Grateful: Home Builder's Assoc. Strong Ally in Insurance Reform

by Ana Maria

My heart danced with great joy and I burst out in smiles all over the place the other night. I had received the email announcing the great news that the National Association of Home Builders has endorsed Congressman Gene Taylor’s multiple peril insurance policy proposal. This is a big victory for home and business owners. The NAHB is an incredible ally in helping to restore the financial security many of us believe we have when we buy home or business owner insurance policies.

Taylor and his wife Margaret lost their home in Katrina, were denied wind-related damages, and had to hire Dickie Scruggs to fight their insurance company. A Democrat who represents South Mississippi, Taylor and his staff have worked tirelessly on insurance reform. The news about the homebuilders is a welcome addition to the team, I’m sure.

How fantastic that a major, important, and mainstream player in our nation’s economy “gets it.” The National Homebuilders Association understands the crippling negative economic impact of requiring home and business owners to purchase insurance-in-name-only. The impact? Financial ruin for the individual homeowner or business owner and for all the connecting businesses as well, connecting businesses like . . . homebuilders, developers, architects, contractors, electricians, plumbers, carpenters, painters, bricklayers, and so on and so forth.

Their announcement is a great shot of energy that even I felt when I read the article. I’ve been here only six months, yet I’m already experiencing some energy shifts, what one person referred to as the 6-month burnout. Well, I’m not burn out. I am frustrated as hell, though.

I like to get things done. Period. Figure out what needs doing, set my mind to doing it, and begin moving heaven-hell-and-earth to get it done. In no time flat, voila! It’s done no matter what impossibilities may have been required to overcome.

Katrina Land is a different kettle of fish, however. Like many others, I want to do more, but the reality of the enormity of the obstacles astounds me. Help and leadership that would have been here, say, eight or nine years ago, is no where to be found. The brazen abandonment by those leaders upon whom we depend in national or natural emergencies remains shocking, the stinging betrayal unrecognizably unfathomable.

Six years ago today, our entire nation experienced the devastation that we now refer to simply as 9-11. The loss of life profound. The impact on those families immeasurable. Nationally, we felt vulnerable in ways we had not ever before felt.

This week’s 60 Minutes aired a piece titled The Dust At Ground Zero. Yes, today, many first responders and others suffer from breathing in air that the Bush Administration declared safe. Another Bush betrayal in the face of a national emergency.

The Katrina-ravaged region remains a national emergency. When Bush brags about the billions appropriated to the Katrina region, he fails to mention how much remains in the pipeline hung up by his own executive branch politics and bureaucratic red tape that he could clear—if only he wanted to. Instead, he comes to the area for his annual photo op, speaks his niceties and another round of empty promises, and goes to his next stop to do the same. His is a betrayal of pretension.

That’s the kind of betrayal that the insurance industry has imposed upon us nationally as American consumers of residential and business policies. When an insurance company sells policies that fail to do what we pay our good money for it to do, then the insurance company commits betrayal through pretension.

While it may ultimately come as no surprise that Bush’s corporate buddies in the insurance industry betrayed us, the emotional and financial reality of this betrayal has upended our lives permanently in much the same devastating way as 9-11 upended the nation.

I know that insurance is one of those boring, mundane, non-sexy aspects of our lives. There’s nothing all that dramatic about it, except when we don’t have it. Don’t have it, for example, because when our good neighbor sold wind damage insurance to us, we didn’t realize that we when we needed it most we would not be in good hands after all.

Our good neighbor in whose good hands we had hoped to be should something befall us, had apparently pretended to sell us the financial security we desired. Our money went to secure the industry’s $108 billion profits in 2005-2006, but not to secure our homes and businesses.

Fortunately, help has begun to arrive. For this, we are grateful. The announcement that the National Association of Home Builders is joining forces with Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-SC), and Congressman Gene Taylor (D-MS) creates a stronger foundation to achieve real financial security for America’s home and business owners. As we all move forward together to do our part to solve this financial security crisis, those are good hands to be in.

© 2007 Ana Maria Rosato. All rights reserved.

Return to A.M. in the Morning! Home

Read More......

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.

Return to A.M. in the Morning! Home

Read More......

Pelosi-led group to tour Gulf Coast

Visit to put focus on region two years after disaster
By Maria Recio - McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Thu, Aug. 09, 2007

WASHINGTON -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will lead a delegation of 15 House members to New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast on Aug. 12-14 to draw attention to the region just before the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

Pelosi, D-Calif., who led a group of 29 House Democrats for last year's anniversary when her party was in the minority, is looking to contrast the Democrats' active response to hurricane victims with that of the Bush administration.

