Health Insurance Companies Are Dramatically Increasing Premiums Due To The New Health Care Law

And There Is Not Much We Can Do About It
Published on 08-20-2010
By Michael Snyder - BLN Contributing Writer

Wasn't the new health care reform law supposed to make health care more affordable for everyone? Well, imagine my surprise when I opened up a letter from my health insurance company recently and found out that my health insurance premiums were going up by nearly 50 percent. I am in perfect health and I have never had a single health insurance claim with this company. Unfortunately, after doing a little research, I discovered that I am far from alone. All over the United States, people are being hit with double-digit percentage increases in their health insurance premiums even as the health insurance predators continue to rake in record profits. At a time when millions of American families are barely making it from month to month, the last thing they need is to be figuratively kicked in the groin by the health insurance companies. But that is exactly what is happening.

Not that health insurance companies ever needed an excuse to raise rates, but in 2010 many of them are blaming changes in health care law for the dramatic rise in premiums.

Of course it is true that there are over a dozen new taxes on the health care industry in the "health care reform" law that Barack Obama and the Democrats rammed down the throats of the American people, and everyone should have realized that those taxes would ultimately be passed on to the consumer.

But what is also true is that the health insurance companies basically wrote large sections of the health care reform law and health insurance company stocks rose when this new law was passed.

So why is this new law so good for health insurance companies?

Well, the new health care law requires all of us to purchase health insurance from them.

We are no longer going to have the choice of opting out of their system.

We are going to be forced to buy health insurance.

And since they are all raising rates, there is no escape from the pillaging.

As the new health care bill was being debated, Obama promised that the average American family would save $2,500 in yearly premiums under the new law.

If any of you still believe that claim I have got a bridge to sell you.

The Congressional Budget office says that yearly health insurance premiums are actually going to increase by about $2,300 each year as a result of the new law, but that estimate is probably far, far too low.

The truth is that rates are already shooting through the roof. Just consider the following excerpt from a recent article on Fox News....

Here is the terse reason CareFirst/Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Washington gave its subscribers for raising a monthly premium from $333 to $512 on a middle aged man who is healthy, is not a smoker and is not obese: "Your new rate reflects the overall rise in health care costs and we regret having to pass these additional costs on to you."

Could you afford to pay $512 a month for health insurance just for yourself?

Unfortunately, the truth is that this is nothing new. Many health insurance companies have been increasing health insurance premiums by double-digit percentages year after year after year even as they continue to reel in record profits.

In particular, health insurance companies seem to love to stick it to small businesses and the self-employed.

According to an article on the Mother Jones website, health insurance premiums for small employers increased 180% between 1999 and 2009.

The greed of the health insurance companies seems to know no bounds. For example, the 39% hike that Anthem Blue Cross sent some California customers last year made headlines across the nation. But executives defended the dramatic premium hikes as perfectly justifiable.

The reality is that health insurance is becoming so insanely expensive that millions of Americans can't even afford it anymore.

But thanks to the new health care law they are being forced to keep shelling out their hard-earned money for it.

It is getting really hard for anyone to deny that the health care system in the United States is deeply, deeply broken. The new health care law is not going to reduce costs. It is only going to help the health insurance companies continue to rake in obscene profits.

But wasn't the new health care law supposed to prevent the health insurance companies from abusing all of us?

Well, as it turns out, the new health care law does not give the federal government much regulatory power at all to prevent premium increases.

But what about the states?

Can't they do something?

Well, yes they can, but unfortunately most state legislatures have been bought off by the health insurance industry.

Since 2003, health insurance companies have shelled out more than $42 million in state-level campaign contributions.

That is a lot of money, and they wouldn't be spending that kind of money if they did not expect a return for it.

"The pressure that the industry can bring to bear in state legislatures is unbelievable," J. Robert Hunter, a former insurance commissioner in the state of Texas recently told the Los Angeles Times. "They pretty much get what they want."

The cold, hard reality is that health insurance companies are not in business to help people and provide affordable health care. They are in business to make money and they are very good at it.

