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.

Previously:

Tomorrow morning’s Governor’s Ham Breakfast at the State Fair is gonna be really interesting (August 13, 2014)

Gov. Jay Nixon will be in the St. Louis area today, not at the State Fair (August 14, 2014)

This morning’s Governor’s Ham Breakfast at the State Fair in Sedalia took place without Governor Jay Nixon. Governor Nixon was in Ferguson, Missouri as was/is Senator Claire McCaskill. No statewide Democratic Party office holders were in attendance at the breakfast.

Senator Roy Blunt (r), Representative Vicky Hartzler (r), Representative Blaine Luetkemeyer (r), State Auditor Tom Schweich (r), House Speaker Tim Jones (r), and former Speaker Catherine Hanaway (r) were at the State Fair. We also covered a republican press conference at the Farm Bureau building going after the EPA on water regulation. Senator Blunt, Representative Hartzler and Representative Luetkemeyer spoke. Not a word about Ferguson, but the were all pleased about the “right to farm” amendment.

Serenading folks in the Home Economics Building.

The band also performed in the big tent for the ham breakfast crowd. They were quite good.

Senator Roy Blunt (r).

Politicians weren’t the only ones on display and being judged.

Representative Vicky Hartzler (r).

The Democratic Party tent at the Missouri State Fair.

They were open and active long before the republican tent opened up.

Former House Speaker Catherine Hanaway (r).

State Auditor Tom Schweich (r).

Judging pie.

Representative Vicky Hartzler (r).

Representative Blaine Luetkemeyer at the republican press conference in the Farm Bureau Building.

Interestingly, all three purported republican candidates for Governor in 2016 attended the breakfast. There was no tear gas.

Republicans like to tell stores about being “fiscal conservatives” who oppose irresponsible spending. They’ve managed in the process to impede economic growth while successfully fighting off efforts to cut that large segment of our irresponsible spending which takes the form of subsidies to highly profitable industries like Big Oil, Big Agriculture, and big what-have-you – which big entities often happen, in turn, to be very generous when it comes time to fund political campaigns.  

Nowhere, though does GOP hypocrisy show through more than in the recent budget and debt level negotiations. The Washington Post‘s Wonkblog today identifies the members of the exclusively Republican “default caucus,” made up of the 135 representatives and 17 senators who voted first for the omnibus spending bill, and then against raising the debt limit that would pay for it. They essentially decided that the United States should not pay the bills that they themselves had voted to run up. Try doing that at home, Mr. and Mrs. Average American. As Wonkblog’s Christopher Ingraham puts it, “the fact a significant faction in Congress can vote to run up debt, refuse to pay for it, and bill themselves as “fiscal conservatives” shows just how much that term has lost its meaning.”

I would suggest that a better label than “default caucus” for these lawmakers would be “deadbeat caucus.” That, after all, is what we call folks who don’t want to pay their bills. There are several members of the deadbeat caucus from Missouri:

Senator Roy Blunt (R)

Rep. Ann Wagner (R-2)

Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-3)

Rep. Vickky Hartzler (R-4)

Rep. Sam Graves (R-6)

You can click on the names of Representatives listed above that have links to go to their press releases designed to tell us why voting for the spending bill they later refused to fund was such a good idea – not that they mention anything about the relationship between the two votes. I think that they hope we won’t figure that one out. Sam Graves simply ignores his yea vote on the omnibus funding bill, but did issue a statement patting himself on the back for voting against the extension of the debt limit. His reason for the nay note? He somehow seems to think that the debt limit extension vote is the place to cut the spending he approved in the earlier vote. So what do  you think? Are they all dumb as posts? Or cynical panderers? Whatever else they are, they’re certainly willing to play fast and loose with the full faith and credit of the U.S. Government – along with our welfare.

Ingraham allows as how those folks who voted against both the spending bill and the debt limit hike necessary to accommodate it should at least be admired for their consistency. And they are consistent, but you might temper your admiration when you remember that it stems from a totally nutty and discredited conception of economics, to wit, austerian theories that these folks probably don’t even understand apart from platitudes abut the “free market” and the evils of “big government.” Nothing but extreme economic ignorance coupled with total irresponsibility could explain their willingness to risk the disastrous consequences of default on the debt. Consequently, in recognition of the harm they do to us all, I’d like to label these folks the “nutjob caucus.” (You’re probably all aware that many members of the deadbeat caucus are, on other occasions, only too happy to claim membership in the nutjob caucus.) In Missouri, the members of the budgetary nutjob caucus includes:

Rep. Billy Long (R-7)

Re. Jason Smith (R-8)

So what do we call congresspeople who swallowed some of the bitter pills in the omnibus bill (cuts to food stamps, anyone?) in the interest of breaking gridlock and staving off another expensive government shutdown, and then, like responsible adults, voted to extend the debt limit to pay for the spending they had just authorized? Real legislators – you know, the people who are doing the hard job of governing without temper  tantrums. And it also looks like this time around we call them Democrats – including Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, who didn’t vote on the omnibus spending bill for whatever reason – maybe a few of those bitter pills were just too bitter – but came through when it was time to raise the debt limit and honor the spending decisions that his colleagues, including many in the GOP delegation, had already made.  

