Santa Barbara's ABC Affiliate Airs Compelling 2-Part Original Katrina Series

by Ana Maria

Last night, the Santa Barbara ABC affiliate interviewed Kevin Davis, a budding would-be reporter who had just returned from his self-financed trip to the Katrina-ravaged region. In his interview on InFocus, Kevin aired part 1 of his two-part video titled Katrina Revisited.

Kevin’s mini series demonstrates compellingly the devastating financial crisis that can befall the 55% of Americans who live within 50 miles of our nation’s beautiful coastlines. His series demonstrates further that Taylor’s multiple peril insurance proposal is the answer to protect the financial security of everyday Americans who work hard, play by the rules, and expect an insurance policy to provide the financial security we pay for it to provide.

While doing his research long before coming to the area, Kevin came across my blog A.M. in the Morning! which I had posted on my Daily Kos diary. Regular readers know I focus exclusively on real life inside Katrina Land, with a specific focus on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Kevin decided to contact me to share his plans to come to New Orleans. I recommended that he consider including three parts of the Katrina story that would surely be overlooked by most of the mainstream programs.

1. The ongoing devastating economic harshness of living on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

2. How the insurance companies have played a major role in preventing its policyholders like Joe De Benvenutti and Congressman Gene Taylor and plenty of other throughout the Katrina area from rebuilding their homes, businesses, lives, and communities.

3. The absolute necessity of passing the multiple peril insurance policy that Gulf Coast Congressman Gene Taylor (D-MS) sponsored, legislation that is now a part of the federal flood insurance reauthorization bill on which Congress will soon vote. Brilliantly, Kevin incorporated everything into a two-part short video, the first part of which aired last night on Santa Barbara’s popular Sunday evening program InFocus during his interview on the program.

Here is part 1 that Kevin showed on InFocus.



I’m hoping that the popularity of Kevin’s interview and the compelling story he revealed in part 1 of this series will assist in guaranteeing that he will land a follow-up interview where the second part can also be aired. In Part 2, Kevin addresses the multiple peril insurance act directly and ends the piece with his interview with Congressman Taylor, the original sponsor of this landmark legislation. The congressman's interview provides undeniably persuasive and convincing reasons that the nation must offer its citizens one policy for both flood and wind damage, a policy option which private industry does not offer.

My favorites in the series are Congressman Taylor, Joe De Benvenutti, and Lisa Palumbo. In the spirit of full disclosure, however, Kevin also included two clips of yours truly as well.

Taylor told Kevin,

“People say ‘Well, gee. How is it the flood program loses $19 billion the same year that the insurance industry collectively cleared about $60 billion?’ Well, it’s no coincidence. The tax payers paid bills that the insurance companies should have paid.”

Taylor explained how families and businesses benefit from his proposed multiple peril legislation.

“and you can buy an option on your flood insurance for all perils. So that whether the wind did it, the water did it, if you come home to a slab, if you come home and your home was substantially destroyed, it doesn’t matter.

If you built it the way you were supposed to, if you paid your premiums, and the storm gets it, you’re gonna get paid. You don’t have to hire a lawyer. You don’t have to hire an engineer . . . and wait years to get the check that you should have gotten within days.”

That is how is should be.



To help propel the airing of this second part—seen here courtesy of Kevin Davis and A.M. in the Morning!;), let’s channel our political hell raising energy into contacting the station to request that they air Part 2. Santa Barbara is an important media market.

Contact the station know that their budding reporter has provided the world with a gift and that we’d like them to consider bringing him back on to show part 2. As always, A.M. in the Morning! provides a phone script with the phone number to achieve this important goal to help get this series aired in an important media market.

Hopefully, this bright, young, energetic, soulful man’s two-part series will also launch his new on-camera reporting career. Our nation needs more reporters who deliberately seek out the stories that need talents like Kevin’s that can tell the story in a movingly compelling manner.


Kevin Davis works as a production assistant for KEYT-TV, an ABC affiliate in Santa Barbara, CA, and is currently looking for his first reporting job. Last week, A.M. in the Morning! published an interview with CNN’s Kathleen Koch that Kevin Davis shot here in Bay St. Louis. Kevin can be reached at 925-788-1803 and kdavis2600@gmail.com.


© 2007 Ana Maria Rosato. All rights reserved.
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Hancock Bank Can Teach Bush A Thing or Two

by Ana Maria

Who would have ever thought that a bank would be the anchor business for beachfront revitalization in Bay St. Louis, Miss., one of the tiny beach towns that comprise Katrina’s ground zero? Yet, that is exactly the case with Hancock Bank, Mississippi’s largest and a strong regional bank as well.

As the flagship business for renewing Bay St. Louis’ beach front/downtown/Old Town business district, Hancock Bank’s reopening provides unparalleled leadership locally and even nationally.

How’s this for a demonstration of Katrina responsiveness?

One of the bank’s officers told the celebration’s crowd of a few hundred that in the storm’s immediate aftermath, Hancock Bank took a satchel of money to some central location and began to cash checks. The bank knew that folks needed cash to buy supplies. Thoughtful, indeed. And good business, of course. But, here’s the kicker.

Hancock Bank even took IOU’s from people. That’s right. A bank in the year 2007 took IOUs from people just to get cash in their pockets so that these Katrina survivors could begin to . . . survive.

THAT’s innovation. THAT’s leadership. THAT’s responsiveness. THAT’s creativity. And that is how forward thinking, responsive leaders act, particularly when the worst natural disaster hits an area.

Hancock Bank Could Teach Bush A Thing or Two
Contrast Hancock Bank’s response with the Bush Administration that wants to know why it is that in the immediate aftermath of this same natural disaster that virtually wiped out so many cities in Katrina’s wake that city officials didn’t go through the traditional bidding process and get the least cost for the services needed. For more on that White House foolishness, read Dirt, Dead Bodies, and White House Dirt Bags.

Contrast Mississippi’s largest bank taking IOUs with Bush’s Administration that is holding out millions and millions and millions of federal reimbursement checks perhaps with an eye on outright stiffing Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama cities and towns for the clean up costs for which the federal government is supposed to pay. Compassionate, my you-know-what! [For more on Bush's Administration holding out on reimbursement funds, see When You're Up To You're Ass in Alligators and The "F" Word: FEMA.]

Bush talks compassionate, but doesn’t walk it. Hancock Bank doesn’t say anything and just takes care of the people who have helped it grow over the last century. That’s leadership.

Hancock Bank's Humble Beginnings in the Bay
Hancock Bank was founded in 1899 right here in Bay St. Louis, Miss., and its initial branch was on this very same spot along Beach Boulevard where this grand re-opening was held yesterday evening. As one bank representative said to us at the ceremony, this 100 plus beach front property has been through four major hurricanes and plenty of financial dark times for the banking industry—most notably the Great Depression and the Savings & Loan crisis during the Reagan years.

At the town hall meeting that Congressman Gene Taylor held last week, Board Chair George Schloegel told the standing room only crowd that the bank is not carrying any insurance on the building. It cannot afford the rates. Should the building be destroyed in the future, the cost of rebuilding will be spread over its multi-state branches. However, he continued, families have one home and can’t spread the costs of rebuilding or renovating their homes like Hancock Bank is able to do. Scholoegel supports Congressman Taylor’s Multiple Peril Insurance Act which adds wind coverage to the federal flood insurance program.

“Schloegel brought the house down when he remarked that the insurance companies didn’t have to hire lawyers and haul us to court to get us to pay our premiums. Why should we have to hire lawyers and haul them to court to get them to pay on our wind policy claims?!”

Great people, a great community asset, and a great business citizen in this tiny beach town. Others around the country should take note and follow its example, including the Bush Administration.

At yesterday’s celebration, I was fortunate to run into George Schloegel and told him that I just LOVED his comment on premiums and hiring lawyers. He looked down at me smiling as he told me that he just said it the way he sees it.

Ahhhh, yes. Boy am I ever home where the verbal guessing game is unnecessary. Talking with us doesn’t require reading between the lines. What you see is what you get. Period. That’s unheard of in the political and corporate circles I’ve traveled in around the country.

Celebrating in Typical Bay St. Louis Fashion
We love our music and great food. Yesterday evening’s celebration was typical Bay St. Louis complete with a live Dixieland Jazz band and two huge tables filled with plenty of great food.

