Month: June 2009

Monopoly Money

by digby

Our good friend Senator Blanche Lincoln thinks it’s very dangerous for the insurance companies to have to compete with a public plan option:

“One of our biggest concerns is that it doesn’t need to be a government plan that usurps that ability to compete in the marketplace, which I’m concerned that a totally government-run option would do,” she said.

Right. It’s competition in the marketplace that makes this country great. Like the competition they have in Lincoln’s state of Arkansas, for instance:

The Justice Department considers an industry to be “highly concentrated” if one company has 42 percent of the market. In Arkansas — Senator Lincoln should take note — Blue Cross Blue Shield has 75 percent of the market. If you take government self-insurance plans out of the equation, it’s higher. The state ranks as the ninth most concentrated in the country. Is it any wonder that insurance premiums have risen five times as fast as wages?

Introducing a public plan option that individuals and businesses could choose instead of Blue Cross would be very detrimental to Blue Cross, that’s true. They would lose their monopoly for sure and very likely lose a lot of customers if they kept raising rates at the clip they’ve been raising them:

Here is a clue to the Arkansas problem — and the national one, too. From 2000 to 2007, the median earnings of Arkansas workers rose only 12 percent, from $20,328 to $22,692. Health insurance premiums for the average working Arkansas family rose over the same period by 66 percent.

It’s quite a racket. You can see why they don’t want to change anything except to have the government force the few stragglers they don’t already have in their clutches to buy their expensive product. Competition is the last thing they want.

Lincoln is all for the co-op concept now, which all the insurance company spokesenators are very happy about. They know that these co-ops won’t be able to do anything about costs, so they will fail as often as they succeed and in the end all but the really ill will be driven into their expensive private plans, thus turning the remaining co-ops into welfare programs. Huzzah, more money for greedy CEOs and corrupt politicians. What’s not to like?

Lincoln is one of the few Democratic members of the senate who sits on key committees and who is also running for re-election in 2010 in what could be a tough race. She needs to advocate for the people on this, not the insurance companies. Hell, even Arkansas Republicans hate insurance companies.

We’d like to send her a message and could use your help. If you have a couple of dollars to spare to help Blue America put some ads on the air in Arkansas to educate Lincoln’s constituents about where their Senators’ loyalties lie, you can do that here. Just a couple of bucks would help.

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Buyers Market

by digby

You’ve got to love it:

Staff at Goldman Sachs staff can look forward to the biggest bonus payouts in the firm’s 140-year history after a spectacular first half of the year, sparking concern that the big investment banks which survived the credit crunch will derail financial regulation reforms.

A lack of competition and a surge in revenues from trading foreign currency, bonds and fixed-income products has sent profits at Goldman Sachs soaring, according to insiders at the firm.

[…]

Barclays Capital, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank are among the European firms expected to register bumper profits, along with US banks JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley following the near collapse and government rescue of major trading houses including Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, UBS and Royal Bank of Scotland.

[…]

Critics of the bonus culture in the City said the dominance of a few risk-taking investment banks is undermining the efforts of regulators to stabilise the financial system.

Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat treasury spokesman, said: “The investment banks more than any other institutions created the culture of excessive leverage, excessive risk and excessive bonuses that led to the downfall of the financial system. Now they are cashing in and the same bonus culture has returned. The result must be that we are being pushed to the edge of another crash.”

[…]

Until the release of its first quarter profits in April, it seemed inconceivable that a firm owing the US government $10bn would be looking to break all-time records in 2009.

David Williams, an investment banking analyst at Fox Pitt Kelton, said: “This year is shaping up to be the best year ever for investment banks, or at least those that have emerged relatively unscathed from the credit crisis.

“These banks are intermediaries in the bond markets where governments and companies are raising billions of pounds of new money. There is also a lack of competition that means they can charge huge sums for doing business.”

Last week, the firm predicted that President Barack Obama’s government could issue $3.25tn of debt before September, almost four times last year’s sum. Goldman, a prime broker of US government bonds, is expected to make hundreds of millions of dollars in profits from selling and dealing in the bonds.