From Talking Points Memo we learn that the following Missouri Republicans signed up for Obamacare through the D.C. marketplace without indicating that they would refuse the employer contribution: Billy Long (R-7), and Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-3)

So what you say? We all know that the employer contribution was reinstated for congressmen and their staff in order to restore fairness – after all, 80% of Americans get their insurance through their work where all or much of the costs are borne by their employers – which was also the case with congress before an anti-Obamacare stunt on the part of GOP Senator Chuck Grassley backfired, forcing congressional employees onto the exchanges which had only been intended for folks who had to purchase their insurance on the open market without benefit of an employer group’s buying power.

But the big deal is that these particular members of congress were unwilling to give up the talking point about unfair treatment for government workers and were pretty vocal that the subsidy should not be restored; both voted in September to strip the employer contribution for members of congress and their staffs. As TPM puts it, these folks now have the chance to “practice what they preach” – and some Republican members of the House have had the integrity to do just that. Or like Missouri’s Rep. Ann Wagner (R-2), they either have coverage through a another source, or sufficient private means to buy their own insurance, and so can afford to spurn their employment-based insurance and avoid the issue of “do as I say, not as I do” altogether.

But not Long and Luetkemeyer, even though they were specifically called out on the issue during the disastrous GOP “defund-obamacare” government shutdown by the new Chairman of the Missouri Democratic Party, Roy Temple, who called upon members of Missouri’s GOP House delegation to “put your money where your mouth is”:

On the seventh day of a Republican government shutdown, due to the US House majority demanding a dismantling of the Affordable Care Act before they fund basic services, Missouri Democratic Party Chairman Roy Temple issued a challenge to Representatives Ann Wagner, Blaine Luetkemeyer, Vicky Hartzler, Sam Graves, Billy Long, and Jason Smith: that they voluntarily forfeit their employer contributions to their health care plans – contributions they have lately labeled “special treatment.”

Long even felt entitled to crudely grill HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius – who is not subject to the congressional mandate to buy insurance from the exchanges – about why she is not giving up her federally supplied insurance and buying from the exchanges. As for Luetkemeyer, he actually voted to suspend all subsidies under the pretense that they are liable to fraud, a consideration that apparently doesn’t bother him when he’s the recipient.

Say what you will about hypocrisy, perhaps Long’s and Luetkemeyer’s actions simply demonstrate what everybody else has known all along. The entire brouhaha about “special treatment” for congress was simply an effort by the GOP to keep stirring up trouble and generating false anti-Obamacare scandals. Don’t you think that these folks are maybe going to cry “wolf” just once too often? Like any day now?

 

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.  

All of Missouri’s Republican House delegation joined the 144 Republican House members who voted no on the budgetary continuing resolution sent to them from the Senate, which amounts to five votes from Missouri to keep the shutdown going. To a man or woman, these members of the Missouri Shutdown Hall of Shame tried to justify their votes with references to those all-purpose boogymen, the deficit and “out of control spending” (see also here).

To a man or woman, they have all also refused to admit they initially went to war with the nation’s well-being for no reason other than to defund the Affordable Care Act (ACA) – even though the ACA reduces the deficit long-term. Nor are they willing to admit that the main ACA concession they demanded as a sop when it became clear that the rest of the Congress and most of the country regarded their anti-Obamacare jihad as laughable, a repeal of the medical devices tax, was a special interest boondogle that would have undercut the ability of the ACA keep government costs down. All that reasonable bystanders can conclude from this is that our GOPers are either dishonest, severely deluded, or dumber than fenceposts.

According to S&P estimates, the antics of these shutdown diehards cost the U.S. economy $24 billion and cut 0.6% off of yearly fourth quarter GDP growth. Tell me how this reflects concern with the economy. Think Progress has compiled a partial list of government expenditures that could have been financed by the amount of money lost in the shutdown:

— The net cost of to the government from the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP): $24 billion

— The Department of Agriculture’s proposed budget: $22.6 billion

— NASA’s approved budget: $16.6 billion

— All air transportation programs, including the Federal Aviation Administration, security, research, and other costs: $21.9 billion.

