebola provides a convenient litmus test that tells us just who cares about Americans and who cares about wining no matter the cost.

And folks, most of the Missouri GOP delegation have failed the Gerson litmus test. Consider:

— Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, joining Senator Roy Blunt, Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-4) and Rep. Billy Long (R-7) in demanding travel restrictions, declared that, “Our nation’s leader and his administration cannot continue to sit back and hope the Ebola epidemic will simply go away.”

–Rep. Long notes that ” my constituents want to know why a travel ban has not been instituted and our borders have not been secured.” Couldn’t he study up a little and tell them why it’s a bad idea, act like a leader and help calm the growing panic rather than fan the flames while pointing his finger Obamaward?

— Rep. Hartzler claims that “the current procedures are proving not to be sufficient to protect Americans from this deadly disease.” Didn’t anyone tell her that only three people in the U.S. have the disease and, after some initial misfires, the situation is pretty much under control? If you didn’t know better, you might think she wanted us afraid.

If you want to know why a travel ban is a bad idea, read this article; the author notes that George Bush decided against a travel ban during the avian flue outbreak for the same reasons he cites. Ebola is not a serious problem in the U.S – it is a serious problem in Africa and if we want to keep it out of the U.S., that’s what we’ve got to tackle. Instead, those folks who’ve been most riled up about our first black president, are now riled up about how that president isn’t doing enough to keep those nasty black African diseases out of the U.S. You think there’s no racist angle? Consider Phyllis Schlafly comments which are straight from the Republican id:

Obama doesn’t want America to believe that we’re exceptional, […]. He wants us to be just like everybody else, and if Africa is suffering from Ebola, we ought to join the group and be suffering from it, too. That’s his attitude . […] Out of all the things he’s done, I think this thing of letting these diseased people into this country to infect our own people is just the most outrageous of all.

Letting “these diseased people” in? Once again. Three people have contracted Ebola in the U.S. The lines of transmission are clear and the situation is under control. And even if more cases occur, we have the wherewithal to deal with them. Nevertheless, no matter how foolish, the media hounds will bay, Republicans will follow the scent of blood, and chances are, just enough Democrats, fearful of being left out when the spoils are divvied up come November, will join the chase and we’ll end up with a travel ban as ill-considered as the Aids/HIV travel ban we recently rescinded.

…Throw out your breakfast garbage, and I’ve  got a hunch, that the folks downstream will drink it for lunch…

Previously:

Sen. Roy Blunt (r): bad, bad EPA, bad (August 15, 2014)

Vicky Hartzler talking about water and pesky regulations at the Missouri State Fair (August 14, 2014)

What if you had a ham breakfast and the Governor couldn’t be there? (August 14, 2014)

Representative Blaine Luetkemeyer (r) spoke Thursday morning at a republican press conference in the Farm Bureau building on the grounds of the Missouri State Fair in Sedalia shortly after the Governor’s Ham Breakfast. He was joined at the press conference taking issue with proposed EPA rules on water by Senator Roy Blunt (r) and Representative Vicky  Hartzler (r). They also criticized regulation in general.

hy•drol•o•gy  noun  hī-ˈdrä-lə-jē</a>

a science dealing with the properties, distribution, and circulation of water on and below the earth’s surface and in the atmosphere

– hy•dro•log•ic or hy•dro•log•i•cal adjective

The video:

“…the way this rule reads as soon as one drop of water falls out of the sky EPA is on it. And that is a scary thought. Stop and think about that. As soon as one drop of water falls from the sky. It’s hydrologically connected to all the rest. Now the can technically get to it…”

Uh, why is that scary, is it because pollutants and contamination are stopped at an imaginary right wingnut miniature environmental border fence?

“…got a number of amendments in there to try and rein in the [Army] Corp [of Engineers] as well as empower the Corps to do a better job at what they’re doing…”

Apparently to right wingnuts those two actions are synonymous.

