Senate Whistle-Blower

By today's standards, Chuck Grassley is right out of a Frank Capra movie.

This summer the Republican Senator from Iowa got the Department of Agriculture to admit it had been sending subsidy checks to dead farmers, $1.1 billion over seven years.

This fall he voted to override President Bush's veto of the SCHIP bill and worked hard to persuade House Republicans to do the same and expand health insurance coverage for poor children.

Now he is pressing televangelists to explain how and why they drive Bentleys, fly in private jets and buy $23,000 commodes. Tomorrow is the deadline for six ministries to answer Grassley's questions about compensation, housing allowances, personal use of assets and unreported income.

"If tax-exempt organizations, including media-based ministries, thumb their noses at the laws governing their preferential tax treatment, the American public, their contributors, and the Internal Revenue Service have a right to know," says Grassley, the top minority member of the Senate Finance Committee.

Even Robin Hood has not escaped the Iowan's beady eye. A prestigious New York foundation of that name had to reexamine practices that led to employees of hedge funds run by board members collecting 2% of the assets and 20% of the profits, adding up to $14 million a year in management fees.

"I don't remember Robin Hood keeping 2 and 20 as his cut," Grassley said. "I'm worried that more and more, it seems some hedge fund and private equity managers see charitable donations as a chance to do well for themselves."

In the past five years, the Christian Science Monitor reports, "Grassley has led probes of nonprofits that unearthed lavish perks at the Smithsonian Institution, conflicts of interest at the Nature Conservancy, and mismanagement at the American Red Cross."

He has also sponsored legislation to protect whistle-blowers. Frank Capra would have loved him.

The Unhealthy Body Politic

While Rudy Giuliani peddles fake survival statistics about his prostate cancer to lambaste "socialized medicine," George Bush and his Congressional loyalists are still blocking health insurance for children.

For those who care about Giuliani's glitch, Paul Krugman explains it in his New York Times column today, but that's only a minor symptom of the GOP war on health care compared to the ongoing epidemic of SCHIP-bashing by the Bush Administration.

Senate Democrats and Republican allies were working on a House-passed compromise yesterday of the bill Bush vetoed when faithful Mitch McConnell, whose office savaged 12-year-old Graeme Frost for advocating coverage for other kids, stepped in to stop it by forcing a vote on the bill.

But the issue is far from dead, as evidenced by an editorial in Maine's Bangor Daily News:

"The president’s arguments against SCHIP have put him in a corner. He opposes the program, he says, because he doesn’t want the government making decisions for doctors and customers. Patients don't have their medical decisions made by government under SCHIP; they use private insurers and private doctors, who presumably make their decisions based on their medical expertise. He has also painted the program as a Democratic scheme.

"To get out of that corner, he should consult with 'Democrats' like Sens. Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Orrin Hatch and Chuck Grassley to understand why they are such strong supporters of the program.

"Maybe if they explain the program allows 'customers'-— children, in this case--who now have no relationship with a doctor because they have no insurance, to start one, he'll better understand and support the program."

Meanwhile, advocates are running up to $2.5 million worth of ads against House members supporting the White House to help them understand the threat to their political well-being if they persist in such unhealthy behavior.

Karl Rove's Ghost Walks the White House

The architect is gone, but his spirit lives on and, as in all horror shows, is manifesting itself in grotesque ways. The political possession of the President has gone from prolonging a lost war to demonizing Democrats (and infected Republicans) who want to provide health insurance for poor children.

Yesterday the House passed the SCHIP bill by 265 to 159, with 45 Republican votes, an impressive but not veto-proof margin. President Bush, who fervently believes in majority rule for Iraq, the White House was quick to announce, will override the 106-vote difference as well as whatever the headstrong Senate does.

In true Rovian fashion, Bush has been denouncing Congress for playing politics over the bill with which he has been playing politics.

As the President of the United States keeps acting like a kid threatening to hold his breath until he gets his way over the war, wiretapping and now the health of real children, when will grownup Republicans say “Enough!” and send him to his room?

This may turn out to be the time.