Entries from November 2003 ↓

Yahoo! News posted this report about the US military’s arrest of the wife and daughter of Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, a lifelong Saddam associate who is No. 6 on the list of most-wanted Iraqis.

Did they do anything wrong? Have they broken laws? Or have we resorted to the tactics of the guys with the broken noses? Are we bringing democracy to Iraq or are we bringing the Iraqi people the morally-bankrupt strong-arm tactics of the organized crime world? It’s a rhetorical question… I know the answer.

UPDATE: USA Today reports that Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush died today while undergoing interrogation by US troops.

Happily, I’m pretty unfamiliar with military interrogation techniques, but why was the Army spokesman so quick to assure the press that the subject wasn’t hooded?

Q. What do Joe Lieberman & John Kerry have in common with the 11 (disgusting) Democrats and 43 Republicans who voted for the abominable Medicare bill?

A. They felt that their election campaigns were more important than the welfare of seniors or the future generations who will be forced to pay for this staggeringly expensive and totally ineffective piece of legislation.

Look through the Washington Post’s list of Senate votes on the Medicare bill and you’ll notice that the only two Senators who didn’t make their positions known were Kerry and Lieberman.

The Republicans and Democrats who voted for the bill at least had the courage to go on the record with their choices, knowing that passage of the bill — still safely 2 years away from implementation — will make for great sound-bites during the 2004 campaign. Kerry and Lieberman, meanwhile, took the gutless route and can now tell audiences exactly what they want to hear.

If an audience of deluded seniors and pharmaceutical company executives cheer about the bill’s passage, John & Joe can claim they would have voted for passage. If the realistic seniors, young people — who will be paying for this bill — and those who cherish a responsible government throw catcalls and hisses at the bill, Joe & John can claim they were against it, too.

I know their votes wouldn’t have changed the outcome, and I’m sure their offices have some plausible explanation for their absence on the vote-day of one of the most important, horrendous, expensive, partisan, pork-laden bills ever to come before Congress, but… whatever reason they come up with is bullshit.

As you know, I’ve had strong political opinions for most of my life. While I’ve always been ready to state my opinions and argue them, I’ve never asked you to take action on an issue I believe in. Until now. Because this one affects you, it affects me, and it will affect the lives of your new grandchildren. I urge you to call AARP and call your Congresspeople and tell them to leave Medicare alone.

You’re both members of AARP — Dad loves the discounts his membership entitles him to at the movies — and I’m sure that, like most members, you’ve always assumed that the organization would have your best interests at heart. Well… surprise, surprise… “your” advocate has hung you out to dry.

This week, William D. Novelli, Executive Director and CEO of AARP pledged the organization’s enthusiastic support to the deeply-flawed, Republican-sponsored Medicare bill. But whose interests did Mr. Novelli have in mind when he made this endorsement in your name? Consider these details as outlined by Representative Bernie Sanders:

• The voluntary program would cost you a membership fee each month of approximately $35, or $420 per year
• There will be a $250 deuctible
• After you’ve paid the deductible, the new drug benefit will cover 75% of your costs up to $2200 per year
• Any drug costs greater than $2200 and less than $5000 are NOT COVERED AT ALL
• Costs greater than $5000 are covered 95%

Great deal, huh? There’s a specified “maximum out-of-pocket” limit on the plan of $3600 — with a little bit of fine print which says that you may have to pay more than the “maximum out-of-pocket” since you are still responsible for 5% of everything over $5000. So, if your drug expenses are $5000 per year, under this plan you’ll still have to come up with just about $4000. Now, the $1000 you’ll save is nothing to sneeze at, but it’s also nothing to cheer about.

When you consider all the negatives of the plan, cheering becomes even less appropriate. For instance, coverage for low-income seniors is based on an onerous assets test ($6000 in total assets for individuals and $9000 for couples under 135% of the poverty level), which may leave many of the people who most need the benefit unable to claim it. In addition, there is means testing on the other end, too; seniors who earn more than $80,000 — or couples earning more than $160,000 — will have to pay higher premiums. On the surface that might seem okay, but these higher fees are being assessed on the people who likely paid more into the program over their working lives.

Being that this is a Republican bill, there are plenty of bonuses for the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries. For starters, there’s $12 billion in “incentives” — read “slush fund” — to “encourage” HMOs and PPOs to provide more benefits to seniors. That’s money which is NOT going to seniors themselves. There’s also a continued prohibition against importing drugs from Canada and Europe, where the drugs are often half the price of the same prescritions here.

And get this: Unlike the Veterans Administration and Medicaid, Medicare is prohibited from using its enormous purchasing power to bargain with the pharmaceutical companies for the best prices. Forbidden? Gosh, I wonder who suggested that plan? I’d be willing to bet that it wasn’t seniors.

So, with all these negatives, why does AARP support the bill? Well, you see… AARP gets about 25% of its budget from dues-paying members, but it gets 27-30% from the insurance policies it hawks to its members, and another significant chunk from the pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies which advertise in its magazine, Modern Maturity.

AARP’s leadership, along with members of the Republican Party keep telling us that we have to do this NOW because if we don’t pass this bill NOW the opportunity won’t come around again for many years. And why the hell not? Maybe the idiotic demagogues in the Republican party realize that there’s enough disenchantment with their ham-fisted mismanagement of the economy, the environment, the war on terror, etc… that THEY might not have the opportunity for a few years to ram this horrible bill down the throats of today’s seniors and their grandchildren who will be paying for this boondoggle for the rest of their lives.