— The Child Tax Credit: $22.1 billion.

— The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program (formally known as welfare): $17.7 billion.

— The cost of Head Start, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and Women Infants and Children (WIC) program combined: $25.2 billion

I hope you noticed that all or parts of these expenditures were or are bitterly opposed by these same GOPers who insist that we can’t afford them. Nevertheless, they’re all more than willing to run up similar costs in the service of empty symbolic gestures meant to impress their base. But as Think Progress also noted, these pols have been making the same types of choices from the getgo:

The shutdown was just the latest budget crisis that has been costly to the economy. A recent report found that the uncertainty created by fights over funding the government and raising the debt ceiling that have cropped up since 2010 has cost the economy nearly a million jobs.

And, to cap it all off, there are already rumblings from the GOP crazy caucus, with whom Missouri’s GOPers seem to have allied themselves, that they’ll be willing to give the ol’ shutdown routine a go once again early next year when yesterday’s agreement runs out. However, as Michael Tomasky wrote today, one thing may have changed:

. . . At least the American people did get to see what assassins the Republicans are. That was valuable. Many of us have been trying to say for many years now about Washington’s polarization and dysfunction that yes, both sides are to blame, there are no Boy Scouts here, but the sides are not remotely equally to blame, and this is a crucial point, and journalists and commentators who keep insisting on framing things this way out of some devotion to “balance” that is out of whack with the facts of reality are disserving the republic; lying, basically. I don’t think now any commentator can seriously maintain that fiction. . . .

Ann Wagner’s pushing the newest trumped up anti-Obamacare scare. From her Facebook page:

In 2008, President Obama said, “In an Obama administration, we’ll lower premiums by up to $2,500 for a typical family per year. We’ll do it by the end of my first term as President.” A few days ago, we learned that the average family of four will face increased health spending of $7,450 under Obamacare. With premiums skyrocketing across this great nation on hardworking families, how is ObamaCare impacting you?

Wagner’s referencing this Forbes article by one Chris Conover. It’s caused quite a stir; it appeared yesterday, the Conservatorium jumped on it up to their knees, tweeting and Facebooking it all over the known universe – hence Wagner’s – and Billy Long’s and Blaine Luetkemeyer’s Facebook posts today. Doubtless it’ll make it’s way onto the Facebook pages or twitter feeds of the rest of our GOP congressional delegation soon – like lemmings, they prefer to make their mistakes in groups.

The article that has Wagner in such ecstasies is total twaddle, of course, and quickly became an object of public derision among many economic policy types because of its obviously incoherent statistics and confused analysis. Some of the clearest online discussions of the problems with Conover’s assertions are in Igor Volksy’s Think Progress piece, and an excellent discussion of Conover’s statistical crimes by Univ. of Missouri-St. Louis political science professer, Kenneth Thomas.

Read these articles if you want to know why Wagner et al. are full of it. There’s no point in repeating points that others have made more efficiently and clearly than I can. (However, I can’t resist pointing out that the $7,450 figure that GOPers are trumpeting represents Conover’s estimates of increases in costs over ten  years – he really only shows an increase of $745 per year for a “typical” family of four – and he’s wrong about that too. None of the Missouri GOPers who tout this article have made this distinction clear which in itself serves as a comment on their motivation, not to mention their honesty.)

After the criticisms began to appear, Conover updated his article several times, not to answer his detractors in a substantive fashion or correct his errors, but simply to declare that he was too right! In the process he referred to articles by Avik Roy, a conservative writer who, as Steve Benen remarked, seems to want to produce “content with a credible tone; he doesn’t fly off the rhetorical rails; and he genuinely understands the policy details.”

Nevertheless, as Benen lamented, Roy was recently guilty of the same type of blatantly dishonest and/or shoddy analysis on the topic of California’s successful Obamacare implementation.  While Roy’s assertions were, like Conover’s, quickly refuted (most notably by Jonahan Cohn, Paul Krugman and Ezra Klein), they will undoubtedly continue a zombie existence among those on the right where no idea, no matter how mistaken, is ever buried if it serves a partisan purpose.

The lesson that Benen took from Roy’s and other would-be conservative intellectuals’ consistent misfires – and which applies as well to Conover’s effort to bend statistics  into unnatural forms – is that there is what he calls a “wonk gap” between the left and the right:

… As Republicans become a post-policy party, even their wonks — their sharpest and most knowledgeable minds — are producing shoddy work that crumbles quickly under mild scrutiny.

