perfidy

Much has been made in the right wing press of a "liberal" focus on "Bush's lies". What, exactly, are we supposed to do when we have a clear-cut case of it right in the middle of extremely serious public debate?

Tony Pugh of Knight Ridder writes about the senior's drug benefit cost analysis process. The short version is that the real number, $550 Billion, was available from the Office of the Actuary well before the debate. The administration knew about this number, but squelched its release by threatening to fire the analyst who came up with the figure.

$400 Billion was bandied about extensively as the "cost" of the program. To their great dishonor, GOP and Dems voted for this boondoggle intergeneration wealth transfer, a giveaway to the drug industry. And I almost forgot; while they were voting an open-ended benefit to seniors, they also chopped off the government's hands by writing into law that they government may not negotiate on price with drug companies. Every other nation in the world that has a public drug plan negotiates, except this one.

But back to our saga...the country was shocked (to the extent that is possible any more) to learn, only two months after the drug benefit was signed into law, that its costs were off by nearly 50%. "How did this happen?", we all asked ourselves...and now we know.

I call it a lie when you deliberately falsify budget numbers to deceive congress, in order to get your way in the political process.

This is, of course, simply the tip of the iceberg. Knight-Ridder obtained copies of emails that prove that this incident occurred.

We've had years of bullshit job estimates from the Bush crowd. Do we have any reason to believe that these estimates originated anywhere else other than Karl Rove's head?