Although the trip is being labeled "bipartisan," it was unclear if any Republicans would be joining the speaker.

House Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C., who will be on the trip, said that after last year's visit, "we set to work meeting with local officials, touring the region and determining the needs around infrastructure, education, health care, public safety and housing. We made a commitment to do better to help the Gulf Coast."

Hurricane Katrina hit the Crescent City and the Mississippi coast on Aug. 29, 2005, destroying homes, schools and buildings, and displacing hundreds of thousands of residents. The initial lackluster response of Federal Emergency Management Agency continues to haunt the Bush administration, but officials say they've since gotten on track.

"We're grateful for the help we've gotten, but we've still got challenges," said Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., who lost his home in Katrina.

Taylor will hold a town meeting for constituents with the visiting members to push for his signature legislation -- multiple peril federal insurance. Taylor's bill would include wind damage as part of the federal flood insurance program in order to prevent the raging legal disputes policyholders are having with insurers over whether homes were destroyed by wind or water. The House is expected to consider the bill in September.

In Louisiana, the lawmakers will visit the Lower Ninth Ward, tour the St. Bernard Health Center, visit a New Orleans school and observe the city's levee system.

Original article here.

Return to A.M. in the Morning! Home

Read More......

TAYLOR'S CRUSADE WINS ONE

Flood program expansion approved by House panel

By MARIA RECIO
SUN HERALD WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON -- The House Financial Services Committee voted Thursday to make a dramatic change in federal disaster insurance by expanding the national flood insurance program to cover wind damage.

The 38-29 vote, largely along party lines, in favor of the Flood Insurance Reform and Modernization Act of 2007 was spurred by a pledge House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., made after Hurricane Katrina to the coastal communities of Mississippi and Louisiana.

Pelosi will lead a bipartisan delegation to the region in mid-August before the second anniversary of the hurricane, appearing at Bay St. Louis' Our Lady of the Gulf Catholic Church on Aug. 13.

The vote is a personal victory for Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Bay St. Louis, who lost his home in Katrina. Taylor has made it a crusade to explain to members how the current system creates a shortfall with private insurance companies covering wind damage and the federal government covering water, resulting in a bias by insurers who administer the flood program to label all damage "water."

"This really helps people in all coastal areas," said Taylor, noting residents in North Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Maine and New York would be able to purchase the expanded coverage, as well as in his home state of Mississippi. "Fifty percent of all Americans live in coastal areas."

Under the committee-approved bill, policyholders of the flood insurance program would be able to purchase wind insurance policies as well. The policies would not be available for those seeking exclusively wind coverage.

The multiple-peril residential policy limit would be set at $500,000 for the structure and $150,000 for contents. The bill increases the maximum coverage for flood insurance policies from $250,000 to $335,000 for residences.

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., said the expanded program would pay for itself through actuarially determined premiums. "What does it cost (taxpayers)? Nothing," said Frank. "It is revenue neutral." He said the bill was necessary because "in the Gulf situation, it was difficult to tell, if not impossible, wind damage."

The legislation encountered stiff resistance from Republicans who said it exposed the federal government to steep liability at a time when the insurance fund was essentially bankrupt. Insurers and consumer groups are opposed to the expansion, warning losses will dramatically increase as claims rise.

"I am not ready to support shifting the burden of wind damage to a plan that is nearly $18 billion in the red," said Rep. Spencer Bacchus, R-Ala., the committee's ranking Republican. The flood insurance program had to borrow $17.5 billion more than it took in because of Katrina-Rita claims.

The legislation makes reforms in the program, increases premiums, phases out subsidized rates paid by vacation-home owners and raises the borrowing authority.

Republican members offered several amendments stripping or delaying the wind provision from the bill, but they were defeated. Rep. Judy Biggert, R-Ill., who opposed the addition of wind coverage until Congress studies the issue further, complained the controversy could sink the legislation.

"This is really adding a poison pill to flood insurance reform bill," said Biggert. Frank acknowledged the bill was controversial but said it would be ready for a floor vote in September.
Taylor predicted the bill would pass on the House floor and hopes in the Senate he can turn to Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott, R-Miss., who also lost his home to Katrina
Democrats, led by Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., chair of the panel's housing and community opportunity subcommittee, recently attached the language from Taylor's bill on "multiple perils" to the flood insurance reauthorization bill.

But Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, questioned whether the plan would stay budget-neutral. "I know from experience that these designs don't always work out the way they're supposed to." He said, "I'm still not convinced the private insurance market won't work."

Rep. Mel Watt, D-N.C., countered that the post-Katrina insurance response "was a massive failure of the private sector. There are still people down there who haven't been paid."

Flood Insurance Reform and Modernization Act of 2007 Here are the key features of H.R. 3121:

• Increases the amount FEMA can raise policy rates in any given year from 10 percent to 15 percent.
• Extends multiple-peril policies for wind damage where local governments agree to adopt and enforce building codes and standards designed to minimize wind damage.
• Allows any community participating in the flood insurance program to opt in to the multiple-peril option. The multiple-peril residential-policy limit is $500,000 for the structure and $150,000 for contents. Nonresidential properties could be covered to $1 million for structure and $750,000 for contents and business interruption.
• Increases the maximum coverage limits for flood insurance policies. New coverage limits would be $335,000 for residences, $135,000 for residential contents, and $670,000 for businesses and churches.
• Phases in actuarial rates for vacation homes and nonresidential properties beginning Jan. 1, 2011.

HOUSE FINANCIAL SERVICES COMMITTEE

Original article at Sun Herald published July 27, 2007.



Return to A.M. in the Morning! Home

Read More......

Happy Talk: State Farm and Their Statistics

I come from a musical family. Growing up in my home, playing musical instruments, dancing, and singing were the norm. On Saturdays, one of my older brothers would turn on the radio or put a stack of 45s on the stereo. We would dance with mops and brooms to Motown or other terrific music playing in the background while doing our chores.

As my younger brother now says, “Anything worth doing, is worth doing to music!” I wonder if this is his modern day version of the Mary Poppins’ lyrics “a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.” For old time’s sake, here’s a YouTube version of Julie Andrews singing it. Go ahead, press the button. You know you want to! ;)

Mary Poppin's "Spoonful of Sugar"
Indeed, Disney movies as well as Broadway plays were a big while I was growing up, and their positive influence has remained with me. I have found their lyrics to be supremely instructional. Rogers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific featured the song “Happy Talk” which may be seen as a precursor to the introduction of the power of positive thinking. In the Broadway musical, South Pacific’s character Bloody Mary sang the rhythmic song while playing matchmaker with her daughter and a military guy.

Happy talkin’ Talkin’
happy talk
Talk about things you like to do
You got to have a dream
If you don’t have a dream
How you gonna have a dream come true?

. . .

If you don’t talk happy
And you never have a dream,
Then you never have a dream come true.

Clearly this is good advice with regard to anything we desire, and its magic is legendary for those of us who’ve followed it. We can see its fruits all around us. The fruit itself can be quite deliciously sweet.

However, the fruit can also be demonically poisonous. It just depends on the fruit about which one is happily talking. State Farm’s happy talk about its closed Katrina-related cases is a great example.

In response to the racketeering lawsuit that the Scruggs Katrina Group filed against State Farm, the company’s spokesman Jonathan Freed declared, “More than 99% of all Katrina claims have been paid and settled.”

Mississippi’s Insurance Commissioner George Dale repeats the talking points that the insurance industry apparently provides him. "98 percent of all claims have been paid." This is all happy talkin’ non-sense. The company’s happy talk covers up the sad reality for hurricane survivors. Playing the role of the big bad wolf, State Farm and Commissioner Dale, who is in the industry’s pocket, hope to scare away current and potential plaintiffs from participating in lawsuits that are intended to force the companies to live up to their contractual obligations. Dale’s attorney is a big time lobbyist for the insurance industry, and the commissioner sees no conflict of interest with this relationship.

Oh my, what big teeth you have!
Not really. Mississippi Attorney General Jim “Hood accused State Farm of reporting false statistics, saying the insurer asserted it had settled 99 percent of its Katrina claims. The Attorney General said if the insurer considered a residence damaged by water, it didn't consider it a claim at all.”

What?! Isn’t that what all of the lawsuits are about in the first place? The fact that State Farm and its cohorts in the insurance industry have routinely pawned off on the federal government’s flood insurance program all of the hurricane’s costs regardless of the percent of damage caused by wind and that caused by water? A smidgen of water and bam! The insurance industry hits our Federal flood insurance program with an inflated $23 billion bill. Meanwhile, the Insurance Industry Institute reported that the private insurance industry boasted $44.2 billion in after-tax profits in 2005 and $63.7 billion in after-tax profits in 2006. These profits were after the companies had paid out $40.6 billion in Katrina claims, which of course, are not all of the Katrina-related claims that they should have paid. [For more information, read Scamming Policyholders & Taxpayers.]

