The Washington Slimepit
August 2, 2009
Of course, Nancy Pelosi doesn’t want a “Truth Commission” which might expose hundreds of rotten criminals like Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzalez, Rove and scores of corrupt prosecutors and judges in the inherited Bush Injustice System. Given immunity, these people would have to testify. No, Ms. Pelosi wants prosecutions. She wants them because she knows that if President Obama and “Uncle Tom” Holder have their way, there will never be any prosecutions. With a “Truth Commission,” her pretty little “rear end” may be swept out with the other debris.
Worse yet, Mr. Obama seems to be ignoring virtually everything he has said in his books. After his naive bailouts and Neoliberal charity to every crooked banker and insurance executive he could embrace, he is sacrificing his and our future to secure an admittedly necessary National Health Care Plan. Our country and our entire industrial survival does depend on National Comprehensive Health Care. We can no longer burden industry with up to 15% expenditure of gross income for health care. “Pay me now” (current health care) or “pay me later when you have made a profit on your money.” (the proper goal)
The problem is that without Justice Department participation, there is no chance for health care reform. While naïve but honest Secretary of Health and Human Resources, Kathleen Sebelius, asks the heretofore worthless Attorney General, “Uncle Tom” Holder, to resume his token attack on minor clinics and physicians, scum that they may be, they amount to only about three billion dollars a year. This represents only a small fraction of the at least 70-110 billion dollars annually in real Medicare fraud.
The major fraud is not in Miami or Detroit, folks; it is in Washington. What about the “scum sucking” committees that vote to spend 4400 dollars for a motorized scooter that I bought retail for 1100 dollars for my elderly father? What about the 8300 dollars for oxygen that Walgreens retails for 3200 dollars? What about the major laboratories selected for the majority of Medicare contracts permitted to charge 3-4 times true retail prices for bloodwork? What about committees assigning drug companies 2-4 times competitive prices for their products? “Uncle Tom,” don’t worry about the 70-110 billion overspent, fraudulent bloody Medicare dollars. You can resume those same useless habits that you so ineptly illustrated during Mr. Clinton’s watch. While he was concentrating on fun and frolick, what were you concentrating on, sir?
I remember, for instance, my friends, accused of charging for bogus lab bills. They were accused, conveniently, by an admittedly guilty local laboratory in exchange for “easier sentencing”. The federal attorneys never did find any evidence of wrongdoing by the physicians, but did retire very rich men, supposedly on government salaries. At least Mr. Holder is now diverting attention to a host of guilty “small fry” to again protect the real villains in Washington.
I remember Governor Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris, at the behest of several Republican state legislators, illegally transferring thousands of innocent names to a felon’s list to deliberately cheat these people (mostly black) out of their right to vote. President Clinton was too busy, Vice President Gore too tired, to pay attention, and who knows what Uncle Tom Holder was doing at the time?
Needless to say, just as Karl Rove is laughing at the Siegelman and Minor political “persecutions,” just as Rove is laughing at the convenient death of IT expert Connell just two days before his testimony, the firebombing of witness Dana Jill Simpson's home, her near highway execution by a truck, and the firing of most recent whistleblower Tamara Grimes by “Uncle Tom’s” Justice Department, scores of Washington Congressmen and lobbyists are still laughing. They know that if “Uncle Tom” Holder has a choice he will not investigate Karl Rove, his own department or where those thousands of billions of lost Medicare dollars have gone over the past 20 years. There will be no investigation into how labs are permitted to double bill the already cheated patients to the tune of over 30 billion dollars annually- by, uh… accident.
As long as President and Attorney General fail to do their duty, Pete Stark and John Dingell (Democrats) and Republicans like Tom Delay and Billy Tauzin will continue to laugh in their beer and micturate on the Constitution, or, at least, what’s left of it. As they do, the Health Care plan for which Mr. Obama is sacrificing the rest of his presidency will die in the slimepit of the Washington lobby.
Allen Finkelstein, D.O.