But there are a few states that have stood up to the health insurance companies. States that have "prior approval" laws have been able to successfully fend off some of the over-the-top rate increases that health insurance companies have been trying to ram down the throats of consumers. For example, the Los Angeles Times recently reported on what has been happening in the state of Oregon....

Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Oregon was forced to cut back a proposed 26.4% increase in one of its individual plans to 17.3%. Other carriers were ordered to scrap altogether hikes as high as 20%.

Unfortunately, a number of these states that have these "prior approval" laws are now being sued by insurance companies.

That is how these folks work - they will either try to buy off politicians or they will keep filing lawsuits until they get what they want.

Meanwhile, the top executives at the five largest for-profit health insurance companies in the United States received nearly $200 million in total compensation in 2009.

Are you upset yet?

You should be.

And you know what?

When it finally comes time to actually use your health insurance, these predators will do anything they can to get out of paying up.

In fact, it has been documented that some of the largest health insurance companies actually pay their employees large bonuses for denying claims. The employees who deny the most claims are the ones that get the largest bonuses.

The health care system in the United States is messed up beyond all recognition, and the new health care law has made things worse than ever. Americans pay more than anyone else in the world for health care, and all that we get in return is a system that is deeply, deeply broken.

BP accused of withholding 'critical' spill data

By DINA CAPPIELLO and HARRY R. WEBER 

WASHINGTON — The company that owned the oil rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico is accusing BP of withholding critical evidence needed to investigate the cause of the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history, according to a confidential document obtained by The Associated Press. BP called the claims a publicity stunt.

The new complaint by Transocean follows similar complaints by U.S. lawmakers about difficulties obtaining necessary information from BP in their investigations.

In a sternly worded letter to BP's attorneys, Transocean said the oil giant has in its sole possession information key to identifying the cause "of the tragic loss of eleven lives and the pollution in the Gulf of Mexico."

BP's refusal to turn over the documents has hampered Transocean's investigation and hindered what it has been able to tell families of the dead and state and federal investigators about the accident, the letter said.

BP and Transocean appear likely to face off in court over how much each should pay out for the tragedy. Transocean owned the Deepwater Horizon, the rig that exploded and sank, killing 11 workers and unleashing millions of gallons of oil. BP was the operator and majority owner of the well.

BP spokeswoman Elizabeth Ashford said Transocean's accusations were misleading and misguided.

"We have been at the forefront of cooperating with various investigations commissioned by the U. S. government and others into the causes of the Deepwater Horizon tragedy," Ashford said.

In a biting response late Thursday, BP told Transocean in a letter that Transocean's claims were "nothing more than a publicity stunt evidently designed to draw attention away from Transocean's potential role in the Deepwater Horizon tragedy."

In other spill developments Thursday:

_The U.S. government said the final plugging of BP's blown-out Gulf well will begin sometime after Labor Day. First, engineers plan a potentially risky maneuver to replace a massive failed piece of equipment on the sea floor. The equipment, called a blowout preventer, is a prime source of interest for investigators. BP senior vice Kent Wells said the company will preserve it intact so it can be analyzed by the government.

"Clearly, I think all of us want to absolutely understand what the root causes are of this," Wells said.

_A new scientific study provided the first conclusive evidence of an underwater plume from the BP spill, and researchers said it could take months for the oil to break down.

In the dispute over documents, Transocean said that BP released limited records only after the company agreed to sign a confidentiality agreement at BP's request.

"This is troubling, both in light of BP's frequently stated public commitment to openness and a fair investigation, and because it appears that BP is withholding evidence in an attempt to prevent any entity other than BP from investigating the cause of the April 20 incident and the resulting spill," the letter said.

Copies of the letter were also sent to government agencies, commissions and lawmakers investigating the spill's cause.

Aides for some of those lawmakers told the AP on Thursday that they, too, have had trouble obtaining information from BP.

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee had a "stare down" with BP over some of the data it was seeking, said Bill Wicker, a spokesman for committee chairman Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M.

BP requested that congressional staffers sign a nondisclosure agreement. The committee refused, telling the company that it would send all BP's information back. Since then, BP has been forthcoming with data, Wicker said.

Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass, chair of the House's energy and environment subcommittee, said his staff has also had difficulty "prying information" out of BP.

