Friday, December 05, 2003
What's he really saying?
YOU decide with the Bush Backdrop Generator! Here's one example.
posted by chris at 4:56 PM
Solving problems - the Bush way
President Bush made a fund-raising stop in New Jersey yesterday, speaking for 20 minutes to a crowd of about 500 party faithful at a $2,000-a-plate evening fund-raiser.
Not breaking any new ground, Bush, speaking in the main ballroom of the Hanover Marriott in Whippany, highlighted the accomplishments of his administration, including eliminating the terrorism threat from Afghanistan and weapons of mass destruction from Iraq and ensuring that Medicare will remain solvent.
"I came to this office to solve problems and not pass them on to future presidents and future generations," Bush told the crowd.
Really? The US eliminated WMD from Iraq? Strange . . . I didn't see that in the news. What kind of fantasy world is this Administration living in?? Probably a world where future generations don't have to support the massive deficits that Bush is running or be fearful of increased terror threats that he's stirring up. Paul Krugman has more.
posted by chris at 4:24 PM
The woes of Medicare
Medicare, the nation's largest purchaser of health care, pays hospitals and doctors a fixed sum to treat a specific diagnosis or perform a given procedure, regardless of the quality of care they provide. Those who work to improve care are not paid extra, and poor care is frequently rewarded, because it creates the need for more procedures and services.
The Medicare legislation that President Bush is expected to sign on Monday calls for studies and a few pilot programs on quality improvement, but experts say that it does little to reverse financial disincentives to improving care.
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By making sure its doctors prescribe the most effective antibiotic for pneumonia patients, for example, and thereby avoiding complications, Intermountain forgoes roughly $1 million a year in Medicare payments, he estimated. When a pneumonia patient deteriorates so badly that the patient needs a ventilator, Intermountain collects about $19,000, compared with $5,000 for a typical pneumonia case. And while it makes money treating the sicker patient, Dr. James said, it loses money caring for the healthier one.
Nor is Intermountain rewarded for sparing someone a stay in the hospital — and for sparing Medicare the bill. Shirley Monson, 74, of Ephraim, Utah, said that she expected to be hospitalized when she developed pneumonia last year. Instead, Sanpete Valley Hospital, part of Intermountain, sent Mrs. Monson home with antibiotics, and she recovered over the next two weeks. Such visits produce just token payments for hospitals.
In addition to losing revenue each time it avoids an unnecessary hospital stay, Intermountain is penalized for treating only the sickest patients, Dr. James said. Medicare's payments for pneumonia are based on a rough estimate of the cost of an average case and assume a hospital will see a range of patients, some less sick — and therefore less expensive to treat — than others. But because Intermountain now admits only the sickest patients, its reimbursements fall short of its costs, Dr. James said, resulting in an average loss this year of a few hundred dollars a case.
Providing good health care just doesn't pay.
posted by chris at 3:27 PM
More rhetoric coming your way
President Bush's aides are considering a new lunar exploration program and other unifying national goals, including a campaign to promote longevity or fight childhood illness or hunger, as they sift ideas for a fresh agenda for the final year of his term, administration officials said yesterday.
Several government agencies and task forces have been assigned to determine the cost and feasibility of a variety of major ideas, which could cost billions of dollars at a time when the nation is running a substantial budget deficit.
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The development of big ideas for Bush's 2004 agenda is being led by the president's senior adviser, Karl Rove, the officials said. Administration officials said options have not been presented to the president, let alone decided, but the search is active for ambitious initiatives to flesh out a reelection agenda that also includes limiting lawsuits, making the tax cuts permanent and adding private investment accounts to the Social Security system.
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This official said Bush's closest aides are promoting big initiatives on the theory that they contribute to Bush's image as a decisive leader even if people disagree with some of the specifics. "Iraq was big. AIDS is big," the official said. "Big works. Big grabs attention."
How about instead of big attention-grabbing ideas, we do some realistic big things, like, oh, i don't know, universal health care? Ending homelessness? Affordable housing? Or does that not get the crucial votes?
Thanks to the lovely Lindsey.
posted by chris at 11:52 AM
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Thursday, December 04, 2003
When is a turkey not a turkey?
