No one seems to be writing opinion pieces quite the way I would, so I decided to do it myself.

The name? Taverns are places where one goes to discuss the interesting events and things in the world, so this is my tavern.

I will offer my views on politics, economics, and whatever else strikes my fancy.
I will occasionally publish the entire article from another journal for purposes of causing discussion.

 

The Bush Pattern of Deceiving the Public

The Bush administration clearly overstated its case for the war in Iraq and misled the people and Congress about whether they would work to get UN backing for it in order to induce Members of Congress to vote to support the action.

Is it any surprise that when the Medicare drug benefit bill was before Congress they would lie about how much it was going to cost?

Knight-Ridder has now reported that the claims by the HHS Chief Actuary for Medicare that he was told he would be fired if he informed Congress of the true (much higher) estimates of the Cost of the prescription drug benefit prior to the extremely close vote that approved it.

So the White House has gone into damage control mode (they are good at it, but they have had so much practice!) and the investigation will be an internal one by Tommy Thompson, Secretary of HHS rather then the Congressional investigation that was asked for by prominent Congressmen.

Kevin Drum also points out that there are also formal investigations going on into:

(a) the outing of Valerie Plame by senior Republican officials in the White House,
(b) a possible bribery offer by the House Republican leadership to congressman Nick Smith,
(c) the pilfering of memos from the Senate Judiciary Committee by a Republican staffer,
(d) possible illegal use of funds by the Republican majority leader's PAC.

Bush really is the Enron-Haliburton President.

He bought and paid for the office, and now he is going to milk it for everything he can get out of it for as long as he is in office. Already it will take years to repair the damage he has done to the deficit, and when the stop-loss orders are lifted, the numbers of trained and experienced soldiers getting out of the Army, Army Reserve, and National Guard will destroy the effectiveness of those organizations.

How much more damage and criminality will we have to put up with? It really is time for Bush to go.
posted by Richard at 4:46 AM