There is one great thing that you men will all be able to say after this war is over and you are home once again. You may be thankful that twenty years from now when you are sitting by the fireplace with your grandson on your knee and he asks you what you did in the great World War II, you won’t have to cough, shift him to the other knee and say, “Well, your Granddaddy shoveled shit in Louisiana.” No, Sir, you can look him straight in the eye and say, “Son, your Granddaddy rode with the Great Third Army and a Son-of-a-Goddamned-Bitch named Georgie Patton!
Fastforward to the year 2009. Clowns like Jimbo truly are timeless: (H/T Editilla)
All insured real estate owners could be on the hook for a $95 million judgment against Louisiana’s state-backed insurance company, state Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon said today.
Donelon said he’s considering several options to raise the money to post the bond. One option is to impose a new fee that would be borne by insured homeowners and commercial property owners.
The payment, due Monday, is required because the Louisiana Citizens Property Insurance Corp. lost the first round of a class-action lawsuit in March. The suit, filed in Jefferson Parish on behalf of 18,573 policyholders, argued that the insurer took too long to pay claims after Hurricane Katrina. Citizens is appealing and the case is likely to end up with the state Supreme Court.
Citizens chief executive John Wortman is trying to find a surety company willing to put up the money, Donelon said.
Another option: imposing a new fee, or “assessment,” on all property insurance companies in the state. Most firms would then pass that cost onto their policyholders. Donelon said the fee would likely be between 1 percent and 5 percent of a policyholder’s annual premium. A 4 percent fee on a $2,000 annual premium would be $80.
Policyholders already pay a 5 percent Citizens assessment to pay off about $1 billion in debt the company incurred because of Katrina claims. The 5 percent assessment is set to drop to 4.3 percent in December.
Speaking of clowns……..:
Lawmakers in Southern states have been among the fiercest critics of federal spending in the face of the financial crisis, most recently railing against the Congressional stimulus bill.
But seven Southern states have received at least $100 million each from taxpayer bailout money passed through one of the biggest recipients of federal funds, American International Group.
Yesterday, under intense pressure, AIG released documents revealing what it’s done with some of the $170 billion it’s received in federal infusions. The records show that between September and December 2008, AIG used $94 billion in bailout money to pay off financial counterparties, largely banks it owed money from its losses in credit default swaps and its securities lending business.
In addition, the documents reveal that AIG used bailout money to pay $12.1 billion in Guaranteed Investment Agreements to municipalities — usually bonds. Six Southern states received $100 million or more from AIG for this purpose — including Mississippi and Texas, which are led by governors that have publicly decried federal bailout spending.
In the documents, AIG clearly states that all of the money it used to pay off counterparties came from federal bailout funds. This is especially notable given that many of the counterparties were already recipients of government bailouts.
This “Citizens” litigation is the biggest “scam” I have encountered since 8/29/05. Under the settlement (or judgment), each policy-holder is entitles to $5,000 which is reduced to $2,750 after the politically-connected plaintiffs’ lawyers get paid. What are these scoundrels, who routinely represent the State, doing suing a quasi-State agency, who didn’t FAIL to pay, but only failed to start the adjustment process in a timely manner? This is a contrived litigation if there ever was one, calculated to enrich the Plaintiffs’ Bar on the backs of the taxpayers.
which plaintiffs, in turn, will have to use to pay the resulting increase in premiums and their share of the assessment required of all taxpayers…you may have nailed this one Ashton but the underlying issue is that Citizens is not a solution to the insurance problem in Louisiana. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire – or in the case of Citizens’ rewriting law so that only fire is covered and screwing a lot of citizens in the process.
what a cluster . . . good God.