In the most widely published image from his Thanksgiving day trip to Baghdad, the beaming president is wearing an Army workout jacket and surrounded by soldiers as he cradles a huge platter laden with a golden-brown turkey.
But as a small sign of the many ways the White House maximized the impact of the 21/2-hour stop at the Baghdad airport, administration officials said yesterday that Bush picked up a decoration, not a serving plate.
Officials said they did not know the turkey would be there or that Bush would pick it up. A contractor had roasted and primped the turkey to adorn the buffet line, while the 600 soldiers were served from cafeteria-style steam trays, the officials said. They said the bird was not placed there in anticipation of Bush's stealthy visit, and military sources said a trophy turkey is a standard feature of holiday chow lines.
Karl Rove didn't know that Bush holding a turkey for the troops would make the perfect Thanksgiving photo op. Riiiiiiiigghhhtt.
posted by chris at 4:42 PM
Hey, big spender
President Bush came to office saying he was a fiscal conservative, but federal spending has skyrocketed on his watch. And it's not just the Pentagon that's getting more federal dollars.
Overall spending is up by at least 16 percent since he took office, far more than the 2 percent average annual inflation rate over the same period. According to one recent analysis, the government now spends $20,000 a year for every household in America, the most since World War II.
In the meantime, the $236 billion federal surplus that Bush inherited in January 2001 has turned into a $400 billion-plus deficit.
I thought the Democrats were supposed to be the party of Big Government.
posted by chris at 4:22 PM
Pork products
Congress wants to spend $3 million this year to introduce more young Americans to the game of golf. It wants to set aside $200,000 to subsidize a documentary movie about Kalahari Desert bushmen. It also wants to build a $50 million indoor rainforest in Iowa.
Scattered throughout a massive $328 billion spending bill to pay for highways, health programs and scores of federal agencies are millions of dollars in spending for specific pet projects of influential lawmakers.
The "omnibus" spending bill, which is set for a vote in the House of Representatives on Monday, also contains a collection of policies backed by President Bush that in some instances flatly contradict the wishes of House and Senate majorities, including provisions governing travel to Cuba and restricting media ownership concentration.
The Senate, scheduled to convene Tuesday, is unlikely to take up the bill because Democrats don't plan to be there to vote on it.
Critics say the bill represents a marked shift in how Congress exercises its constitutional power of the purse by changing or setting government policies without congressional review. What's more, the number of lawmaker-specified projects, or "earmarks" in the spending bill - usually for popular programs in their home states or districts - has been rising exponentially since the 1990s.
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But what Congress giveth, Congress can taketh away. The legislation would cut $92,500 from the Washington Metro subway system as punishment for once accepting advertising that promoted the decriminalization of marijuana. It also would prohibit any transit systems that get federal money from displaying ads that promote legalization or the medical use of controlled substances.
Much more.
posted by chris at 4:18 PM
Thinning the forests AND the wildlife
As President Bush, with much fanfare, signed legislation Wednesday aimed at speeding fire-prevention efforts in federal forests, his administration quietly adopted a rule that would expedite timber-thinning projects by removing a safeguard for endangered species.
Under the Endangered Species Act, the U.S. Forest Service and other federal agencies are required to seek confirmation from the Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service before taking any action that may adversely affect any endangered plant or animal.
The new policy, which does not require congressional approval, authorizes biologists for the Forest Service or other land-management agencies to make the call that no endangered species will be adversely affected, exempting them from consulting with the agencies whose main mandate is protecting rare plants and animals.
Just like they always do: make a big public display and then sneak around in the back and gut it.
posted by chris at 4:07 PM
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Tuesday, December 02, 2003
Why I support Buy Nothing Day
A mob of shoppers rushing for a sale on DVD players trampled the first woman in line and knocked her unconscious as they scrambled for the shelves at a Wal-Mart Supercenter.
Patricia VanLester had her eye on a $29 DVD player, but when the siren blared at 6 a.m. Friday announcing the start to the post-Thanksgiving sale, the 41-year-old was knocked to the ground by the frenzy of shoppers behind her.
"She got pushed down, and they walked over her like a herd of elephants," said VanLester's sister, Linda Ellzey. "I told them, 'Stop stepping on my sister! She's on the ground!"'
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Paramedics called to the store found VanLester unconscious on top of a DVD player, surrounded by shoppers seemingly oblivious to her, said Mark O'Keefe, a spokesman for EVAC Ambulance.
