My Latest Column: Being Dick Cheney

FYI - I have a new regular column for In These Times magazine. This edition is one called "Being Dick Cheney." It analayzes some recent statements from our Vice President which display just how divorced from reality he has become.

See the column here and let me know what you think by commenting on the blog or emailing me.

New Format for The Blog

Making some technical changes...

My Site is Syndicated

FYI - I just figured out how to add an RSS/Atom feed to my site. For those of you who use RSS/Atom readers, you can find it at http://www.davidsirota.com/atom.xml

Health Photo-Op, Then Fundraiser With Insurance Executive

Bush today is doing a photo-op at a children's hospital, even though he tried to cut funding for children's hospitals...then he is immediately going to a $2000-a-plate fundraiser at a health insurance executive's house:

CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL PHOTO-OP DESPITE CUTTING CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL FUNDING: Bush's budget this year proposes to freeze funding for grants to children's hospitals. He also proposes a $94 million cut to the Community Access Program, which makes grants to children's hospitals, and proposes a $158 million cut to training grants for specialties like pediatrics. Last year, Bush proposed to cut $86 million out of grants to children's hospitals. And in 2002, he proposed to cut $35 million out of grants for children's hospitals to train pediatricians.

THEN ATTENDING FUNDRAISER AT INSURANCE EXECUTIVE'S HOUSE: The President is expected to attend a fundraiser at the house of Clay Jackson. Jackson is a major Bush/Republican contributor, and an executive at BB&T, a company which provides, among other things, health insurance services. Bush's Medicare bill provides private insurance companies a new $130 billion subsidy.

Whose Bottom Line Is He Talking About?

This is classic Bush - use a populist message to hide a policy designed to enrich the wealthy fat cats he's spent his whole life surrounded by. In this instance, he sounds like he's talking about cutting health care costs for average workers, but he's really talking about cutting health care costs for Big Business, as they reduce worker benefits, and raise their premiums/deductibles.

CLAIM:

"We've passed what's called Health Savings Accounts...It's a good way to help control costs."
– President Bush, 5/25/04

FACT:

"Sharply higher health insurance deductibles may hit workers in the next two years as employers embrace newly created tax-free Health Savings Accounts...widespread adoption of the plans could drive up the annual deductible paid by workers.”

– USA Today, 4/25/04

Industry Lobbyists Now Oversee Their Industry

The Denver Post this Sunday ran a great expose on the scores of lobbyists and industry spokespeople President Bush has appointed to now oversee the industries they once worked for.

Though the story was stellar, the Post forgot to mention the fact that President Bush himself was an executive in the oil industry his Energy Bill would reward, and that he was an original investor in a drug card company that his Medicare bill now rewards. It also forgot to note that Vice Preisdent Cheney was CEO of Halliburton, the company bilking U.S. taxpayers on no-bid contracts in Iraq. Here are a few others troubling ones the Post did not touch on:

BEEF LOBBYISTS OVERSEE MAD COW POLICY AT USDA:

Why is the Bush Administration doing everything it can to fight American ranchers who want every cow tested for Mad Cow? Knight-Ridder reported "the Bush Administration's Department of Agriculture is staffed with former executives of the meat industry, now in charge of regulating their former employers." USDA "Chief of staff Dale Moore, senior adviser Elizabeth Johnson, and Chuck Lambert, deputy undersecretary for marketing and regulatory programs, all came from the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. Deputy Undersecretary James Butler joined USDA after serving as partner in Butler & Son Charolais Ranch, a Texas cattle company, while Deputy Secretary James Moseley was managing partner of Infinity Pork L.L.C., an Indiana hog farm. Donna Reifschneider, the agency's administrator of inspection is the former president of the National Pork Producers Council." Former Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman "said regulators with industry backgrounds are unlikely to fight for much-needed enhancements to the USDA enforcement powers" – and more susceptible to lax oversight. For instance, at the same time USDA employed an assistant secretary and chief information officer who used to work for ConAgra and its subsidiary, USDA acknowledged it had allowed ConAgra "to continue operating when inspectors knew of 34 E. coli samples in the Greeley, Colo., plant." That led to 47 people being sickened and one dying from E. coli poisoning.

LABOR DEPARTMENT SPOKESMAN FOR OVERTIME CUTS WAS INDUSTRY SPOKESMAN PUSHING FOR OVERTIME ROLLBACK:

Earlier this year, the Bush Labor Department began giving Big Businesses official, government-sanction "tips on how to avoid paying overtime" to workers under the Administration's new overtime rules (which would cut off 8 million workers from overtime protections). One suggestion was to "cut workers' hourly wages and add the overtime to equal the original salary." The official spokesman for the Labor Department's overtime campaign is none other than Ed Frank, who was formerly the spokesman for the so-called "National Federation of Independent Business" - the main special interest group pushing for the Bush overtime rollbacks.

