{"id":942,"date":"2003-12-08T11:05:43","date_gmt":"2003-12-08T18:05:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/uncategorized\/revenge-of-the-conservatives\/"},"modified":"2003-12-08T11:05:43","modified_gmt":"2003-12-08T18:05:43","slug":"revenge-of-the-conservatives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/nada\/dump-duhbya\/revenge-of-the-conservatives\/","title":{"rendered":"Revenge of the Conservatives"},"content":{"rendered":"

Op-Ed Columnist: Stalking the Giant Chicken Coop<\/a> By BOB HERBERT, NYTimes<\/p>\n

The Bush administration has mastered the art of legalized banditry<\/b>, in which tons of government money — the people’s money — are hijacked and handed over to the special interests.<\/p>\n

Drug company stock prices soared with the passage of the Medicare bill, a sign that another government vault had been blown open and the big Medicare money was in play. The Republicans are not subtle about these matters.<\/b> The bill, for example, specifically prohibits the government from negotiating discounts or lower drug prices, and bars the importation of cheaper drugs from abroad. …<\/p>\n

[In 1965,] the growls of opposition in the background were muted. Medicare was a desperately needed program, and it grew to be a wildly popular one. But conservatives were outraged by it. Socialized medicine, they snarled. Un-American.<\/b>
\n…<\/p>\n

Ronald Reagan saw Medicare as the advance wave of socialism, which would ”invade every area of freedom in this country.” …<\/p>\n

Newt Gingrich ranted<\/b> against Medicare in the 1990’s, comparing its operations to “centralized command bureaucracies” in Moscow. …<\/p>\n

After nearly four decades, during which Medicare significantly improved the health and economic conditions of the nation’s elderly, this unrelenting hostility can fairly be called an obsession<\/b>.<\/p>\n

Today President Bush will sign into law a prescription drug benefit under Medicare that will introduce the first cold drafts of bitter reality to the G.O.P.’s long dream of dismantling Medicare as we’ve known it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Op-Ed Columnist: Stalking the Giant Chicken Coop By BOB HERBERT, NYTimes The Bush administration has mastered the art of legalized banditry, in which tons of government money — the people’s money — are hijacked and handed over to the special interests. Drug company stock prices soared with the passage of the Medicare bill, a sign … Continue reading Revenge of the Conservatives<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dump-duhbya"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}