In honor of Martin Luther King Day, the PBS Newshour rebroadcast a segment originally shown at this time last year in which school children read Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. It was, as you might expect, both a charming and moving exercise. As I listened, however, I was suddenly struck by the specific phraseology in one of the refrains where King had begun to develop the variations on the “I have a dream” theme, especially the words I have bolded below:

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of “interposition” and “nullification” – one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

Let’s see – where I have I heard folks talking about “nullification” before. Could it have been the Tea Party – those folks who pretend to be so outraged when anyone points out that there are often hints of petty racism in their rhetoric? Could it have “dripped” from the lips of some of our own Missouri legislators – Jane Cunningham and Jim Lembke perhaps?

Nullification is a constitutional theory, based on a questionable interpretation of the 10th amendment, that holds that individual states can abrogate federal law; in its most extreme form, it stipulates that states are voluntary participants in the federal union and can withdraw their allegiance as they desire. It formed the theoretical basis for the Confederate secession and should have been laid to rest by the civil war. According to the Constitutional Accountablility Center:

… the tactic was most aggressively advocated for in the 1820s and ’30s by pro-slavery politician John C. Calhoun (who started the short-lived Nullifier Party), extended by the Confederate secessionists in the 1850s and ’60s, and then reinvigorated by segregationists in the 1950s and ’60s.

There you have it – a theory utilized by slaveholders and bigots.

But, you say, aren’t Tea Partiers and their representatives like Cunningham and Lembke using nullification to protest laws like Obamacare that affect all races? Indeed. But isn’t it interesting that the Tea Party grew out of opposition to a mild, centrist health care reform law that would bring millions of uninsured into the health care fold, while helping slow increases in health care costs overall. Didn’t you find the violence of the opposition surprising? Don’t you – at least secretly – suspect that the general rage might have had something to do with the fact that the law in question is the signal achievement of America’s first black president?

And, of course, there’s the fact that many on the right are convinced that big government programs benefit brown people at the expense of whites. Just a few days ago, in fact, one of the GOP presidential contenders let the cat out of the bag once again. Rick Santorum, speaking on the topic of welfare in Iowa declared that:

I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money; I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money.

This in spite of the fact that only 9% of food stamp recipients in Iowa are black, or that most welfare recipients in the U.S. are white.

So was Mr. Santorum revealing his own racism, or pandering to what a 2010 survey described as the “racial resentment”  of his Tea Party leaning audience? Actually, I ‘m not sure it makes much difference. What the revival of nullification talk tells us, among many other things, is that we still have a way to go before Martin Luther King’s vision of the peaceable kingdom is fully realized.  

I was struck by an article in today’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch, describing the imminent closure of a campground for people displaced by the Joplin tornadoes earlier this year. Among the few remaining inhabitants of the camp are some who claim to have come to Joplin in hopes of finding work when the rebuilding starts. That’s what 9%+ national unemployment numbers get you – people so desperate they hope to turn disaster into a job.

Economist Jared Bernstein helps put our current situation into perspective with this chart from the Bureau of Labor Standards, which shows the components that make up the unemployment picture during the period from 2007-2011:

We’re not losing jobs, but we are failing to create new jobs, condemning millions to literally years of unemployment  The truly pathetic aspect of this situation, however, is the performance of the politicians we send to Jefferson City and Washington to watch out for our interests. There are some brave Democrats in Jefferson City, but too many of our state and federal legislators are refusing to deal with our urgent jobs crisis, preferring instead to quibble about spending cuts and to fight over which parts of an already decimated budget carcass they get to pick over.

The GOP response is worse than useless. On one end of the spectrum we have Roy Blunt’s obsequious concern for his corporate benefactors, or “job creators,” to use the GOP designation for the very wealthy, in spite of the absolute failure of these putative job machines to produce more than a minimal up-tick in employment when, as during the Bush years, their needs were tended so assiduously. On the other hand, we have the outright contempt for the unemployed evinced by GOP State Senator Jim Lembke who filibustered to prevent the use of federal funds to extend unemployment benefits, asserting that beneficiaries of the benefits were “stealing from their neighbors.”