And there’s more:

Bank of America Corp., which is among the largest banks to receive government bailout funds, has been paying millions in bonuses to attract talent and retain investment bankers who management sees as vital, the New York Post reported Thursday, citing unnamed sources. Two former Merrill Lynch bankers are among those who are said to have received payouts, according to the article. A spokeswoman for B. of A. told the paper the bonuses were necessary as rival firms poach its best executives.

It would appear that the global financial crisis was just a convenient way for the masters of the Universe to cull the herd.

Rotten Apples

by digby

Another day, another corrupt elite. It’s as predictable as the sun rising in the east. We have politicians and greedy CEOs and wall street gamblers revealed all the time as crooks and liars. The punditocrisy is no exception. I’m sure everyone remembers the scandal over the pentagon military analysts who were spreading propaganda to promote the war while working for military contractors who stood to make a ton of money on it, right? (You could be forgiven for not knowing about it — the TV news media have blacked out their own scandal, thus creating another one.)

So, with all that, I suppose it was only a matter of time before corruption in academia, specifically that which crosses over into the punditocrisy, would be revealed as well. And this one’s a doozy.

Greg Sargent:

There’s a fascinating revelation in Ben Smith’s article today about political prognosticator Larry Sabato that really tells you a lot about how the D.C. pundit-industrial complex works and how D.C. insiders reinforce their mutual influence, unwittingly at times.

The article reports that Sabato, one of D.C.’s best known inside-game pundit-types, received earmarks on a regular basis for an educational program at his University of Virginia Center for Politics. The earmark cash was delivered by former Congressman Virgil Goode of Virginia’s 5th District, a longtime friend of Sabato. Goode was ousted last year in a surprise upset by young long-shot Thomas Perriello.

Turns out, though, that during the race, Sabato had regularly been predicting a comfortable victory for Goode until the end — and though Smith doesn’t say this outright, there are no signs he disclosed the earmark arrangement that was benefiting his institution while calling the shots on the race.

Predictions of victory from the likes of Sabato are no small thing. They influence insider chatter, which has a real impact on endorsements and fundraising and can swing a contest’s outcome.

Sargent says that Sabato wasn’t out on a limb predicting Goode’s win, but that he should have disclosed his ties. I actually think that isn’t good enough. I don’t believe he should have commented on that race at all since he was good friends with one of the candidates and was receiving huge sums of money as a result of that friendship. Neither should he have ever discussed the topic of earmarks on television or written a word about them without pointing out that he was a huge beneficiary of the practice. Frankly, close friendships between analysts and the subjects they analyze is always going to be a problem and when you add money into the mix it turns into outright corruption.

Elitist cronyism is at the heart of all these corrupt practices. And the media is right in the middle of it. All the back scratching and payoffs that dismayed the rest of us as the dishonesty and ineptitude of the ruling class became apparent in situations like Iraq and Katrina were just business as usual to the ruling class. Similarly, the greed and self-destructive malfeasance of our economic overlords simply didn’t register among elites who all know each other and earnestly believe they are all the best and the brightest (when they are actually “the best and the brightest” which Halberstam meant as an ironic term.) The rot is systemic.

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Saturday Night At The Movies

Remake/remodel

By Dennis Hartley

Denzel and Travolta: Got to do with where choo-choo go.

Well, summer is back, and apparently, so are the Seventies. Let’s put it this way: if I had been able to construct a time machine back in 1979, and had set the controls for 30 years hence, I would have looked around at the theatre marquees and assumed that either a) my experiment had failed, or b) Hollywood had completely run out of original ideas. The latest Will Farrell vehicle, Land of the Lost is based on the 1970s TV show. Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming (and spellchecker-challenged) Inglourious Basterds is a remake of a 1978 B-movie. And now, for better or for worse (more on that shortly), we have Tony Scott’s The Taking of Pelham 123, a retooling of Joseph Sargent’s 1974 action thriller.

Good morning, Mister Blue.

