Medicare Card vs. Canadian Drug Prices

Prices that Medicare beneficiaries will pay with the new drug cards are significantly higher than prices paid by consumers in Canada (Figure 1). Overall, a selection of a one month supply of each of the ten drugs purchased in Canada would cost $596. The prices for the same drugs from the three drug cards are at least $972 with the Walgreens card, at least $1,046 with the RxSavings card, and at least $1,061 with the Pharmacy Care Alliance Card. The average price for the drugs from the three drug cards is $1,026, $430 more than in Canada. In percentage terms, the average drug card prices are 72% greater than the Canadian prices. Of the three cards analyzed, the Walgreens card has the lowest prices. But even prices with this card are over 60% higher than Canadian prices. MINORITY STAFF COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES APRIL 2004

Bush Medicare Card for Corporations*

while the [Medicare discount ]card touts typical 10 percent to 15 percent discounts, the new law sets no base prices from which the discounts can be calculated.  Prices for the top 50 drugs. . .rose 3.5 times the rate of inflation between 2002 and 2003 . . .
Also working against price cuts is that card sponsors -- insurance companies, drug benefit managers and drug companies -- can negotiate secret rebates, without having to share any specific amount of savings with card holders.  That opens the door to sponsors agreeing to use the priciest drugs to get rebates, keeping almost all the rebates, and sticking card users with the higher costs.
Time will tell, but right now, the Medicare discount-card plan looks more like a benefit plan for drug and insurance companies.  Florida Today Editorial 3/26/04

Bush: Incompetent or Dishonest*Rick Foster, the chief actuary for Medicare, says he was told he would be fired if he passed along the higher estimates to Congress [for the Medicare bill]. "I'll fire him so fast his head will spin," Thomas Scully, then head of Medicare, said last June, according to an aide who has now gone public. . .
As for Bush himself, there are only two possibilities, both bad. The first is that he never learned the true cost of one of the major policy initiatives of his presidency. If so, he was incompetent. The second, more plausible, alternative is that he simply chose the lower, more convenient number and didn't have any problem with the honest figures produced by the bureaucracy's getting "deep-sixed," as they used to say during Watergate.  Jonathan Alter
Newsweek, 3/29/04 Issue

Bush's Medicare Fraud*

Federal investigators are scrutinizing television segments in which the Bush administration paid people to pose as journalists praising the benefits of the new Medicare law, which would be offered to help elderly Americans with the costs of their prescription medicines.
The videos are intended for use in local television news programs. . . Two videos end with the voice of a woman who says, "In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting."
But the production company, Home Front Communications, said it had hired her to read a script prepared by the government. . . the Committee of Concerned Journalists, expressed disbelief that any television stations would present the Medicare videos as real news segments, considering the current debate about the merits of the new law. . ."Those to me are just the next thing to fraud," Mr. Kovach said.
ROBERT PEAR, NY Times 3/15/04

The Medicare Index

Last month, President Bush signed into law Republican-sponsored legislation that adds a prescription drug benefit to Medicare and invests billions of dollars in an effort to lure the elderly away from the government program and into private health insurance plans. Last week, in his State of the Union address, President Bush said the new measure "kept a basic commitment to our seniors." . . . Here are some key details omitted from President Bush's speech (with apologies to Harper's):

Estimated cost of the Medicare drug bill over 10 years: $400 billion

Estimated increase in drug industry profits: $139 billion

Additional payments from government to insurance industry to participate in Medicare: $14.2 billion . . . SHERROD BROWN and STEPHEN DOYLE, NY Times, 1/28/04

Bush's Bad Policies in One Giant Appropriation*

Policy fights: $13 million for President Bush (news - web sites)'s plan to give school vouchers to low-income students in District of Columbia; omits Senate-approved language that would have blocked administration rules making it easier for companies to avoid overtime pay to white-collar workers; allows networks to own television stations serving up to 39 percent of viewers, up from current 35 percent; requires FBI (news - web sites) to destroy records of applicants for gun purchasers after 24 hours instead of current 90 days. AP at Yahoo.com, 12/9/03

Higher Prescription Drug Costs with New Bush Medicare Bill

. . .under the new plan, seniors in the middle income quintile will pay an average of $1,650 a year in out-of-pocket expenses for prescription drugs in 2006. This figure is nearly 60 percent more than they paid in 2000, even after adjusting for inflation. Expenses are projected to continue to rise so that by 2013 middle-income seniors will be paying more than two and a half times as much for prescription drugs (adjusting for inflation) as they did in 2000.  Dean Baker, Center for Economic and Policy Research, 12/4/03

Medicare Legislation: Think Twice

by Jeanne Lambrew, Center for American Progress 11/14/03

Link to Full Articl

excerpts:

[I]t would allow private plans administering the drug benefit to dictate which drugs are covered and how much seniors must pay for them — in effect, permitting insures to ration access for chronically ill seniors and people with disabilities who need prescription drug coverage the most. . . .

This untested system poses particular risks to sicker beneficiaries and those in rural areas. Private insurers could discourage enrollment of high-cost seniors, such as patients with diabetes, through high co-payments and a restrictive formulary for their medications. . . .

the emerging bill would discourage employers from continuing to offer prescription drug coverage to their retirees by providing less Medicare assistance to such retirees than to other beneficiaries.  This could eliminate coverage for as many as 2 to 3 million retirees  . . .

