Et tu, Ron?

As President Obama read former Aetna CEO Ron Williams’ op-ed in The Wall Street Journal renouncing his support for a key provision of the health care reform law, he must have felt like Julius Caesar when Caesar realized, as he drew his last breath, that his close friend Brutus was in cahoots with his assassins.

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Williams’ op-ed would never have appeared in the Journal if industry leaders weren’t nervous about what the high court will do. Their worst fear is that the mandate will be struck down but the rest of the law will be allowed to go forward. Knowing they can’t rely on Obama and the Democrats to get rid of the new regulations and consumer protections under that scenario — they’ve tried without much success so far — they will need to help flip the White House and the Senate to Republican control to be certain the job gets done.

Williams’ real audience for that op-ed was Republicans lawmakers and kingmakers. It was a signal to the GOP that the industry’s brief and often rocky affair with Obama is over and done with, that they were just playing the Democrats all along.

A draft agreement leaked Wednesday shows the Obama administration is pushing a secretive trade agreement that could vastly expand corporate power and directly contradict a 2008 campaign promise by President Obama. A U.S. proposal for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact between the United States and eight Pacific nations would allow foreign corporations operating in the U.S. to appeal key regulations to an international tribunal. The body would have the power to override U.S. law and issue penalties for failure to comply with its ruling. We speak to Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, a fair trade group that posted the leaked documents on its website. "This isn’t just a bad trade agreement," Wallach says. "This is a 'one-percenter' power tool that could rip up our basic needs and rights." [includes rush transcript]