But the totally unsurprising GOP fecklessness doesn’t mean that our Missouri Democrats are doing much better. Whether it’s Senator McCaskill dithering about what she really meant when she was talking about not extending unemployment benefits, or Governor Nixon, who, in the words of a Post-Dispatch editorial last May, was “too worried about making a campaign misstep or flying around the state announcing government handouts with dubious job-creation ability to provide the leadership that was needed,” the impression they create is one of timidity and weakness.

It isn’t as if there aren’t Democrats who know just what to do. Take, for instance, Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky, whose “Emergency Jobs to Restore the American Dream Act,” would put more than 2 million people to work, with particular emphasis on the long-term unemployed, the 99ers, whose joblessness has exceeded the 99 weeks of unemployment insurance our mostly millionaire congress-people are willing to grant them. But that’s not all – remember we also need to address revenue and debt issues – the act would be:

… financed by separate legislation introduced by Schakowsky called the “Fairness in Taxation Act,” which would raise taxes for Americans who earn more than $1 million and $1 billion. It would also eliminate subsidies for big oil companies while closing loopholes for corporations that send American jobs overseas.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we’ve got Roy Blunt responding to a negative jobs report that reflected mostly federal jobs lost due to GOP inflicted spending cuts with the following bit of predigested GOP pablum:

Missourians are looking for jobs, but today’s latest unemployment report indicates yet again that there just aren’t enough jobs out there for people who are looking to get back to work. Washington Democrats are ignoring their pleas to cut taxes, quit spending so much, and help the private sector create real, permanent jobs.

Or there’s McCaskill, claiming that we can’t do much to create jobs, but maybe, just maybe we can fiddle around a little and:

… look at patent reform, we can look at trade agreements as long as they’re fair and don’t hurt American middle-class workers even more than they’ve already been hurt. We can look at regulations — what regulations are absolutely necessary and what regulations are getting in the way of businesses.

And while our Missourians are busy percolating this type of hot air, everybody agrees that the excellent, commonsense proposals put forward by Representative Schakowsky, proposals that would actually address our endemic joblessness, are DOA, victim to ideological warfare, greed, and cowardice.

There’s a new kid on the block, the St. Louis Democratic block, that is. Last fall, Rea Kleeman, a local activist started a group that she hoped would help local Democrats strengthen ties with the state Democratic party and help that entity put out a more effective message. That goal may yet materialize, but in the meantime we are not sitting on our duffs. We’re on the move. We have decided to target vulnerable Republican incumbents in the metro area–and perhaps even a traitorous Democrat or two.

The group has a brand spanking new name that gives us a lot to live up to: Missouri Progressive Action Group (MOPAG). We began taking action by contacting local unions. At a meeting this week of representatives from the thirteen Metro area Teamsters Unions, MOPAG member, Bob Burns, laid out the case for working together. He told them what they already know, of course, that education is key, that we have to let voters know what Republicans are doing to pummel the working guy while giving every multimillionaire the cash he needs to buy a vacation home at Martha’s Vineyard and an extra Lamborghini. Burns said that Democrats have got to start figuring out how to come up with a plan of action, and he promised them that our members would be there to help them in any way we could.

We’re only 85 members strong right now, but we expect that number to grow. And some of our members will be out there when the unions distribute flyers about labor issues at Busch Stadium June 3rd. They’ll also stand by union people at similar events later in the summer. The flyer that union people will hand out will lay out in clear terms some of the double dealing dirty work Republicans have been up to. It explains, for starters, that Republicans tried to revoke what we voters passed on minimum wage (DID YOU ACTUALLY THINK THAT YOUR VOTE COUNTED?) and describes Jane Cunningham’s ham handed attempt to revoke child labor laws (CHINA, TAIWAN, INDIA, BANGLADESH, “MISSOURI“?)