"I am not surprised Transocean — which may end up in litigation against BP in the future — is encountering similar difficulties," Markey said.

Markey said it was important that Congress, the presidential commission investigating the accident, and the public have full access to the information.

BP's outgoing chief executive, Tony Hayward, personally assured the presidential commission of full cooperation, said David Cohen, a spokesman for the commission. The panel recently received new information from the company and is now reviewing whether it matches what they asked for.

President Barack Obama warned months ago that companies involved in the accident needed to work together and with the government on the investigation, saying: "I will not tolerate more finger-pointing or irresponsibility."

Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government's point man on the Gulf oil spill, told the AP during a conference call with reporters Thursday that he was not aware of Transocean's letter and could not comment on it.

Asked if BP has withheld any information vital to the government, Allen said, "None that I am aware of."

According to Transocean, BP has rebuffed at least seven of its requests for information. And while BP has turned over some documents, it has not provided Transocean with any information since June 21, and has not even acknowledged the company's requests since August 3, the letter said.

Transocean said that the limited information it has retrieved from BP came only after the company reluctantly signed a confidentiality agreement.

"Despite our reservations, we agreed to BP's condition of secrecy because there is no other source of key well data," the letter said.

Transocean wants 16 pieces of technical information from BP, including pressure tests, logs and other data.

Verizon & Google Want to Kill the Open Internet--Rep. Alan Grayson

Media Mogul Confirms Their Bad Intentions
Google's market capitalization is $150 billion. Verizon's is $85 billion. They don't care about our wellbeing. Even if one of them tells us it won't "be evil."
By Rep. Alan Grayson, AlterNet
Posted on August 20, 2010

"[Barry] Diller asserted that the Google-Verizon proposal "doesn't preserve 'net neutrality,' full stop, or anything like it." Asked if other media executives were staying quiet because they stand to gain from a less open Internet, he said simply, "Yes."" New York Times, August 12, 2010

The Verizon-Google Net Neutrality Proposal begins by stating that "Google and Verizon have been working together to find ways to preserve the open Internet." Well, that's nice. Imagine what they would have come up with if they had been trying to kill off the open Internet.

Actually, you don't have to imagine it. Because that's what this is. An effort to kill off the open Internet.

Much of the coverage of the Verizon-Google Proposal has focused on only one of the proposal's many problems: the fact that the proposal allows wireless broadband carriers -- like, say, Verizon, for instance -- to discriminate in handling Internet traffic in any manner they choose. They can charge content providers, they can block content providers, and they can slow down content providers, just as they please. That sure doesn't sound "neutral."

We've already seen examples of political censorship over mobile networks. In 2007, Verizon refused to run a pro-choice text message from advocacy group NARAL, due to its supposedly 'unsavory' nature. Yes, this happened; yes, this kind of censorship would be continue to be legal under the Google-Verizon deal; and yes, Google, this is evil.

But the Verizon-Google Proposal allows almost as much latitude to other internet carriers, like cable and DSL carriers. Under the heading "Network Management," all carriers can "engage in reasonable network management," which "includes any technically sound practice" (which means what?). And it specifically includes the power to "prioritize general classes or types of Internet traffic, based on latency." The term "latency" means delays in downloading, from carrying video files and such. So if you want video, and YouTube won't pay Verizon to provide it, then Verizon can "prioritize" other traffic. And then your two-minute video will take two hours to see. And let's say you want to start a new website that offers video -- good luck getting through to Verizon's customer service department, to have Verizon place it in the right 'tier' of Verizon's internet service. In my experience, customer service requests have extraordinarily high "latency."

Furthermore, under the heading "Non-Discrimination Requirement" (that sounds promising!), wireline carriers cannot engage in "undue discrimination." "Undue discrimination!" What, exactly, is "due" discrimination? And even then, the presumption of non-discrimination "could be rebutted."

And if a carrier somehow manages to run afoul of these absurdly loose standards, the FCC doesn't even have the power to act, unless someone actually finds out about the discrimination, complains about it, and can prove it. And even then, the Verizon-Google Proposal limits the penalty to $2 million.

Do you happen to know what Verizon's revenue is every 10 minutes? It's . . . $2 million. That's right. The maximum fine is equal to what Verizon takes in every 10 minutes.