It would actually prohibit the use of federal Medicaid dollars to pay for prescription drugs not covered by the new Medicare drug plan . . .

prescription drug coverage could be scaled back for 6 million nursing home residents, people with disabilities, and truly indigent seniors. . . .

In addition, the plan would merge Medicare’s two trust funds - in so doing, capping the general revenue contribution to the program and advancing the projected date of the system’s insolvency by 10 years. . .

Stated simply, this legislation shifts government costs to beneficiaries; it does not contain overall costs. . . .

More fundamentally, the bill would alter the fabric of Medicare as a social insurance program by undermining its guaranteed benefit and capping its government funding. And by simultaneously increasing costs and limiting financing, the conference agreement jeopardizes Medicare for future retirees.

Ailing Health Care

A recent survey of chief financial officers at major corporations found that 65 percent regard immediate action on health care costs as "very important.". . . .America's traditional private health insurance system, in which workers get coverage through their employers, is unraveling. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that in 2004 there were at least five million fewer jobs with health insurance than in 2001. . . We spend far more per person on health care than any other country - 75 percent more than Canada or France - yet rank near the bottom among industrial countries in indicators from life expectancy to infant mortality. . . .The United States has the most privatized, competitive health system in the advanced world; it also has by far the highest costs, and close to the worst results. Krugman, NY Times, 4/11/05  MORE

Your Financial Insecurity *

The bankruptcy bill was written by and for credit card companies, and the industry's political muscle is the reason it seems unstoppable. But the bill also fits into the broader context of what Jacob Hacker, a political scientist at Yale, calls "risk privatization": a steady erosion of the protection the government provides against personal misfortune, even as ordinary families face ever-growing economic insecurity.  The bill would make it much harder for families in distress to write off their debts and make a fresh start. Instead, many debtors would find themselves on an endless treadmill of payments. . .A vast majority of personal bankruptcies in the United States are the result of severe misfortune. One recent study found that more than half of bankruptcies are the result of medical emergencies. The rest are overwhelmingly the result either of job loss or of divorce.  Krugman, NY Times, 3/8/05  MORE

Bush Hurts Poor Kids and Other Living Things *

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) failed to publish two reports that show Head Start is effective in raising the academic performance of low-income children. The National Head Start Association (NHSA) recently leaked the data, noting that the Bush administration continues its efforts to dismantle the program. . . NHSA held a press conference on Feb. 3 announcing the results of two studies, one from the National Reporting System assessment, that showed Head Start children made gains in English and early math skills. Another study, the Head Start Family and Child Experience Survey, known as FACES, concluded that graduates of the program were at national educational norms in early reading and writing and close to catching up in math and vocabulary.
. . . NHSA’s advocacy on Head Start issues has generated a series of retaliatory actions by HHS,  OMB Watch, 2/7/05  MORE

Bush Makes Civil Servants Lie*

[T]he Social Security Administration is gearing up for a major effort . . . to convince the public that private accounts are needed as part of any solution. . .[A]gency employees have complained to Social Security officials that they are being conscripted into a political battle . . . They question the accuracy of recent statements by the agency, and they say that money from the Social Security trust fund should not be used for such advocacy. . . Robert M. Ball, who worked at the Social Security Administration for three decades and was commissioner under Democratic and Republican presidents from 1962 to 1973, said: "It's fine for the agency to answer factual questions, but it's unusual to use the Civil Service organization to push a political agenda, especially because what they're saying is not true. The program is not going bankrupt."  ROBERT PEAR, NY Times, 1/16/05 MORE

While Bush Fiddles*

Bush Medicare Bamboozle *

Pfizer. . . ended its widely used discount card for the elderly yesterday, leaving several hundred thousand low-income Medicare beneficiaries at least temporarily without access to reduced prices for popular medicines like the cholesterol treatment Lipitor. . .Mr. Hayes said the Pfizer action was "a harbinger of trouble ahead" in the patchwork of Medicare drug programs, which include a welter of prices and eligibility requirements that some elderly people have found daunting to navigate. . .Mr. Hayes said his group worried that some holders of Medicare cards had selected cards that did not offer the best prices on Pfizer drugs on the assumption that they would continue using the Living Share cards. . ."Usually, the needier the person, the sicker the person, the more likely they will be shut out of these programs," he said.  MILT FREUDENHEIM, NY Times, 9/1/04 MORE

The Rambo Coalition

One of the wonders of recent American politics has been the ability of Mr. Bush and his supporters to wrap their partisanship in the flag. Through innuendo and direct attacks by surrogates, men who assiduously avoided service in Vietnam, like Dick Cheney (five deferments), John Ashcroft (seven deferments) and George Bush (a comfy spot in the National Guard, and a mysterious gap in his records), have questioned the patriotism of men who risked their lives and suffered for their country: John McCain, Max Cleland and now John Kerry.  How have they been able to get away with it? The answer is that we have been living in what Roger Ebert calls "an age of Rambo patriotism." . . .After 9/11, Mr. Bush had a choice: he could deal with real threats, or he could play Rambo. He chose Rambo. Not for him the difficult, frustrating task of tracking down elusive terrorists,  Krugman, NY Times, 8/24/04