But maybe there’s more: maybe it has to do with AARP’s CEO and his incestuous relationship with Newt Gingrich. Newt’s most recent book, Saving Lives & Saving Money carries a foreword from Mr. Novelli, praising Gingrich’s book as “bold, enlightening and provocative”. Gingrich is the man who, in 1995 said that Medicare should “wither on the vine”; do you believe Newt has changed his mind? Do you believe that Mr. Novelli, the man who represents 33 million seniors should be praising the plans of a man who aims to destroy one of the major benefits which have brought seniors out of the dog-food-eating days of the 1960s and 70s.

Congress is rushing into this action with their eyes on the coming political campaigns, rather than on the legislation itself. There is no rush to pass this bad legislation, especially since IT WILL NOT EVEN TAKE EFFECT UNTIL 2006! The sickest seniors who feel time’s pressure on their lives may not live long enough to see this benefit take effect. And yet, as I am writing this, the Senate is about to take up the vote for passage of this bill. Opposition has been bi-partisan and extremely close. The bill passed the Republican-controlled House by 5 votes, only after serious arm-twisting by the President and his attack dog, Mr. Cheney — neither of whom will have to suffer with the effects of this bill.

So, Mom & Dad: take some action. It might be too late to affect the outcome of this debate, but let the AARP know that it does not represent you. Let your Congresspeople know that, although you are senior citizens you will not thank them for this abominable law. Let all of them know that you will be working for the day when this bill will be repealed and a true, fair, comprehensive solution to the prescription drug crisis will become the law of the land.

Writing about the Republican/FoxNews Party’s staged 30-hour marathon filibuster protesting the Democrats’ use of the filibuster, The Hill.com ends the story with this gem:

This is inane on so many levels. First of all, other than Supreme Court Justices, the Constitution says nothing specifically about the president’s right to appoint judges. It does say that Congress has the right to write laws installing the power to appoint “inferior officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the courts of law, or in the heads of departments.”

Second of all, “ridiculous” is a way to describe the 167 federal judgeship nominees the Republicans held up during Clinton’s term. It is not ridiculous that the Democrats should use a long-standing Senate procedure — the filibuster — to block the vote on 4 of Bush’s radical right-wing, racist, religious zealot nominees while approving all of the other 168 more reasonable nominees. Hatch’s whining is ridiculous: crying because he can’t have EVERYTHING he wants.

Third of all, nothing in the Democrats’ actions have done anything to interfere with the President’s “right to nominate judges.” He can nominate all he wants. He can nominate fascists, abortion clinc bombers, lynch-mob organizers, or his family’s friends — the princes of Saudi Arabia. Nothing is stopping him from his nominations. There is nothing more important on the Sanate’s agenda than providing advice and consent to the president’s nominees: not a simple rubber stamp.

If Hatch wants to live in a country with one-party rule and an obedient legislature, I’m sure the Russians or the Chinese might be able to accommodate his request for defection.

I never served in the armed forces. I came into political consciousness in the shadow of the Vietnam War, and because of that, I’ve believed in pacifism for most of my life. Pacifism was applicable on a personal level, but I’ve never been so naive to believe that a nation could long endure without the protection afforded by men and women in uniform. I reconciled this contradiction between personal belief and political reality with the certainty that after our Southeast Asian debacle, our formidable army would be used for defense, for peacekeeping, for the prevention of genocide… never as a belligerent invasion force.

Despite my lack of service, I’ve been surrounded most of my life by ex-military people.

• My father spent 3 years in the Marines, then served another four years in the Navy — he was lucky enough to serve in the period between Korea and Vietnam, so although he spent plenty of time at sea, he never saw action.
• My uncle served two tours of duty in Vietnam and to this day, he won’t talk about his time there. We don’t ask anymore.
• My younger brother served six years in the Navy, most of them in Japan, stationed on the USS Midway. When Iraq invaded Kuwait, the Midway, with my brother and 4000 other crew aboard sailed to the Persian Gulf and fought there until Operation Desert Storm was completed.

I’ve never felt anything but respect for these men and the many millions of other men and women who have served their country and provided me with the freedom to avoid serving. Veteran’s Day is always an important holiday, but this year it has an extra significance because we have troops fighting and dying in two foreign countries. They are fighting and dying because this President lied to us and to them.

He and his greedy cronies have lied about everything since they have been in office. While insinuating that those of us who were against the belligerent action against Iraq were anti-American and anti-troops, he and his administration have stolen shamelessly the benefits and basic dignity of the armed forces. While signing bills which ostensibly give back some of what he has taken away from veterans, servicemen and women and their families, he has refused to fund those initiatives, preferring to distribute some more largesse on the whores of industry who slobber at his feet, perverting the Oval Office more than his predecessor ever did.

While laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, he profanes that sacred ground by his presence there. He pretends to honor unknown soldiers, but ignores the ones with names and faces, forbidding the media to acknowledge the arrival of the flag-draped coffins at Dover AFB. He has not met with the families of dead soldiers, nor has he visited the Dover morgue to pay respects and honor those he sent to die.

I am no one. I am just another little voice on the web. My words mean nothing compared to those which might come from the mouth and the heart of a leader or a statesman. I despise this war. I oppose the liars who have led us into our aggressive action in Iraq.

But, today, I want to thank my brother and my father and my uncle and all the members of the various services who — for whatever reason — are standing firm and risking everything for their belief in an America which I fear no longer exists.