Golden Age for Wall Street, Gilded Age for insurers, good old days for lobbyists, Grapes of Wrath for workers

As Wall Street bonuses soar to the heavens and economic pain spreads for Americans under a president who promised transforming change, I recently told someone close to the president: If the president and his aides set up a poker game, please invite me. I will take their money, their shirts, their pants, their right arm, left leg and family dog, because these guys can't play hardball against forces of power and greed.

Now this morning, in their latest fawning capitulation to win one Republican to pretend the healthcare bill is bipartisan, which the White House polls and focus tell them is good politics, two senior White House aides tell The New York Times the president wants to sell out the public option he says he supports in favor of a "trigger" supported by that one Republican.

I told a senior Democratic senator this week that he should become a Republican. Then the president can fawn over him, give him everything he wants and claim bipartisan support.

Let us first expose the fraud of the trigger idea. The concept is that we will allow the insurers to pillage and abuse customers for several years, which they have been doing for years, which they are doing today, and which they recently promised to do even more under the Senate Finance Committee bill. And then after several years of pillaging and abuse, we will reconsider the public option.

Two senior White House aides tell The New York Times this morning that this is change we can believe in. I call it something else, which is unprintable in a family newspaper such as The Hill.

Here is what will happen under what two senior White House aides call change we can believe in for healthcare reform:

I was virtually alone among Democrats in this town opposing the credit card "reform bill" because, courtesy of bank lobbying, congressional weakness and presidential surrender, the bill would not become effective until next year. There was a huge window for corruption, similar to the grace period for rip-offs that would be created by the trigger that two senior White House aides believe is change we can believe in for healthcare.

And what happened? Rampaging banks jacked up credit card interest rates, jacked up fees, cut credit lines for creditworthy customers, forced huge increases in minimum payments, destroyed the credit ratings of good customers who paid their bills, squeezed consumers whose spending creates jobs and deciminated small business whose growth creates jobs.

If you wonder why the Dow is at 10,000 and the jobless rate is 10 percent (and really more like 15 percent) the war waged by credit card banks against consumers and small businesses AFTER the credit card bill and BECAUSE of the credit card bill is one big reason.

Folks, pull up the multiple stories about credit card abuse after this alleged reform by Lisa Myers on the NBC Network News to see the human horror stories and outrages that have been committed against patriotic Americans, by bankers taking huge bailouts and giving themselves huge bonuses. When customers call their banks and protest, they are told: "We are doing what Congress said we should do under the credit card bill!"

And so it will be under the window for abuse, corruption and rip-offs of the so-called trigger supported by one Republican senator who claims to want affordable insurance, which two senior White House aides, passionately desperate to get her support for the pretense of bipartisanship, now claim is change we can believe in, for healthcare they claim will be reformed.

This is absurd, ridiculous, dishonest and offensive.

Here's the good news. Some of us who supported the president, and support healthcare, won't buy it. The capitulation caucus will be surprised how many members of the House and Senate say no. They will not vote for a bill that includes this fraud they call the trigger, which is nothing more than a license to steal.

More good news: A growing number of Democrats and some Republicans are now pushing the proposal I made in a column two weeks ago to eliminate the anti-exemption for insurers and tie this elimination to healthcare. Enough price fixing and price gouging that is now legal under the law that presidents and Congresses have enacted.

And more good news: There is now a move in the House to close the window for corruption in the credit card bill. It is ironic that when the window for corruption for credit card abuse may be now be closed, some would create a new window for corruption for insurers in this fraud they call the trigger, which in fact is a multiyear license to steal.

The White House is floating its trial balloon for this fraud it calls the trigger, and we should blow this bad idea to Hades, where it belongs.

Under a Democratic administration and Congress, it remains a Golden Age for bankers' pay, a Gilded Age for insurer abuse, the good old days for Washingon lobbyists and The Grapes of Wrath for American workers.

I again invite the president and these unwise aides who float these horrible plans to my poker game. I will be glad to take their money, but we should not tolerate their accepting abuse from those who wrongly take the money from our people.