Daschle's Dumbfuckery

Two exposés of Tom Daschle worth reading.

Scarecrow gets sarcastic:

The New York Times does a disturbing piece on what a swell guy Tom Daschle is to be so willing to privately advise President Obama on health care while he serves as a paid political consultant to a myriad of health industry clients.

Mr. Daschle, who conveniently neglected to pay taxes on incomes only the wealthy understand, isn't a registererd lobbyist, though one wonders why he's exempt. Instead, Tom, who works for Alston & Bird, prefers to be called a "resource."

“I am most comfortable with the word resource.”

Well, no kidding. So what does a "resource" do?

The answers to that will likely infuriate you.

Cujo does an analysis and concludes that health care reform was fucked from the beginning:

Daschle's failed appointment, and Kathleen Sebelius's appointment, demonstrate where Obama's loyalties lie. Daschle has never been an advocate for patients or insurance consumers. Sebelius, while she seems to have had a good record as Kansas' insurance commissioner, failed in her only attempt to expand health care coverage as governor, and has no record that I can see of advocating anything like public financing of health care. Daschle's influence, and Sebelius's recent statements on the public option, represent continuation of the conditions that have made health care in America the sorry excuse for care that it is.

This is why I've said, since that January article, that Obama isn't going to help us on health care. He's not listening to the people who represent our interests, at least not on a regular basis. He's listening to, as Matt Taibbi described Daschle, the "bought-off Washington whores". If you want a clue to where a leader is headed on an issue, look at who advises him.

What this tells me is that we shall have to apply unrelenting pressure to obtain delivery of what we were promised. And with three-quarters of the country plumping for choices that include a public options, I do believe we can apply that pressure with some success.

Show no mercy, ladies and gentlemen.