The food was stupendous! None of this barely edible appetizers many try to pass off at such occasions. Absolutely, this was a veritable feast of baby tomatoes stuffed with shrimp salad, potato salad, chicken kabobs, a couple of other meats (I don’t know which because I eat seafood only), jambalaya, and a number of delicious deserts.

When I was growing up, Dixieland Jazz was definitely a favorite genre of music in our home. I remember my father telling me that when he was a young man still living with his parents on Magazine Street in New Orleans, he and his brother were forbidden from holding band practice at home. My paternal grandparents came from Italy, and my grandfather taught music—old style and old school. No, I’m not talking Motown old school. I’m talking something quite different.

Today, we learn musical notes by a letter designation. A, B, C, D, E, F, G. Back then—and yeah, it’s not quite a century ago now, my grandfather taught music Do, Re, Mi, Fa . . . which some of us learned from the Sound of Music. Trust me, it was NOT that kind of teaching. My point is that life was, well, different way back, but the attitude of the older folks toward the younger one's musical tastes remain rather similar.

My grandfather apparently wasn’t too keen on the new ways and would not permit jazz to be played in the house. “Not real music” my father would tell me his dad would say. Eventually, my grandfather allowed his sons to bring their jazz band to practice in the house on one condition. They had to tell their father when the band would be practicing so he could leave. My dad told me that his father thought jazz wasn’t “real music” and that is would be a death knell for the orchestra.

A few years back, I myself knew that I had reached the generational divide when certain songs were played and I thought, “That’s not music!!” I don’t think my grandfather was whispering to me from the grave, either.

Every generation has their musical tastes, I suppose. (But really, how can it be “music” without a good beat to dance to?! Just kidding.) Some things never change from generation to generation.

Nevertheless, for this child of a former jazz musician, listening to the Dixieland tunes being played reminded me of dancing with my father who has long since passed away. As a little girl, he would put me on his shoes and we’d dance. I love those memories.

That’s part of the magic of Hancock Bank’s reopening in the same spot it has always operated for 100 years. Coming home to memories. Clearly the bank’s decision to rebuild in the same spot has more to do with tradition, history, and a sense of community than some actuarial bean counting analysis. That’s what creates strong families, neighborhoods, communities, towns, and cities. It’s about strong memories, a sense of history, a sense of belonging.

Last night, we all belonged at that wonderful celebration. We felt a sense of community, a hopefulness, a renewed desire to rebuild our town.

With all of the celebration and laughter underneath the stars and moonlight, who would have thought that anyone there had a care in the world.

But, oh, we all have many, many cares. Katrina took away nearly everyone’s homes either completely or devastated the homes so much that it took ages to clean it up to make do while living in it as the rest was being worked on.

Katrina took away so very much, which many fear may never return in their lifetimes. Last night I was talking with a couple that I hadn’t seen in over 25 years. Now in their 60’s and 70’s, how can they start over particularly when the insurance company low balls or outright denies payment on legitimate wind claims on a policy they’ve paid premiums for years?

Our sorrows are deep, healing is slow, and payments from insurance companies slower exacerbating our sorrows and our healing.

So how can we enjoy ourselves at all? We know that life isn’t about sorrow only or happy times only. It is about how they intermingle, intertwine within our lives. Here in Bay St. Louis, Miss., we tend soothe our sorrows and celebrate our joys with great tasting food, good music in the background, and great company. That’s one of our secrets to our sanity, our generosity, our vibrant culture. That’s how we are able to survive Katrina and the betrayal from Big Insurance and Bush’s Administration.

With business sensitivity and innovation like that which Hancock Bank has shown and the internal fortitude of our residents, that's how the Bay will return to its vibrancy complete with all the festive trimmings to celebrate every milestone along the way.

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Bush’s FEMA Again Lifting Wrong Finger for Katrina’s Families

by Ana Maria

With Katrina’s 2nd anniversary a week away and eyes glued to following Hurricane Dean’s path, evidence of post-Katrina stress abounds. From short tempers and increased alcohol and drug usage to low expectations that life can ever return to even the worst of pre-Katrina days to people whispering about various friends and family members in good health but who all of a sudden die without warning. In hushed tones, they share with me their various conclusions on the cause of death.

• Katrina took away their will to live.
• The stress of post-Katrina survival got to them.
• When the insurance companies failed to own up to their financial responsibilities to pay on wind policies, it killed ‘em—they checked out.

Mental illness is double the pre-storm levels, rising numbers suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, and there is a surge in adults who say they're thinking of suicide. . . .

The big surprise: Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which typically goes away in a year for most disaster survivors, has increased: 21% have the symptoms vs. 16% in 2006. Common symptoms include the inability to stop thinking about the hurricane, nightmares and emotional numbness.

Katrina victims struggle mentally
USA Today
8.16.07

The nation’s worst natural disaster is playing havoc with our coping mechanisms, and Bush’s FEMA is playing havoc with how they interpret the rules that should afford some much needed funding for mental health services in the Katrina-ravaged area.

An Associated Press story reported “FEMA has refused to assist the institutions that those people were referred to and it has not explained why."

"A government survey released [August 15, 2007] to USA TODAY shows no improvement in mental health from a year ago."

Katrina victims struggle mentally
USA Today
8.16.07

Maybe that’s because FEMA can’t explain the cruel and compassionless policies flowing out of a “you’re on your own” Bush White House philosophy. What is Bush to do? Admit that he only believes in spending taxpayer money on bloated contracts with his friends? Fat chance. Instead, he and his ilk have surrounded themselves with similar conscious-free types whose mission seems to be to spend the least amount as possible when it comes to helping Americans.

FEMA ran its Project Recovery Program as a referral service only, and chose not to provide funding for mental health professionals to counsel Americans temporarily going through this horrific disaster. Not exactly helpful, particularly when Katrina displaced the area’s mental health professionals—just as it has so many others in the hurricane’s aftermath.

This is crazy—then again, so much that the Bush Administration has done is pure madness. Yes, pure madness. FEMA does fund short-term crisis counseling after disasters. That’s right. FEMA has done so for 25 years.

“The Crisis Counseling Program [has] been supported in the past twenty-five years by the Federal government, provides for short-term interventions with individuals and groups experiencing psychological sequelae from Presidentially-declared disasters.”

Well, if that don’t beat all. Here’s an excerpt from a U.S. Government agency website— Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) provides supplemental funding to States for short-term crisis counseling projects to assist survivors/victims of Presidentially declared major disasters. FEMA supplements, but does not supplant, mental health services traditionally provided by State and local mental health agencies. The Crisis Counseling Assistance and Training Program (commonly referred to as the Crisis Counseling Program) was first authorized by the U.S. Congress under the Disaster Relief Act of 1974 (Public Law 93-288) and later modified by the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act of 1988 (Public Law 100-707). FEMA is responsible for administering the disaster assistance programs of the Stafford Act, including Federal assistance for crisis.

A major disaster, as defined by the Stafford Act, is any natural catastrophe, or regardless of cause, any fire, flood, or explosion, which in the determination of the President causes damage of sufficient severity and magnitude to warrant major disaster assistance to supplement efforts and available resources of States, local government, and disaster relief organizations in alleviating the damage, loss, hardship, or suffering caused by the disaster.

So there we have it. FEMA pays for mental health care crisis counseling, but the Bush Administration is apparently playing politics with the tax dollars that could be and should be helping Katrina’s Americans cope with the myriad of Katrina-related mental health problems.

How cruel. How categorically cruel for the Bush Administration to deny access to federal funding when the money can be used for such a critical service for its people. AND this isn’t exactly breaking new ground as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ website explains that disaster crisis counseling programs are part and parcel of what it provides.

Disaster Crisis Counseling Programs are a departure from traditional mental health practice in many ways. The program is designed to address incident specific stress reactions, rather than ongoing or developmental mental health needs (CMHS, 1994). Programs must be structured and implemented according to Federally established guidelines and for a specific period. Emphasis is on serving individuals, families, and groups of people - all of whom share a devastating event that most likely changed the face of their entire community.

Yet, Bush’s FEMA denies funding for this critical service for Katrina’s Americans. This is yet another example of the Bush Administration’s cruel and compassionless core values. Bush talks compassion and walks cruelty. And the impact of Bush’s FEMA policy is evidenced everywhere.