By the same token, if and when we pick vulnerable Republicans to target and start doing lit drops in their districts, those union members may want to come out and help us do that. Suppose we were to target, for example, a state senator who filibustered against extending unemployment from 79 to 99 weeks and accused people in that fix of not being willing “to get off their backsides and get a job”. Union workers might take offense at such a senator’s aspersions on working people and think that going after him was a dandy idea. Since neither Lembke nor Nieves has lifted a pinkie to create jobs for the three hundred thou unemployed in this state, could someone tell us and the Teamsters why those senators deserve to keep their own jobs?

Bob Burns is a union guy through and through, and he was warmly received. I’m glad I tagged along to the meeting, because I learned a lot. For one thing, a lawyer for the union educated us about the upcoming legal battle in this state over forcing municipalities to allow  workers to form a union.

Any St. Louis area progressive wanting in on the action can do two things. The first would be to call Rea Kleeman (314-727-7374) and ask to be put on the mailing list. The second is to attend the next monthly meeting of the group on Saturday, June 4th, at 1:30 p.m. at the Mid-County (Clayton) branch of the St. Louis County Library at 7821 Maryland Ave. We’ll be discussing how to boot out of office some of these haters of public schools, puppies, and poor people.

Oh, and there’s one more thing you could do: offer to help pass out those union flyers on June 3rd. Call Teamsters Local 682 at 314-647-4768.

Jonathan Chait calls Paul Ryan’s budget a “War on the Weak” and observes:

Ryan’s plan does do two things in immediate and specific ways: hurt the poor and help the rich. After extending the Bush tax cuts, he would cut the top rate for individuals and corporations from 35 percent to 25 percent. Then Ryan slashes Medicaid, Pell Grants, food stamps, and low-income housing. These programs to help the poor, which constitute approximately 21 percent of the federal budget, absorb two thirds of Ryan’s cuts.

Ryan spares anybody over the age of 55 from any Medicare or Social Security cuts, because, he says, they “have organized their lives around these programs.” But the roughly one in seven Americans (and nearly one in four children) on food stamps? Apparently they can have their benefits yanked away because they were only counting on using them to eat.

Ryan casts these cuts as an incentive for the poor to get off their lazy butts. He insists that we “ensure that America’s safety net does not become a hammock that lulls able-bodied citizens into lives of complacency and dependency.”

Question: Is Ryan channeling Sen. Jim Lembke (unemployed workers won’t “get off their backsides”) or vice versa? Or are they both channeling Ben Stein, whose personal survey reveals that:

The people who have been laid off and cannot find work are generally people with poor work habits and poor personalities. I say “generally” because there are exceptions. But in general, as I survey the ranks of those who are unemployed, I see people who have overbearing and unpleasant personalities and/or who do not know how to do a day’s work.

[emphasis in original]

Nice of him to qualify his hasty generalization with the word “generally”, but Think Progress disagrees:

The current recession is a global phenomenon caused by the collective bad behavior of the world’s largest financial institutions. Before the recession, the unemployment rate hovered around six percent; it is ludicrious to say that [fifteen million] Americans suddenly got lazier and less able to work within the span of a few months.

But, to return to the subject of Ryan cutting federal revenue by extending the Bush tax cuts, a P-D letter writer pointed out: “There are two parts to a budget. One is revenue. That is not the part you cut.” More specifically, according to WillyK:

if we do nothing about spending, but just let the the Bush tax cuts die a natural death, we would halve the deficit by 2021.

Here at home, that lesson is lost on Lembke et. al., who are slashing state revenue by turning down tens of millions in federal funds already appropriated for us. They claim it’s a protest about federal overspending, though their action does not cut the federal deficit by one cent. But the Lembke loonies aren’t the only Republicans who don’t understand that balancing the budget gets harder if you cut revenue. Both chambers have voted to eliminate our corporate franchise tax, thus costing Missouri $87 million a year.