Bush's Waste, Fraud & Abuse*

Three U.S. senators have called on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to account for 8.8 billion dollars entrusted to the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq earlier this year but now gone missing. . . channeled to Iraqi ministries and authorities by the CPA,. . .The loss was uncovered in an audit by the CPA's inspector general. . .They pointed to "disturbing findings" from the inspector general's report that the payrolls of some Iraqi ministries, then under CPA control, were padded with thousands of ghost employees. They refer to an example in which CPA paid the salaries of 74,000 security guards . . . in one case some 8,000 guards were listed on a payroll but only 603 real individuals could be counted. . .In June, British charity Christian Aid said at least 20 billion dollars in oil revenues and other Iraqi funds intended to rebuild the country have disappeared from banks administered by the CPA.  Emad Mekay, Inter Pres Service, 8/21/04

Bushites Rewrite History*

Perhaps you recall how eager the Bush administration was to invade Iraq last year?  If so, you're mistaken. Senior administration officials weren't determined to invade Iraq, they were simply the victims of faulty intelligence. . . .Among the skeptics was chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix, who clarified for the world — weeks before the U.S. invasion began — that there weren't any WMD in Iraq, at least not any that he or his team of experts could find after several months of intensive searching.  Blix made this point emphatically to the U.N. on Feb. 14, 2003, when he contradicted key aspects of the U.S. case. The U.N.'s top nuclear inspector, Mohammed ElBaradei, also reported that day that he'd failed to find evidence of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq.  LINDA MCQUAIG, Toronto Star, 7/18/04

Prescription Drug UNcoverage*

New government estimates suggest that employers will reduce or eliminate prescription drug benefits for 3.8 million retirees when Medicare offers such coverage in 2006. . . When Medicare officials held an open-door forum on June 9, they were deluged with complaints from Medicare beneficiaries alarmed at the prospect of cuts in retiree drug coverage. . . In last year's debates, Republicans repeatedly said the new drug benefits would be completely voluntary. "Seniors happy with the current Medicare system should be able to keep their coverage just the way it is,'' Mr. Bush said in his State of the Union Message in 2003.  But Representative Pete Stark of California. . . said it now appeared that the new law would "force millions of retirees out of comprehensive retiree drug coverage and into a flawed, inadequate program.''  ROBERT PEAR, NY Times, 7/14/04

Bush and "Kenny Boy"

Lay's relationship with the Bush family dates from at least 1990 when he was co-chairman of former President Bush's economic summit for industrialized nations, which was held in Houston. Lay also was co-chairman of the host committee for the Republican National Convention when it was held in Houston in 1992.  . . .the Lays had given $139,500 to George W. Bush's political campaigns over the years. Those donations were part of $602,000 that Enron employees gave to Bush's various campaigns, making Enron the leading political patron for Bush at the time of the company's bankruptcy in 2001.  In addition to Lay's political campaign donations, he and his wife contributed $100,000 to Bush's 2001 inauguration. Lay also was a fund-raiser for Bush, bringing in at least $100,000 for the president's 2002 campaign AP, 7/8/04.

Are They Losing It?

First Vice chewed out The Times for accurately reporting that the 9/11 commission said there was no collaborative relationship between Saddam and Al Qaeda. Then Paul Wolfowitz called the reporters risking their lives in Iraq craven rumormongers. Then came Mr. Cheney's F-word. (Not Fox, the other one.)  Finally, President Bush got agitated when an Irish TV interviewer said most of the Irish found the world more dangerous now than before the Iraq invasion. "First of all, most of Europe supported the decision in Iraq," Mr. Bush declared. (It's all in how you define "Europe.")
Even as Tom Daschle proposed bipartisan family retreats to heal the harsh mood, even as the Senate passed the "Defense of Decency Act," Mr. Cheney profanely laced into Mr. Leahy for criticizing Halliburton's getting no-bid contracts.  Dowd, NY Times, 6/27/04

Bush Questioned in Criminal Case*

Federal investigators questioned President Bush for more than an hour Thursday as the investigation into the leak of a CIA operative's name reached into the Oval Office.
The president was interviewed for 70 minutes by U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the head of the Justice Department investigation, and by members of his team. The only other person in the room was Jim Sharp, a private trial lawyer and former federal prosecutor hired by Bush, . . . Investigators want to know who leaked the name of Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA operative, to syndicated columnist Robert Novak last July. . .Plame's husband Joseph Wilson] suggested in a recent book that the leaker was Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff. The White House denies the claim.  Associated Press, 6/24/04

Bush, Not an Ordinary Mortal*

We're still being denied the full picture because the documents [released by the White House] on planning for the treatment of prisoners were selected by the White House. . .These hundreds of pages, which the administration has kept classified for so long, pose no possible security danger. About the only thing in them worth keeping secret was the degree to which the administration had decided to exempt itself from the Geneva Conventions and then spent months debating whether there was a legalistic way to justify what ordinary people would consider the torture of prisoners. . . This partial view of the thinking of the administration on the prisoner issue did provide, once again, confirmation of how this president and his team consider themselves above the rules that bind ordinary mortals.  NY Times Editorial, 6/24/04