Whether we are adults or children. Katrina has negatively impacted our collective mental health. In Trauma shapes Katrina's kids, USA Today wrote

New Orleans pediatrician Corey Hebert dreads the rainy weeks when he knows he'll face about 20 sobbing, screaming children in full-blown panic attacks.

"They can't be calmed because they're terrified another hurricane is coming," he says. Parents bring them in because there are no therapists around.

In Mississippi, FEMA is taking away $4.5 million of federal dollars that could be used for counseling any aged survivor trying to cope with what many call post-Katrina syndrome. Again, the U.S. government agency website stated

The Crisis Counseling Program is unique in comparison to the mix of Federal programs made available through a Presidential disaster declaration. It is the one program for which virtually anyone qualifies and where the person affected by disaster does not have to recall numbers, estimate damages, or otherwise justify need. The program provides primary assistance in dealing with the emotional sequelae to disaster.

The only thing we’ll have to watch out for is the Bush Administration demanding that the counseling be laced with religious overtones or allowing the federal dollars to go to unqualified professionals, particularly those who support Bush’s desire to mix his religious beliefs with our very secular government. He’ll have us praying his way.

Believe me, down here everyone is praying. The old saying “pray to God and row to shore” has us asking for help with the rowing part, not the praying part.

Good Lord! If folks want religion and government intertwined, they can move to Iran or Saudi Arabia where government and religion are laced together. Don’t care for that? How’s about Afghanistan where the pathetic fools called the Taliban foist their own ignorant macho cruelty upon its prey all under the veil of “religion.” Don’t like the Middle Eastern example? How’s about reviewing recent history in Ireland with two factions of Christianity did its gut level best to shove its own views on the other in rather violent fashion. A rather bloody mess came about, to say the least.

Religion and government don’t mix well. That’s the reason the founders of our nation placed Freedom OF Religion as part of our Constitution’s First Amendment. Freedom of . . . and its implied Freedom FROM. Remember, the founders were often those who had fled Britain’s King George’s religious tyranny. Talk about history repeating itself!

The point here is two-fold. First, our own federal government already has long established post-disaster crisis counseling programs specifically for Katrina-type scenarios. Secondly, we need to be aware of Bush’s propensity to act in a way that laces religion with government—a deadly combination and fundamentally anti-American.

What is beautifully American, however, is the belief that we can make life better for ourselves, our families, our communities, and for others. As Americans, we hold the belief that a new day brings new possibilities to alleviate for ourselves and the next generation the challenges we face today.

Bush and his White House are fundamentally different human beings than the people I run across throughout the Mississippi Gulf Coast and throughout the Katrina-ravaged region who are needlessly suffering at the Administration’s hands. With the sunny optimistic outlook that pegs us as true blue Americans, folks in Katrina Land are trying to fix the problem at hand that Bush’s FEMA has created through failing to offer to our people the mental health services needed.

However, in typical American fashion, folks around here are trying to ensure that FEMA does not force other Americans to suffer needlessly as it has forced Katrina’s survivors to suffer. Ed LeGrand, executive director of the Mississippi Department of Mental Health, “said he was concerned FEMA's rigid interpretation would affect future disaster recovery programs.”

"I did want to set the stage where if there was a significant disaster elsewhere then maybe the feds would be a little more liberal in how they allow the states use those (mental health) funds in the future."

Throughout the Katrina ravaged Gulf Coast region, folks here fight with the Bush's FEMA and Bush's corporate insurance supporters to get all of them to do right. As they fight, these hard-working Americans who’ve been through hell and back do so not only for themselves and their communities, but also to prevent another town, another family from having to experience this horrific, and unnecessary, hardship.

Lifting a finger to help
While the Bush Administration continues to lift the wrong finger to Katrina’s families, businesses, and communities, the rest of America—that would be you and me—can lift a real finger to provide real help. We can help this situation through letting our fingers do the walking and our mouths do a bit of talking. Yes ma’am and yes sir! You know what that means. It’s political hell raising time! Wooohooo!

FEMA’s Director needs our wise counsel to fund professional counselors in the same way the agency has done after other disasters over the last 25 years. So, let’s give him a piece of our mind and gain a peace of mind for ourselves knowing that today, we helped to make a difference in the Katrina recovery.

Today's political hell raising acivity involves one phone call to FEMA Director Paulison to tell him that FEMA must fund mental health services for the entire Katrina-ravaged region from New Orleans and its surrounding areas across the Mississippi Gulf Coast region and on over to Bayou LeBatre, Alabama.

Lifting our fingers this way can help to outweigh the only finger Bush and his gang seem to lift with any regularity to Americans whether in the Katrina-ravaged region or not. This kind of deliberate, targeted political hell raising is one way to simultaneously lift our own finger to the Bush Administration while helping to create the momentum needed to get the funding we need for mental health services here in Katrina Land. We do this, and things will shift positively for us. On that, I have total faith.

Related articles
Trauma shapes Katrina's kids USA Today 8.16.07
Katrina victims struggle mentally USA Today 8.16.07

Gulf Coast kids of every class affected by Katrina USA Today 8.16.07

Katrina rips up the few roots foster kids had USA Today 8.16.07

Portrait of a Troubled Teen Sun Herald 8.11.07

FEMA takes back $4.5M Mspi wanted for mental health facilities Sun Herald 8.11.07


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“Run for Cover!” Republican Gov. Evacuation Plan for Gulf Coast Residents

by Ana Maria



With Hurricane Dean tearing through the Caribbean, Gulf Coast residents watch the weather reports praying that whatever Mother Nature does, she does elsewhere. We’re still a long way off from recovering from Hurricane Katrina, which demolished the area two years ago. Many of our families—mine, included—have put into place evacuation plans that we had never before felt a need to have BK, Before Katrina.

The Associated Press reported that Mississippi’s Republican Governor Haley Barbour stated

“people should think about where they will go if an evacuation is ordered and how they'll travel.”

Oh, so that’s it? What is this?! Barbour’s admission that he has no evacuation plan?

Maybe Barbour is taking a page out of Karl Rove’s scare-‘em-half-to-death political playbook. After all, it is an election year for the governor’s mansion here in Mississippi.

Instead of real, effective, and efficient homeland security, however, Barbour decided to squander public dollars on little more than election-year posturing. Mississippi’s Republican Governor sent out a pre-recorded message to

“some 70,000 land-based phone lines in the three southernmost Coast counties Saturday morning. The message reminded locals a hurricane was in the Caribbean, and now is the time to pay attention to weather reports and have a hurricane evacuation route in mind, as well as to load up on supplies.”

Like we don’t know that. We’ve been through a few hurricanes in our day, and believe me, we’re watching the weather closely.
Click here to listen to Barbour's call to Gulf Coast residents telling us "not to panic." [Call courtesy of John Leek.]

Rather than election year posturing using fear that Karl Rove tells Republicans to instill in voters, how’s about something more important and effective for the situation at hand. Like what, you ask? Well, you know, homeland security kinds of things. The real kind, that is.

What A Homeland Security Plan Could Include
If the governor were so inclined—and apparently Barbour is not, he could have set up emergency hurricane evacuation hot lines staffed with calm, cool, collected, and well-trained individuals from right here in South Mississippi, good folks who provide information fellow South Mississippians need to keep us safe during the stormy hurricane season. These hotlines could provide a much-needed service to the Gulf Coast’s residents and business owners.

In addition, staffing these hotlines with local people provides much-needed revenue into the coffers of Katrina’s families who could use the income. Nothing like a good paying job to help buoy a person out of feeling totally depressed or a family out of its financial crisis, both of which are major problems throughout the region. The only people getting wealthy off of recovery efforts seem to be those with close ties to the White House or to Barbour himself.

To help keep our families safe and secure, hotline operators could provide important critical pieces of information. For example, operators could provide a list of items (children’s birth certificates, social security cards, driver’s license, medicines, doctors’ names, etc.) that everyone should have with them regardless of whether they go to a local safe haven or evacuate outside of the area.

For those who are need a local safe haven for shelter, hotline operators could be armed with the following critical pieces of information.

The closest places we can go for safety complete with addresses and directions on how to get there. This would require that the governor’s homeland security people would have scoured the area to locate and negotiate the use of the facility for this extremely important emergency usage.