Do we laugh? Or do we cry?

This would give Verizon -- and every other large internet carrier -- the equivalent of a cheap "put" option on every company with an internet-based product or service. For a mere $2 million, Verizon could secretly block (or just mess with) the internet content of a billion-dollar company, destroying its market value overnight. And, perhaps, sending those customers to Verizon's rival product or service.

Now, I really would like to believe that the FCC can deliver on guaranteeing net neutrality. But remember, this 'proposal' came after months of secret, closed-door meetings with the FCC, spurred by Chairman Julius Genachowski, that sought an industry- brokered deal along the lines of the Verizon-Google Proposal. And when the proposal was issued, net neutrality's longtime ally, Commissioner Michael Copps, responded as follows: "Some will claim this announcement moves the discussion forward. That's one of its many problems."

When I see our most stalwart friend on the commission coming out against a deal shepherded by the Chairman, it doesn't inspire confidence that the FCC can hold the line against telecom and cable companies, when those companies have something else in mind.

Google's market capitalization is $150 billion. Verizon's is $85 billion. They don't care about our wellbeing. Never have, never will. Even if one of them tells us it won't "be evil."

It's time for the FCC to step up. It's time for Congress to step up. It's time for all of us to step up. We need for the law to protect the internet: No discrimination in pricing or in service. No self-regulation by corporate titans. And no blessing of corrupt deals at the FCC.

And we need all citizens to engage, to be vigilant. Remember, no one in Big Business has an interest in keeping this medium open to all of us. The only interest that wants to keep the internet open and free, for you and me, is you and me.

So if you care about a free and open internet, uncensored by Big Business, then look toward the horizon. A storm is brewing. There's a hard rain coming.

Alan Grayson is congressman for Florida's 8th District.

"al Qaeda Does Not Exist" a documentary by the BBC

(Posting this not because I believe it or agree with its premise but because I find it interesting that it is so counter to what we have been sold in the war on terror. Judge for yourselves.--jef)



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2007 Deficit =Bush Tax Cuts for Same Year

An 18 Billion Mile Journey is almost complete!

Posted on: August 19, 2010 by Ethan Siegel

"Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune." -Noam Chomsky

You might remember when the Solar System had nine planets, but as unbelievable as it sounds, for a very long time we only had six.

Why? Because only the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn are visible from Earth with the naked eye. Even though the telescope was invented in the early 1600s, it wasn't until 1781 that a planet out beyond Saturn was found! When William Herschel finally discovered Uranus, it was absolutely fascinating to astronomers! (And shown here, as imaged by Hubble, during a Solar eclipse caused by its moon, Ariel.)

Why? Well, for as good as our laws of gravity and planetary motion were, they were really only based on objects that had been known since ancient times. You see, one of the hallmarks of any good scientific theory or model is that it doesn't just explain what you've already observed, it makes predictions that should tell you what you're going to observe in a new situation!

Well, Uranus comes along, and now we've got a new situation to test out good old Kepler's laws of planetary motion:

• 1.) Planets move in ellipses with the Sun at one focus.
• 2.) Planets move along that ellipse at such a speed that they sweep out equal areas in equal times.
• 3.) The period of a planet's orbit squared is proportional to its semimajor axis (i.e., for a circular orbit, the radius) cubed.

Now, because the planets farther out take so much longer to orbit, it took us a long time to test whether Uranus was obeying Kepler's laws or not. After 60 years, here was the data on Uranus, with Saturn and Jupiter's orbits also shown.

Moving in an ellipse? Check.

Taking around 84 years to orbit, based on how far it is from the Sun? Check.

But sweeping out equal areas in equal times? No, it didn't. The planets orbit counterclockwise in the image above. For the first 20 years, it moved too quickly. For the next 20 years, it moved at the right speed, leading many to believe that maybe the early data was flawed. But then for the third 20 year period, it moved too slowly!

What was going on? Independently, John Couch Adams in England and Urbain Le Verrier in France came up with exactly the same idea.

The great idea was that, perhaps, there was another planet, even more distant than Uranus, that was affecting the 7th planet's orbit! Let's take a look at the first 20 years.