The Bush Recitation*

The speech [last night] reflected the fact that Mr. Bush has been backtracking lately, but he did not come close to charting the new course he needs to take. His "five steps" toward Iraqi independence were merely a recitation of the tasks ahead. . . .It's regrettable that this president is never going to admit any shortcomings, much less failure. That's an aspect of Mr. Bush's character that we have to live with. But we cannot live without a serious plan for doing more than just getting through the June 30 transition and then muddling along until the November elections in the United States. . .The draft of the United Nations resolution that circulated yesterday was disappointingly sketchy.  NY Times Editorial, 5/25/04

Bush Bends Constitution*

"What did the president know and when did he know it?" a Republican senator — Howard Baker of Tennessee — famously asked of Nixon 30 springtimes ago.  . .Having read the report of Major Gen. Antonio Taguba, I expect Baker's question will resound again in another congressional investigation. The equally relevant question is whether Republicans will, Pavlov-like, continue to defend their president with ideological and partisan reflex, or remember the example of principled predecessors who pursued truth at another dark moment. . . .Like Nixon, this president decided the Constitution could be bent on his watch. Terrorism justified it, and Rumsfeld's Pentagon promoted policies making inevitable what happened at Abu Ghraib.  Carl Bernstein, USA Today, 5/24/04

Bush Propaganda Paid by US*

The General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, said on Wednesday that the Bush administration had violated federal law by producing and disseminating television news segments that portray the new Medicare law as a boon to the elderly.
The agency said the videos were a form of "covert propaganda" because the government was not identified as the source of the materials, broadcast by at least 40 television stations in 33 markets. The agency also expressed some concern about the content of the videos, but based its ruling on the lack of disclosure. . . The General Accounting Office said that a specific part of the videos, a made-for-television "story package," violated the prohibition on using taxpayer money for propaganda.  ROBERT PEAR, NY Times, 5/20/04

Neither Bush nor Rumsfeld Read Newspapers*

President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld . . .were back to their well-established practice of ignoring all bad news and marching blindly ahead as if nothing unusual had happened. . . [Bush] viewed photos and video stills of the atrocious treatment of prisoners by soldiers under his and Mr. Rumsfeld's command, and then announced that the defense secretary was doing a "superb job." It was stronger than ever yesterday, during Mr. Rumsfeld's road trip to Iraq, where he . . . announced his approach to the prison scandal: "I've stopped reading newspapers.". . .Each passing day has made it more clear that the routine treatment of prisoners in military prisons violates international law, the Geneva Conventions and American values NY Times Editorial, 5/14/04

Rumsfeld Inadequate*

SECRETARY OF Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld read a statement yesterday to Congress taking responsibility for the abuse of prisoners in Iraq, and he was right to do so. But Mr. Rumsfeld did not accept the fundamental nature of the problem, much less commit himself to correcting it. In testimony before Senate and House committees, the defense secretary and his deputies continued to portray the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison as isolated acts by individuals. They defended, or refused to acknowledge, the policy decisions that made the abuses more likely. They pledged that those connected to the repugnant acts documented in published photo-graphs -- and others yet to be released -- would be punished. But they offered no assurance that their unacceptable system of detention in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere would be fixed.  WashingtonPost Editorial 5/8/04

Privatizing for Pain & Profit*

When four Blackwater employees were killed and mutilated in Falluja, . . . marking the start of a wider insur-gency, it became clear that in Iraq the U.S. has extended privatization to core military functions. It's one thing to have civilians drive trucks and serve food; it's quite different to employ them as personal body-guards to U.S. officials, as guards for U.S. government installations and — the latest revelation — as inter-rogators in Iraqi prisons. . . I don't think it's simply a practical matter. Although there are several thousand armed civilians working for the occu-pation, their numbers aren't large enough to make a significant dent in the troop short-age. . .You may ask whether our leaders' drive to privatize reflects a sincere conservative ideology, or a desire to enrich their friends. Krugman, NY Times, 5/4/04

Accountability

the mistreatment of Iraqi war prisoners by their American captors was shockingly disturbing and hauntingly reminiscent of the horror stories from the regime of Saddam Hussein. . .  Historically, when Americans in uniform - whether police officers or military personnel, whether at home or abroad - have engaged in shameful or unlawful behavior, they have been prosecuted and, if found guilty, punished. But punishing these soldiers shouldn't close the book on the events at Abu Ghraib. The Pentagon must be held accountable if the military failed to provide the training, staffing, supervision and leadership required to ensure that prisoners of war are treated humanely. Baltimore Sun Editorial, 4/30/04

Bush Busts 9/11 Fund *

On Sept. 14, 2001, just three days after the tragic events of September 11, the Congress of the United States established a $40 billion Emergency Response Fund to assist the victims of those terrorist attacks and to strengthen homeland and national security. . . the terms of the law were clear. Namely, the president was required by law to keep the Congress fully informed t. . . prior to the expenditure of funds. , ,
To the best of our knowledge, as the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and the ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee during 2002, we were provided no consultations by the White House,. .  about the use of the $20 billion of funds  

David R. Obey, Ranking Member,
 Appropriations, the House, Robert C. Byrd Ranking Member, Appropriations, the Senate