[…]

I write often about the asymmetry in American politics, and the consequences of a radicalized party in a two-party system. But this wonk gap points to something related but different: it’s not just Republicans who’ve become more extreme and less interested in substance; it’s also conservatives who’ve allowed their intellectual infrastructure to atrophy and collapse.

Credible policy debates are rendered impossible, not because of the chasm between the two sides, but because only one side places a value on facts, evidence, and reason.

And this is why the winner-take-all and devil-take-the-hindmost political culture of the day is so frustrating to those of us who believe in the benefits of intellectual give-and-take. For such exchanges to take place, all the participants have to act in good faith. Kool-aid and fine wine don’t mix.

The Keystone Pipeline would cross the central United States carrying environmentally “dirty” tar sands oil to refineries on the Gulf. Environmentalists oppose it on numerous grounds. Those who support it it usually do so on the grounds that it would create jobs in the U.S. and would lessen our energy dependence on the Middle East. Both claims have been convincingly disputed. The jobs claim, however, has been a constant talking point among Missouri’s Republican delegation to Washington D.C.:

I wrote last week that Rep. Ann Wagner (R-4) was getting all worked up that the president had had the gall to call Republicans out on the topic of the economy while delaying approval of the Keystone XL pipeline.

Right now, President Obama can approve the Keystone XL pipeline and create tens of thousands of good-paying jobs while ushering in a new era of energy independence.

GOP Senator Roy Blunt also thinks Keystone XL is a great idea according to a press release on his Website:

Blunt cosponsored bipartisan legislation – which was introduced by U.S. Senator John Hoeven (N.D.) and is cosponsored by 44 Senators – to authorize the construction and operation of the Keystone XL Pipeline. The Keystone XL Pipeline would create an estimated 20,000 jobs.

Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-3) claims that if the President endorses the pipeline, “the end result will be the creation of 20,000 jobs and the reduction of our dependence on foreign oil.”

Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-4) also likes that 20,000 number, claiming on her Website, that “TransCanada, the builder of the pipeline, plans to spend  $7 billion in the U.S. and create 20,000 jobs.”

Ever the team player, Rep. Billy Long (R-7) goes along with the idea that it’s all about jobs, claiming that “the Keystone pipeline is a privately funded jobs project.” Imagine! I bet TransCanada thinks it’s significantly more that a “jobs project” when it comes to their bottom line.

On the other hand we have President Obama who recently indicated the criteria he would use to judge whether or not to okay the pipeline project. In his statement, he discounted the jobs argument that has become an article of faith among his Republican detractors, who were moved to near hysterical levels of invective when he delayed his decision on the pipeline last year. Instead, the President observed that:

“Republicans have said that this would be a big jobs generator,” Obama told the Times. “There is no evidence that that’s true. The most realistic estimates are this might create maybe 2,000 jobs during the construction of the pipeline, which might take a year or two, and then after that we’re talking about somewhere between 50 and 100 jobs in an economy of 150 million working people.”

On one side: right-wing, free-market ideologues, many of whom are in hock to the energy industries that fund their campaign with big donations. On the other side: a famously cautious, centrist politician with nothing to gain from Big Oil who has taken the time to review all the arguments – and who has no ideologically implanted hostility to environmentalism baked into his genetic makeup.

The real indication that something is amiss with the GOP job estimates, however, is a fact that our pols ought to be aware of. The company that wants to build the pipeline, TransCanada itself, has been backing off the earlier estimates of large numbers of jobs:

In January of 2010, Trans-Canada CEO Russell Girling claimed that the project would produce 13,000 construction jobs.  In April of 2011 the number grew to 20,000, which the Canadian Ambassador reiterated in August 2011.  In January 2012 the number was revised back down to 13,000 and this past April the company revised that number even lower, to 9,000 construction jobs.

Nine thousand jobs are still more than the estimates prepared by the State Department and those offered in another study done by Cornell University, but it’s getting closer and closer to the ball park in which opponents of the pipeline have been playing. This fact alone suggests that our Republicans should be worried that they’re promising lots more than TransCanada can deliver.

ADDENDA:  TransCanada is sending mixed messages, apparently backtracking again to the 20,000 jobs figure – at least for public consumption – and claiming disingenuously that “there is no reason for us to overinflate our numbers, we have to answer to our board, we have to answer to our shareholders.”  The 9,000 number comes as noted above from the TransCanada CEO, Russell Girling in April of this year; the reiteration of the 20,000 number comes from a company “spokesperson,” one James Miller apropos the “political” situation that he posits as the rationale behind the President’s comments. Draw your own conclusions.