WaxWorks
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Friday, March 12, 2004
Maybe They Are "The Most Crooked and Lying Group I've Ever Seen"
Medicare, Medicare, Medicare.
First, there was the unprecedented three hour long roll call vote to pass the bill, the result of serious arm-twisting after the Republicans were slated to lose when the normal voting time expired.
Then there was the Medicare bribe flap by Rep. Nick Smith, now being investigated by the FBI. (How does Bob Novak get in the middle of everything -- he's the Linda Tripp of this administration)
Then there was the news after the bill passed that the bill would cost $134 billion more than the original administration estimates of $400 billion. That's a full 33% more than the Bush Administration told Congress when it voted to pass the bill.
Then there's this --
The government's top expert on Medicare costs was warned that he would be fired if he told key lawmakers about a series of Bush administration cost estimates that could have torpedoed congressional passage of the White House-backed Medicare prescription-drug plan.
When the House of Representatives passed the controversial benefit by five votes last November, the White House was embracing an estimate by the Congressional Budget Office that it would cost $395 billion in the first 10 years. But for months the administration's own analysts in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services had concluded repeatedly that the drug benefit could cost upward of $100 billion more than that.
Withholding the higher cost projections was important because the White House was facing a revolt from 13 conservative House Republicans who'd vowed to vote against the Medicare drug bill if it cost more than $400 billion. Rep. Sue Myrick of North Carolina, one of the 13 Republicans, said she was "very upset" when she learned of the higher estimate. "I think a lot of people probably would have reconsidered (voting for the bill) because we said that $400 billion was our top of the line," Myrick said.
Five months before the November House vote, the government's chief Medicare actuary had estimated that a similar plan the Senate was considering would cost $551 billion over 10 years. Two months after Congress approved the new benefit, White House Budget Director Joshua Bolten disclosed that he expected it to cost $534 billion.
Richard S. Foster, the chief actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which produced the $551 billion estimate, told colleagues last June that he would be fired if he revealed numbers relating to the higher estimate to lawmakers.
"This whole episode which has now gone on for three weeks has been pretty nightmarish," Foster wrote in an e-mail to some of his colleagues June 26, just before the first congressional vote on the drug bill. "I'm perhaps no longer in grave danger of being fired, but there remains a strong likelihood that I will have to resign in protest of the withholding of important technical information from key policy makers for political reasons." Knight Ridder obtained a copy of the e-mail.
Foster didn't quit, but congressional staffers and lawmakers who worked on the bill said he no longer was permitted to answer important questions about the bill's cost. Cybele Bjorklund, the Democratic staff director for the House Ways and Means health subcommittee, which worked on the drug benefit, said Thomas A. Scully - then the director of the Medicare office - told her he ordered Foster to withhold information and that Foster would be fired for insubordination if he disobeyed.
Thursday, March 11, 2004
I Guess "Crooked" is Stronger than "Asshole"?
Bush: No Apology for Gaffe -- September 5, 2000
The Republican presidential candidate George W Bush has said he regrets the fact that people heard him make an insulting comment about a journalist, but he refused to apologize. Just before a campaign speech in Illinois, Mr Bush said to his running mate Dick Cheney: "There's Adam Clymer, major league asshole from the New York Times." Mr Bush later said he did not realize that live microphones were going to pick up the remark, but he stopped short of an actual apology.
Kerry Refuses to Apologize to GOP - March 11, 2004
After a union rally in Chicago, Illinois, on Wednesday Kerry told a worker that "these guys are the most crooked, you know, lying group of people I've ever seen." His microphone was still on when he made the comments...
Bush campaign Chairman Marc Racicot called on Kerry to apologize. "Senator Kerry's statement today in Illinois was unbecoming of a candidate for the presidency of the United States of America, and tonight we call on Senator Kerry to apologize to the American people for this negative attack," Racicot said in a statement.
You're Damn Right
I just can't let this one slip by:
"If the Democratic policies had been pursued over the last two or three years, the kind of tax increases that both Kerry and [Sen. John] Edwards [D-N.C.] have talked about, we would not have had the kind of job growth we've had."
-- Vice President Cheney, in an MSNBC interview March 2, lending his perspective to the economy's loss of 2.2 million jobs over three years.