If this new planet were ahead of Uranus in its orbit during this time, it would exert an "extra gravitational pull" in the direction Uranus is moving, causing it to speed up, or move too quickly!

But, being an inner planet, Uranus is bound to catch up.

For around the next 20 years, Uranus would be directly between the Sun and this new planet, so that the extra force would neither cause Uranus to slow down nor speed up. Therefore, it ought to look like it was in perfect agreement with Kepler's second law.

But then, subsequently, the relative positions would have changed once more.

And with this outer planet behind Uranus now, it should pull backwards, slowing it down.

Two men, two countries, with one idea. But in this case, it would come down to mathematics. Who, working from observations of Uranus' orbit, could better predict where this new world ought to be, based solely on the laws of gravity?

Adams came up with 6 distinct predictions that varied from one another by up to 12 degrees during the years 1845 and 1846, but none of the British astronomers he contacted -- James Challis or George Biddell Airy -- were able to locate the proposed planet. (Even though Challis observed it twice in August of 1846, he mistakenly thought it was a star!)

But Le Verrier simply proved to be the better man for this job. After performing his painstaking calculations once, he announced his results publically on August 31, 1846 in front of the French Academy. He then composed a letter detailing his prediction to astronomer Johann Galle at the Berlin Observatory; the letter arrived September 23. That evening, Galle and his assistant, d'Arrest, pointed their telescope towards the exact location Le Verrier predicted.

And right there, less than 1 degree away from the exact spot Le Verrier predicted, was the new planet: Neptune. So while there are many who contend Adams deserves equal creditfor Neptune's discovery, I am not among them.

And that was nearly 164 years ago. But what you might not know is that, being 30 times farther away from the Sun than Earth is, Neptune takes nearly 165 years to complete a single orbit!

Which means, for the first time since its discovery, Neptune is about to return to the same position in space that it occupied the day it was discovered. And what date will that be?

July 12th or 13th, 2011. (Thanks to Ian for nailing down the date.) An 18 billion mile (28 billion km) journey, for a single Neptunian year, is about to be completed. After nearly 165 complete Earth years, Neptune can finally check off the number "1".

And for those of you who still think of Pluto as a planet, waiting around for its 248 year orbit to return it to its position at the time of its discovery won't happen until 2178! It's taken us a long time to learn so much about where we live in this Universe, so don't forget this remarkable anniversary!

Facebook Feels Unfriendly Toward Film It Inspired

By MICHAEL CIEPLY and MIGUEL HELFT | August 20, 2010

LOS ANGELES — At the New York Film Festival next month, Hollywood will unleash The Social Network, a biting tale of the Silicon Valley giant Facebook and its founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Now Facebook must decide whether to bite back.

After fretting for months over how to respond, the company appears to have decided that its best bet is to largely ignore the movie and hope that audiences do the same — that The Social Network will be another failed attempt to bottle a generation, like Less Than Zero, and not culturally defining, as it aspires to be, in the way of Wall Street or The Big Chill.

Behind the scenes, however, Mr. Zuckerberg and his colleagues have been locked in a tense standoff with the filmmakers, who portray Facebook as founded on a series of betrayals, then fueled by the unappeasable craving of almost everyone for “friends” — the Facebook term for those who connect on its online pages — that they will never really have.

Mr. Zuckerberg, at 26 a billionaire, and his associates are wary of damage from a picture whose story begins with the intimacy of a date night at Harvard seven years ago and depicts the birth of a Web phenomenon in his dorm room.

By his account, and that of many others, much in the film is simply not true. It is based on a fictionalized book once described by its publicist not as “reportage” but as “big juicy fun.”

“It’s crazy because all of a sudden Mark becomes this person who created Facebook to get girls or to gain power,” said Chris Hughes, a Facebook co-founder who left in 2007 to join the Obama presidential campaign. “That’s not what was going on. It was a little more boring and quotidian than that.”

Scott Rudin, a producer of “The Social Network,” said two top Facebook executives, Elliot Schrage, the vice president of communications, and Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer, “saw the movie a while ago, and they do not like it.”