In the the original film, the late great Robert Shaw (above) leads a team of bow-tied, mustachioed and bespectacled terrorists who hijack a New York City subway train, seize hostages and demand $1 million in ransom from the city coffers. If the ransom does not arrive in precisely 1 hour, passengers will be executed at the rate of one per minute until the money appears (no pressure!). As city officials scramble to scare up that much loot on such short notice, a tense cat-and-mouse dialog is established (via two-way radio) between Shaw’s single-minded sociopath and the ever-rumpled Walter Matthau as a wry, world weary Transit Police lieutenant. Peter Stone’s screenplay (adapted from the novel by John Godey) is sharply written and rich in characterization; it’s also memorable for being so chock full of New York City “attitude” (every character, from the Mayor and his handlers on down to the subway hostages, is soaking in it). Sargent delivers a very gritty, organic and extremely believable urban thriller. It’s one of the first of its kind, actually; it could be seen as a pre-cursor to the by now all-too-familiar (although not as believable) Die Hard action pic formula. It most definitely influenced Tarantino, who blatantly lifted (OK, I’ll be nice and say: “paid homage to…”) one of its signature gimmicks. Shaw’s gang adapts non de plumes for their “job” based on colors (Mr. Blue, Mr. Green, Mr. Grey and Mr. Brown). The men who pull off the heist in Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs are designated by their ringleader as Messrs. White, Orange, Blonde, Blue, Brown, etc. (prompting the very chagrined Steve Buscemi’s immortal line: “Why am I Mr. Pink?!”)

All of which now brings us to the matter of Tony Scott’s new version, which, as I’m sure you have noticed, is being positioned as one of this summer’s blockbusters. Glancing at the director’s credits (as listed on the Internet Movie Database), I see that I have somehow managed to overlook all of his output between Enemy of the State (1998) and this one. It wasn’t necessarily by design; I love Enemy of the State, which holds a coveted place in my Conspiracy-A-Go-Go section. It’s just that Scott doesn’t tend to make the types of films that interest me (The Hunger and True Romance aside). And don’t get me started on that towel-snapping military recruitment ad, Top Gun (no, seriously…don’t).

In the new film, Denzel Washington steps into Walter Matthau’s shoes as Walter Garber, with a slight shift in job description (here he is a subway dispatcher, instead of a transit cop) and John Travolta plays the heavy, simply referred to as Ryder (What? No more Mr. Blue?!). The setup remains the same; the film jumps right into the action with Ryder and his henchmen hijacking a subway, seizing hostages and demanding ransom. Now, the prices have gone up since 1974 (even terrorists have to adjust for inflation). Ryder wants $10 million…and one cent. As in the original film, Garber and Ryder verbally square off (via cell phone in this outing) while the ransom is assembled and the clock ticks away.

Since this is Tony Scott, there’s never a dull moment (it’s rare for him hold any camera shot for much longer than 10 seconds). I know that this is basically an action movie, but the problem with Scott’s hyperkinetic visual style is that his goddamned camera NEVER stops moving, even when it should. For instance, there’s a bit of exposition where the Mayor (James Gandolfini) is standing on the street having a confab with his advisors about how they are going to handle the crisis. For the entire scene, Scott never stops spinning his camera in a dizzying 360, making you feel like you’re on a runaway merry-go-round (it almost triggered a relapse of a sporadic positional vertigo condition I have).

Another problem with the remake is the lack of character development. What made the original so good was the fact that it was a great ensemble piece; even minor walk-on characters had detectable personalities. There are a few attempts; for instance, Washington’s character is given some hints of moral ambiguity that starts to move the story in an interesting direction, but it never really develops into anything of substance (I had expected a little more from screenwriter Brian Helgeland, because he had done such a marvelous job co-adapting L.A. Confidential). Even the bad guys all had distinct personalities in the original film; here it’s all about keeping an over-the-top Travolta in the spotlight, while his cohorts are your non-descript standard-issue evil henchmen (the most recognizable is perennial second banana Luis Guzman; even he’s given less to do than usual). John Turturro is given short shrift as a hostage negotiator working alongside Garber (it’s possible that Scott wanted to make sure no one upstaged Washington, either).

I am aware that no matter how big, dumb and loud they are, summer movies like this are virtually critic-proof; and to be sure, Washington and Travolta are undeniably great actors (especially with the right material) and lend major box office clout to any film; but this one’s strictly a paycheck gig. My advice? Please step away from the sliding doors.