Bush, Wilson and Plame

The Bush administration is bracing itself for the latest memoir by a former insider. Joe Wilson, a former ambassador, will this week reveal the name of the government official who "outed" his wife - revealing her identity as a CIA operative in apparent revenge for his role in proving the White House made false claims about Iraq's efforts to develop nuclear weapons. . . .[Wilson's] memoir could be the most damaging yet as it deals with a topic that is currently the focus of a criminal investigation. If a senior White House official is even charged with leaking Ms Plame's identity it would be very awkward for Mr Bush and Dick Cheney.  The Independent (UK), 4/29/04

Bush and Cronyism*

Cronyism and corruption are major factors in Iraq's downward spiral. This week the public radio program "Marketplace" is running a series titled "The Spoils of War," which documents a level of corruption in Iraq worse than even harsh critics had suspected. The waste of money, though it may run into the billions, is arguably the least of it — though military expenses are now $4.7 billion a month. The administration, true to form, is trying to hide the need for more money until after the election; Mr. Cordesman predicts that Iraq will need "in excess of $50-70 billion a year for probably two fiscal years.". . .the common view in Iraq is that members of the U.S.-appointed Governing Council are using their positions to enrich themselves, Krugman, NY Times,4/23/04

Bush's Unconstitutional Misappropriation of Funds*

In the [60-minutes] interview, Woodward talked about how the administration was able to finance secret preparations for the Iraq war.

"... The end of July 2002, they need $700 million, a large amount of money for all these tasks. And the president approves it. But Congress doesn't know and it is done. They get the money from a supplemental appropriation for the Afghan War, which Congress has approved. ... Some people are gonna look at a document called the Constitution which says that no money will be drawn from the treasury unless appropriated by Congress. Congress was totally in the dark on this." Mike Wallace, CBS, on 60 Minutes, Sunday, April 18, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

Bush's Frightening Answers

QUESTION: Mr. President, why are you and the vice president insisting on appearing together before the 9-11 commission?

BUSH: Because it's a good chance for both of us to answer questions that the 9-11 commission is looking forward to asking us. And I'm looking forward to answering them.

QUESTION: And, Mr. President, who will we be handing the Iraqi government over to on June 30th?

BUSH: We'll find that out soon. That's what Mr. Brahimi is doing. He's figuring out the nature of the entity we'll be handing sovereignty over.   Bush News Conference 4/13/04

Another Week with W. *

Consider this week: Gasoline prices hit a record high. Stocks fell to a yearly low. Medicare's fiscal prognosis worsened, in part from Bush's reform plan. Israel killed a top Palestinian, stirring fears of anti-U.S. retaliation. And the president's leadership in the war on terrorism, the core theme of his re-election, came under withering fire from a former White House counterterrorism chief.

All of that was on top of slumping consumer confidence, a sluggish labor market, a huge federal budget deficit, an increasing body count in Iraq and the failure to find either Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction or Osama bin Laden. 
Paul West, Baltimore Sun, 3/27/04

Qaeda or Iraq? *

The president wanted war with Iraq, and ultimately he would have his war. The drumbeat for an invasion of Iraq in the aftermath of the Qaeda attack was as incessant as it was bizarre. Mr. Clarke told "60 Minutes" that an attack on Iraq under those circumstances was comparable to President Roosevelt, after Pearl Harbor, deciding to invade Mexico "instead of going to war with Japan."
The U.S. never pursued Al Qaeda with the focus, tenacity and resources it would expend — and continues to expend — on Iraq. The war against Iraq was sold the way a butcher would sell rotten meat — as something that was good for us. The administration and its apologists went out of their way to create the false impression that Saddam and Iraq were somehow involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, and that he was an imminent threat to the U.S.  Herbert, NY Times, 3/26/04

A History of Bush Retaliation*

When Gen. Eric Shinseki told Congress that postwar Iraq would require a large occupation force, that was the end of his military career. When Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV revealed that the 2003 State of the Union speech contained information known to be false, someone in the White House destroyed his wife's career by revealing that she was a C.I.A. operative. And we now know that Richard Foster, the Medicare system's chief actuary, was threatened with dismissal if he revealed to Congress the likely cost of the administration's prescription drug plan.  . . .On "60 Minutes" on Sunday, Mr. Clarke said the previously unsayable: that Mr. Bush, the self-proclaimed "war president," had "done a terrible job on the war against terrorism." After a few hours of shocked silence, the character assassination began.  Krugman, NY Times 3/23/04

Bush Won't Collect Taxes*

Deputy Treasury Secretary Samuel W. Bodman used the escalating delinquencies to renew a Bush administration push to bring private debt collectors into the IRS tax collection process. . .Last year, the IRS opted not to pursue 2.25 million tax cases, costing the government $14.1 billion in individual income taxes and $2.3 billion in corporate taxes, the Treasury document states.
The median size of the delinquent accounts was $14,000. The largest account not being pursued involved more than $50 million. . . A pilot program employing private collectors in 1997 failed . . . In some cases computers used to transmit sensitive taxpayer data were found to be inadequately secure. Jonathan Weisman, Washington Post, 3/20/04