Phone numbers to call to obtain a ride to the nearby safe havens that our responsible government has secured. This would require more organizing and negotiating with folks on the ground as well as finding out an approximate number of people that would request this important evacuation assistance.

A list of things that should be brought to the safe havens: (i.e. bedding and the like). Depending on where folks are going to ride out a storm, different items would be required and prohibited. We will need to know which is which. Through his emergency management people, the governor should ensure that this kind of information is available to us.

Barbour’s administration could send out tape-recorded messages to the homes with phone service informing South Mississippians of these hot lines staffed with wonderful homegrown folks providing this much needed service.

There may be plenty of Mississippians who are in a similar position as Keisha, the young single mother with two children and no car with which to evacuate on her own. Katrina ruined Keisha’s car, and she has not been able to replace it.

When she was talking with Democratic Gubernatorial nominee John Eaves the other day, I heard her tell Eaves that FEMA gave her $3,000 for all of her belongings, those of her two young children, and her car. Goodness knows that even if she had forgone replacing any clothes, bedding, toys, or books for her children, $3,000 would not have purchased a safe and reliable vehicle for her and her children. My heart went out to her as she was talking with Eaves and WLOX-TV 13, an ABC affiliate located in Biloxi, Miss.

The governor’s evacuation plan would also need to address how to keep safe those who are too sick to move, the disabled, and the elderly. These Mississippians need safety, too.

It’s been two years since Katrina. Plenty of billions of dollars have made their way from Washington, DC, to Jackson, Miss. With Hurricane Dean blowing its way through the ocean waters, none of us need more hot air from some high-ranking Republican government official.

Where are Mississippi’s coastal evacuation plans? Surely someone somewhere got federal money to create them. So where are they?

Rather than describing a well-though out deliberate plan of action to protect the Gulf Coast and its residents, Barbour announced “No government is big enough to do everything for everybody.”

What a cop out. No one is asking our government to do everything for everybody. We do ask it to do some things for some people. And those “some people” includes regular families with regular lives. No matter how minimalist some one thinks that they want our government to be, when it comes to homeland security, we expect America’s public officials to act like we’re the number one nation on the planet.

Apparently, Barbour hasn’t figured out that homeland security requires more than screaming “Run for cover!”


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Katrina-Land: A Lesson in Crossing the Political Divide

by Ana Maria

Today is the day I’ve been looking forward to for quite sometime. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) leads a delegation to New Orleans and over to the Mississippi Gulf Coast to see the state of post-Katrina living. Last year I was living in San Jose, Calif., which is about an hour’s south of San Francisco—the district that Pelosi represents. I wasn’t here for Katrina, though plenty of my family members were. I remember when I read that Pelosi had led a delegation of Democrats to this area last year. I was thrilled!

I became happily stunned when I read that the town hall meeting was in my own hometown of Bay St. Louis, Miss. Then, I became almost speechless beaming from ear-to-ear when I realized that the Town Hall meeting was held in the parish hall of Our Lady of the Gulf Church parish hall. I had attended OLG elementary school and then Our Lady’s Academy from 7-12th grades. I felt honored though my strong separation of Church and State perspective wasn’t all that thrilled with it being held in a Catholic school setting. I have since found out that available venues are, indeed, a premium. Same goes for the one being held tonight. As this year’s delegation will find out, significant feats in recovery and rebuild are wholly absent in New Orleans and all along the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

I’m glad that I’ll attend this year. Part of the purpose of the meeting, I believe, is a follow up from last year. Speaker Pelosi had told the Gulf Coast residents that if the Democrats gained control of the House of Representatives, that she would ensure that it would provide hearings for multiple peril insurance and pass it. A woman of her word, Speaker Pelosi has ensured that first two of the formal three-step process has already been met. The Republicans have been fighting this all the way, and the Bush White House has already announced its opposition to it.

Undeterred, Pelosi said she would do her part, and she is making good on her word. A subcommittee of and the full Finance Committee have passed the bill that would expand the federal flood insurance program to include wind. With one policy where American home and business owners can get both wind and flood insurance coverage, we won’t have private insurance industry deliberately failing to pay on the wind insurance policies as the industry has apparently done. We will have the option of having one policy and one carrier for both. Remember, the private insurance companies got out of the insurance business in the 60’s.

When Pelosi returns to the Katrina-ravaged region today, she does so as the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Where are the high ranking Republicans who ought to be attending? For that matter, where were they last year?

From what I have learned, once again, no Republican is attending. Not one. This is more than disappointing. When Katrina hit, the storm blew through Republican and Democratic homes and businesses alike. When Katrina hit, the storm devastated right wing Republican homes and businesses along with Democratic ones. When the insurance industry abandoned and betrayed Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana residents and business owners, it abandoned and betrayed Republican and Democratic ones simultaneously.

This hurricane was nonpartisan. The ensuing financial and physical devastation are nonpartisan. The depression and post-traumatic stress that plagues the areas residents and businessowners are nonpartisan. The cry for assistance is also nonpartisan. I am grateful that the highest levels of Democratic leadership as Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi demonstrated last year and this are hearing and responding to our plea. It is the right thing to do. It is the moral thing to do. It is the compassionate thing to do.

Wasn’t it George W. Bush and Dick Cheney who campaigned on compassion? Apparently, it is the Democrats who DO compassion whereas Republicans only use it as a campaign slogan.

Isn’t the Republican Party the one that loves to campaign about being pro-family? Katrina hit families hard, and those families continue to hurt. Guess it isn’t the right year for campaign photo ops and speeches that give the impression of being pro-family, huh? Republicans TALK compassion. Democrats DO compassion.

Isn’t the Republican Party the one that likes to campaign on issues of fiscal responsibility? Oooops. Bush’s FEMA is anything but fiscally responsible. Take their handling of delivering formaldehyde-filled FEMA trailers. On the floor of the House of Representatives, Gulf Coast Congressman Gene Taylor (D-MS) spoke to the issue of the Bush Administration’s fraudulent practices through FEMA.

But those trailers were delivered by a friend of the president by the name of Riley Bechtel, a major contributor to Bush administration. He got $16,000 to haul a trailer the last 70 miles from Purvis, Miss., down to the Gulf Coast, hook it up to a garden hose, hook it up to a sewer tap, and plug it in, $16,000.

Isn’t the Republican Party the one that likes to campaign on issues important to business? When the insurance industry fails to pay on the wind insurance policies that its customers paid premiums, the industry members are not distinguishing between wrongfully denying customers based on whether they are residential or commercial customers. No, sir, they are not. As the insurance industry fails to pay out on its wind insurance policies for which business owners have paid their premiums, these businesses cannot rebuild, cannot open their doors, and cannot return to their customers and employees. The same is true when insurance rates are no longer affordable. To thrive, communities must have businesses: grocery stores, clothing stores, malls, auto repair shops, paint stores, music stores, movie theaters, restaurants, etc.

I have driven all along the Mississippi Gulf Coast from Lakeshore, Miss., on the far western corner along Beach Boulevard across the new Bay Bridge all the way to Biloxi about 40 miles away. I didn’t see ONE gas station. Not ONE. In fact, I hardly saw any businesses or residences or the construction of any of these either. Here we are up against the two-year anniversary. What I did see were plenty of wide open space where homes and businesses were once plentiful.

Tonight will be interesting from a number of perspectives. It’s my second one with Speaker Pelosi. Back in 2001, she held a town hall meeting in her district of San Francisco, which I attended. It was vibrant and alive. I felt exhilarated by the entirety of it all. A Bay kid (yours truly from Bay St. Louis, Miss.) at a town hall meeting in the hub of what the world knows as the Bay area of California—San Francisco. Most people there expressed outrage at the stolen 2000 presidential election.

(Boy, if the Bush White House neglect in Hurricane Katrina doesn’t demonstrate clearly that election outcomes have consequences . )

Tonight’s town hall meeting is going to be a fundamentally different topic. It’s going to be fundamentally different for me, though, because the topic is deeply personal. I’ve lived the post-Katrina life now for five months. I’m native. I needed no tutoring on the customs and values here. I possess them. I need no photos of the pre-Katrina landscape. I have vibrant memories seared in my mind. I need no explanation of why the Mississippi Gulf Coast residents—regardless of our ethnicity or when our ancestors arrived or how, think and act as they do. All of this is in my own DNA. I need no explanation of the values here for these are in my heart.