Mr. Rudin described months of backdoor contacts during which he tried to ease relations with Mr. Zuckerberg by letting colleagues of the Facebook chief read the script, and even by accommodating them with small changes. Facebook had insisted on bigger changes, which the producers declined to make. In the end, Mr. Rudin said, “We made exactly the movie we wanted to make.”

Mr. Zuckerberg declined to be interviewed for this article. In a recent onstage interview, he said, “Honestly, I wish that when people try to do journalism or write stuff about Facebook that they at least try to get it right.” He later added, “The movie is fiction.”

But Mr. Rudin said the movie was about conflicting truths, as recalled by Mr. Zuckerberg and his associates, largely in a pair of court cases that ended in settlements. “There is no such thing as the truth,” Mr. Rudin said.

In a statement, Facebook acknowledged that “it’s a sign of Facebook’s impact that we’re the subject of a movie — even one that’s fiction.”

“The Social Network” is being rushed into awards contention by a pair of Hollywood’s most powerful filmmakers, the director David Fincher and the writer Aaron Sorkin. The two worked without acquiring the rights from Mr. Zuckerberg and other subjects, relying instead on the journalist Ben Mezrich’s book, “The Accidental Billionaires,” and on the legal protection provided to free speech, along with Mr. Rudin’s diplomacy. The book drew heavily on interviews with Eduardo Saverin, a co-founder of Facebook and a former friend of Mr. Zuckerberg’s, who later felt that he was unfairly sidelined.

For months, Mr. Rudin said, he talked with Mr. Schrage and others about a collaboration that would have involved incorporating work from David Kirkpatrick, who was writing a separate book about Facebook. Eventually, it became clear “that we were not going to be working together,” Mr. Rudin said, though he maintained contact long enough to screen a nearly finished film for Mr. Schrage and Ms. Sandberg.

Filmmakers often elect not to buy rights for people who figure only marginally in a picture. That is also the case for television movies that adhere closely to the public record. But studios like to lock down the rights to their principal living subjects, if only so they will not be bound to literal truth in their portrayals.

Mr. Rudin said rights were unnecessary in this case, partly because of the extensive legal record.

Among the undisputed facts in Mr. Sorkin’s script, a version of which has long been posted online, is that Mr. Zuckerberg, as a 19-year-old college student, became deeply involved in the creation of an online social network that grew from a few hundred users in 2004 to perhaps half a billion today.

The film, which is set for release by Sony Pictures on Oct. 1, clearly aspires to importance. “Want a perfect body, want a perfect soul,” chants a chorus of voices over the part of the movie trailer that shows Mr. Zuckerberg, portrayed by Jesse Eisenberg, rising to prominence like an Internet Sammy Glick.

In Mr. Sorkin’s telling, Mr. Zuckerberg is not so much villain as antihero, a flawed human being whose deep need for acceptance becomes the driving force behind a Web site that offers the illusion of it.

If “The Godfather” was about family and “Network” about rage, “The Social Network” appears to be mostly about emptiness.

“I’m talking about taking the entire social structure of college and putting it online,” Mr. Eisenberg sputters in his eureka moment.

The movie deals heavily with themes familiar to Hollywood, like friendship and betrayal, but makes little effort to explain Silicon Valley or the Facebook phenomenon. Indeed, much of the story borrows from depositions taken in cases pressed by former associates — Mr. Saverin, Divya Narendra and Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss — over the founding and subsequent ownership and control of Facebook.

The film is also sprinkled with scenes of extravagant parties, and it is not clear how authentic they are. As of this week, Mr. Rudin said, one remaining question was to what extent the finished film would include a scene that depicted Sean Parker, the Napster co-founder who was heavily involved with Facebook’s early history, delivering his dialogue while a pair of teenage girls offer partygoers lines of cocaine from bared breasts.

Matthew Hiltzik, a spokesman for Mr. Parker, declined to comment. But a person who was involved with research for the film, and spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid conflict with the producers, said that sequence was one of several that were mostly made up.

Mr. Rudin said his main concern about the scene involved how much could be shown without compromising the movie’s hoped-for PG-13 rating.

As for the portrayal of Mr. Zuckerberg, Mr. Rudin offers no apologies.

