- Jul 25, 2002
- 10,053
- 0
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From the Washington Post
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<CLIP> From the Party of Integrity:
=================================================
The continuing violence in Iraq has been bad news for President Bush, of course, but he's got trouble on the domestic front as well.
After months of getting hammered on the WMD issue, Bush is now on the defensive over Medicare -- and, more broadly, whether his administration is playing fast and loose with the facts.
For those who haven't been keeping score, Congress had a cliffhanger vote last year in passing Bush's prescription drug program, which conservatives found hard to swallow even at the administration's advertised cost of $395 billion. Then, once the dust settled, it was oops! The actual cost will be $534 billion.
Which would have been a one-day story if the tireless New York Timesman Robert Pear hadn't discovered that one Richard S. Foster, Medicare's longtime actuary, had estimated the higher price tag all along.
And, according to Foster, he was threatened with firing by his boss, then-Medicare chief Thomas Scully, if he went public with the information. That is now the subject of an inspector general's investigation.
So the program is mired in controversy even before seniors see the real benefits in 2006.
Meanwhile, Pear popped another story in which the Health and Human Services Department is peddling a propaganda video about the drug program -- complete with fake reporter -- to TV stations, about 40 of which have run it. Isn't this the administration's fantasy -- it gets to produce the news and script the bogus journalist's lines without having to deal with actual, sweaty, annoying correspondents?
All this has provided an opening for Democrats and liberal commentators who charge that Bush was no more candid on Medicare or his projected budget deficits than he has been on Iraq. Kerry accuses the administration of trying to "silence the truth," a useful counterpoint to the demands by Powell, Cheney et al. that he reveal which foreign leaders told him they want to see Bush gone.
Rather than simply ignore information, Bush and his minions have resolved to suppress it or, better yet, to prevent it from being created in the first place.
"The Medicare Lockdown refines the Pentagon Spanking in two ways:
"1.) The political hack in question blocked information output, not input. Prohibiting output is worse than prohibiting input because when you prohibit input there's at least the hope that a third party (say, the CIA) will make use of the shunned information. When you prohibit output, nobody gets the information. According to White House spokesman Scott McClellan, not even President Bush had a clue that his Medicare bill cost in excess of $100 billion more than he'd thought until long after he signed it into law.
"2.) The penalty for disobedience was not reprimand, but firing, which is self-evidently worse. (Scully told the Washington Post, 'I never said to Rick, I'm going to fire him,' except in jest. What a kidder!)
"The EPA End Run. Tom Hamburger and Alan C. Miller reported in the March 16 Los Angeles Times that Environmental Protection Agency staffers were told not to perform routine scientific and economic analysis for a proposed regulation governing mercury emissions from coal-burning power plants. According to EPA veterans consulted by Hamburger and Miller, this is unprecedented for a major rulemaking. Russell Train, a Republican who headed the EPA during the Nixon and Ford presidencies, called it 'outrageous.'
Because the blatantly pro-industry nature of the mercury rule generated considerable protest, EPA administrator Michael Leavitt has now called for additional study, including the type of analysis that should have been done before the rule was proposed."
"You know, it's now been revealed that the White House threatened the top government Medicare actuary that he'd be fired if he revealed the true costs of the Medicare reform passed last year,"
"What struck me most about this story was how generally muted the reaction to it was.
"I don't think this was because it wasn't reported widely or because people didn't take note. I think people just aren't that surprised that this administration would practice deceit in such a casual, even routine, manner.
"It's just not surprising anymore. It's expected. (Pat Moynihan died too soon to see the most bracing example of defining -- governmental -- deviancy down.)"
But it was the bombing in Iraq -- which, as I mentioned in my last post, blew Kerry off the television screen but not Cheney -- that dominated the day's news.
"Two days shy of the first anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration and Sen. John F. Kerry launched a furious debate today, placing the Iraq war at the center of the presidential campaign,"
========================================================
There is a lot more, so register and learn.
