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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Insurers Screw Consumers: Democratic Congress Fights to Protect Us

J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., listens to opening remarks on Capitol Hill in Washington on Tuesday during a hearing of the House Housing and Community Opportunity subcommittee, as they consider the Multiple Peril Insurance Act of 2007. Sun Herald

by Ana Maria

"Greed is the main disconnect in this situation," said Taylor, D-Miss. "It's easy for them to walk around in their Gucci suits and defend their companies, but the reality is down there on the Gulf Coast, where all of the destroyed homes and property of my constituents are. Of course, these companies don't want to change the rules that are currently in their favor.

"People who played by the rules and expected insurance companies to play by the same rules got screwed," said Taylor, whose bill would create financially sound premium levels to make the NFIP self-supporting.

Taylor, insurers lock horns over bill
Sun Herald
July 18, 2007

Toward the end of the subcommittee hearing on the Multiple Peril Insurance Act that Congress held the other day, the chairwoman of the committee, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, D-Calif, “chastised the insurance industry representatives for criticizing Taylor's plan without offering a solution to reform the NFIP to add wind damage protection.”

As mentioned in yesterday’s piece, Democrats Shame, Skewer Insurance Shills, the corporate shills all sang from the same song sheet. Their tune? “All we are saying, is keep things the same” with this thrown in for variety’s sake “All we are saying is keep our profits the same.”

One of those verses was “state sponsored mediation.” Of course, they would want that. They have all the marbles in their corner. The insurance company writes the policy. We have to have insurance for loans to build homes and businesses. Then, here in Mississippi, the insurance companies own the Insurance Commissioner George Dale who said Katrina “put an undue burden on the insurance companies.”

Fortunately, Dale is up to be booted out of office in the primary on August 7th. [Read about Gary Anderson, the real Democratic candidate for insurance commissioner.]

Think about it. What negotiating power do we have as consumers? We can go from one insurance company to another to price shop or look for various coverage options. However, we do not negotiate the coverage itself. It’s a take it or leave it proposition. We have no right or vehicle to negotiate terms or coverage. As a result, the entire insurance industry has us over a barrel. I believe the legal term for this is “inherent power”, and courts have ruled that it is illegal for them to act in bad faith because of it. Essentially, we are at the mercy of insurance companies.

In the recent racketeering lawsuit that the Scruggs Katrina Group filed against State Farm, Forensic Analysis & Engineering Corp., and E.A. Renfroe & Company, Inc., we learn that State Farm allegedly participated in “mock mediation” meetings where they rehearsed concealing the existence of the engineering reports that said wind damaged the policyholders homes. SKG alleges that State Farm attorneys provided the script for the mediation for which “the purpose and aim . . . was to demoralize policyholders and create the impression that no degree of forensic evidence would convince State Farm and/or Renfroe to pay the full value of their insured hurricane damages.” Yeah, that sure sounds quite neighborly to me. More like the neighbor from hell.

During the course of the negotiations that Mississippi Insurance Commissioner Dale pushed, State Farm and their partners “actively and fraudulently concealed information and prevented the plaintiffs [the consumers/policyholders] from obtaining information that could be used in their favor.”

With the deck stacked in the insurance companies’ favor and without any evidence of any kind of moral fiber in the being of the captains of or mouthpieces for this industry, of course, they would recommend that the state legally mandate mediation. You and I are standing before them naked as jay birds without any armor to protect our homes, families, businesses, employees or customers. They get their fat corporate bonuses and we get . . . what was that word that Congressman Gene Taylor used? Oh yeah, “screwed.”

Taylor had an additional few choice words for the six corporate shills who advocated maintaining the status quo.

“I want to tell each of you today to defend this [holding up a photo of a home that had $600,000 worth of insurance and got not one penny from their wind insurance policy], to defend those profits [$40 billion in 2005, the year of Katrina and over $60 billion in 2006] to defend the practice where they can call each other up and say “Let’s all raise our rates. You take this state. You take that one. Or even better, let’s all back out for a little while. And then we’ll come back in, and we’ll quadruple the rates and the people will be so desperate because they know hurricane season’s right around the corner, they’ll pay us anything.”

