Wednesday, December 10, 2003
Boom!
Boston, New Hampshire Announce Plans to Begin Buying Prescription Drugs from Canada0 comments
We've come to this.
Millions of Americans are now planning open revolt.
There's no getting around it. Consider the recently signed Medicare Bill as being officially renamed: the 2003 Bush Viagra Bill.
Because George W. Bush has reinvigorated millions of middle-aged and senior Americans. They've regained the passion, the emotional fire, the disrespect for authority they haven't felt since their teenage years!
In a word: they're pissed.
Boston (MA) Mayor Thomas M. Menino, New Hampshire Gov. Craig Benson, Burlington (VT) Mayor Peter Clavelle and outgoing Springfield (MA) Mayor Michael Albano are all to be congratulated for re-establishing the principle of a government "of, by and for the people." The people who don't happen to be corporate officers of major Republican campaign contributors, that is.
These are American heroes.
***********************
And in the losers lockerroom:
I love "spokespeople." And people on the payroll who offer themselves to media outlets as qualified "talking heads / experts." These are the morons who willingly allow themselves to appear clueless in public, defending the powerful interests they work for, or who fund them. Of course, these corporations would jettison them happily in a heartbeat.
There are two of these fools in this aritcle.
Wanda Moebius, a spokeswoman for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said municipal leaders would do better to tell employees about programs for people who cannot afford prescription drugs.
"People's safety shouldn't take a back seat to savings," she said. "There are probably ways to save money, through competitively bid pharmaceutical benefit managers that don't open up the risks that importation does."
Wanda, come home to us, dear.
Someone please inform poor Wanda that the programs she's referring to are the very programs her employers lobbied so hard to eliminate from this bill. The federal government can now no longer negotiate lower drug prices for Medicare.
Oops.
Might there be anyone sadder than some poor flack who's trying to sound convincing while she's saying the sun really does appear to rise in the west?
Perhaps it might be an industry apologist, carrying the whining chores for the drug corporations:
But Ira Loss, executive vice president of Washington Analysis, which conducts research for institutional investors, said Menino is making a mistake.
"This is not an approach that is going to win this guy any favors, any friends in Washington," Loss said. "It's breaking the rule of law."
Whoa, big fella!
The drug industry has already bought all the "friends in Washington" who were possibly for sale, so these mayors and the governor needn't fret any.
Plus, Ira, you may not be aware that those "friends in Washington" are now facing federal bribery and extortion allegations. No matter how much money corporations give to their many campaigns, your "friends in Washington" can't browbeat, bribe and threaten their colleagues on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Do be a tad careful here, Ira, about throwing around moral highground words like "the rule of law," before you've checked on whether you actually HAVE the moral highground.
So—Ira and Wanda—I ask that you please be careful. I wouldn't want to see you swell kids get run over and trampled when the American public show up with the torches and the pitchforks.
They're just going to want to get at the people inside the doors behind you. I suggest letting them pass.
posted by Gotham 7:17 PM
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