Mixing Bloody Mary’s Happy Talk Advice with Alice in Wonderland
State Farm isn’t the only one using the talking point to pretend 99% of Hurricane Katrina claims have been settled. It’s good neighbor Allstate uses the same number, too!

“Allstate spokesman Michael Siemienas said, “We are pleased that these customers are now a part of the 99 percent of Allstate customers in Mississippi whose claims are settled.” What does he mean “are now a part of the 99 percent”? Is this an admission that Allstate had created a number and from now on any claims the corporation really does close appropriately are part of the fictitious number? Geeze, Louise!

Is State Farm—and Allstate, for that matter—combining Bloody Mary’s happy talk advice with “The Unbirthday Song” lyrics from Disney’s Alice in Wonderland? Do you remember that one? It’s about using statistics in a way that favors your goal. Go on. Press the button. You know you want to remember the Disney film of our youth.

Alice in Wonderland's "The Unbirthday Song"
Statistics prove, prove that you've one birthday,
one birthday ev'ry year.
But there are three
hundred and sixty four
unbirthdays.
That is why we're gathered here to cheer.

Let’s recap, shall we? We have State Farm, Allstate, and their industry front man, Mississippi Insurance Commissioner George Dale all singing from the same fictitious happy statistical song sheet.

Too bad I’m not a cartoonist. I could sketch out an editorial cartoon of three men on stage surrounding a single microphone. Two are cartoonish State Farm and Allstate figures dressed in suits made from cloth with their respective company logos as the design. The third member of the trio, of course, would be their front man, George Dale.

The tune? “The 99% Blues” sung in three part harmony and dedicated to Katrina’s plaintiffs. This would be a two frame cartoon. The first frame is a close up of the three singing, smiling, and winking at each other as if to say, “Yeah, buddy, we’re singing in perfect harmony . . . just like always!”

The second would capture the filled-to-capacity auditorium whose audience is up on their feet walking out on the trio’s performance. The trio is screaming, “Where is everybody going?!” Turning to each other, audience members are saying, “Who has that number to the Scruggs Katrina Group?” “I’m calling my attorney when I get home. These guys were handing us a line of you-know-what.”

So what do we do about an industry that is the only game in town to insure us? Two things come to mind.

First, Gulf Coast Congressman Gene Taylor (D-MS) introduced a bill to expand the federal flood insurance program to include all natural perils. Since these private corporations don’t want to keep their word to us, we can change the rules of the game and end the industry’s gravy train. This is within our power. It is up to us to do our part in ending this legal thievery. Following the rules established under the leadership of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Congressman Gene Taylor’s legislation requires that the program be financially self-sufficient. Good. It should be.

Today’s political hell raising activity will help us provide real all perils insurance for Americans.

We can call and email our congressional representatives to request that they co-sponsor H.R.920, which is called the Multiple Peril Insurance Act of 2007. Raising a little political hell together, we can protect everyone’s families from being soaked by insurance companies.

The second thing that comes to mind is this. For our own purpose, we use the power of Bloody Mary’s happy talk advice. It’s good advice upon which the filmmakers of The Secret have expounded. I’m a big fan of both The Secret and the song "Happy Talk". The Secret is a DVD that introduces the concept of the Law of Attraction, the idea that what we think about with emotion we will attract and manifest into our lives. Bloody Mary conceptualizes this idea in her song. Talk happy, be happy.

State Farm and Allstate talk happy statistics in hopes to make their dream of scamming us come true.

We can talk in terms of quick and fair settlements. We can talk about a quick and just outcome of the racketeering lawsuit to punish insurance corporations that have harmed families and friends in the Katrina-ravaged region. We can talk about passing the Multiple Peril Insurance Act so that when a tornado rips through or an earthquake swallows or a hurricane demolishes or a flood drowns our home, we really will know that we are in good hands. We really will know that our insurance coverage will be there, just like a good neighbor.

For those who are unfamiliar with or for those who simply want to go down memory lane, below you will find South Pacific’s “Happy Talk” video on YouTube. Go on. Push the button. We all can stand to memorize this song. That way, when we a naysayer like the apologists for State Farm and Allstate start singing their fictitious statistical song, we just remember that these days, we’re singing to our own tune.

South Pacific's Happy Talk"

Return to A.M. in the Morning! Home

Read More......