Throughout the Mississippi Gulf Coast, we are all hard working, humble, modest people who value family, friends, and community. We are among the poorest areas in the country.
Folks around here tend to keep their head down and trudge through whatever obstacles are before them. We are fiercely independent in nature and value self-reliance even when help would make life easier, better. We are forever grateful when someone does assist us. Loyalty is big for us.

Our collective fascination with the intricacies of the political world is on par with that throughout the country. Not much. In the aftermath of the worst natural disaster, though, the only political sophistication that will remain seared in our collective memory is who came here to help. We’re forever grateful to all volunteers whether they came here in person or sent their George Washington envoy (money).

With the private insurance industry rolling over us and Bush’s FEMA, our memory of who helped us will have two faces on it today. Mississippi’s own Congressman Gene Taylor, a conservative, and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, a progressive. In a way, this is what it really means to reach across the proverbial political divide to get things done on behalf of the American people where ever we live in our nation.

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Normalcy Long Overdue in Katrina-Ravaged Region

by Ana Maria

Two days ago, Mississippi voters in the Democratic Primary ousted Insurance Commissioner George Dale, whose cozy relationship with Big Insurance became his electoral albatross. Surely less than a year ago, Dale anticipated his re-election bid to retain the normalcy he had experienced over the last three decades of running for office.

The campaigns for newly-elected Democratic nominee Gary Anderson and his Republican opponent will recuperate from the primary, then redirect their efforts for the usual hustle and bustle of a general election, which will be held this November. Even inside the chaotic nature of every election campaign, there is a sense of normalcy to that chaos—at least for those of us who’ve been in a few.

Here inside the Katrina-ravaged region, we’re still struggling to return to a sense of normalcy. At Katrina’s ground zero, we still have Wal-Mart as our only grocery store for at least a 30 minute ride in any direction. Insurance companies continue to low ball, delay, and fight tooth and nail to break their legal contracts to pay on legitimate wind damage claims. Reliable, solid, and reasonably priced contractors to repair homes are still miraculous to find. FEMA continues to jerk around municipalities.

Jobs are scarce. More scarce are employees. More scarce still? Housing.

Even hotels are difficult to find. On reflection, that makes sense. When Big Insurance decided not to pay wind damage claims for its wind policy customers, it did screwed over all customers—including the hotels.

What is easy to find are the stories of how folks survived in those first few weeks after Katrina hit.

Turning Family Homes into Hotels and Restaurants
Yesterday, I spoke with a young woman who was going into her senior in high school two years ago when Katrina hit. She works as a concierge at one of the local casino resort hotels that re-opened recently. She is working at the hotel as she goes to the local university.

When I encouraged her to stay in school, she looked me squarely in my eyes and said, “Don’t worry. I was valedictorian of my class. I have every intention of getting my degree.” Good. I asked how her family made out in the storm.

She said that her family lives in Guatier (go-sheyah), Miss., near a river, but the family home only had a few shingles fly off their roof. No other damage. Fortunately, her dad owns a local roofing business so repairing was a breeze. Given the family’s relative fortune in coming out of the worst natural disaster, I asked how many people ended up staying at their place.

Notice, I didn’t ask whether they opened their home. I didn’t ask if anyone had asked to come stay with them. Given the innumerable stories that I’ve heard since returning home in March for my, uh, short surprise visit that has since extended past the few weeks I had intended, I knew that it wasn’t a matter of whether, but how many stayed with them.

The young college student told me that after Katrina, her family helped everyone clear out yards and streets. For at least a month, and maybe six weeks, after the storm, though, they didn’t have any electricity. She said that sometimes they were cooking for 50 people—breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They didn’t know how many or who would show up much less when. It was like running a hotel.

Amazing.

My cousin Eric was living in Slidell at the time Katrina hit. Slidell is 30 minutes east of New Orleans and 30 minutes west of Bay St. Louis, Miss.,--one of the three tiny beach towns that comprise Katrina’s ground zero. When the New Orleans levees broke, parts of Slidell flooded. Eric and his immediate family did ok. His older brother, Chip, who lives in Diamondhead, Miss., just a bit up the road from the western part of the Gulf Coast, lost everything. Recently, Eric shared with me part of his post-Katrina story.

One Big Garage Sale—With a Twist
Like the young woman’s family in Gautier, Eric and his wife Lisa had opened their home to Katrina survivors never knowing how many would be eating with them at breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Fortunately, Lisa is a great cook and loves cooking. Eric said it was like running a restaurant because they had to cook big batches of everything.

Every room in his home housed survivors—including a woman in the last month or two of her pregnancy. He felt badly because the better beds were upstairs which she had to climb for the more comfortable sleeping quarters.

Eric holds a leadership position in an international Catholic prayer circle dedicated to Medjugorje. He put out a call to those members who live on the west bank of New Orleans, because they didn’t get hit by either Katrina or the levee breaks. With creative flare, he asked for everyone to clear out their garages. If it isn’t being used, donate it to those who lost so much in Katrina.

Calls poured in. On his lunch hour, after work and on the weekends, Eric would go pick up furniture, baby clothes, appliances, or whatever people had and networked to give it to those who in need.

He said that he had learned of a very elderly African American lady—around 90 years old, if I recall correctly—who had 15 family members in her home, but she had no stove to cook the meals. A call came in about a brand new stove sitting in someone’s garage waiting to be installed in the house. The family decided that the old stove was fine, and they could donate the stove to the effort.

Eric had one lady tell him that she needed a bed. But the catch was that her husband was a BIG man requiring a king sized bed. Oooo. That’s gonna be a tough one. He told her to pray for it. He had not even reached his home when a call came in—someone had a king-sized bed. Did he know who could use it?

Eric regaled me with story after story similar to that one. In one instance, a mother told Eric that just before the storm, she had just finished decorating her young daughter’s room with everything Shortcake and how devastating losing it had been on her daughter. Now the woman was clearly just sharing with my beloved cousin part of her family’s Katrina story.

Yet, before he knew it, he got a call from a woman who told him that her daughter had outgrown her bedroom, which had been decorated in everything Shortcake. Did he know of anyone that could use it?
Around Christmas time, Eric’s boss approached him asking what he is doing on his lunch hour. He had been watching Eric—a longtime, valued employee—dart in an out for a few weeks. So Eric told him of the garage-emptying project he started. The boss was impressed, of course. What did he do? Noting that Christmas was coming up, he asked how he could best help provide for those families. Eric said “gift cards.”

If I recall correctly, the boss put out an email to all the employees. The company ended up donating piles of $25 gift cards, which Eric and his merry band of friends personally delivered to various families so that the parents could shop for their kids. One woman, whom I’m sure represented the reaction from many recipient, simply cried when Eric handed her the package of gift cards tied neatly with a pretty ribbon. She said that she had no idea how to provide some normalcy in her children’s lives. She thanked him profusely.

Another lady opened her door when Eric knocked. She listened as he said what he was there to drop off. He handed her the gift cards wrapped in pretty ribbon, and without a word, she closed the door. Months later, she got word to him that she was so stunned, so in shock, that she couldn’t say a word. She, too, was grateful for the sense of normalcy the gift cards would bring to her children at Christmas.

Normalcy? What normalcy?
We’re just shy of the two-year anniversary from any sense of normalcy here in the Katrina-ravaged region.

Those who live in New Orleans are suffering because of the levee break and the breakdown in our federal government, which has utterly failed to live up to its obligation to the American people.

Those who live outside of New Orleans, but inside Louisiana—such as those in Slidell, and those of us who live anywhere along the 50 miles of the Mississippi Gulf Coast and into Alabama, also yearn for normalcy.

A sense of normalcy. That is what everyone here yearns for. Anytime some small effort is put forth, all one has to do is take a drive down beach boulevard in Bay St. Louis and Waveland, Miss., then cross the bridge and continue down highway 90 from Pass Christian through Long Beach, Gulfport, Biloxi, and Ocean Springs. The stairs leading to no where represent homes that have not been able to be rebuilt. Same with the slabs that are cleared of debris but overgrown with weeds. And the steel beams standing erect waiting for the walls to be returned to their pre-Katrina place.

For all of us here, a sense of pre-Katrina normalcy is long overdue.