“To say that doesn’t need to change, to say that it’s ok, well, you gotta, you gotta live with yourself. And I’m sure, quite frankly, that your financial portfolio looks a whole lot better than these guys (as Taylor picks up one of the photos of a gorgeous home that had at least a half million dollars in insurance coverage but received not one penny), but the bottom line is that it does have to change. It is not a ‘what if’. It has already happened.

“So the question is when does it happen to North Carolina? When does it happen in New York? When does it happen in New Jersey? When does it happen in Connecticut? When does it happen to Georgia? When does it happen to South Carolina? Because it’s gonna happen.. . .”

Click Here To View Archived Webcast
start at 2:36 to watch all of
Congressman Taylor’s riveting final remarks

Taylor thanked the Democratic leadership for holding five hearings on the matter since taking over in January. He said “in the 15 months after the storm, the guys that used to run this committee didn’t see fit to have one hearing on the kind of abuses that took place by the thousands in Mississippi. In the months since the Democrats have taken over, they have had five. We’ve had a promise of a vote.”

Great! Thank GAWD for Speaker Pelosi (D-CA) and Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-MA). Pelosi lead a 20+ Democratic Congressional delegation here to review the Katrina-ravaged areas of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. These Democratic congressional representatives attended a town meeting in my hometown of Bay St. Louis, Miss., and listened intently to a cross section of people tell their nightmare stories: Republican and Democrat, wealthy and far less than wealthy. By way of contrast, their colleagues on the other side of the aisle have not done the same.

The Sun Herald reported that Taylor “hopes to see the bill approved by the House committee and sent to the full House for a vote before the August recess.” In his final comment at the hearing, Congressman Taylor said “To sit back and to do nothing would be the greatest wrong of all.”

Taylor’s final comment is a great segue to today’s Political Hell Raising Activities. Go here to contact by email and phone the members of this subcommittee. The point of this is to ask them to vote in favor of H.R. 920, the Multiple Peril Insurance Act of 2007. This is the way to move through the legislative process as active, thoughtful, and effective participants in our American democratic system. Think of it as an easy way to help us screw over an industry that has long abandoned and betrayed us.

Additional resources
H.R. 920
FAQ regarding the Multiple Peril Insurance Act of 2007
Rep. Gene Taylor Asks AIA to Retract Report
Trent Lott's letter of support
The Official Hearing Website

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Recovery’s Two Major Impediments: $$$ and the “F” word

This is the second in a series of five to help the Democratic Party, particularly its presidential hopefuls, to get the framework right, to broaden its lens through which it views Katrina, what’s stopping recovery, what will speed up a vibrant recovery, and how Katrina affords us the opportunity to transform the basic quality of life for all Americans.

Our recovery has two speeds: s-l-o-w and s—l—o—w—e--r. One reason is a lack of money both from the insurance companies and from FEMA. Today, we’ll talk about money and the insurance industry.

Tomorrow, we’ll talk about the other reason for this unacceptably s-l-o-w recovery: the abysmal lack of appropriate and innovative leadership from those sitting in our White House. Hands down, there is no better example of this than Bush’s FEMA. But we’ll just have to wait ‘til tomorrow to skewer that subject.

Money
Money would solve nearly all of the problems we face in reviving our lives, jobs, communities, cities, and region and to do so in innovative ways so that we protect the wetlands throughout the region while implementing a world class environmentally sound levee system like that in the Netherlands.

Money will help us to recover in a way that adopts the best of the best practices for everything from low income housing to public education. Rather than the painfully s-l-o-w way experienced since Bush finally decided to end his infamous month long vacation a few days after Katrina ravaged the area, money will infuse the area with much needed cash . . . and infuse the area with a much needed emotional and psychological lift in spirits.

