Make Your Own Orwell

Y'know those Medicare "news clips" from earlier this year that ended with the memorable tag line, "This is Karen Ryan reporting"?

Turns out they were illegal:

The General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, said on Thursday that the Bush administration had violated federal law by producing and disseminating television news segments that portray the new Medicare law as a boon to the elderly.

The agency said the videos were a form of "covert propaganda" because the government was not identified as the source of the materials, broadcast by at least 40 television stations in 33 markets. The agency also expressed some concern about the content of the videos, but based its ruling on the lack of disclosure.

Now, I doubt this story will get much play beyond our happy echo chamber on the left. Like so much else, this little crime of the Bushistas almost certainly will go unpunished:

The consequences of the ruling were not immediately clear. The accounting office does not have law enforcement powers, but its decisions on federal spending are usually considered authoritative and are taken seriously by officials in the executive branch of the government.

...

Medicare officials are unlikely to face any penalties. David M. Walker, the comptroller general of the United States, who is head of the General Accounting Office, said, "We do not have reason to believe that this violation was knowing and willful, and we are not in the enforcement business."

Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey, said he was drafting legislation that would require the Bush campaign to reimburse the Medicare trust fund for the cost of the videos. The administration put the cost at $42,750, but refused to provide any documentation.

I like and admire David Walker, so I hope he was rolling his eyes and inflecting his voice with major sarcasm when he uttered the first part of that sentence... as for Lautenberg's "legislation," I give him points for political theatricality, but the day Bill Frist brings that up for a vote, those cats the good doctor dissected all those years ago (?) will arise again for the Last Trump of the Felines.

At best, I guess we can hope that this new fact will be appended to whatever news stories around the Medicare bill pop up going forward. But even that seems like a lot to hope for in this media environment. One of the harder truths I've had to accept is that the majority of American voters just don't get as freaked out and upset about stuff like this as I do.

Maybe this is a good thing, but it sure is frustrating. Especially on the heels of this story from Wednesday's New York Times, about how the Bushies are taking credit for goodies disbursed by programs they've tried to cut. This one at least has some humor value.