As I hear of all these wonderful, arms wide-open stories of folks making do and doing more than good enough to get through this ongoing crisis, I keep thinking why in the living heck George Bush and the vast resources at his fingertips didn’t and still doesn’t bother to lift much of a finger to restore a sense of normalcy.

Oh, I see.

I forgot to look carefully at which finger he and his administration were collectively lifting.



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Gary Anderson Wins: Post-Katrina Justice Rules!!

by Ana Maria

In a gloriously magnificent upset electoral victory, Democratic candidate Gary Anderson defeated George Dale 51-49% to become Mississippi’s first African American Democratic nominee for Insurance Commissioner. Anderson’s pro-consumer position resonated throughout the state sending George Dale packing after 32 years in office.

Just two years after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Mississippi Gulf Coast, voters from the three coastal counties definitively voted for Anderson in a sharp slap in the face to George Dale who had come to epitomize Big Insurance. The three tiny beach towns comprising Katrina’s ground zero reside in Hancock and Harrison counties. Voters in those counties cast ballots for Gary Anderson at a rate of 69% and 82% respectively. Jackson County, which is Mississippi’s third county on the eastern end of the Gulf Coast, voted for Gary Anderson over incumbent George Dale at a rate of 76%. Voter revenge? You bet.

Anderson’s appeal to rededicate the state’s insurance commissioner position to the tradition of protecting consumers from the ravages of Big Insurance resonated throughout the state. For example, 67% of voters cast their ballots for Anderson over Dale in Hinds County where George Dale lives. The state’s capitol city of Jackson is in Hinds County, which is in the middle of the state. The Clarion Ledger, Jackson’s daily newspaper, endorsed Dale. Ooops! By a wide margin, voters must have ignored the paper’s perspective that they’d be in good hands with Ol’ George.

Of course, George Dale did his best to convince voters that his primary job was to prop up insurance companies rather than protecting policyholders. George Dale told voters that Katrina was “the worst natural disaster in U.S. history . . . and put an undue burden on insurance companies.”

Mississippi voters cast their ballots which reflected their agreement with Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, the “billionaire insurance titan” who stated "We are in the insurance business. We are in the risk business. And if you start taking away every risk that industry is exposed to, then what do you need an insurance company for?"

Licking their Wounds
We can count on the Dale campaign spending endless hours commiserating over what went wrong . . . with the campaign. What it will not do is entertain the idea that the campaign was doomed from the get go. No amount of nuancing, no amount of strategizing, no tactical preparations could remove from the campaign its fundamental flaw.

George Dale didn’t do his job, and many, many, many families, businesses, communities, schools, cities, towns, non-profits, and places of worship suffered—and continue to suffer—needlessly.

The Dale Campaign will surely be licking their wounds for a while. However, they may never see that the candidate inflicted those wounds upon himself.

Pundits Predicted Appallingly
Some pundits predicted that voters along the Gulf Coast would not show up to the polls. They were, uh, wrong. Some predicted that the more northern counties would carry Dale to victory. Wrong again. Some predicted that Mississippians wouldn’t cast their ballot for an African American man over a white, good ol’ boy who’s entrenched in the Old South way of doing business. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

What happened?
George Dale epitomized Big Insurance, which the whole world now knows is starving Gulf Coast businesses and families of the funding that would power up the engine to recovery. The elephant in the middle of the room is Big Insurance. With George Dale out of office, we now have a chance to address the issue and remedy the problems caused during his tenure and with his help.

Breaking its legal contracts with policyholders, Big Insurance has wrongfully denied families and businesses the money required for rebuilding. George Dale sided with the insurance companies. These very same families and business owners went to the polls and cast their ballots for Gary Anderson, rejecting Dale’s business as usual approach.

Rather than rolling out the red carpet for the insurance companies as George Dale has done, Gary Anderson campaigned on a platform that includes creating a criminal investigations division. That Anderson has to set up a criminal investigations division means that George Dale never did in spite of 32 years in which to do so. Without a criminal investigation arm, Dale assured his insurance industry friends that they had nothing to fear. With Anderson's win, Dale's Big Insurance friends now have something to fear.

Lacking Imagination
Neither Dale nor the insurance industry counted on voters raging over their post-Katrina greed . . . and actually channeling their rage into the ballot box. Clearly, they never imagined that Gary Anderson could mount an effective campaign to tap into that voter rage and channel it into his own electoral victory on behalf of all of Mississippi consumers. Well, that’s what a lack of imagination will do for you.

Jacking Up Premiums
In obscene fashion, Big Insurance has jacked up the cost of insurance throughout Mississippi—just as it has done in California, Oklahoma, and elsewhere in the nation. George Dale authorized each of those jacked up premiums. Voters took note and cast their ballots that vetoed Dale’s rubber-stamping the industry’s greed-driven premium hikes.

Pocketing Industry Funds
While Dale raked in hundreds of thousands of campaign dollars essentially flaunting his torrid affair with an industry that has wreaked havoc on Mississippians, Gary Anderson signed a pledge not to take contributions from insurance companies or executives.

When talking with A.M. in the Morning! recently, Hancock County Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Tish Williams said the biggest impediment to recovery remains the cost of insurance. Ms. Williams added that right up behind that is finding employees, which is problematic because there is no housing. The housing, she added, goes right back to the issue of insurance. So, insurance is the biggest impediment to recovery.

Post-Katrina Justice Rules!
The election of staunchly pro-consumer candidate Gary Anderson is the outcry for removing that impediment. While Big Insurance may now be heard crying in it beer over losing its sweetheart in the Mississippi Insurance Commissioner’s office, we can be heard happily singing a new tune with the election of Gary Anderson as the Democratic nominee for the state’s Insurance Commissioner. Post-Katrina Justice Rules!


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A Breath Of Fresh Air In Post-Katrina Mississippi

by Ana Maria

Today’s a big day in Mississippi. While there are plenty of contested local races throughout the state—particularly on the Republican side, the insurance commissioner is the most important statewide race because it impacts every individual, family, community, and every form of government inside the state.

Here on the coast, electing Gary Anderson as the Democratic nominee and booting out George Dale from office would clearly send more than a few ripples of joy throughout the Katrina-ravaged region. You see, the insurance crisis impacts so many things that most of us—myself included—just don’t think about until it is pointed out.

For example, I’m hearing how drug and alcohol abuse among teens and adults has dramatically increased since Katrina. Kids have no where to go—not a movie theater, skating rink, nothing. What is there to do? How are they to channel all the usual that comes with being a teen and all the unusual that resides inside of them because of Katrina’s impact?

Their friends may be scattered to the winds. The kids may have had to deal with death of friends or family members. Their homes may be gone, schools destroyed, social groups evaporated. Their families finances shattered because of jobs no longer available since most businesses were lost in Katrina. On top of that, little to no money for rebuilding the family home.

We know that communities everywhere struggle with this issue of teens and having places for them to go and activities to keep them occupied in healthy ways. Put on top of that having lost everything they’ve ever known including their social network that helps them go through those difficult years that transform kids into young adults. No wonder drugs and alcohol are rampant.

This past weekend, I attended a Democratic Women’s annual picnic in which many candidates or their surrogates spoke. I was honored to speak on behalf of Gary Anderson. The park was stupendously gorgeous with water to the one side of us, beautiful homes on another, and the beautiful green grass and trees everywhere.

My pitch was easy—all Gary Anderson voters, of course. Yes, I gave them a political hell raising activity: get out their address books and call all of their friends and family to ensure that they remembered to get out and vote. (I'm the same me on paper and in person—only a lot more lively in the flesh.)

The lady who spoke with me about the teen issue also talked with me about the level of depression hitting teens as well as adults and how she is losing friends to suicide, those who lose hope that their lives will ever get back to some level of normalcy.

I listened as she told me that another issue facing the Gulf Coast is the lack of affordable housing in the area and how the insurance companies have made it so that apartment complexes cannot afford to rebuild and that those that may be rebuilt will have to substantially raise the rent to cover the insurance rates.

I recall talking with a grade school friend some months back. Before the storm, her elderly mother’s apartment rent was about $500 a month. After Katrina, the rent nearly doubled—$900 a month. I don’t know about you, but if my monthly costs for housing doubled, that would be more than a bit difficult to absorb.