This just makes me sick. However, it gets a little bit worse.
Ellzey said Wal-Mart officials called later Friday to ask about her sister, and the store apologized and offered to put a DVD player on hold for her.
To put a DVD player ON HOLD! Isn't that sweet of them?
posted by chris at 11:03 AM
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Monday, December 01, 2003
What, they were waiting til closer to the election?
The United States plans to release 140 of the 660 prisoners at its Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prison for suspects in the U.S.-declared war on terrorism, Time magazine reported on Sunday.
Slated for release were "the easiest 20 percent" of detainees, a military official told the magazine. It did not identify its source, who said the military was waiting for "a politically propitious time to release them."
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According to Time, activities leading toward release of the 140 prisoners have accelerated since the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. It said U.S. officials had concluded some detainees were kidnapped for reward money offered for al Qaeda and Taliban fighters. (Emphasis added.)
Whatever happened to due process?
posted by chris at 4:56 PM
CIA lacked "specific information"
The US Central Intelligence Agency has acknowledged it "lacked specific information" about alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction when it compiled an intelligence estimate last year that served to justify the US-led invasion of Iraq.
But it said that and other uncertainties surrounding the case had been fully presented to President George W. Bush and other US policymakers in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, a document often referred to by members of the Bush administration as a basis of their claim that Iraq had an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell told the UN Security Council last February that Saddam Hussein and his regime were "concealing their efforts to produce more weapons of mass destruction" and that their weapons programs "are a real and present danger to the region and to the world."
However, an explanation issued over the weekend by veteran CIA analyst Stuart Cohen, who was in charge of putting together the 2002 intelligence estimate and currently serves as vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council, made clear the case against Iraq, as presented by the CIA behind closed doors, was much less clear-cut and more nuanced.
"Any reader would have had to read only as far as the second paragraph of the Key Judgments to know that as we said: 'We lacked specific information on many key aspects of Iraq's WMD program,'" Cohen wrote in an article posted on the agency's Web site.
Story via August.
posted by chris at 1:28 PM
Colorado Supreme Court rejects sneaky redisticting plan
The Colorado Supreme Court today threw out a controversial Republican-backed redistricting plan in a decision that politicians said could have national implications in congressional elections next year.
In its ruling, the full court decided that a Republican redistricting plan, pushed through the state General Assembly in the closing days of this year's session, was unconstitutional because Colorado's congressional districts had already been redrawn in 2002 by a Denver judge after lawmakers could not agree.
The Supreme Court decided that under Colorado's 1876 constitution, new congressional boundaries could be drawn only once a decade, following the federal census.
"The plain language of this constitutional provision not only requires redistricting after a federal census and before the ensuing general election, but also restricts the legislature from redistricting at any other time," said an opinion delivered by Mary J. Mullarkey, chief justice of the seven-member court. "In short, the state constitution limits redistricting to once per census, and nothing in state or federal law negates this limitation. Having failed to redistrict when it should have, the General Assembly has lost its chance to redistrict until after the 2010 federal census."
Maybe this bodes well for the sneaky Texas redistricting plan.
posted by chris at 1:22 PM
Please Hammer, don't hurt 'em!
At the last minute, Congressional leaders added legislation to their pre-adjournment agenda that would extend more than a dozen tax breaks scheduled to expire at the end of the year. But despite efforts to squeeze the tax-cut “extenders” package into the busy Congressional schedule before adjournment, Congressional leaders have shown no willingness to consider extending the temporary federal program to help the long-term unemployed, which, starting January 1, will not provide any benefits to those who exhaust their regular, state-funded benefits.
In addition, the House version of the tax-cut extension bill would continue a large, supposedly temporary corporate tax break that was enacted as part of the 2002 stimulus legislation. When it comes to the unemployment benefits, however, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay told BNA Daily Labor Report on November 19 that there is “no reason” for extending those benefits. The House approach implies that corporations need continued support amidst a still-weak economy, but that laid-off workers do not. This is despite the fact that firms might not use the tax breaks to hire new workers and that the unemployed workers who have their benefits run out will be receiving neither paychecks nor unemployment benefits.
More.
posted by chris at 1:19 PM
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