Does anybody in the state legislature besides Jeanette Mott Oxford speak up for the sanest way to increase Missouri revenue: that is, by raising taxes on the wealthier Missouri families? Our top tax bracket is $9,000. As in $9,000! That was a munificent salary when it was instituted in 1931. It was like making $300,000 in today’s economy. But as a top tax bracket in 2011, it’s ludicrous. August Busch IV is in the same tax bracket as people renting one room apartments in urban ghettos.

Meanwhile, the meanies in Jeff City are doing their best to shove more Missourians out of the top tax bracket. They’ve undone another of our citizen initiatives by ruling that minimum wage workers won’t get automatic Cost of Living Adjustments. They’re making war on unions. Ideally, Republicans would like to pass Right-to-Work-for-Less, but if they can’t get that one through the lege this year, they’ll settle for enfeebling unions by legislating that employees must give their consent before a union can use their dues for political purposes.

We can only wait to see how many of these bad ideas Jay Nixon will veto.

If Missouri workers don’t begin to notice that the GOP views them as parasites and the rich as their rightful rulers, the situation will continue to deteriorate.

That’s the rationale behind blaming Nixon if unemployed workers don’t get that extension to 99 weeks from the federal government. Four state senators–Lembke, Nieves, Schaaf, and Kraus–are filibustering to prevent Missouri from accepting free federal funds for the long-term jobless. If they succeed, we’ll be unique: the only state stupid enough to send its federal funds to some other state.

But the senators aren’t unreasonable. Oh no. If they can get Nixon to turn down other stimulus funds, they’ll give up the filibuster against jobless benefits. And if Nixon doesn’t kowtow, then:

“he’s more interested in paying for pet projects and pork than helping the families in Missouri that on Friday he said were his priority,” said Sen. Brian Nieves, R-Washington.

Republicans have a nasty habit of holding somebody’s kid at gunpoint and making ransom demands. That’s bad enough, but then they blame the kidnapping on the parents (or on Obama or on Nixon).  

And they ain’t honest in other ways as well. When a reporter asked them about their assertions that these workers are “gaming the system”, Nieves got hot. (Well, that’s Nieves.) “Which one of us have EVER said anything remotely similar to that?” Lembke, who was standing next to Nieves at the podium didn’t say a word about this published quotation of his: “‘People need to get off their backsides and get a job.'” Furthermore, the reporter quoted Schaaf, 13 minutes earlier, saying that it’s outrageous to take money from one worker and give to another who should be working.

I’m past being surprised at wingnuts being wingnuts.

No.

They argue that cutting off unemployment benefits at 79 weeks for Missourians could help the employment picture in the longterm because it would force those the idlers collecting it until 99 weeks to get off their bums and find a job.

Let me explain it one more time: One job = six applicants. It’s true even at Wal-Mart, so let’s not hear any more about PhDs who won’t work in nursing homes. Lembke can just drop the anecdotal nonsense:

Lembke said some employers–such as a home-health care company and a Jefferson County manufacturer–have told him they have trouble finding workers willing to take $10- to $15-an-hour jobs.

Every fifth grader, not just the smart ones, can tell you that if you give money to a person who is desperate for it, he will spend it. And store owners who are desperate for customers will be glad to see the poor man come in with cash. Thus, the economy gets happier.

That’s fifth grade economics. I don’t see Lembke qualifying this June for a promotion from fourth grade.

Previously: Of cigars, port wine, and arrogant state senators

Jim Hightower says the Republicans are teaching Americans who’s really behind the recession:

America owes a debt of gratitude to such insightful Republican governors as Walker of Wisconsin, Kasich of Ohio, Snyder of Michigan, and Christie of New Jersey.

Were it not for them, many Americans – myself included – would still be thinking that today’s state budget messes are mainly the product of a national economic crash caused by the reckless greed of Wall Street banksters and rich speculators, as well as the abject failure by political leaders to tax their super-wealthy campaign contributors in order to meet the growing needs in education and other essentials. Luckily, the GOP guvs have set the record straight by explaining that the budget woes are the fault of teachers who have health coverage and firefighters who get pensions.

