While Bush is denying American children who have NO health insurance (by vetoing S-CHIP legislation), the Bush Administration is putting it's final touches on the largest American embassy in the world -- the Iraq embassy -- 21 buildings on 104 acres (approximately the size of 80 football fields).Here's a description from USA Today:
21 STRUCTURES
-- New office building: Includes classified activities
-- New office annex: For public diplomacy staff, consular affairs and the U.S. Agency for International Development
-- Interim office building: Designed for future use as a school
-- General services annex: Facilities management, break areas, staff locker rooms
-- Recreation building: Gym, exercise room, swimming pool, locker rooms, the American Club, commissary, food court, barber and beauty shop
-- Six staff apartment buildings: Each has one bedroom apartments
-- Residences for the chief and deputy chief of mission
-- Marine security guard quarters
-- Remaining buildings are dedicated to security, vehicle maintenance and facilities management, storage, utilities, and water and wastewater treatment
Sources: State Department, Mall of America, Disneyland, Architect of the Capitol, wire reports and Senate Foreign Relations Committee
And the Guardian reports that " - the embassy is one of the few major projects the administration has undertaken in Iraq that is on schedule and within budget." And what are the costs of the enormous, permanent militry bases that have been built (by Kuwaitis not Iraqis) in Iraq?
Mr. President, shame on you for chiseling deserving children out of an opportunity for healthcare! And to the House Republicans who stick with Bush on this issue, well, good luck next year in November....
The time for this occupation to end has come and gone. The time for foot dragging is over. As fantastic as our military is and as bright as members of it are, there is no military solution for Iraq. The future of Iraq is in the hands of Iraqis. It is time for them to master their own destiny and for us to leave them be.
More money for this failed policy? We need to get every Virginian in every congressional district in this sate to flood the offices of their representatives with letters and phone calls everyday until even the most harden heart must listen. $190 billion is ridiculous, just ridiculous. No more, no more. Stop saddling our children with the Iraq Occupation debt!
Well, the ever-faithful secretive Bush Administration has just done their usual 180 and now are informing us taxpayers that the Baghdad Fort -- oops Embassy -- "... could cost $144 million more than projected and will open months behind schedule because of poor planning, shoddy workmanship, internal disputes and last-minute changes sought by State Department officials...", as reported in today's WaPo!
The Baghdad Embassy was to have been finished by September 2007 and would have cost us $592 million. But --
The growing price tag and delayed opening have alarmed members of Congress, some of whom regard the troubled project as the latest in a series of State Department management problems in Iraq. The department has been criticized for failing to send enough reconstruction specialists to assist U.S. forces in Baghdad and for not providing adequate oversight of its principal private security force, Blackwater USA, whose personnel have been accused of using excessive force to protect U.S. diplomats.
Bush's lack of personal business acumen always resulted in endless bailouts by others. So here we are again in a royal Bush screw up costing us more money and lost time. I contend that this Administration and, by their complicity, Republicans are incapable of running the Government of the United States of America!!! They are 2 for 2 ... so far: the US and Iraq.
Tens of thousands of Medicare recipients have been victims of deceptive sales tactics and had claims improperly denied by private insurers that run the system's huge new drug benefit program and offer other private insurance options encouraged by the Bush administration, a review of scores of federal audits has found.
...
The audits document widespread violations of patients' rights and consumer protection standards. Some violations could directly affect the health of patients - for example, by delaying access to urgently needed medications.
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For years, Democrats have complained about efforts to "privatize Medicare," and they are likely to cite the findings as evidence that private insurers cannot be trusted to care for the sickest, most vulnerable Medicare recipients.
I have elderly parents who are in the Part D program and I can tell you it's a privatized bureaucratic nether world to deal with!
From the insurers denying the elderly necessary medications to even trying to figure out which plan is best for your medical circumstance, Bush and the Republicans are lining the pockets of the pharmaceutical and insurance companies and sticking it to the American elderly!
Why should we be surprised: the pharmaceutical and insurance industries wrote the legislation and then gave jobs to the legislators that pushed it through.