My Blog In the Washington Post

From the "shameless self-promotion" department, I wanted to show folks this Washington Post story about my blog (here's the original post the story was based on)...it's depressing that, until that point, barely any media attention had been paid to the potential Bush-Riggs-Saudi connection...but it is encouraging that all of the collective efforts to expose the truth are starting to seep into mainstream news coverage.

RNC Outsourced Fundraising/Get-Out-The-Vote Operations

We knew they supported shipping American jobs overseas, but this is a whole new level:

According to the Hindustan Times of India, over a 14 month period in 2002 and 2003, the fund-raising and vote-seeking campaign for the Republican Party was done, in party by two call centers located in India. According to the report, the Republican National Committee sent the India operation its voter database and used 125 staff there to "solicit political contributions ranging between $5 and $3,000 from thousands of registered Republican voters." While the contract for running the campaigns was originally awarded to Washington-based Capital Communications Group, "for cost and efficiencies gains, the company outsourced the work to HCL Technologies that in turn sent it offshore."

Bush Touts Programs He Is Trying to Cut

Am away in California for a business trip, but wanted to post this article...this story has been written in snippets over the last four years, but the NY Times really put it all together. In short, the White House has made an art out of trumpeting programs it is trying to gut:

"For example, Justice Department officials recently announced that they were awarding $47 million to scores of local law enforcement agencies for the hiring of police officers. Mr. Bush had just proposed cutting the budget for the program, known as Community Oriented Policing Services, by 87 percent, to $97 million next year, from $756 million. The administration has been particularly energetic in publicizing health programs, even ones that had been scheduled for cuts or elimination. Tommy G. Thompson, the secretary of health and human services, announced recently that the administration was awarding $11.7 million in grants to help 30 states plan and provide coverage for people without health insurance. Mr. Bush had proposed ending the program in each of the last three years."

See the full article here.

Bush's Uncle Is Executive At Bank Fined for Lax Oversight of Saudi Money

As if the Bush-Saudi ties couldn't get any deeper, check this out (you really can't make this up):

RIGGS BANK FINED FOR LAX OVERSIGHT OF SAUDI MONEY, WHICH MIGHT HAVE GONE TO TERRORISTS
According to the 5/14/04 New York Times, Federal regulators fined the Riggs National Corporation, the parent company of Riggs Bank, $25 million yesterday for "failing to report suspicious activity, the largest penalty ever assessed against a domestic bank in connection with money laundering. The fine stems from Riggs's failure over at least the last two years to actively monitor suspect financial transfers through Saudi Arabian accounts held by the bank." The 5/14/04 Wall Street Journal reported that of particular concern, Riggs failed to monitor "tens of millions of dollars in cash withdrawals from accounts related to the Saudi Arabian embassy," including "suspicious incidents involving dozens of sequentially numbered cashier's checks and international drafts written by Saudi officials, including Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan." According to the 4/18/04 Washington Post, Saudi Prince Bandar's wife, Princess Haifa al-Faisal, "may have used a Riggs account to donate money to a charity that then gave some of it to the Sept. 11 terrorists." According to the Washington Post, federal regulators "called Riggs actions a "'willful, systemic' violation of anti-money-laundering law." Riggs officials have "acknowledged years of deficiencies in reporting to law enforcement hundreds of millions of dollars in suspicious financial transactions by foreign customers, particularly those connected with the embassies of Saudi Arabia."

PRESIDENT BUSH'S UNCLE IS A CHIEF EXECUTIVE AT RIGGS BANK
According to the nonprofit Texans for Public Justice, Jonathan Bush is the President and CEO of Riggs Investment Management - a major arm of Riggs Bank. He is also the uncle of President George W. Bush. The President "credits the investors sent his way by this banker uncle as a key to his 'success' in the Texas oil industry in the early '80s." According to Public Citizen, the uncle Jonathan was a Bush Pioneer, having raised more than $100,000 for his nephew in 2000.

For more, read this AP article or this NY Times expose.

Why Don't Those Drug Cards Actually Save Anyone Any Money?