You really should register, it's free and painless
<CLIP> From the Party of Integrity:
=================================================
The continuing violence in Iraq has been bad news for President Bush, of course, but he's got trouble on the domestic front as well.
After months of getting hammered on the WMD issue, Bush is now on the defensive over Medicare -- and, more broadly, whether his administration is playing fast and loose with the facts.
For those who haven't been keeping score, Congress had a cliffhanger vote last year in passing Bush's prescription drug program, which conservatives found hard to swallow even at the administration's advertised cost of $395 billion. Then, once the dust settled, it was oops! The actual cost will be $534 billion.
Which would have been a one-day story if the tireless New York Timesman Robert Pear hadn't discovered that one Richard S. Foster, Medicare's longtime actuary, had estimated the higher price tag all along.
And, according to Foster, he was threatened with firing by his boss, then-Medicare chief Thomas Scully, if he went public with the information. That is now the subject of an inspector general's investigation.
So the program is mired in controversy even before seniors see the real benefits in 2006.
Meanwhile, Pear popped another story in which the Health and Human Services Department is peddling a propaganda video about the drug program -- complete with fake reporter -- to TV stations, about 40 of which have run it. Isn't this the administration's fantasy -- it gets to produce the news and script the bogus journalist's lines without having to deal with actual, sweaty, annoying correspondents?
All this has provided an opening for Democrats and liberal commentators who charge that Bush was no more candid on Medicare or his projected budget deficits than he has been on Iraq. Kerry accuses the administration of trying to "silence the truth," a useful counterpoint to the demands by Powell, Cheney et al. that he reveal which foreign leaders told him they want to see Bush gone.
Rather than simply ignore information, Bush and his minions have resolved to suppress it or, better yet, to prevent it from being created in the first place.
"The Medicare Lockdown refines the Pentagon Spanking in two ways:
"1.) The political hack in question blocked information output, not input. Prohibiting output is worse than prohibiting input because when you prohibit input there's at least the hope that a third party (say, the CIA) will make use of the shunned information. When you prohibit output, nobody gets the information. According to White House spokesman Scott McClellan, not even President Bush had a clue that his Medicare bill cost in excess of $100 billion more than he'd thought until long after he signed it into law.
"2.) The penalty for disobedience was not reprimand, but firing, which is self-evidently worse. (Scully told the Washington Post, 'I never said to Rick, I'm going to fire him,' except in jest. What a kidder!)
"The EPA End Run. Tom Hamburger and Alan C. Miller reported in the March 16 Los Angeles Times that Environmental Protection Agency staffers were told not to perform routine scientific and economic analysis for a proposed regulation governing mercury emissions from coal-burning power plants. According to EPA veterans consulted by Hamburger and Miller, this is unprecedented for a major rulemaking. Russell Train, a Republican who headed the EPA during the Nixon and Ford presidencies, called it 'outrageous.'
Because the blatantly pro-industry nature of the mercury rule generated considerable protest, EPA administrator Michael Leavitt has now called for additional study, including the type of analysis that should have been done before the rule was proposed."
"You know, it's now been revealed that the White House threatened the top government Medicare actuary that he'd be fired if he revealed the true costs of the Medicare reform passed last year,"
"What struck me most about this story was how generally muted the reaction to it was.
"I don't think this was because it wasn't reported widely or because people didn't take note. I think people just aren't that surprised that this administration would practice deceit in such a casual, even routine, manner.
"It's just not surprising anymore. It's expected. (Pat Moynihan died too soon to see the most bracing example of defining -- governmental -- deviancy down.)"
But it was the bombing in Iraq -- which, as I mentioned in my last post, blew Kerry off the television screen but not Cheney -- that dominated the day's news.
"Two days shy of the first anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration and Sen. John F. Kerry launched a furious debate today, placing the Iraq war at the center of the presidential campaign,"
========================================================
There is a lot more, so register and learn.
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