I have to share this with you. You will never guess who ended up sitting right next to me at the screening. Michael Medved (why does all this weird Zelig shit keep happening to me?!). No, I didn’t say anything to him (Christ, where would I start?). Anyway, I found it rather funny that he nodded off during the opening credits. It became more entertaining to me than the film, watching him lean to starboard, then to port; occasionally jerking awake whenever there was an explosion or a hail of gunfire onscreen. At one point, his huge, thatched head lolled dangerously close to actually ending up on my shoulder. But I knew I was fairly safe…because it would have required him to lean pretty far…um, to the left.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. Until next week, the balcony is closed. Michael?

Zzzzzzzzz…huh?!

Blood on the tracks: The Incident, The French Connection, Pickup on South Street, The Warriors, Death Wish, King of New York, Jacob’s Ladder, Le Samourai, Subway, Trans-Europ-Express, Pickpocket, La Bete Humaine, The Narrow Margin (1952), The Lady Vanishes, Lady on a Train, Strangers on a Train, Murder on the Orient Express, North By Northwest, Silver Streak, Runaway Train, Breakheart Pass, From Russia With Love, High and Low, The Great Train Robbery, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Good, the Bad & the Ugly, 3:10 to Yuma (2007), Emperor of the North, Julia, The Train, Von Ryan’s Express, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia.

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Someone Fax This To Congress

by dday

Yet another poll shows overwhelming support for a government-run option to compete with health insurance companies.

Americans overwhelmingly support substantial changes to the health care system and are strongly behind one of the most contentious proposals Congress is considering, a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

The poll found that most Americans would be willing to pay higher taxes so everyone could have health insurance and that they said the government could do a better job of holding down health-care costs than the private sector […]

The national telephone survey, which was conducted from June 12 to 16, found that 72 percent of those questioned supported a government-administered insurance plan — something like Medicare for those under 65 — that would compete for customers with private insurers. Twenty percent said they were opposed.

Republicans in Congress have fiercely criticized the proposal as an unneeded expansion of government that might evolve into a system of nationalized health coverage and lead to the rationing of care.

But in the poll, the proposal received broad bipartisan backing, with half of those who call themselves Republicans saying they would support a public plan, along with nearly three-fourths of independents and almost nine in 10 Democrats.

The whole poll is here.

There remains the dichotomy of a high number of folks (77%) describing themselves as satisfied with their own health care. But given the overlap, considering that “85 percent of respondents said the health care system needed to be fundamentally changed or completely rebuilt,” clearly people will support a policy they believe to work for them and not for CEOs. Most important, we are starting to see the end of the Randian virtue of selfishness:

In a follow-up interview, Matt Flurkey, 56, a public plan supporter from Plymouth, Minn., said he could accept that the quality of his care might diminish if coverage was universal. “Even though it might not be quite as good as what we get now,” he said, “I think the government should run health care. Far too many people are being denied now, and costs would be lower.”

Obama needs to reassure people that their care would not suffer and is in fact already insufferable. But even if he cannot, over 70% of Americans, and you can barely find 70% to agree on the color of the sky, support government involvement in the health care system.

Health care is maddeningly complex, and defenders of the status quo exploit that complexity to spin out all kinds of theories about what this plan or that plan would actually do. It seems that the goal should be to stress how the status quo is irretrievably broken for far too many people, businesses and the government, and that as a matter of basic morality, we should offer everyone the access and opportunity to quality health care without exception. Clearly the public will be receptive.

Another point. In most people’s minds, a 70-20 issue on which even Republicans offer plurality support would be among the easiest for swing-state Democratic Senators to get behind. But for some reason, that only works if the issue falls within the elite consensus. Anything remotely progressive, and the polls suddenly no longer matter.

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Just One Little Piece Of The Problem

by digby

There is a health insurance problem I rarely see anyone discuss, so maybe it’s rare. But it happens to be something I’ve confronted personally so I know a little bit about it. This is from a commenter at Shakespeare’s Sister:

I always roll my eyes when it comes to the threat of “wait times.”

Right now I have been avoiding going to the doctor for the past three years because I’m afraid of having another “pre-existing condition” added to the list and I can’t guarantee I’ll be in this state a year from now. When you are self- insured, your insurance ends when you move out of state, and you have to start over again from scratch. Keeping your slate as “clean” as you can makes a huge difference in the premiums. (And yes, I know this is f*ed up. As someone who strongly believes in regular, preventative checkups, I find the situation appalling if inevitable.)

So, right now, my “wait time” is going on four years. If I knew I had stable insurance, I’d be signing up for a doctor’s checkup right now!

