A couple weeks ago, in my Seattle Weekly column, I stated that Regence Blue Shield had had their request for a 28% rate increase on their individual plans approved by State Insurance Commissioner Deborah Senn. Senn's office then called with the information that they have, in fact, rejected Regence Blue Shield's proposal--four times. My contrary information came from a letter Regence sent to policy holders informing us of Regence's intent to collect the increase. That was my fault, for not double-checking Regence's claim. It's hard for me to even wrap my mind around the idea that the insurance giant could possibly misrepresent itself to customers. Greedy bastards.

Behavior like that is the most eloquent argument for abolishing the health insurance industry entirely. It's time to get profit and the middlemen out of what ought to be a basic human right. The U.S. is breathtakingly wealthy; we as a society have the resources to keep ourselves and each other healthy and alive. If we want to. For the bean-counters at companies like Regence, it's in their short term financial interests to let healthy people get sick, and to let sick people die. And they do. How do they sleep at night?--G.P.

We're a couple weeks into the serious campaign season for city council races, and to the point where trends for different races are starting to sort themselves out. One of the manifestations to watch for each year is who among the candidates is most assiduously tailoring their messages--sometimes contradictory ones--to their audiences, saying in essence what they think the audience wants to hear--whether it's sincere or not. (Everyone does this to some extent; we're talking about offenders who are clearly lying to please.) ETS! readers with good memories will recall that two years ago we got into it with the progressive backers of Aaron Ostrom over his tendency to breathe fire to progressive audiences and then murmur sweetly to the halls of power. Time, to be blunt, proved us right.

This year's early crowd-pleasers who operate along similar lines include Heidi Wills, a young Democratic Party hack (former aide to centrists Cynthia Sullivan and Ron Sims) who has never had a job in the real world, came full of revolutionary fervor to the Green Party endorsement shindig but has none of that in evidence with more conservative crowds (from whom she's extracted more money than any other city council candidate this year, including incumbents). Also full of contradictions is former city councilwoman Cheryl Chow, who when not reminding us that she loves kids is claiming to be the voice of the poor and the powerless--even though she consistently spit on them during her pro-business time in office. And, last but perhaps most disappointingly, there's Judy Nicastro, who aside from her frantic disassociation with rent control (her housing platform in general is surprisingly mild), is also emphasizing to her non-pwog friends a decidedly non-progressive attitude on issues like public-private partnerships. Nicastro's been getting bad advice to move her campaign to the center; if she's willing to do that now, how will she perform on council?

Speaking of my weekly Seattle Weekly column, I've had several suggestions that, since both out of town and many local ETS! readers don't see SW every week (or at all), I should set up an e-mail list to send out the pre-copy-edited version of the column each week. (It's also findable at www.seattleweekly.com). Is there any interest in this? E-mail me at ets@scn.org if you'd like to receive it each week and if there's interest, I'll go ahead and do it.--G.P.