Most of us could not absorb it regardless of whether we are Democrats or Republicans, seniors or not yet seniors, single or married, Caucasian, African American, Vietnamese American, Sikh, Latino, disabled veteran, coach, nurse, lawyer or doctor. Whether we are salaried, self-employed, hourly wage or fixed income households, we all have “X” amount of money coming in—if we’re among the lucky ones, that is. Increasing household expenses in such a dramatic fashion makes life more than difficult to say the least.

By the way, my grade school friend’s family who received this shocking increase on mom’s rent? The family is Republican.

Increased teen drug and alcohol abuse, adult depression so overwhelming that suicide seems the only out of the unnecessary misery, skyrocketing financial burdens unfair under any circumstances. And what does Mississippi Insurance Commissioner George Dale have to say about all of this?

“My mistake after Katrina was saying . . . some claims are not going to be paid because of water damage.”

WHAT?! The financial ruin of an entire region because Dale chose to turn his back on these communities, cities, towns, and every person inside of them. The emotional devastation that came as a result of Dale assisting his insurance industry buddies to create the largest financial disaster to hit the area probably since the Great Depression in the 1930s. And all he can think about is that his mistake was blurting out what was that he shouldn’t have gone public with insider knowledge that he was going to let the insurance companies get away with ripping off Gulf Coast residents?

Dale’s comments seem to have come from a set of talking points that the insurance industry would have supplied him.

I don’t know how a public official can be so completely devoid of taking personal responsibility for the ruin his own public policies have had on an entire region. I don’t know how a public official can be so completely devoid of an ounce of genuine compassion.

Who am I kidding? George Dale publicly campaigned on behalf of George W. Bush.

I pray that tonight will bring everyone on the Gulf Coast great joy at having helped to give George Dale his walking papers through electing Gary Anderson as the next Democratic nominee for the state’s insurance commissioner. While the insurance industry will have the wind knocked out of it, electing Gary Anderson will be a breath of air that surely to goodness we could all use especially here in post-Katrina Mississippi.


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Mississippi Insurance Commissioner Just Doesn’t Get It—His Job, That Is . . .

by Ana Maria

Some have said that I may be too cozy with the industry I regulate. Those who make these charges have never offered one fact where I have not held [the] insurance industry accountable to the laws of Mississippi that I am called on to enforce.

–George Dale Speech at the Neshoba County Fair,
video courtesy of John Leek and Cotton Mouth Blog

After 32 years sucking out money at the government teat, after over three decades in the job, George Dale doesn’t know his job. He is supposed to effectively, efficiently and faithfully carryout the duties of insurance commissioner. That is not just following the letter, but also the spirit, of the law. The point of his job isn’t to be the government paid lobbyist for the insurance industry. Voters wouldn’t put up with that nonsense. The industry has plenty of its own money to pay for lobbyists.

The point of the insurance commissioner is to protect consumers from the ravages of a market that would rip us off blindly if we let them. Andddddd, it is to create a level playing field for the businesses who are insuring our homes, offices, and non-profit organizations as well as local, state, and federal government assets. Unfortunately for us here in Mississippi, Insurance Commissioner George Dale is like their good neighbor, his always on their side. That’s right, the insurance industry is in good hands with George Dale.

When it comes to his job, George just doesn’t’ get it. I think to help him understand the errors of his ways will require breaking it down a bit. Let’s try to spark in him a vague memory of the point of his job.

1. “They made me do it!”

George Dale claims that the corporate big wigs in the insurance industry force him to burden Mississippians with massive jumps in the cost of insurance. The usual talking point for an insurance company is that they will take all their toys and go home if George doesn’t give them the obscene rate increases they are demanding. Dutifully, George drinks the kool-aid the industry gives him, and then he spits out this garbage.

“One important aspect of my job is to maintain a marketplace for the sale of insurance.”

Mississippi Insurance Commissioner George Dale, 2003

News Flash, George. It isn’t the only or the primary aspect of your job. The key question is this. To whose benefit do you maintain that marketplace? Your demonstrated bias is to maintain the marketplace for the benefit of the insurance industry itself and its apparent insatiable lust for obscene amounts of profit.

However, you are supposed to maintain a marketplace for the sale of insurance that is fair and equitable to all insurance companies AND that benefits the public. A HUGE difference.

Don’t give me that poppycock that it won’t do any good if an insurance company pulls out of the state. What is this? Government propping up of business? If companies can’t make their obscene profits here, fine. Let ‘em go. Don’t let the door hit ‘em, you know?

2. “Come right on in! We have your office all set up.”

George, you are supposed to protect the hen house from the foxes, not roll out the red carpet and invite them to set up shop inside your govern-ment office. Immediately following hurricane Katrina, the worst natural disaster in our history, you allowed an insurance industry PR flack to set up shop inside your government office.

When you did this, George, you betrayed the very people depending on you to protect them from the foxes in the insurance industry.

3. “Don’t’ be ridiculous. I’m supposed to be good friends with Industry lobbyists and hire one of their big time lawyers to be my own attorney.”

George, you are supposed to be regulating the insurance industry, not becoming good friends with its big time lobbyists or hiring a big industry attorney as your own lawyer. No, there is no law specifically prohibiting this. However, there is something mighty unethical about it. It doesn’t take a college graduate such as yourself to see that this creates a C-O-N-F-L-I-C-T of I-N-T-E-R-E-S-T.

Yet, all you said about hiring Greg Copeland, an attorney who is a longtime lobbyist for the insurance industry, is “I don’t see any conflict.”

George get your eyes checked, honey. You aren’t seeing the smut that is squarely on the end of your nose. In fact, George, you called this big insurance lobbyist "a good friend." You are not paid to be good friends with the industry. You are paid to protect us from the insurance industry’s propensity for not doing right by us.

Since you see no conflict with it, George, why don’t you just go ahead amd campaign specifically citing your chumminess with an industry big wig.

Vote for me! I’m good friends with an insurance industry big wig lobbyist. I will protect the insurance industry from silly fools who think their family and business budgets ought to come first. Remem-ber . . . a vote for George Dale is a vote for big insurance!

Could these be the reasons that Forbes Magazine reported this horrible fact about insurance rates on your watch?

“Mississippi, dead last in [per capita] income, is the sixth most expensive place to insure a house.”

See, your job is to be a referee so that there is a level playing field that does not benefit one company over the other, that makes it fair for all companies to compete, AND that ensures the public is PROTECTED. The main reason your job exists is because if left to its own devices, the insurance industry is unfair to its customers such as home and business owners. These are YOUR constituents. However, you think your job is to protect your favored corporations. You have missed the boat, George.

Your job is to protect all the folks in the state who own homes and businesses as well as educational facilities. And let us remember that every government agency and non-profit needs insurance, too. That is OUR money going into paying the insurance on the courthouses, jails, public schools, etc. When you approve inappropriately massive increases in insurance rates to protect a company or set of companies that you favor, you demonstrate that have lost your way and forgotten the job you had been elected to do.

You are one confused public official, George. Your job is about the public interest, not your personal interest.

You let the insurance industry co-opt you. They didn’t make you. You did this to yourself.

Heck, even the Mississippi State Supreme Court has so much as stated that you’ve abandoned your post, gone AWOL when it comes to regulating insurance companies.

These days, George, you are whining about trial lawyers who represent the very constituents you’ve long abandoned, lawyers who are the champions for the policyholders you’ve long abandoned. Come to think of it, because you haven’t done your job, you’ve become the trial lawyer’s best friend. Way to go, George. Way to go.

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Miss. Insurance Commissioner Finds Self in Political Harm's Way

by Ana Maria

Once again, Mr. Foot-in-Mouth Diseased Insurance Commissioner of the State of Mississippi—George Dale—has implied that the majority of Americans ought to move. That’s right, George Dale thinks that the 55% of Americans whom the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency reported live within 50 miles of our nation’s gloriously beautiful coastlines should move from our homes, families, communities, places of worship, jobs, and friends . . . and that if we don’t, then—by George—we get what we deserve from the worst of Mother Nature.

Oh, George, you are such a horse’s patoot!

Rather than having worked tirelessly as an exceedingly strong, faithful, and compassionate advocate on behalf of every Mississippi family and business owner—especially in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, George Dale has spent his tenure being in the pocket of the very insurance industry he is responsible for regulating.