How many people out there are petrified of going to the doctor because they have individual insurance and don’t want a “pre-existing condition” on their medical record? I think there are plenty. The inevitable increase in premiums (if you can get insurance at all) if you switch plans or move out of range of your insurance company factors hugely into your decision to go to the doctor or treat something you know will affect your coverage.

I know that most people are covered under their employers, so this doesn’t affect them. But there is a sizable population of freelancers, students and self-employed people who are reliant on the individual market. (And the Republicans want to put all of you in it!) We are pretty much slaves to our insurance. We can’t even contemplate moving to a new state without taking into account whether or not we will be able to get a new policy. We hate the idea of going to a doctor because it will put a pre-existing condition on the record, thereby making it even more difficult to ever switch. Certainly if we are over 50 or have had an illness, we are pretty much stuck with what we have, taking whatever the insurance companies dish out without any hope of getting an affordable policy elsewhere. (That’s assuming they don’t issues a rescission and deny us coverage anyway.)

You cannot have a dynamic, growing economy when people are not able to take risks for fear that they will lose everything they have, even their lives. If you can’t change jobs or start a business or move to a place where there are more opportunities for fear of being without health insurance, the whole system slows down. If you try to “fix” the system without a serious program to contain costs, then American businesses will remain at a disadvantage as well. And, needless to say, making American citizens dictate all of their important life decisions on the basis of whether or not some insurance company bureaucrat might decide that the dental work they had seven years ago disqualifies them for health insurance is a recipe for economic stagnation. (True story…)

The incentives in our system are completely nuts on every level and that’s not going to change by tweaking a little bit around the edges.

Update: Reader Steve T writes in with this humdinger …

Here’s a prime example of the American health care system. Last week I mentioned that my co-pay for a prescription drug had doubled in January. I called to ask about it, and the person I reached suggested I should enroll in one of Kaiser’s cheaper plans which still offered the lower co-pay. That sounded sensible to me, so I applied online for a plan that would cost me $300/month (down from $343) and $30 for my blood pressure drug rather than $60.

Yesterday I got an e-mail saying my application had been denied. Why? Because my medical history (in their own medical system!) showed that I’d been treated for high blood pressure within the past five years.

So I can continue paying the higher monthly premiums and co-pays to Kaiser, or I can complain further and risk them telling me that I’m too big a risk and they don’t want me as a member at all.

Is that a Catch-22 or what?

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“If You’re Not Sick, We’re Not Doing Our Job”

by digby

h/t to bb

Compensating Failure

by digby

Chris Hayes has a very interesting article posted at The Nation on the subject of CEO compensation. Considering what’s happening with health care and financial system reform, this subject should be getting a lot more attention:

Bloated CEO salaries aren’t exactly new, but why they persist is harder to explain than you might think. Every dollar paid to an executive above his or her actual worth comes from the pockets of the shareholders. And while workers may be too beaten down to fight back, investors aren’t exactly a powerless class in America. Why, then, do they allow clubby compensation committees and consultants to pick their pockets?

Part of the problem is the raw difficulty of figuring out how much value a particular CEO adds to a company. There’s also a legal structure that attenuates shareholder power. But there’s a deeper issue. CEO pay is to corporate governance what farm subsidies are to the federal government: the benefit accrues to a small group (CEOs or big agricultural concerns like Monsanto) while the cost–whether to shareholders or taxpayers–is shared widely.

[…]

Against this backdrop, what you end up with is a whole lot of corrupt, elite self-dealing, which is the emerging through line of our benighted age. “The boards tend to be dominated by CEOs and other high corporate executives of other firms, who have an interest in keeping executive compensation high,” wrote Judge Richard Posner on his blog last year. They are “abetted by compensation consultants who naturally recommend generous compensation packages to directors who are recipients of generous compensation and therefore believe that the CEOs of the companies on whose boards they sit should be paid top dollar.”

Hayes goes on to discuss the various reforms that the administration and other have proposed. But this gets to the heart of the situation:

As needed as many of these reforms are, whatever rules are put in place, CEOs will have massive incentives to skirt them. Which is why, finally, much of the solution must be found in the tax code. In 1980, before Ronald Reagan inaugurated the supply-side counterrevolution in taxation, the top rate for individuals was 70 percent. When taxation took 70 cents of every dollar made above a certain amount, there was far less incentive to game the system for giant payouts. By 1988, though, the rate was 28 percent. It has fluctuated between 30 percent and 35 percent under the past two presidents, while capital gains and other wealth taxes have steadily declined.