Bush's Orwellian Taint*

An Orwellian taint is emerging in the Bush administration's big victory last year in wringing the Medicare prescription drug subsidy from a balky Congress. The plan is being sold to the public through propagandistic ads disguised as TV news reports, and it turns out the government's top Medicare actuary was muzzled by superiors during the debate about the program's price tag. . . .As the bill was being considered, Mr. Foster privately cautioned that its cost could amount to as much as $600 billion, while the White House publicly stuck to the Congressional Budget Office figure of $400 billion over 10 years. The administration eventually conceded a cost of $534 billion, but only after the bill was safely signed into law.  NY Times Editorial 3/16/04

Florida as the Next Florida

In a January election in Palm Beach and Broward Counties, the victory margin was 12 votes, but the machines recorded more than 130 blank ballots. It is simply not believable that 130 people showed up to cast a nonvote, in an election with only one race on the ballot. The runner-up wanted a recount, but since the machines do not produce a paper record, there was nothing to recount. . . .This past Tuesday,. . .Voters were wrongly given computer cards that let them vote only on local issues, not in the presidential primary. . .  When a Times editorial writer dropped in on one Palm Beach precinct where there were reports of malfunctioning machines, county officials called the police to remove him. NY Times Editorial 3/14/04

Hide the Truth or Be Fired*

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.
Tony Pugh, Knight Ridder Newspapers, 3/11/04

Scary Bush*

Mr. Bush continues to imply that we should be scared because we're not safe, so we need to keep him to protect our national security. Which seems like a weird contradiction. If he's so good at protecting us, why aren't we safe?
The president doesn't hesitate to exploit 9/11 in his ads, even as he tries to keep 9/11 orphans and widows in the dark about what really happened.
Mr. Bush's ad flashes a shot of firefighters removing some flag-draped remains of a victim from the wreckage at ground zero even as he prohibits the filming of flag-draped remains of soldiers coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan. You might call the Bush ads, an homage to Ronald Reagan's famous ads, "Mourning in America." Maureen Dowd, NY Times, 3/4/04

Bush's Orwellian Vocabulary*

[The Bush administration's use of scientific phases] sounds noble enough, but the phrases "sound science" and "peer review" don't necessarily mean what you might think. Instead, they're part of a lexicon used to put a pro-science veneer on policies that most of the scientific community itself tends to be up in arms about. In this Orwellian vocabulary, "peer review" isn't simply an evaluation by learned colleagues. Instead, it appears to mean an industry-friendly plan to require such exhaustive analysis that federal agencies could have a hard time taking prompt action to protect public health and the environment. And "sound science" can mean, well, not-so-sound science.  Chris Mooney, Washington Post 2/29/04

Bush the Union Buster*

[The] Wal-Mart Stores Inc. . . . file at the National Labor Relations Board includes roughly 250 cases . . . .Wal-Mart's tactics: . . . fly in SWAT teams from headquarters at the first sign of organizing; find some lame excuse to fire workers . . .; set up surveillance teams outside the store to record which employees chat with union organizers;. . . only one [group of Wal-mart employees]  -- 10 butchers at a store in Jacksonville, Fla. -- actually voting in favor. And gosh, wouldn't you know that just weeks later, Wal-Mart decided to eliminate the meat-cutting function . . .the day before [acting NLRG general counsel Page's] trip [to investigate], he got a call from the White House thanking him for services and instructing him to clear out his desk Steven Pearlstein, Washington Post, 2/25/07

Bush Burger Bumble*

Is cooking a hamburger patty and inserting the meat, lettuce and ketchup inside a bun a manufacturing job, like assembling automobiles? . . .The latest edition [of the Economic Report of the President], sent to Congress last week, questions whether fast-food restaurants should continue to be counted as part of the service sector or should be reclassified as manufacturers. . . .Counting jobs at McDonald's, Burger King and other fast-food enterprises alongside those at industrial companies like General Motors and Eastman Kodak might seem like a stretch, akin to classifying ketchup in school lunches as a vegetable, as was briefly the case in a 1981 federal regulatory proposal.  DAVID CAY JOHNSTON, NY Times, 2/20/04

Bush Labor Secretary "Untrue"*

"What we've seen is a decrease in money for training," said Michael Cannarella, a labor relations specialist for [Portland Community] college's faculty federation.
[Labor Secretary Elaine] Chao called the statement "untrue" and repeated the department's dedication to training.
"I don't know where you got that number," she said before closing questioning.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, money budgeted for dislocated worker training nationwide fell from $1.6 billion for the program year spanning July 2000 to June 2001 to $1.4 billion this program year, which began in July. Oregon's share declined during the same period from $30.4 million to $25.7 million. BRENT HUNSBERGER, The Oregonian, 2/19/04

Bush Helps Corporations, Not  AIDS Victims*

In his State of the Union address a year ago, President Bush announced an ambitious new program to combat AIDS overseas. He pledged to spend $15 billion over five years to prevent new AIDS infections, provide antiretroviral treatment and care for the sick and orphans. . .  . . Mr. Tobias [Bush's AIDS coordinator] will be giving much of his money not to African groups but to American contractors, who often charge a lot more for the same work. . . .A key test of whether Mr. Tobias's office is spending its money wisely is whether it buys generic antiretrovirals, notably a new pill that combines generic versions of the three drugs in a triple cocktail. The pill can cost as little as $140 a year,. . .Mr. Tobias's office, . . . has signaled it will not buy the pill. . .  Mr. Tobias. . . was chief executive of the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly. NY Times Editorial, 2/16/04