AND unemployed workers who won’t “get off their backsides”–as Missouri’s own state senator Jim Lembke puts it. He and three other Republican senators have been filibustering to prevent the state senate from accepting federal unemployment funds for workers. The four of them are preventing the state from extending the funds to 99 weeks for people who’ve been out of work more than 79 weeks. Missouri is the only state that has still not accepted those federal funds. At the bottom of the heap again.  

Lembke tries to divide and conquer workers by saying that unemployment checks for such workers represent a burden on the jobless person’s neighbor, who might also be struggling. To which, I’d like to observe: First, our nation was born out of the notion that we’re all in this together; if we’re going to get out of this recession, we’ve got to help each other. And second, consider that there are six workers for every available job, that corporate profits hit an all time high last year, and that corporations are using the recession to get more productivity out of workers rather than rehire the ones they let go. If we’re all in this together, then corporations like Bank of America and General Electric, which paid no income taxes last year, should be in it with us. If everybody was pulling together and playing his part, we wouldn’t be in this mess. So Jim Lembke’s ideas are lame. Don’t let the Republicans kid you about who’s at fault. The money men are bagging the proceeds from what working families produce and jumping in their getaway Lamborghinis.

An editorial in the Tuesday Post-Dispatch took Lembke and his partners in crime to task:

After being sworn in in January, it didn’t take long for state Sen. Brian Nieves, R-Washington, to embrace the trappings of office that come with being a Missouri state senator. In February, Mr. Nieves turned to the social media site Twitter to tell his followers that he and Sen. Jim Lembke, R-South County,  were “enjoying cigars and port in my office.”

(……)

To hear Mr. Lembke, you would think that unemployed Missourians were just sitting around smoking cigars and drinking wine.

“People need to get off their backsides and get a job,” Mr. Lembke said about the unemployed.

Let’s explain it one more time: Rejecting federal money doesn’t mean it doesn’t get spent. It just gets spent elsewhere. Money spent on unemployment benefits is one of the best economic stimulus projects that exists. If there’s one thing economists agree on, it’s that when the unemployed get money, they spend it.

Most of it, we would surmise, goes to food to feed their families.

Even Lembke’s own party members couldn’t help but notice the hypocrisy:

The bill’s House sponsor, Rep. Barney Fisher, R-Nevada, said that while he understands the dissident senators’ points, he also understands the needs of those who are out of work.

“Political, philosophical standpoints make great discussions, but they don’t put food on the table,” he said.

He noted that the state accepts millions in federal dollars for education, health care, highways and other projects, but senators aren’t suggesting those funds be returned.

“I would admire them if they had the courage of their convictions and filed bills to send back every federal dollar, but to just do this is inappropriate,” Fisher said.

Sue Schoemehl, a Democratic representative from South County in St. Louis, just announced her intention to challenge Lembke for his senate seat, and she used that cigar image:

Jim Lembke and his big fat cigar have stood in the way of our school children receiving money for better education. He has worked to gut the recently passed Proposition B which prevents cruelty to animals by unscrupulous dog-breeders, and he worked to strip deserving workers of a fair wage through the repeal of the minimum wage increase. He is lost in a cloud of smoke rings and following a disastrously narrow agenda.

No doubt she’ll also make use of his declaration about lazy workers getting off their backsides. She’s got a year and a half to drill those images into the brains of voters in the first senatorial district the image of Lembe’s cigars and the sound of him saying that the unemployed won’t “get off their backsides.” Make him pay for his arrogant condescension, Ms. Schoemehl.

photo courtesy of FiredUp!

Think Progress‘ The Wonk Room spotlights more jackassery on the part of State Senator Jim Lembke (R-1) and a few of the impressionable, tea party cub scouts (Sen. Rob Schaaf (R-28), and Sen. Brian Nieves (R-98) have been mentioned) who made it into the legislature while the state’s adults weren’t paying attention:

In Missouri – where the unemployment rate is currently 9.5 percent – Republican state senators are filibustering legislation that needs to pass today in order to prevent unemployed workers from losing their benefits

With the aid of several conservative freshman senators, [Senator Jim] Lembke (R) managed to successfully hold up the debate on the bill, which funds unemployment benefits for those Missourian unemployed for between 79 and 99 weeks. The extension bill has already passed through the House and is expected to easily pass the Senate when it is called up for a vote.