During the financial services hearing, as Republican after Republican railed against the specter of government bureaucrats micromanaging pay–down to “secretaries and janitors” in the fevered imagination of Illinois Representative Judy Biggert–part of me wondered if perhaps they had a point. Regulating executive compensation might have the same balloon-squeezing effect as bonus caps. And besides, it’s easier for executives to game the compensation committee and shareholders than the IRS. So maybe we should let executives make as much as they can wrangle. We just need to make sure we then tax the hell out of them.

That sounds like heresy to Americans who have been indoctrinated in the conservative movement’s low tax dogma of the past 30 years. But it’s long past time to think about different ways to break this absurd Randian propaganda that says whatever these Masters of the Universe do is, by definition, good and therefore cannot be be restricted in any way. The financial meltdown and the obscene CEO salaries in the health insurance industry show that something is terribly wrong with the incentives in our system and people are beginning to realize that.

It’s not only necessary for the health of the economy to make some big systemic changes — it’s a political opportunity to challenge this free market, CEO worshipping fundamentalism as well. It doesn’t appear that the Democratic party is interested in doing that, at least not yet, since they are as wedded to the system as the rest of the ruling elite. But it’s an opportunity for someone.

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Fire Up The Wurlitzer

by dday

Joe Conason has a good piece on the firing of Bush Administration appointee and Americorps Inspector General Gerald Walpin, which has all the earmarks of a full-fledged hissy fit. Conason thinks the right is attempting to gin up Whitewater redux.

According to the wingnut version, Walpin is a heroic investigator who was ousted simply because he exposed misspending of hundreds of thousands of federal dollars by an Obama ally, namely former NBA star Kevin Johnson, who ran a nonprofit organization in Sacramento that received Americorps funding before he was elected mayor of the California state capital last fall. Walpin had to be removed on June 11, after he refused the president’s request that he resign, because the White House was trying to cover up Johnson’s wrongdoing and permit his city to receive federal stimulus money.

That simple and sinister scenario, like so many of the media descriptions of Whitewater, omits crucial facts.

It is true that Walpin found evidence of misuse and waste of Americorps funds by St. Hope Academy, a nonprofit community group started by Johnson after he retired from the NBA. It is true that Johnson and St. Hope have acknowledged that they must refund roughly half of the money that the group received from Washington. But it is also true that Walpin, a Republican activist attorney and trustee of the Federalist Society before Bush appointed him as inspector general, went well beyond his official mandate last year by publicizing supposed “criminal” wrongdoing by Johnson in the days before the Sacramento mayoral election.

And it is true as well that Lawrence Brown, the United States attorney in Northern California who received Walpin’s findings, decided not to bring any criminal charges against Johnson and instead reached a settlement with him and St. Hope.

That settlement, filed last April, is a public document that reflects no great honor on Johnson, to put it mildly. But it also voided any possibility of a “coverup” by Obama or anyone in his administration. The case against Johnson had concluded months before the president acted to dismiss Walpin — and in fact only drew attention to the case by doing so, as he must have known would happen.

Just as salient as the accusations against Johnson, however, are those brought by Brown against Walpin. A Republican named as the acting U.S. attorney by Bush, Brown filed a sharply worded complaint against Walpin with the oversight office for the federal inspectors general that charged him with ethical violations in an overzealous assault on Johnson and St. Hope. The U.S. attorney said that Walpin had “overstepped his authority by electing to provide my office with selective information and withholding other potentially significant information at the expense of determining the truth” — in other words, Walpin had failed to provide substantive exculpatory facts to the U.S. attorney, while trying to push the government into opening a criminal probe of Johnson. During the election season in Sacramento, Brown noted that Walpin had sought publicity for his findings against Johnson in the local media before discussing them with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, “hindering our investigation and handling of this matter.”