We need money to rebuild the infrastructure of our cities for things like roads, firehouses, school buildings, drains, street signs, stop lights, stop signs, and light posts. We need money to rebuild public buildings such as court houses, city halls, and other government offices Katrina destroyed.

Businesses need money to rebuild their buildings and replace the contents inside of those buildings.

Families need money to rebuild their homes whether those homes were in the 9th Ward at one end of the economic spectrum or in Lakeview, a New Orleans neighborhood at the other end of the economic spectrum. Families need money for their homes located in Slidell, Louisiana, which is just east of New Orleans or Long Beach, Gulfport, Biloxi, Ocean Springs, and Pascagoula, Miss., on the far east of the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Money is needed to completely rebuild the towns of Pearlington, Waveland, Bay St. Louis, and Pass Christian, Miss.,— each of which Katrina wiped clean and which comprise Katrina’s ground zero. (Yes, Katrina’s ground zero was in Mississippi, about 60 miles or so east of New Orleans.)

Money will help the Katrina region retain the dignity of its residents be they a disabled veteran, a senior citizen, a working class laborer, a computer geek, hair dresser, janitor, teacher, nurse, doctor, realtor, oil rig worker, etc. and so forth.

A major bottleneck for getting money to where it needs to go rests with Bush’s FEMA and the insurance companies. We certainly pay plenty enough taxes to expect FEMA to be here pronto stat when we need the agency to help communities, businesses, and families get back on their feet. We don’t expect amateur hour or some version of “Whose job is it anyway?” to be played.

We expect insurance companies to own up to their financial obligation and promptly pay on the wind insurance policies when its customers appropriately submit claims. We need that kind of confidence in our financial markets. Insurance companies are part of our financial security be it for our health, car, life, or home.

If we are going to insure what is clearly the greatest financial asset for most American families—our homes, then we must have insurance entities in whose hands we have complete confidence and on which we can depend–just like a good neighbor.

The way that insurance companies have turned their backs on the very customers who have paid the premiums that created the industry’s $108 billion profit in 2005 and 2006, they ought to be ashamed of themselves. Their greed is downright sinful, and the means by which the companies attained their wealth seems criminal. As a result of failing to pay on the legitimate wind claims, families and businesses cannot return to their homes, livelihoods, communities. What’s happening here is not unique except in its scope.

Private insurance companies are raising rates to astronomical levels for significantly less coverage for commercial and residential policies. They are also choosing to stop writing new policies not just here along the Gulf Coast but also all over the country from the West Coast to the Mid-West to the East Coast.

The private companies have not just failed us but also are deliberately abandoning American families and businesses everywhere just as it did in the 60’s with regard to flood insurance. The private sector simply begged off of it. That is the reason that the federal government stepped up to the plate and began its flood insurance program in 1968. And so it is again with Gulf Coast Congressman Gene Taylor’s proposed Multiple Perils Insurance Act of 2007 to include windstorms, floods and other purposes in the Federal Government’s Flood Insurance Program. The insurance industry’s insatiable insanity demands we act quickly to protect our families, our homes, and our businesses.

The Insurance Industry’s Insatiable Insanity

Insurance Company Documents

Nationwide on 9/4/2005: “if loss is caused by both flood and wind there is no coverage.”

State Farm instructions to adjusters on 9/13/2005: “where wind acts concurrently with flooding to cause damage to the insured property, coverage for the loss exists only under flood coverage.”

The documents from which the above excerpts have been taken, certainly appear to indicate that the insurance companies have deliberately directed its workers to refuse to pay legitimate claims from its policyholders. No wonder we need to pass the Multiple Insurance Act of 2007! (For more information on these documents, read Wind? Water? More like a bunch of hot air!)

When these private companies refuse to own up to their financial responsibilities, who do these companies stiff with their financial tab? That’s right! The federal government’s flood insurance program and policy holders like you and me.

