Who Love's Ya Baby?

posted by The Vidiot @ 1:03 PM Permalink

Not republicans, that's for sure!

Bad for our health:

Improper sales of medicines targeted

Drug firms have paid fines of $3.5 billion since 2001 for wrongful promotions
[...]
One reason the law has been effective is its reward to tipsters, who can receive 15 percent to 30 percent of the penalties against a company. A formal complaint is typically kept under seal while prosecutors decide whether to take the case. The litigation sometimes includes criminal charges under other federal laws.
[...]
The industry has asked the Department of Justice to reconsider the prosecution tactics, Kamp says. Meanwhile, conservatives have reportedly lobbied Congress to cut whistleblower awards. The Washington Legal Foundation, a pro-business group, has also stepped in, filing briefs in a few false claims cases defending drug manufacturers and seeking to reduce whistleblower awards. It has also urged the Justice Department to involve the FDA more in deciding when to prosecute.

Because the FDA does such a great job ... in promoting BigPharma's interests.

Bad for our economy:

Last fall, House Transportation Committee Chairman Don Young, R-Alaska, and Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, earmarked $223 million to link the remote town of Ketchikan (population 8,900) to the more remote island of Gravina (population 50). The Bridge to Nowhere became a national symbol of congressional porkmania, lampooned by Leno, Letterman and Limbaugh.
It was the most brazen of the record-breaking 6,300-plus earmarks inserted by individual members of Congress into the record-breaking $286 billion transportation bill.
Young, a 33-year House veteran, defiantly boasted that he had stuffed the bill "like a turkey." And Stevens, a 37-year senator, furiously threatened to resign if Congress shifted money away from Gravina and another bridge to nowhere near Anchorage - a bridge actually named Don Young's Way, near Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport.
But the projects became such an embarrassment to Republicans that the chairmen agreed to withdraw both earmarks. Budget hawks, green activists and clean-government types hailed the defeat of the bridges as a victory for fiscal sanity.
Except that the bridges weren't defeated.
The Republican-controlled Congress still gave Alaska the $452 million it had requested for the two bridges, merely removing the earmark directing where the state should spend the money. Republican Gov. Frank Murkowski, who was once Stevens' junior colleague in the Senate, intends to spend that money on the bridges.

Well then, that's OK then, as long as it isn't earmarked[/sarcasm]

Bad for our troops:

"Any time we put our troops into harm's way, you must have the best training, the best equipment, the best pay." That's what George W. Bush said on Oct. 8, 2003.

Let's examine the record.
Of the 20,000 Humvees sent to Iraq, 6,000 had factory-installed armor. Nine thousand trucks were sent to transport our troops; less than 1,000 had armor. We've all heard the stories of the body armor purchased by individuals and families when the Department of Defense didn't supply them to the troops. Radio jammers would have helped prevent so many deaths but they were not deployed to Iraq.
When Donald Rumsfeld was asked about the equipment, his reply was, "You go to war with the Army you have… not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time." Apparently it was only the war they wanted at that time.
What about the pay for those whom we have put in "harm's way"?
As the deaths and wounds increased for our troops in Iraq, Bush's budget for 2005 called for a decrease of their monthly imminent danger pay from $225 to $150 with an additional cut for the family separation allowance from $250 to $100.
In April 2005 the Veterans Administration pleaded for money for the hospitals, but Republicans in Congress defeated the measure to provide $2 billion for health care funding. In February 2005 patients at Walter Reed Army Medical Center were asked to pay for their meals.
But we are grateful for the sacrifices of our brave troops — why, the Department of Defense sent out letters of condolence to the families with Rumsfeld's signature (added by a machine).
Is it any wonder that Marine General Greg Newbold said, "My sincere view is that the commitment of our forces to this fight was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions — or bury the results."
Support for our troops is more than a yellow ribbon on an SUV or empty words from the president.
Barbara M. Edwards, Spicer

Bad for our jobs:

With public anxiety growing over gasoline prices and with job growth slowing, President Bush used a college commencement address on Saturday to assure graduates that they were entering a marketplace with good jobs at high salaries.
[...]
The president's positive economic assessment came a day after a government report showed slower-than-expected job growth last month.
[...]
Bush cited growing competition from China and India, and although he did not delve into the controversies over U.S. ties with those and other nations, he warned that avoiding engagement "is a sure path to stagnation and decline."

'Growing competition' from countries that we shipped 3 million of our jobs to.