You may be wondering whether the highly-touted Medicare drug cards are actually going to save you any money, as the President has repeatedly promised. The fact is, they probably won't. Why would the Administration create a program that doesn't actually help consumers, but would enrich drug companies? Maybe its because the provisions creating the drug cards were written by a long-time Bush crony from a Texas company Bush himself used to own stock in:

"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...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 they can use to purchase medicine from May of 2004 until 2006...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...Bush had been an investor in a Halbert-owned predecessor company to AdvancePCS, called Advance Paradigm... Halbert contributed to Bush campaigns from his 1994 gubernatorial race through his White House bid in 2000."
- Boston Globe, 12/12/03

"Public records give no precise amount of how much he earned on the Advance stock sale, but Bush's financial disclosure form made public last year shows that he realized a capital gain, or profit, of as much as $1 million on the sale" of the same firm that he allowed to write portions of the Medicare bill, and who will now benefit from the drug card provisions.
- Center for Public Integrity, 3/7/04

Mitch Daniels: The Most Fiscally Irresponsible Official In American History

From Citizens Against Government Waste, a purportedly non-partisan organization that conveniently ignores factual reality to support only Republicans:

"Throughout his career, Mitch Daniels has understood the need for fiscal discipline. Now, more than ever, we need people like Mitch Daniels in the [Indiana] governor's seat. Faced with a $1 billion state budget deficit this year, our children and grandchildren will be left with an enormous burden that cannot easily be repaid."

Last I checked, Mitch Daniels as Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, personally oversaw the worst budget deterioration in American history. Daniels was the principle architect of budget policies that, took a projected surplus of $5.6 trillion in 2000 and turned it into a projected deficit of $4.4 trillion today by the time he left the White House to run for governor in 2003. That is a$10 trillion deterioriation. To put it another way, in the 29 months Daniels served as the nation's top budget official, the nation's budget picture deteriorated by more than $12 million a day, every single day, 7 days a week. Just think how much bigger Daniels could make the $1 billion deficit in Indiana...

Did You Get - Or Read - That Memo?

It seems National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice has made a hobby of receiving memos/reports with dire information, and then doing absolutely nothing about them:

RICE RECEIVED RED CROSS MEMO WARNING ABOUT PRISON ABUSE:

"ICRC President Jakob Kellenberger spoke about prison conditions in January with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice." No action was taken.
- AP, 5/11/04

RICE CLAIMS TO NOT HAVE SEEN OR NOT HAVE REMEMBERED URANIUM MEMO:

Rice admits she received repeated memos and warnings from the CIA not to include a claim that Iraq had acquired Uranium in the President's 2003 State of the Union. Nonetheless, the claim was included by Rice and others in the State of the Union. To defend herself, she actually said “I can tell you, I either didn't see the memo or I don't remember seeing the memo.”
- Condoleezza Rice, 7/30/03

RICE RECEIVED MEMO ABOUT BIN LADEN ATTACK BEFORE 9/11, AND DID NOTHING:

Rice claimed that the Administration had no warning about an imminent Al Qaeda attack before 9/11, but then acknowledged receiving a memo in August 2001 which was titled “Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States." She had also received “a stream of other alarming reports on al Qaeda’s intentions.” She claimed that these memos “were focused primarily on threats to U.S. interests” but sources have made clear that the memos “were focused on attacks within the United States.”
- Rice 9/11 Testimony, 4/8/04; Washington Post, 4/13/04 & 5/19/02

Not Protecting Our Troops

CLAIM:

"Our troops continue to face serious danger, and this government is giving them every means of protecting themselves and every means necessary to gain victory."
- President Bush, 5/10/04

FACT:

"Many soldiers who are there say the Pentagon is failing to protect them with the best technology America has to offer…That has translated into a lack of armor… A breakdown of the casualty figures suggests that many U.S. deaths and wounds in Iraq simply did not need to occur. According to an unofficial study by a defense consultant that is now circulating through the Army, there have been 142 casualties by land mines or improvised explosive devices, while 48 others died in rocket-propelled-grenade attacks. Almost all those soldiers were killed while in unprotected vehicles, which means that perhaps one in four of those killed in combat in Iraq might be alive if they had had stronger armor around them, the study suggested."
- Newsweek, 5/3/04

FACT:

“The military already has identified unmet funding needs, including initiatives aimed at providing equipment and weapons for troops in Iraq. The Army has publicly identified nearly $6 billion in funding requests that did not make Bush's $402 billion defense budget for 2005, including $132 million for bolt-on vehicle armor; $879 million for combat helmets, silk-weight underwear, boots and other clothing; $21.5 million for M249 squad automatic weapons; and $27 million for ammunition magazines, night sights and ammo packs. Also unfunded: $956 million for repairing desert-damaged equipment and $102 million to replace equipment lost in combat. The Marine Corps' unfunded budget requests include $40 million for body armor, lightweight helmets and other equipment.”
- Washington Post, 4/21/04

On Vacation...will be back soon

No posting until mid may...on vacation for first time in a year...will be back soon!