Mr. Zuckerberg is “simultaneously a builder and a destroyer,” Mr. Rudin said. “It’s a big subject. It’s a big American subject.”

Mr. Kirkpatrick, whose book, “The Facebook Effect,” is a reported account of the company’s history, says much of the film, including many of the details of Mr. Zuckerberg’s personal life, are made up and “horrifically unfair.” He said that Facebook might be forced to deliver a forceful rebuttal once the film has its premiere, especially if it turned out to be a hit.

“They are going to try to ignore it but are going to be unable to,” he said.

Consumers Clamoring for a Leader

By JOE NOCERA | August 20, 2010

So it turns out that the Elizabeth Warren rap video that went “viral” this week is actually a made-in-Hollywood production.

You know the video, don’t you? The one in which a struggling comedian named Ryan Anthony Lumas, dressed in a cowboy outfit, high-steps his way through two minutes of catchy, if ersatz, rap, with lyrics like Sheriff Warren’s what we need-o/ She’s not about the money and the green-o... /She wants to expose the banks and all the greed/ and get rid of unnecessary fees/Which means more money in my pocket?

The group behind the video is the Main Street Brigade. But when you call the Main Street Brigade, you get the Santa Monica office of Hans Zimmer, a prolific Hollywood composer. The two women listed as the Brigade’s contacts run Mr. Zimmer’s new philanthropic/activist arm.

They are also the ones who recruited Mr. Lumas to write and star in the video — he actually makes his living selling televisions at Best Buy — then spent an all-nighter editing it, and e-mailed it to the Elizabeth Warren-obsessed Huffington Post, where it had its premiere a week ago Friday.

“We’re Trojan-horsing people with the messaging,” said Bonnie Abaunza, one of the Brigadettes. In addition to Mr. Zimmer, supporters of the Main Street Brigade include the directors James Brooks and Ron Howard as well as other Hollywood celebrities. Its purpose is to back the work of Americans for Financial Reform, a large coalition of organizations pushing for financial reform. The coalition’s Web site lists the subjects it follows, including foreclosure, derivatives and mortgage reform.

And, of course, Elizabeth Warren.

The group desperately wants President Obama to name her to run the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a key part of the recently signed financial reform legislation. “Tell President Obama: Nominate Elizabeth to Head the C.F.P.B,” reads the coalition’s home page. When you click through, you get the text of a message that can be e-mailed directly to the White House, which points out, among other things, that the new bureau was her idea.

But why, I asked Ms. Abaunza, is it so important that Ms. Warren lead the new agency? Isn’t it enough that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau got passed — especially since the banks were so intent on killing it?

“She’s the people’s choice,” Ms. Abaunza replied. She said she was blown away when she watched a video of a speech by Ms. Warren that outlined all the ways a new consumer bureau could make things better for borrowers.

“The best way to explain it is that she speaks truth to power,” Ms. Abaunza continued. “She speaks about how people have been ripped off in a way that everybody understands. Although she is a Harvard professor, she doesn’t speak in an elitist way. She is a grandmother. She is from Oklahoma. I like the fact that she says ‘golly.’ She engenders this trust immediately. Because she is very honest.”

Also, she walks on water.

O.K., so she doesn’t walk on water. Which isn’t to say that Ms. Abaunza isn’t right. Indeed, the incredible groundswell around Ms. Warren’s candidacy appears to be putting President Obama in a tough spot.

His Treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, by all accounts, would prefer to see Michael S. Barr, the assistant secretary for financial institutions, get the job. Others in the administration worry that she will impose tough new rules on the banks that will make it harder for them to nurse themselves back to health and hence the economy. But it is going to be awfully hard for him to turn his back on Ms. Warren.

With the president on vacation, nobody expects him to make this appointment until he returns at the end of August. But if he chooses anyone but her, he will be widely seen as helping the banks at the expense of the rest of us — something the government has been accused of doing far too often since those grim days of September 2008. With the midterm elections fast approaching, such accusations are not going to be terribly helpful to Democrats. Just a few days ago, 41 Democratic members of Congress sent Mr. Obama a letter pleading with him to appoint Ms. Warren.

