The first is the state's insurance commissioner getting rejected by the Obama Administration as they asked for 3 insurance companies to not have to spend 80% of their premiums on patient care. In short, Obama's DHS said that there is plenty of competition in the Wisconsin market for health care, and as a result, Golden Rule, Humana, and Time insurance are going to have to give their customers some of their premiums back because they can't operate efficiently enough. Don't you feel sorry for those beleagued insurance corporations that have to actually spend some of their blood money on helping their patients instead of paying higher CEO salaries and paying for paper pushers to deny claims? Yes, I'm sure it breaks your heart every bit as much as it breaks mine.
And it's no surprise that State Insurance Commissioner Ted Nickel would make this request to give the insurance companies a break, because Nickel is a former health insurance industry lobbyist who gave Walker over $10,000 in contributions and got rewarded with the Insurance Commissioner gig. In fact, Nickel gave Walker so much that he was accused of campaign violations due to his excessive contributions.
It's a great illustration of the hypocrisy of insurance company representatives like Ted Nickel, who constantly ask for "more competition" in the health care market, but when there actually is a competitive health care market like we do in Wisconsin, they have to be dragged kicking and screaming to do anything that might cut into their profits in order to compete with other insurers. Nickel was quoted on Friday as saying the ruling puts "Wisconsin consumers at risk," but given that 5 Wisconsin insurers can run their business at 88.5% or higher going into customer care, maybe Golden Rule, Humana, and Time just aren't good enough at their business to keep up, and maybe they should fail. Sounds like capitalism at its finest to me.
The other great news I saw on Friday was the Walker campaign's request for another extension to review recall petitions being denied by a Dane County court. The Walker boys had previously had their 10-day window for reviewing signatures extended to 30 because of the hige number of people that signed petitions to boot his ass out, but wanted more time because they whined that they were only 1/3 of the way through the list of signers. Dane County Judge Niess rightfully said that it was plenty of time to get the job done (they still have another 8 days to do it), and agreed with Dems who argued that the Walker's request for extension was nothing more than an excuse to continue to raise unlimited campaign funds.
And to go further, Scott Walker is a guy who likes to talk about how he tries to solve problems "like a small businessman would" (despite the fact that he's a career politician that's never worked for a small business in his life). Well, small businessmen deal with lots of work that have to be completed on short deadlines, and they find a way to get the job done. And those small businessmen don't have millions of dollars from out-of-state contributors to help them meet the deadlines. Maybe Scotty's campaign should stop whining and actually hire some people to take a look at the signatures and see if there's even a chance that the number of legit signatures will be below 540,208 (or 600,000 or 700,000 or 800,000 or 900,000). God knows they need more people working in this state.
And hey, they already have an army of volunteers. Look at the huge turnout for a pro-Walker "make sure the signatures are legal" rally in Madison on Friday.
These losers seem to have time on their hands, I'm sure Walker could hire them for cheap to verify the recall (and have most of their challenges thrown out for not knowing election law). (Hat tip to Nick Nice for the picture)
Both of these cases are great illustrations of the inherent weakness that is the average corporate and the average Republican. They talk a big game about how they work hard and deserve to get rewarded, but when they're asked to step up and get the job done, they complain and make excuses instead of shutting their mouth and doing what has to be done. They really believe they can get away responsibility-free living, where they get all the benefits of a free and competitive society without having to take on the duties and work required to be succesful in such a society. And that "have our cake and eat it too" style of laziness is why we have to crush them, because the weak and lazy cannot be running things.
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