FOLLOW THE MONEY: America’s pharmaceutical industry wants to prescribe the current version of health care reform legislation, and apparently doesn’t mind paying for it. Although there have been denials, it has been reported that “Big Pharm” is spending $12 million on pro-bill advertising.

Couldn’t have anything to do with the bill’s lack of attention to bulk-purchase drug price negotiating or cost-reducing drug reimportation from other countries, could it? And if Pharm’s spending this much on ads, we wonder what it’s spending on election campaigns . . .

JOBS BILL: Almost eclipsed by the health care debate was the signing of a jobs bill. The government will use tax incentives to encourage the hiring of recently unemployed workers, a good thing that would be better if companies actully were hiring at all, which they mostly aren’t.

With unemployment still around 10 percent and millions jobless, though, we still wonder why the administration isn’t looking at some of the kinds of job programs, like the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration, that got things moving in the Depression—and left a bang for the buck, in the form of buildings, parks and other improvements still serving America today.

WHAT’S IN A NAME: Ousted state senator Hiram Monseratte failed in his bid for reelection, but we like the way his attempt to build on an Obama slogan short-circuited. He ran as a candidate of his own “Yes We Can Party.” And in Albany, they’ve proven that time and again.