Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman's opposition to the "public option'' in the health-reform program couldn't be at all connected to the fact that he's a long-term water boy for the insurance industry, much of which is based in Connecticut, could it?
Or maybe the good senator, probably unlikely to get re-elected, is angling for a $2 million a year lobbying job for the industry. Louisiana Congressman Billy Tauzin did everything that Big Pharm asked when he was in Congress. He then got a big job representing his campaign paymasters.
Other than a review of his career, nothing would lead me to suggest that.
Ah, the insurance industry, which once made Hartford one of the most placid, if boring, cities in America -- indeed, to be an Hartford insurance man was the quintessence of public staidness. (What these mild-mannered people were doing in their private lives, of course, was often far more exotic and exciting. Wild sex, booze and drugs, or Charles Ives writing great music and Wallace Stevens great poetry.)
Anguished actuaries!
Now, with much of the industry having fled the cities for the burbs, the city, whose population has plunged in recent decades, is a disaster area of shootings, stabbings, vandalism, abandoned buildings and a mayor indicted for corruption. There is still, howver, the wonderful Wadsworth Athenaeum, Trinity College and a few other great cultural holdouts.
But that's the Nutmeg State for you -- bad cities, rich suburbs (outside of Fairfield County, in search of cities) and some of the loveliest countryside in America, especially in Litchfield County. and the state's northeastern corner.
XXX
Inadvertently weird headline of the day:
The lead in The Boston Globe:
Diocese alterting rituals in swine-flu precaution.
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Joe the phony, after switching from Democrat to Independent, will next become an Anglican Priest and convert to Catholocism.
Just another switch for him, the lowlife..
And he can still be married to his current wife Purim
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