Bush Produces "Survivor"
Between 1979 . . . and 1995 . . ., the salary of the median American worker had actually dropped 4.6 percent, from $25,896 to $24,700.
But, during the same period the top 1 percent of U.S. families had an increase in income of 78 percent. The American wage gap between a typical CEO and a typical worker had grown from 40 times to 190 times. The differential is now over 500 times. . . Now, with every tax cut, the rich-poor gap widens. . .The largest federal revenue stream comes from corporate taxes and taxes on America's top 5 percent. Those [taxes] are at their lowest level since the end of World War II, and the share paid by the rich is narrowing.  Ordinary people are competing against one another in impossible situations . . . In the world of Reality TV, that's called "Survivor." Turn off the television and it's called "America." Cathy N. Davidson, Newday, 2/13/04

Bush Strategically Bankrupt*

The message from the White House has been: "You all just go about your business of being Americans, pursuing happiness, spending your tax cuts, enjoying the Super Bowl halftime show, buying a new Hummer, and leave this war to our volunteer Army. No sacrifices required, no new taxes to pay for this long-term endeavor, and no need to reduce our gasoline consumption, even though doing so would help take money away from the forces of Islamist intolerance that are killing our soldiers. No, we are so rich and so strong and so right, we can win this war without anyone other than the armed forces paying any price or bearing any burden."

This outlook is morally and strategically bankrupt. THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, NY Times, 2/8/04

Bush in Oz*.

 . .two separate American government panels [concluded] that reports of Saddam's secret programs were based on suspicions, not hard data.

The first panel . . .the Arms Control & Non-Proliferation Advisory Board. [ACLAB] . . . [found],. . . the CIA's intel on Iraqi WMD was largely speculative.. . .The absence of hard evidence was so striking, in fact, that panel members recall discussing "the Wizard of Oz theory: that the whole Iraq WMD program was smoke-and-mirrors, and Saddam was just a little guy behind a curtain."

Donald Rumsfeld himself led the second such investigation . . ."The commission's findings on Iraq's WMD didn't materially differ from what ACNAB had concluded," says a panel member familiar with both reports.  John Barry and Mark Hosenball, Newsweek, 2/9/04 Issue

Accountability? Not for Bush*

[A]n important story that has largely evaded public attention: the effort to prevent oversight of Iraq spending. Government agencies normally have independent, strictly nonpartisan inspectors general, . . . But the new inspector general's office in Iraq operates under unique rules that greatly limit both its powers and its independence.
And the independence of the Pentagon's own inspector general's office is also in question. Last September, in a move that should have caused shock waves, the administration appointed L. Jean Lewis as the office's chief of staff. Ms. Lewis played a central role in the Whitewater witch hunt (seven years, $70 million, no evidence of Clinton wrongdoing); nobody could call her nonpartisan.  Krugman, NY Times, 1/30/04

New Republican Break In during Presidential Campaign*

Sergeant at Arms William Pickle has called in Secret Service computer forensics experts, interviewed dozens of staff members and confiscated computer hard drives to determine who accessed parts of 15 memos dealing with Democratic strategy on judicial nominations, staff members said. . . .The unauthorized access of computer memos ''by Republican employees both on and off the committee . . . is a serious breach of trust, morals and possibly the rules of the U.S. Senate,'' Leahy said. . . .The Boston Globe reported this week that the sergeant at arms' investigation had revealed that the breach lasted from the spring of 2002 until at least April 2003.  MARY CURTIUS, Los Angeles Times Service, 1/24/04

Bush's State of the Union Annotated

As we gather tonight, hundreds of thousands of American servicemen and women are deployed across the world  in the war on terror. By bringing hope to the oppressed, and delivering justice to the violent, they are making America more secure. . .

Tonight, Members of Congress can take pride in great works of compassion and reform that skeptics had thought impossible. You are raising the standards of our public schools; and you are giving our senior citizens prescription drug coverage under Medicare. . . .

Inside the United States, where the war began, we must continue to give homeland security and law enforcement personnel every tool they need to defend us. And one of those essential tools is the PATRIOT Act,

Viewers Guide

 Center for American Progress, 1/20/04

No Way to Run a Democracy*

The morning after the 2000 election, Americans woke up to a disturbing realization: our electoral system was too flawed to say with certainty who had won. Three years later, things may actually be worse. If this year's presidential election is at all close, there is every reason to believe that there will be another national trauma over who the rightful winner is, this time compounded by troubling new questions about the reliability of electronic voting machines.
This is no way to run a democracy. . .
Compounding the technology issues are the political entanglements of voting machine companies. Walden O'Dell, the head of Diebold Inc., has raised large sums for President Bush, and pledged in a fund-raising letter that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president" in 2004.  NY Times Editorial 1/18/04

