"Vote" Stealing

A former White House aide is suing everybody in sight for swiping the idea for the new Kevin Costner-Kelsey Grammer movie, "Swing Vote," in which a presidential election comes down to one alcoholic man's ballot, but there's a wee problem: The same movie was made back in 1939 under the title, "The Great Man Votes."

As a teenager, I was impressed by the antics of politicians to persuade John Barrymore (who by then did not have to do much acting to play a boozy has-been), the only registered voter in a key precinct, to declare himself for the incumbent mayor.

Now Bradley Blakeman, a former aide to President George W. Bush, claims in a lawsuit that "Swing Vote" rips off his story, "Go November," which bears a "striking resemblance" to the movie just released by Disney.

"The Great Man Votes" was directed and co-written by Garson Kanin, a talented man who later wrote one of the best political movies of all time, "Born Yesterday."

I still remember the punch line of "Great Man": After being bribed, flattered and paraded around as a hero, Barrymore tells his kids, "Nice man, the mayor. Almost makes me wish I had voted for him."

Stealing from the Sick

Over the next year, Presidential candidates will prattle about health care, but none of them will talk about the elephant in the operating room--the massive fraud that bleeds the system.

Another piece of the picture emerges today in a whistle-blower lawsuit that, according to the New York Times, claims "improper sales practices, together with erroneous accounting, are invisibly draining millions of dollars out of vital public programs like Medicare through overcharges or unauthorized uses...systemic fraud across a whole network of companies and more than 7,000 health care institutions."

Cynthia Fitzgerald's sickening account of her experience in the medical supply business involves kickbacks, bribes and bid-rigging. For complaining about such illegalities, she was, of course, fired as a trouble-maker.

Now she is suing under the False Claims Act which, according to Taxpayers Against Fraud, has helped the government recover more than $20 billion from health care companies since 1986, $5 billion of it in the last two years.

But that may be small change compared to the blood money that is hemorrhaging everywhere. According to the FBI, health care crime by hospitals, doctors, pharmacists and other care providers is adding up to between $60 and $100 billion a year in the system that is saving us from socialized medicine.

If we could stop that, it would pay for almost six months of the war in Iraq.

Giuliani, Murdoch and Judith Regan

She is making news again, this time claiming Rupert Murdoch's people asked her to cover up an affair with Bernard Kerik to protect Rudy Giuliani's presidential ambitions. It's vintage Judith Regan to tie her own interests, this time in a lawsuit against Murdoch, to the headlines.

The charge comes at the start of a 70-page filing for $100 million in damages for what she says was a campaign to smear and discredit her by her bosses at Harper Collins and its parent company, News Corporation.

Before she was famous, Regan sounded me out about writing a book about fatherhood. When I started talking about the complexity of the subject, she cut me off.

"No, no," she said, alluding to her own experience. "It has to be about bastards abandoning their children. The title is 'DaddyWho?'"

After that brief encounter, Regan parlayed her colorful certainty into a notorious career as a book publisher and TV host, most of it under the aegis of Murdoch, a kindred spirit when it comes to eschewing ambivalence.

Now here they are, locked in combat, after Murdoch fired her over O.J. Simpson's "If I Did It" book, which he had apparently approved but backed off when it provoked widespread outrage.

Regan, the New York Times reports, "had an affair with Mr. Kerik, who is married, beginning in the spring of 2001, when her imprint, Regan Books, began work on his memoir, 'The Lost Son.' In December 2004, after the relationship had ended and shortly after Mr. Kerik’s homeland security nomination fell apart, newspapers reported that the two had carried on the affair at an apartment near ground zero that had been donated as a haven for rescue and recovery workers."

Regan has an unerring flair for getting attention and perfect pitch for bad taste. It's a wonder Murdoch ever let her go.

The George Bush of Sports

Before the basketball season starts, the New York Knicks have suffered a stunning defeat, reaffirming its status as the worst-managed professional sports team in the world.

A jury ruled today that coach Isiah Thomas sexually harassed a team executive, subjecting the married mother of three to unwanted advances and verbal insults, in a case that an organization with any brains at the top would have settled out of court to avoid the humiliation of an ugly trial.

But today’s result only extends the record of team owner James Dolan as the George Bush of the sports world, a second-generation perpetrator of monumental misjudgments that have left lifelong followers of the team of Bill Bradley, Walt Frazier and Willis Reed in a state of shock and rage. Running a baseball team, Bush traded away Sammy Sosa, but Dolan makes him look like a genius.

The Cablevision heir's devotion to Thomas, who assembled the highest-paid N.B.A. roster with the worst record, has prompted Madison Square Garden crowds to chant “Fire Dolan!” on a regular basis, an unprecedented response to a team owner.

Bush and Dolan raise questions about the wisdom of Warren Buffet, who once said, "I want to give my kids enough so that they feel that they can do anything, but not so much that they could do nothing."

In some cases, nothing would be a blessing for the world.