“Ninety-nine weeks is too much,” Lembke said. “It’s too long. Enough is enough.”

The extended support actually affects folks who have been out of work for 79 weeks, but who’s counting, right? I hope a few of the more rational and informed types representing the unfortunate citizens of Missouri can manage to explain to Lembke that 79 weeks, 99 weeks, or 109 weeks would only be too much if he and his cohorts had done anything to address the lack of jobs that makes the unemployment compensation so crucial. It’s hard for Lembke to understand, perhaps, but non-existent jobs don’t provide paychecks for anyone. Maybe if he could get over his red light camera spleen fit (and, incidentally, face up to the fact that 70% of Missourians think they’re a great idea), he’d have a little more time to spare for crucial economic issues that face the state.

On second thought, I forgot – he has so much time for tantrums because the GOP in Missouri doesn’t have to do much about economic issues – all they need to do is put their brains on cruise control and follow instructions from the Missouri Chamber of Commerce. Not that that particular anti-worker agenda is going to do much for those unemployed citizens Lembke believes have no need to eat or pay rent after ninety-nine weeks of fruitless job hunting have passed.

But it’s worth it, isn’t it, to let Jimmy Lembke and his playmates hold their breath, stamp their feet and send a message to mean old daddy …. I mean the federal government. Who wants to act like a grownup. Let them send all that taxpayer money to California instead of Missouri; just wait and see if Jimmy cares.

An editorial in today’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch quite sensibly observed that Proposition C was a very poor tool for amplifying the anti-Obamacare message nationally:

The megaphone is muffled when the message is “One in every six registered Missouri voters (71 percent of the 23 percent who turned out) sent a message to Washington.”

On the other side of the state, the Kansas City Star struck the same deflationary note:

…a light turnout made clear what the vote wasn’t: a sweeping referendum on health reform. An electorate seriously riled up about an issue sends more than roughly a fourth of registered voters to the polls.

The silliness of all the conservative celebratory braying is recognized even outside the state. Ezra Klein of the Washington Post put the matter very succinctly:

I’m really not sure why conservatives are so excited that an electorate primarily made of Republican primary voters passed  an anti-individual mandate ballot initiative in Missouri. I don’t even understand why conservatives would be excited if it passed during a normal election. For one thing, states can’t invalidate federal laws. … . Moreover the focus on the individual mandate speaks to how weak the conservative case against the bill is. The individual mandate can be replaced. That wouldn’t be a good thing, but you could substitute automatic enrollment, or some form of lock-out..

All very rational – however, if we were living in a rational political world, there would never have been a proposition C. If you want to gauge the effect of Proposition C in our current political Bizarro World, look no further than the first page of today’s Post Dispatch.

Despite the excellent editorial,  the cover story on Proposition C gave State Senator and Proposition C cheerleader, Jane Cunningham (R-Dist.7), full bragging rights. The reporter evidently felt that bringing up real, verifiable facts like the small turnout was not necessary when he could manufacture a story about how Missouri voters “overwhelmingly rejected a federal mandate to purchase health insurance.” I am afraid that this reporting path will prove to be that most traveled before this is all over.

Nor do we have to wait too long to see just how an orgy of Proposition C triumphalism is going to encourage the crazies to go even further. FiredUp! reported yesterday that State Senator Jim Lembke (R-Dist. 1) is so emboldened by the Prop C victory that he proclaimed his support for having Missouri defy the federal mandate that requires emergency rooms to treat the uninsured – which does, at least, have the virtue that it tells anyone who is interested just how mean-minded Proposition C-loving GOP fringers really are.

Why are those nameless thugs at Fired Up deleting Supreme Court dockets and changing pay-pal addresses?

Thank heavens that Orly Taitz at least has the likes of Jim Lembke on her side.