The St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial board is the professional equivalent of an early aughts LiveJournal community. Given this context, it’s understandable how they thought their latest jab at the GOP over Obamacare made any sense. Most likely authored by Tony Messenger and someone in the Nixon office, the op/ed states:

On Tuesday, the Post-Dispatch’s Tim Logan reported that a Virginia-based company is bringing to Wentzville one of three national call centers to handle health insurance applications under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, dubbed derisively by the GOP as Obamacare.

Serco Inc., a private company that contracts with the federal government, is bringing 600 jobs to a legislative and congressional district that is redder than red.

That’s 600 jobs, with benefits, to the 3rd Congressional District of Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-St. Elizabeth, whobrags on his website that he’s voted to defund Obamacare 37 times.

Those are now 37 votes against 600 real jobs in his district.

 […]

Those 600 jobs are also in the hometown and state Senate district of Republican Scott Rupp, who proudly brags of his co-sponsorship of two statewide referendums in which Missourians expressed their dissatisfaction with President Barack Obama’s plan to increase the number of Americans who have insurance and pump billions of dollars into the nation’s health care economy.

Six hundred jobs, Mr. Rupp.

So tell us. How will you vote when the Missouri Legislature returns in January and a statewide coalition of health care, education and business professionals once again pushes for the state to expand Medicaid coverage as called for in the very federal act that is now pumping millions of dollars into your local economy?

Where to begin?

First, this article supposes these are sustainable jobs created organically in the private sector. False. These are taxpayer-funded jobs—jobs which take money from the private sector by fiat to swell the public sector. Growth comes from the private sector, not the public. When Republicans speak about jobs, they mean jobs that don’t require taxpayer dollars for creation. The Post-Dispatch editorial board may be able to string together a few words to form sentences, but they have already demonstrated inches into this piece that they don’t understand how economics work. I think Missouri taxpayers would like to keep more of their own cash and actually stimulate the economy rather than propping up a government bureaucracy 600 people strong.

If the Post is suddenly worried about jobs then I wonder when they plan on publishing their editorial criticizing Democrats for chasing away actual private sector jobs by taxing Amazon out of existence in our state? Perhaps they could write a piece exploring why Gov. Jay Nixon vetoed tax cuts for small businesses? Why did Nixon veto unemployment insurance reforms to protect small businesses? Amazing also, how the Post‘s editorial board made no reference to Gov. Nixon eliminating  190 government jobs due to Obamacare, (4k state jobs total since 2009, a rarity for Nixon or any Democrat!). Those numbers far outweigh the 600 mentioned in the Post piece.

They won’t mention it, though. I can’t wait for those editorials.