How did this happen? How did a once-obscure Harvard Law professor become such a powerful touchstone?

Partly, it is because she really did come up with the idea. Ms. Warren’s views about banks and borrowers were largely formed early in her career when she and two colleagues, Teresa A. Sullivan, now the president of the University of Virginia, and Jay Lawrence Westbrook, a law professor at the University of Texas, conducted two seminal studies about people who file for bankruptcy.

In the late 1980s, when the first study was unveiled in a book the three of them wrote, “As We Forgive Our Debtors,” the root causes of bankruptcy weren’t well understood. The bank lobby routinely complained that Americans with the means to pay their debts were taking “the easy way out” by filing for bankruptcy. The empirical work done by the Warren-Sullivan-Westbrook team proved those claims false.

People who filed for bankruptcy were genuinely in over their heads, the researchers found. They had accumulated debt they couldn’t repay because they had lost their jobs or had some other life event that robbed them of their ability to earn a decent paycheck. They were often middle class, homeowners even. They filed for bankruptcy because they were desperate. Looking through thousands of bankruptcy filings, Mr. Westbrook said a few days ago, “you got a sense of human beings in real trouble.” He added, “All of us were very much affected by what we found in those files.”

By the summer of 2007, when Ms. Warren proposed the consumer agency, she was a well-known advocate for financial consumers — and the scourge of the credit card industry. She coined the term “tricks and traps” to describe how the banks lulled people into agreeing to credit card terms they weren’t even aware of when they signed up for the card. She had testified before Congress many times.

In the article where she proposed the new agency — she called it the financial product safety commission — she began with an analogy to toasters. (Ms. Warren has a thing for toaster analogies.) “It is impossible to buy a toaster that has a one-in-five chance of bursting into flames and burning down your house,” she wrote. “But it is possible to refinance an existing home with a mortgage that has the same one-in-five chance of putting the family out on the street.” Her timing could not have been better, she wrote the article at the exact moment the subprime bubble was reaching its peak.

What struck me, when I reread that article recently, was the bluntness of her language. She used words like “tricks,” “fleece,” and “bribe” to describe the actions of mortgage and credit card lenders. And I think a lot of her appeal stems from that simple fact: she describes abuses — predatory lending, hidden fees, bewildering “disclosures” that hide more than they disclose — in precisely the way most Americans have experienced them. She conveys a powerful sense that she understands what we’ve been through this last decade.

Her critics have complained that in her quest to avenge the downtrodden consumer, she could endanger the safety and soundness of banks, by writing rules that would strip them of billions in profits. Her essential position is that if taking advantage of borrowers is necessary to save the banks, then there is something deeply wrong with the banking system in America. The American Bankers Association may not agree with that, but that is unquestionably what most Americans believe. And they are right.

Ms. Warren also conveys a powerful sense of optimism about the good the new agency can do. I saw this for myself just a few days after President Obama signed the new law, when she was part of a panel discussion by the Roosevelt Institute, a liberal policy research organization that focuses on financial issues. I was also part of that panel, but after listening to Ms. Warren speak, I felt a little like Ms. Abaunza. I was bowled over.

That afternoon, Ms. Warren conveyed a great deal of passion, energy and historical knowledge about consumer lending practices. She gave a minitutorial about the history of usury laws, and about how credit card disclosures had become a tool for gouging customers.

Ms. Warren said that the new agency would have the power to make a rule, for instance, that credit card companies would have to disclose all their contract terms in two pages — in English simple enough for anyone with a 10th-grade education to understand. That one change, she said, would help end the practice of “cheating by contract.” (Another lovely Elizabeth Warren phrase, by the way.) When she had finished speaking, the audience gave her an ovation.

In 1934, Franklin D. Roosevelt had to choose a chairman to head a new agency aimed at protecting financial consumers — in this case investors. The agency was the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the man Roosevelt picked was Joe Kennedy, the legendary investor (and father of the Kennedy clan). When Roosevelt was asked why he had turned to a “crook” to run the S.E.C., he famously replied, “Takes one to catch one.”

This time, the president is facing a different choice. The people who want Elizabeth Warren to run the new consumer agency are rooting for her precisely because she is not one of them. She’s one of us.