Yesterday the Kerry-Edwards campaign rolled out a new emphasis on the influence of special interests during Mr. Bush's time in the White House. From
AP:
"We've unfortunately seen too many examples of times when this administration should have stood up for the interests of working Americans but looked the other way instead," he said in prepared remarks. "When John and I are in the White House, the for-sale sign is going to come off the front door."
A Kerry-Edwards campaign report attempts to tie donations from various industries to favors that the industry got from the administration. For example, it says:
·The logging and timber industry gave more than $1.5 million to Bush and got the right to log without the usual environmental reviews.
·The coal industry gave $300,000 to Bush and got less protection against black lung disease for workers.
·The chemical industry gave more than $1 million to Bush and got reduced regulations on chemicals exposed to workers.
·The auto industry gave more than $300,000 to Bush and got eased rules on reporting potential defects and a rule allowing truckers to drive 11 hours a day.
·The restaurant industry gave more than $1.2 million and got killed a regulation intended to prevent their workers from exposure to smoke.
The Kerry campaign also names many administration officials who used to work for the industries they now oversee.
WaPo, the
NYT and
American Progress and OMB Watch have all also been covering this recently. Here are some snippets from a
summary by American Progress:
This new theme has potential to be applied to almost every issue, from all the industires listed above to the price of gasoline (See this link and specifically note that ExxonMobil, a client of John O'Neill's law firm, posted record profits last quarter) and other energy prices (link) to the War on Terror (link) to even the SBVfT lies.
But the potential for application to health care discussion may be even greater than all the others combined. Mr. Bush has colluded with both the prescription drug industry (link) and the insurance industry (See Dick Cheney, insurance salesman and also see this, this, this pdf and this pdf on the truth behind high insurance prices.) to defraud and deceive the American people.
One of the proposals that Mr. Bush has blocked on behalf of the prescription drug industry is reimportation of drugs from Canada. Today the governor of Illinois announced that he was lauching a state program to force the FDA'a hand on the matter. (link) American Progress had this in the Under the Radar section of the Progress Report (Notice how the "war on terror" is used as a rather implausible excuse):
The White House/GOP leadership continues to oppose legislation giving seniors access to lower-priced, FDA-approved medicines from abroad, employing ever-more ridiculous arguments to protect the profits of the same drug companies who
fund their political campaigns. Last week, the administration deployed its FDA chairman to claim, without any proof, that
reimported medicines are a top al Qaeda target.
Reimportation is one of two issues with regard to drug prices that have been a big part of the medicare discussion. The other is direct negotiation with the pharmaceutical industry to get lower prices. Mr. Bush, by siding with the pharmaceutical industry, has been on the losing side of both issues with seniors (link):
Perhaps the biggest single reason Democrats are sanguine about their chances with elderly white voters - a factor that is causing considerable consternation among Republicans - is public sentiment against the Medicare prescription drug legislation. A poll released yesterday by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health found that among Medicare patients, the new law was viewed unfavorably by nearly twice as many as those who had a favorable view of it.
The same survey also found that Medicare patients overwhelmingly disagreed with Mr. Bush and agreed with Mr. Kerry on two legislative proposals affecting consumers: 80 percent said they favored allowing the federal government to use its buying power to negotiate with drug companies for lower prices, and 79 percent said they favored allowing Americans to buy prescription drugs from Canada.
Medicare and health care in general have also been targets of Mr. Bush's new "ownership" theme. Unless "ownership" refers to the special interests that seem to own Mr. Bush, a more appropriate name would be "privatization," because that is what his plan actually involves. One of the biggest winners under Mr. Bush's health care privatization schemes would be the insurance industry. Most voters would definitely not benefit. (See general discussion of "ownership" theme here.)
Other related links to the overall theme:
How BushCo and friends steal us blind
Big picture(s) on corporate profits
Bait and Switch: Bush's Flex and Comp Time Gambit