Bush Attacks Science*

The administration proposal. . . would block the adoption of new federal regulations unless the science being used to justify them passes muster with a centralized peer review process that would be overseen by the White House Office of Management and Budget. . . "The way it's structured it allows for the political process to second-guess the experts," said Georges Benjamin, executive director of the 50,000-member American Public Health Association . . .It lays out specific rules regarding who can sit on peer review panels -- rules that, to critics' dismay, explicitly discourage the participation of academic experts who have received agency grants but offer no equivalent warnings against experts with connections to industry. And it grants the executive branch final say as to whether the peer review process was acceptable .Rick Weiss, Washington Post, 1/15/04

Paul O'Neill Reveals Bush*

The incurious President was so opaque on some important issues that top Cabinet officials were left guessing his mind even after face-to-face meetings. Cheney is portrayed as an unstoppable force, unbowed by inconvenient facts . . ."In the 23 months I was there, I never saw anything that I would characterize as evidence of weapons of mass destruction," he told TIME.  . . .O'Neill tells Suskind that during the course of his two years the President was "like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people." . . . When the corporate scandals rocked Wall Street, O'Neill and Greenspan devised a plan to make CEOs accountable. Bush went with a more modest plan because "the corporate crowd," as O'Neill calls it in the book, complained loudly and Bush could not buck that constituency.  JOHN F. DICKERSON, Time, 1/10/04

Ashcroft Finally Recuses Himself*

After an egregiously long delay, Attorney General John Ashcroft finally did the right thing yesterday when he recused himself from the investigation into who gave the name of a C.I.A. operative to the columnist Robert Novak. . .The operative in this case is the wife of Joseph Wilson IV. . . said the Bush administration had mis- represented intelligence by asserting that Saddam Hussein had tried to buy uranium in Africa in order to foster a nuclear weapons program. . .Yesterday's developments left open the possibility of what we feared all along: that Mr. Ashcroft's extremely tight political bonds with President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Karl Rove, the chief White House strategist, inevitably conflicted with an investigation into whether someone at the White House, perhaps acting with institutional sanction, had revealed the name of a C.I.A. operative for political reasons, NY Times Editorial 12/31/03

Bush Republicanism*

The two halves of Republican policy no longer fit together. A political majority that believes in big government for people, and little or no government for corporations, has produced an unsustainable fiscal policy that combines spending on social programs with pork and tax cuts for the rich. Massive budget deficits have been the inevitable result. . . . unlike Ronald Reagan, Mr. Bush has given no hint of a midcourse adjustment to repair revenue flow. In fact, his Congressional leaders talk of still more tax cuts next year to extend the $1.7 trillion already enacted. . . . The conservative part is a stern and sometimes intrusive government to regulate the citizenry, but with a hands-off attitude toward business. The compassionate end involves some large federal programs combined with unending sympathy for the demands of special interests  NY Times Editorial 12/28/03

More Bush Profiteering*

A Texas company owned by a campaign contributor and former business associate of President Bush could profit if Medicare endorses its drug card program under guidelines set by legislation the president signed into law on Monday, , , ,David Halbert, a longtime friend and contributor to several of Bush's campaigns, helped craft the portion of the Medicare bill that allows seniors to buy discount drug cards . . .Halbert's company, Irving, Texas-based AdvancePCS, is one of the nation's largest pharmacy benefit management companies and would be well-positioned to compete for Medicare's endorsement to issue the discount cards.  Wayne Washington and Susan Milligan, Boston Globe, 12/12/03

Bush's Legalized Banditry *

The bill that President Bush will sign today is a giant windfall for the drug companies, opening up a huge new market with virtually no effort to restrain prices. It will give Medicare recipients a modest drug benefit, but at a potentially dreadful cost. The bill starts the process of undermining Medicare by turning parts of it over to insurance companies, H.M.O.'s and other private contractors.
The drug benefit will be delivered almost entirely through private insurance plans. It would have been more efficient and cheaper to deliver it the same way other Medicare benefits are delivered. But that's not the idea. The Bush administration has mastered the art of legalized banditry, in which tons of government money — the people's money — are hijacked and handed over to the special interests.  Herbert, NY Times 12/8/03

Bush Travel Slush Fund:  A Government Accounting Office (GAO) report shows that Bush has collected hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Health and Human Services department (HHS) for trips that were used for both HHS events and major Bush political events. 

GAO Report GAO-03-791R, June 9, 2003, released 7/14/03

Will Bush live up to this GAO recommendation:  Observations on Post-Conflict Assistance in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan

Foreign Assistance: Observations on Post-Conflict Assistance in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan, by Susan S. Westin, managing director, international affairs and trade, before the Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats, and International Relations, House Committee on Government Reform.  GAO-03-980T, July 7.ORIGINAL LOCATION:  http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d03980t.pdf [Deleted from site on day of posting, 7/7/03]

FINDING:  GAO also observed a number of challenges to implementing assistance operations, including the need for sustained political and financial commitment, adequate resources, coordinated assistance efforts, and support of the host government and civil society.assistance in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan; (2)

Medicaid-Physical Neglect of Patients:  [GAO investicators] "said the secretary of health and human services, Tommy G. Thompson, had "not fully complied with the statutory and regulatory requirements" to monitor the quality of care under such [Medicaid] waivers. . . investigators found "medical and physical neglect" of some Medicaid recipients. . . .no one was enforcing basic safety and hygiene standards"  Robert Pear, NY Times 7/7/03