Matt Gunterman March 13th, 2007
After the new Democratic majority finishes shining some light on rampant corruption in Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s Department of Justice, you have to wonder if the next target for cleanup won’t be Secretary Elaine Chao’s Department of Labor.
Ann Imse and Laura Frank reporting in the Rocky Mountain News, after all, find a high level of outrage on Capitol Hill (on both sides of the isle) over attempts in the Labor Department to complicate the process sick nuclear facility employees get treatment by. The plans were to draw things out long enough that the workers simply died first, and it was all to be done in the name of being a good “fiscal conservative.”
Rep. Mark Udall (D-CO) said of it, “Clearly, the administration put dollars above honoring the nation’s promise to the Cold War veterans,” and went on to compare the fiasco to the recent Walter Reed Army Medical Center scandal.
Plus, for Democrats, targeting a corrupt or incompetent Sec. Elaine Chao has the added bonus of complicating the life of obstinate Senator Mitch McConnell.
Matt Gunterman March 11th, 2007
The Rocky Mountain News lede says it all.
Federal officials secretly schemed to limit payouts for sick and dying nuclear weapons workers, including thousands from the Rocky Flats plant outside Denver, newly released documents show.
Those “federal officials” just happen to be from Elaine Chao’s Department of Labor, and Secretary Chao is the woman in the dynamic duo that President George W. Bush called the “ultimate power couple” on March 2 at his $2.1 million fundraiser for McConnell. Imagine the pillow talk.
Read the article. It’ll boil your blood and make you wonder if we shouldn’t add a new category to the whole motif of DINO (Democrat in Name Only) and RINO (Republican in Name Only): AIMO, or American in Name Only.
What a spectacular cost-saving measure: draw the process out so long that the former employees simply die before they get treatment and care. The lengths these people will go to to save a buck for a tax cut, huh? Here’s what Assistant Secretary of Labor Victoria Lipnic had to say about the expanding costs of treating sick workers, “There is not a fiscal conservative left anywhere.” You are so right, Vicky. It’s such a waste of money. Everybody’s gotta die sometime, right? And billionaires only live once.
Many in Congress aren’t terribly happy about this. How much did Secretary Chao know? Whatever the answer, I don’t think it reflects kindly on her. She might be SOL in more ways than one.
