Corporate Cronies are Rewarded

In general self-identified leftists support the state and oppose corporations while self-identified rightists support corporations and oppose the state. What both of these groups fail to see is that the state and corporations are married. When a corporation does something for the state the state rewards that corporation and when the state does something for a corporation that corporation rewards the state:

Whatever one’s views on Obamacare were and are: the bill’s mandate that everyone purchase the products of the private health insurance industry, unaccompanied by any public alternative, was a huge gift to that industry; as Wheeler wrote at the time: “to the extent that Liz Fowler is the author of this document, we might as well consider WellPoint its author as well.” Watch the five-minute Bill Moyers report from 2009, embedded below, on the key role played in all of this by Liz Fowler and the “revolving door” between the health insurance/lobbying industry and government officials at the time this bill was written and passed.

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Now, as Politico’s “Influence” column briefly noted on Tuesday, Fowler is once again passing through the deeply corrupting revolving door as she leaves the Obama administration to return to the loving and lucrative arms of the private health care industry:

“Elizabeth Fowler is leaving the White House for a senior-level position leading ‘global health policy’ at Johnson & Johnson’s government affairs and policy group.”

Now that Fowler has fulfilled her duty of pushing Obamacare through she is returning to her seat in the corporate world. Not surprisingly she will be working in the government affairs and policy ground so she can leverage all the connections she made while working for the state.

It’s not turtles all the way down, it’s corruption all the way down.