Gary Anderson is Dale’s opponent in next week’s Democratic primary. Anderson’s television ad asserts that Dale has received $260,000 in campaign contributions from the insurance industry and raised insurance rates 29%.

Mississippians for Fair Elections is running a television ad asserting that the insurance industry is denying valid claims all over the state while making over $60 billion in profits in 2006 alone. The ad asserts further asserts that George Dale raised insurance rates implying that raising the rates may be the reason the industry has invested over $200,000 in his campaign.


A month and a half or so ago, Dale clearly showed his hand to the Clarksdale Lion’s Club.

Katrina was “the worst natural disaster in U.S. history . . . and put an undue burden on insurance companies.”

Yeah, I feel so sorry for the corporate fat cats whose boards of directors have insisted on drowning their CEOs in millions. State Farm increased the salary of its CEO by 82%. Last year, Allstate gave its CEO a $5 million annual raise on top of a nearly $10 million bonus. That sure would have paid for an awful lot of homes and businesses to be repaired.

Heck, rather thandefending the billions in profits from an industry that is hurting his own Mississippi people, George Dale should have pro-actively sent down boatloads of folks from his office—hired more if needed—to help his constituents fill out the paperwork to get the insurance claims filed and to apply for the state grants. Then, Dale should have led the charge to ensure that the insurance companies honored their legal contracts rather than pull the “wind vs. water” baloney he apparently allowed to go unchecked.

We have elderly and mentally disabled folks. We have folks simply devastated from the magnitude of Katrina’s force. We have folks exhausted from battling insurance companies. The commissioner of insurance should have battled the insurance giants on behalf of his constituents. Instead, Dale forced these good people of all political, religious, and economic backgrounds to turn to trial attorneys such as our state’s very own Dickey Scruggs to get the helping hand they needed from a good friend.

To my knowledge, Dale has NEVER mentioned the significant burden that the insurance companies have placed on Mississippi families and businesses by refusing to pay legitimate claims on their wind policies. No, he has not used his office as a bully pulpit to get the insurance companies to honor their contracts. Rather, Dale is using the power of his office to bully Mississippians who live on the Gulf Coast into believing that we deserve no help from our government or our insurance company regardless of whatever bad weather comes our way damaging our homes, our businesses, our communities, and our places of worship . . . and no matter the legal contract we had signed up for with our insurance company. Oh, George, how utterly vile and contemptible.

Now that he is in a tough election campaign for the job he has held for 32 years, Dale is choosing to attack the fact that his constituents live on one of America’s coastlines. Speaking recently before the Rotary Club in Columbus, Miss., Dale asked

“Should we be allowed to live wherever we choose even if it's in harm's way? Should we make taxpayers pick up the tab of those who choose to live in harm's way?”

Mississippi Insurance Commissioner George Dale
Dale discusses Katrina's impact on insurance, campaign
The Commercial Dispatch

Excuse me?! Since when is Dale in charge of determining whether a geographic area constitutes being in “harm’s way”?

Perhaps George Dale would like to list the “safe” geographical places in our nation so that the 55% of us who live within 50 miles of our nation’s “unsafe” coastlines can immediately pack up and move to this alleged “safe place”. By the way, according to the Census Bureau, 55% of our nation’s population equals 167 million Americans. I wonder where George is anticipating us to move? Where exactly is this fictitious place where we can live outside of harm’s way?

If that list of “safe from all of Mother Nature” isn’t at Dale’s finger tips, perhaps some of his buddies inside Big Insurance can provide him with it—should such a list exist. Of course, where ever these “safe-from-Mother-Nature” cities and towns are, well, surely to goodness our need for insurance will evaporate into thin air. After all, as the “billionaire insurance titan” himself stated

"We are in the insurance business. We are in the risk business. And if you start taking away every risk that industry is exposed to, then what do you need an
insurance company for?"

C.V. Starr & Co. Chairman Maurice "Hank" Greenberg
Insurance Journal
May 2007

But really, why would George stop at recommending only the 55% of Americans who live within 50 miles of America’s magnificent coastlines? He had told the Columbus Rotarians

“over $122 million in claims have been paid in Hinds County alone, which is more than 150 miles inland.”

Shall we infer that Dale will eventually recommend that any American who lives within 150 miles of our coastlines also deserve whatever Mother Nature dishes out and perhaps should move in order to obtain insurance and governmental assistance? What an utterly ridiculous thing to consider. The whole thing is George Dale’s attempt to deflect from answering key questions.

Why is George Dale running away from his post-Katrina record on the coast? He’s so ashamed of it that he didn’t even buy any air time for campaign television or radio spots. [See George Dale is a Coward.]

Why is George Dale essentially saying that the 55% of Americans who live, work, and worship within 50 miles of our nation's beautiful and spectacular coastline deserve all the Katrinas that Mother Nature can dish out?

Why is George Dale defending the insurance industry he is supposed to be regulating on behalf of the people of Mississippi?

Why did George Dale fail to vociferously, aggressively, and faithfully advocate in a successful manner on behalf of the families and business owners who had religiously paid their insurance premiums only to be screwed over by various companies that refused to honor their wind policy contracts?

All of George’s hatred spewing with him telling the Gulf Coast residents to move if they don’t like the way he permits insurance companies to run all over them? Bizarre campaign strategy, really. What could be the point other than sour grapes because the folks on the Gulf Coast aren’t thanking him for enabling the insurance industry to harm families and businesses by the thousands?

Then, a celestial spirit again visited me in the night sharing these ever-important poignant insights.

George is still trying to divide Mississippians one against the other. His standard line to audiences in North Mississippi:

“Should we be allowed to live wherever we choose even if it's in harm's way? Should we make taxpayers pick up the tab of those who choose to live in harm's way?”

He plays to the worst instincts of his audience by making them think they will have to pay higher premiums just because other people live near the Coast.

Wow! Now that makes it fall into place. While it explains his behavior, it does not excuse it. The commissioner of insurance is supposed to be a trusted public servant. Down here on the coast, his actions have instilled betrayal rather than trust. Personally, I don’t cotton to that.

Insurance commissioners don’t have to be that way
Let’s contrast Mississippi’s insurance commissioner with California’s former insurance commissioner John Garamendi, who won his race for Lt. Governor in last November’s election. Garamendi has a fierce reputation for defending California’s policyholders and going up against insurance companies like State Farm. About a year ago, Garamendi went public “accusing California's largest auto insurers of using political extortion to get him to delay implementing laws that would save California motorists money,” See video here.

San Francisco’s CBS television station reported that Garamendi received a phone call in which

“he was offered a take it or leave it deal. [Garamendi] says a lobbying group that represents the state's top auto insurers threatened to spend over $2 million in a negative ad campaign unless he delayed new insurance regulations - regulations that require auto insurance companies to give more weight to how people drive rather than where they live, a practice known as red lining.”

Garamendi said the lobbying group behind the threats “is funded by State Farm, Farmers, Safeco, Allstate and other top insurers.” The San Francisco television station reported that “State Farm confirmed to CBS 5 that the phone call to Garamendi did take place, but they denied blackmail or coercion.” State Farm sure is busy these days, and apparently not with taking great care of its policyholders.

Rather than buckling under the weight of the alleged blackmail and extortion, Garamendi went public. View news clip. He also turned the matter over to the FBI and state officials. Read Garamendi’s letter to the FBI and state officials.

Garamendi is proof positive that standing up to corporate bullies can be successfully accomplished. All it takes is courage, character, and commitment to the public good.

Clearly the sun needs to set on George Dale’s tenure as insurance commissioner. So here are a few political hell raising activities that will help push over the finish line a candidate who has signed a pledge not to take money from the insurance industry AND with our help has a chance to win.

Contribute a few dollars into Gary Anderson's campaign, volunteer with the campaign--maybe phone banking long distance if the campaign is dong that, and vote for him are all steps that can be taken to be part of a solution to the problem with George Dale's cozy relationship with the insurance industry that has ravaged the coast in ways beyond what Katrina did. This is how we help George Dale understand that by deliberately placing others on a path of financial and emotional distress has consequences, he placed himself in harm’s way.

___________________________________________

If you enjoyed this piece, you may also enjoy reading the following.

George Dale is a Coward

Mr. “I can do my job” isn’t doing his job


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