Last Laugh

The gushing out of this feeling of being galled by the NAIC's treatment–and the rhetoric that has accompanied the gush–has made for some very interesting exchanges over the last year or so.

It rose to a fevered pitch when some state legislators (Kennedy among them, if I remember correctly) were barred by security forces from entering a closed session at a quarterly NAIC meeting. Since then there have been some nice-nice gestures, but the underlying situation seems to have changed but little.

There's an old saying that "what goes around comes around." But as Claude Rains would say, I'd be "shocked, shocked" if that had anything to do with the NAIC's input not being sought for a study that has some unflattering things to say about the organization and which has recommendations that attempt to address the failings that state legislators see in its current hegemony.

Thus do I appreciate the irony in remarks by Bell such as his caution that regulators and legislators are "both in this together." The "this" that he refers to, of course, is the effort to preserve state regulation. It's a line that state legislators have used in the past as an exhortation for unity across the regulator-legislator spectrum. It has not gotten a noticeable response from the NAIC, which has often seemed to be on its own course regarding state regulation. And that course has at times seemed to be more about the preservation of the NAIC than state regulation.

But it's Bell's pique at being excluded that I find so unintentionally hilarious. For an organization that insists on having closed meetings in the face of growing opposition from many quarters to pout that it was not consulted for the study, that some of the report was "undocumented," and that it used attribution such as "some say," is pretty funny.

It also takes a lot of gall, but in this case I think NCOIL might have the last laugh.