U.S. Economy Created Mere 21,000 Jobs in February
-Headline, March 6, 2004
Wednesday, March 10, 2004
Mission Accomplished
Remember Bush's Thanksgiving trip to Iraq to see the troops? Well, it turns out that he only met with troops who supported him. The men and women who were risking their lives to fight Bush's trumped up war who didn't support Bush weren't invited and had to eat a crummy MRE in their quarters. According to a solider, a survey was conducted the day before Bush's visit to determine the level of support individual soldiers gave the president. Those who weren't not sufficiently "supportive" were not invited to Bush's Thanksgiving surprise:
Q: What did you think about President Bush?s Thanksgiving visit to Iraq?
A: I was there when President Bush came to the [Baghdad] airport. The day before, you had to fill out a questionnaire and answer questions, that would determine whether they would allow you in the room with the President.
Q: What was on the questionnaire?
A: "Do you support the president?"
Q: Really!
A: Yes.
Q: Members of the military were asked whether they support the president politically?
A: Yes. And if the answer was not a gung-ho, A-1, 100 percent yes, then you were not allowed into the cafeteria. You were not allowed to eat the Thanksgiving meal that day. You had an MRE.
Q: What's an MRE?
A: Meals ready to eat. We also call them "meals refused by Ethiopians."
Q: About this questionnaire, it raises a serious question about whether military personnel, or civil servants for that matter, should ever be asked questions by their supervisors about their political beliefs. It also raises the whole question of freedom of speech. In particular, the circumstances under which members of the military have freedom of speech.
A: There is none.
Q: Is a soldier free, for example, to speak to the media if it is in support of the president and his policies, but not free to do so if in opposition or if raising uncomfortable questions?
A: If you are spouting good things about the president, you are allowed to speak. If you are saying anything negative, you are not allowed to speak.
Tuesday, March 09, 2004
"September 10 is his, too."
With all the talk about Bush trying to wrap himself up in Sept. 11, while refusing to take any responsibility for what happened from January 20 to September 10, Richard Cohen writes a good column today noting that if President Bush "wants to own Sept. 11, he's entitled. But it does not come alone. Sept. 10 is his, too."
Along those lines, look out for this book by Richard Clarke later this month. Clarke was the chair of the Counter-Terrorism Security Group during Clinton's term, and he stayed on during the Bush administration. The book could shake things up about how the Bush administration handled terrorism pre-Sept. 11 and how their arrogance may have cost American lives. More on this to come.
Bush v. Bush
Following up on the previous post, Jon Stewart has crystallized the point of Bush's flip-flops by brilliantly having President Bush circa 2004 debate Candidate Bush circa 2000. (Click on the link and then click on Bush v. Bush on the page that comes up.)
Who's Flopping?
It's clear that a major area of attack by Bush is going to be allegations that Kerry is a flip-flopper on the major issues, while Bush is steadfast and resolute in what he believes. As is so often the case with this administration, they're saying something that is completely counter to the facts and hope that their statement, if repeated enough, will replace the facts as the operative information on the subject. (Kos on the great website Daily Kos has posted a list of flip-flops by Bush for starters)
But the best example of Bush's expedient flip-flopping is over the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Josh Marshall of the indispensible Talking Points Memo has broken this down nicely and vividly. I highly recommend reading this. (Look out for the ironic Max Cleland reference)
Monday, March 08, 2004
College Tour
I'm a big fan of John Zogby's polling, even though he was off base in 2002. Zogby got 1996 and 2000 right on the nose and he's got a good track record.
Here he's got an interesting analysis of the current state of the electoral college based on his polling so far this year. According to Zogby, Kerry has 226 electoral votes in "safe" blue states and Bush has 176 electoral votes in "safe" red states, leaving 136 electoral votes up for grabs. The up for grabs states are Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, Ohio, Oregon, Tenneseee, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
Zogby writes:
Remember NBC's Tim Russert with his chalkboard in 2000, chanting, "Florida, Florida, Florida"?
This time, says Zogby, it may be "Ohio, Ohio, Ohio."
"National poll numbers are irrelevant," Zogby says. "What is relevant is how the president plays in the Red states, and how the Democrats play in the Blue states."
Interestingly, the latest poll out of Florida has Kerry ahead 49-43, with Nader garnering 3%.
With A Grain of Salt?
It's always hard to know how to read advice columns that one side of the political spectrum writes to the other side -- for example, did Republicans really mean it when they said that they thought Edwards would be the toughest Democrat to beat, or was that this an attempt to bait Democrats into nominating someone with no national security experience that they could batter with their 9/11 ads?
Here's an interesting example of this -- John Fund of the WSJ recommending that the Democrats make Tom Brokaw their VP nominee. Personally, I don't know if Brokaw would be helpful or not, but he sure would be great in the debates against Cheney.
