Another one bites the dust. Liz:

GOP sources confirm that Rep. Tom Reynolds, a Western NY Congressman since 1999 and ex-NRCC chairman, will announce around noon tomorrow in Buffalo that he will not seek re-election this fall. Reynolds spokesman LD Platt did not return an e-mail seeking comment. [...]

But the recent NRCC fraud scandal - some of which took place on his watch - has made his re-election effort that much more difficult in an already tough year (increasingly Democratic state, presidential election etc).

That makes things a lot easier for this guy:

The question now becomes whether Jack Davis, the guy who ran for the seat last time - and couldn't defeat Reynolds despite the latter's role in the Foley scandal - will now run as a Democrat in a primary against Jon Powers, or as a republican against likely contender George Maziarz.

Another bit of irony: if Reynolds is retiring over the NRCC scandal, it will prove once and for all that while you can get away with molesting underage boys in the GOP, you had better not lose their money, or you're toast.

On the web: Jon Powers for Congress

Democratic Congressional candidates around the country - Darcy Burner, Eric Massa, Steve Harrison, Donna Edwards, and many more - are embracing the Responsible Plan, an effort to get American troops out of Iraq while preserving regional stability, United States interests and restoring American moral leadership. Every Progressive should read this document. If there is a way forward, this is it.

Here's Steve Harrison, running for Congress against Bush lap dog Vito Fossella in New York's Thirteenth District, speaking on why he was one of the ten original supporters of the Responsible Plan.

On the web: Steve Harrison for Congress
Donate: Steve Harrison's ActBlue Page

The Spitzer scandal and resignation probably still has a few days to go - Sex! Money! Power! Fall from Grace! Read All About It! - and there are a few gems in the flood of dross.

The Nation profiles incoming Governor David Paterson.

Feministing spotlights the harrowing tale of Dr. Laura Schlesinger, who has found the root cause of the Spitzer scandal: Silda.

"When the wife does not focus in on the needs and the feelings, sexually, personally, to make him feel like a man, to make him feel like a success, to make him feel like her hero, he’s very susceptible to the charm of some other woman making him feel what he needs,”

Oh, fuck you, Dr. Laura.

Scott Horton in The New Republic asks "Was the investigation of Eliot Spitzer politically motivated?" Look for that story to not be picked up by the Times, Post, News, and so on.

Just wrong: The New York Times finds the young woman at the center of the affair, complete with links to her freaking MySpace page. In contrast to the Horton piece, look for this story to be picked up by every media outlet under the sun.  read more »

Broken systems produce endless amounts of controversy, and healthcare is entirely typical of the phenomenon.

In Albany, Andrew Cuomo issued subpoenas to several large health insurance companies; the attorney general alleges that various insurers had used a wholly-owned subsidiary of UnitedHealth, Ingenix, to set reimbursements rates for consumers that were artificially low, leading to hundreds of millions in additional costs for consumers and, of course, correspondingly fatter profits for the insurers themselves.

“Ingenix is a wholly owned subsidiary of the industry, and the company is determining the rates that the insurance companies use to reimburse consumers”, Mr. Cuomo said.

Perhaps out of sheer embarrassment, the companies in question had no statement on the subject. As the saying goes, there ought to be a law - preferably an Elizabethan one that involves locking insurance executives in the stocks and encourages passers-by to throw offal at them.

In NY-29, meanwhile, Democratic challenger Eric Massa traces the feudal abuses of the healthcare system to its roots: crappy bought-and-paid-for legislators, specifically, his republican opponent, Congressman Randy Kuhl.  read more »

The black eyes for the State of New York simply do not end. Most dysfunctional legislature in the country? Check. Losing Congressional seats because of relative population decline? Check. An economic performance that trails the rest of the nation significantly, and upstate, catastrophically? Check.

Now, Governing Magazine has ranked the fifty states in order of efficiency. On the standard grade-school scale, New York comes in at a B-, just a tad lower than the national average. Among the states that beat us in terms of effective governance?

Louisiana. They got a B. Freaking Louisiana.  read more »