Here the parallels with the early history of Whitewater seem nearly perfect. Brown’s levelheaded handling of Walpin’s exaggerated charges against Johnson are much like the dismissal of the original Whitewater complaints by Charles Banks, the U.S. attorney in Little Rock, Ark., and an honest Republican who refused to gin up a phony indictment of the Clintons before the 1992 election (and lost his job as a result). And Walpin’s excessive zeal and lust for publicity bear a startling resemblance to the antics of L. Jean Lewis, the Resolution Trust Corp. official who concocted a series of implausible theories implicating the Clintons in the looting of an Arkansas savings and loan.

Walpin, incidentally, is a longtime movement conservative and a trustee of the Federalist Society. He obviously has plenty of friends ready to publicize his martyrdom. Already Judicial Watch has offered their aid, which again is a rerun, as they were the wingnut front organization largely responsible for so many drummed-up Clinton scandals in the 1990s. Darrell Issa, the Congressman who bankrolled the recall of Gray Davis in 2003, is trying to attack the credibility of Lawrence Brown by asking him to explain his complaint against Walpin. And Walpin himself wants Congressional hearings.

You can pretty much write the rest of this script yourself. Obviously it may go nowhere and just get relegated to the back pages of conservative fundraising newsletters and “Obama Body Count” email forwards. But at least some elements of the right are trying to turn this into a Whitewater Reunion Tour. And all we know the conservative noise machine/traditional media “jump/how high” relationship.

Keep an eye on this.

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A votre sante

by digby

Our pal Senator Lincoln finally got off the fence today and stopped equivocating about the public plan choice. She’s definitely against it:

U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., says she prefers private insurance cooperatives to a government-run provider that would compete with the private sector in reforming the nation’s health care system.

“We want to keep what works in the private industry and make it better,” Lincoln told Arkansas reporters in a conference call today. “There’s a lot of discussion about what else we might need that we can’t get from the private sector.”

Lincoln sits on the Senate Finance Committee, which will have a central role in determining how to pay for a health care overhaul intended to control skyrocketing costs and provide health coverage for 47 million uninsured Americans. More than 500,000 Arkansans have no health insurance, 66,000 of which are children, according to the senator.

“A co-op would be the back up for the private industry,” Lincoln said.

The senator left the door open to supporting a government-option, though she acknowledged she has reservations.

“One of our biggest concerns is that it doesn’t need to be a government plan that usurps that ability to compete in the marketplace, which I’m concerned that a totally government-run option would do,” she said.

Insurance companies have had the marketplace all to themselves for many years. And it has also been clear for many years that the ever increasing cost of health care is unsustainable, that our businesses can’t compete because of it, that Americans are going bankrupt by the millions because of an illness even if they are insured, that care is being rationed in an arbitrary and cruel fashion and that insurance companies, particularly their CEOs, have been getting obscenely wealthy on the backs of their sick customers. They could have fixed this system, or at least behaved like decent corporate citizens at any time. They chose not to, squeezing every last penny out of their customers and giving as little as they could get away with in return.

Insurance companies have been instrumental in creating this crisis and are now complaining when the government has to take measures to keep the whole system from imploding and taking down the American economy with it. But this time we can either bailout the average working American by giving them a real option for a change rather than bailing out another failed industry with more taxpayer dollars.

The insurance companies are using the vast wealth they accumulated in the run up to this crisis to keep from having to pay the piper. They do not want to have to compete with an entity that will be charged with actually serving their patients over profit. It’s not like they didn’t see it coming. They could have fixed many of the problems themselves and chose not to because they figured it was cheaper and easier to buy off the political class instead. We’ll see.

Senator Lincoln is running for reelection next year. One hopes for her sake that there are as many insurance company executives living in her state as there are Democrats because she’s going to need every one of those fat cats to vote for her once her constituents figure out who she’s actually working for.

If you haven’t tossed in a couple of bucks to Blue America’s Campaign For Health Care Choice, where we hope to help Senator Lincoln’s voters understand why she thinks the health of insurance companies is more important than the health of human beings, you can do so here.

On a more hopeful front, the House released its plan to day and it’s … good! Here’s Howie Klein’s take on the House plan along with an update on the Campaign For Health Care Choice.

And just in case you were wondering what the ever more irrelevant Republicans have to add to the debate, here’s a little video to get you up to speed:

There’s one thing nobody can take away from the United States. We produce some of the very best politicians money can buy.

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