Comments on The Angry Democrat Forum: What's Sad About It?

Thank you for your anger. Thank you for your work...

2006-01-26T08:02:00.000-05:00

Thank you for your anger. Thank you for your work. While we are the quiet Democrats (the angriest ones), we shall be heard eventually.

Please keep up the good work.

And another thing,The botched launch of the Medica...

2006-01-25T13:39:00.000-05:00

And another thing,

The botched launch of the Medicare drug benefit may not match the muddled response to Katrina in total tragedy, but it is causing trips to emergency rooms.

Meanwhile, alarmed state officials are setting up crisis centers to ensure a continued flow of pills to their elderly and disabled populations.

How much more of this can the voters take? The Republicans running Washington are incapable of either designing a rational program or implementing it. And for all their talk of being the party of national security, you wonder how they would handle an unexpected terrorist attack when they can't even organize a drug plan with more than a year's lead time.

Many seniors who signed up for the program are learning that they are nowhere to be found in the government's computers. Pharmacists can't locate the needed billing information to fill prescriptions. And people calling the Medicare hotline face hour-long waits to speak to a human being.

The situation is even more frantic for low-income Medicaid patients, whose drug needs are now supposed to be met by Medicare. Some are being charged $30 for a prescription they're supposed to get for $3.

Washington's performance would be an embarrassment in a Third World country. But the real mission was to force through another adventure in privatization. The Republicans' idea of a "free market solution" is a government program that lets private companies siphon out billions - and hides the unremarkable level of benefits in the fog of "choice."

It did not have to be this way. During the 2000 presidential campaign, Democrat Al Gore had proposed a simple drug benefit that would have been delivered by Medicare - and not outsourced to private companies. His estimated a price tag of $253 billion over 10 years drew condemnations from Republican ranks. "Mr. Gore seems unconcerned about costs," the Wall Street Journal sniffed.

To counter the Gore drug-benefit plan, Bush offered voters his privatized version - pulling out of his hat a price tag of $158 billion. When he pushed his plan to Congress in 2003, the number had risen to $400 billion. At the time, a government actuary had determined that the program would cost a lot more than $400 billion, but he shut up after Scully threatened his job. And so taxpayers are now looking at a $724 billion bill.

Note that the corporate players have little incentive to save the taxpayers money.Outside of the business interests raking in money, how do Americans feel about the Medicare drug benefit?

The taxpayers are only now waking up to the rip-off. They've been scammed like rubes at a carnival sideshow. Learning that one has just bought a used Vespa for the price of Porsche is not a nice feeling.

If Americans have any self-esteem left, they are going to express their displeasure at the polls in November. In politics as in business, angry customers usually bring about a change in management.

You only need to check the paper daily to see that...

2006-01-25T12:39:00.000-05:00

You only need to check the paper daily to see that this administration has been deeply and profoundly and consistently wrong on everything: from the promise to rebuild Iraq and the consequences of deploying a strained Army this long in an insurgent war to the failure to respond to the aftermath of Katrina, after dissembling about pre-storm alarms.

The bumbling Bush team that ignored the warning "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States" also ignored one that went something like: "Katrina Determined to Attack New Orleans." And now the White House is trying to inhibit Congressional questions on Katrina, just as it did for the 9/11 inquiries.

The administration's p.r. offensive on warrantless - and questionably effective - snooping is so aggressive that it has even risked exposing the president to an occasional unscripted, but still not tough, question. So he rambles on about steering clear of "Brokeback Mountain" and the therapeutic value of mountain biking. And he calls Barney, the Scottish terrier, "the son I never had." (Barney's dad is all bark and no bite.)

The White House is as skittish about bilked Indians as it is about billing-and-cooing cowboys. It admits it has pictures of the president with Jack Abramoff, but won't cough them up.

While he was out defending his scofflaw behavior, W. had to address the fact that the real nuclear threat (Iran), as opposed to the fake nuclear threat (Iraq), is embarrassing him. He told the Iranian people: "We have no beef with you." (State Department reporters puzzled over how that might be translated into Farsi: "We have no cow with you"?)

You couldn't turn on a TV this week without seeing Torture Guy Alberto Gonzales give all-purpose legal cover to Dick Cheney as that Grim Peeper ravages the Constitution. At a Georgetown University speech, W.'s legal lickspittle ignored a few student protesters, but he might have learned something from their banner, emblazoned with words of Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither."

In their usual twisted way, the Bushies are reducing their abuse of the law to a test of testosterone.