“…Uh, but EPA is not our friend, generally…”

Tell that to the people of Toledo, Ohio. Or South Tucson, Arizona. Or Times Beach, Missouri.

“…If we don’t push back they’ll push us…”

That, friends, is the right wingnut view of what America should be. In a nutshell.

The transcript:

Representative Blaine Luetkemeyer: ….I, too, want to extend my congratulations to all of you for all the hard work that you did in trying to support and get, uh, Amendment 1  [“right to farm”] across the finish line. Now, before I got up here a while ago somebody said keep my remarks crisp. So, that’s a new word, I hadn’t heard that before, it’s like, sure, I can be crisp. So we’ll keep, so we’ll keep it crisp here. But, uh, I did, I did want to congratulate you. I know it was a tough, tough, uh, uh, issue. There was a lot of concern about it. Uh, my office got a lot of calls on it, in fact, the last few weeks. And I tell people the best thing that happens is people call. They were concerned enough because of confusion out there that they took the time to call. And we could explain to them that this was an important issue because while it, it doesn’t necessarily do everything in the end to stop this, it puts a hurdle in the way. It put one more barrier for HSUS [The Humane Society] to come in and negatively impact our way of life, our agricultural industry as a whole, and or food supply in general. And so I think, uh, it was a great, great, uh, victory the other night. Uh, and we’re gonna continue to work with you and support you whatever, if they do a recount on it. So, let us know how we can help. Uh, but, again, thank you for all you do for agriculture.

With regards to the, uh, Waters of the U.S. proposed rule the other day we in the Small Business Committee which Sam Graves is the chairman of, and I’m vice chair of, he called a hearing. We had the number two person from EPA at the hearing. And boy did that gut get an earful. I mean, we have people from all over the country who, who are on our, on our committee that Democrats and Republicans both went after this guy, saying this was the most ridiculous thing you could imagine. And there’s, there’s a word in the law really is, is the sleeper in this whole thing. And it’s hydrological. All the water that’s hydrologically connected, so, in other words, every piece of, of, molecule of water that is connected to another one they can tech, technically regulate that. And so it was interesting because the EPA director was sitting, or number two person sitting there said, ah, no, we’re not gonna do anything about this. This is all about, you know, the waters that we can navigate. And the ones that we can oversee and blah, blah, blah. You know, it was interesting, because the real people in the real world who are on the panel who also testified said, you know what, the way this rule reads as soon as one drop of water falls out of the sky EPA is on it. And that is a scary thought. Stop and think about that. As soon as one drop of water falls from the sky. It’s hydrologically connected to all the rest. Now the can technically get to it. So, I think the, uh, you know, we fought this issue a couple years ago and beat it back. We have to stay united and work together, all of the different groups, all the industries, ag should take the lead, but there’s a lot of other issues out there that we’re working with as well that we have a direct in this and we need to work those as well.

Um, when it comes to, uh, other water issues there are things that are, I am directly im, im, impactful on and really like to work on from from the standpoint of the Missouri River and Mississippi River issues. Uh, we had, uh, a bill recently, a water bill that went through, got a number of amendments in there to try and rein in the [Army] Corp [of Engineers] as well as empower the Corps to do a better job at what they’re doing along the Mississippi and Missouri River. We stopped some unnecessary duplicative studies that are wasting money, also helping to empower EPA to do more regulation, and so we were able to cut some of that out. Uh, but EPA is not our friend, generally.  And as a result we have to be very careful to whenever they say they’re here to help us ’cause quite frankly they’re, generally they’re not. But, uh, all you know that.

Continue working with us. We’re excited about the opportunity to represent you in Washington and fight these battles. Together we can win, together we can push back. And I always tell people, I say, you know, when you don’t agree with what’s going on you gotta get to us, get us information, and we gotta push back. If we don’t push back they’ll push us. We have to stay united, you have to push back, don’t give in, don’t give up, and we’ll win.

Thank you very much.

“…Corporations are people, my friend….human beings, my friend…” Someone else said that somewhere a while back.