The federal government contracts with the private insurers to adjust the claims for the federal insurance program. The private companies send the bills to Uncle Sam’s insurance program for payment. That sounds all fine and dandy until something like Katrina hits and the insurance industry ends up in a position where it determines whether to pay the full amount of wind damages for which it is fully responsible or to shift its own costs to the U.S. taxpayers through pushing off claims to Uncle Sam’s federal flood insurance program.

This is an obvious conflict of interest that Gulf Coast Congressman Taylor proposes to remedy with passage of the Multiple Perils Insurance Act of 2007. The amount of damages not covered by the flood insurance are born by the policy holders themselves. There are two reasons for this. First, for those permitted to buy flood insurance, the policy severely limits coverage and whenever damages exceeded the limits, those costs were then shifted to the policyholders themselves.

Secondly, many businesses and homeowners were prohibited from buying flood insurance because their homes and/or businesses were not in a flood zone. So when an insurance carrier wrongfully (and deliberately) asserts that the damage came from flooding and not from wind, the policyholder is left to finance the damages.

We can participate in stopping these financial shenanigans. We can do our usual political hell raising to make this a legislative reality for our families and businesses all across the country. Call or email your congressional representative to voice your support for Taylor’s Multiple Perils Insurance Act of 2007. The bill will be discussed in the next few weeks when the Flood Insurance Program comes up for reauthorization. Click on the hyperlink to go to a page with a sample email and phone script you are free to use as you desire. There is also a link to find your representative’s contact information. Just let your fingers do the walking.

Congress Dems and the Katrina Task Force
As far as I’m concerned, Congressman Taylor is THE Congressional Democratic expert taking the lead on Katrina recovery. When the Democratic Caucus created a Katrina Task Force right after the hurricane hit, Taylor stepped up to the plate to chair it. The task force has issued an 18 page report of legislative recommendations. Katrina and Beyond: Recommendations for Legislative Action which included the following.

1. Investigate the Katrina claims practice of insurance companies that contract with the National Flood Insurance Program.
   
2. Repeal the federal antitrust exemption as it relates to price-fixing, bid-rigging, or market allocation in the market for property insurance.
   
3. Establish all-perils disaster insurance coverage backed by the federal government.
   
4. Rebuild levees and flood controls to higher standards.
   
5. Relieve FEMA of its recovery mission and reassign those responsibilities to the appropriate federal agencies.
   
6. Reform FEMA contract procedures to eliminate cost-plus noncompetitive contracts.

These are practical steps to remove the barriers to returning home and rebuilding communities and cities after natural disasters such as Katrina.

The staff of NPR and the Democratic presidential hopefuls would do well to call Taylor’s office to talk with even the most junior member on staff whom I am certain can cite chapter and verse of what is wrong and how to solve the problems. Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) who was raised and has strong family roots in New Orleans, is also a strong leader in Katrina recovery. Her office is surely to goodness another fabulous resource that researchers should tap for real-time information and solutions that address problems stemming from Katrina.

Preventing Collusion in the Insurance Industry
Closing the insurance industry’s loophole on anti-trust laws is another solution to the problems we’ve uncovered down here. The goal is to make it so that the insurance companies cannot engage in such things as price fixing or bid-rigging. At present, they are only one of two industries allowed to engage in any of these things and to do so with impunity as far as the law is concerned.

Let’s think about this a minute. Here at Katrina’s ground zero in Bay St. Louis, Miss., we’re in the middle of casino country. Can you imagine how many customers casinos would have here or in Vegas if they rigged everything and wouldn’t pay out the winners? Casinos don’t engage in this behavior, because the industry is regulated like crazy, as it should be. We need insurance reform to protect American families and businesses in both the property and casualty and health care insurance arenas. Insurance reform is a bread-and-butter issue for families and small businesses that the Democratic Party should immediately embrace and aggressively push.

The Senate’s Democratic Leaders have put together legislation (S.618) to strip the insurance companies of its 62-year old exemption from the nation’s anti-trust laws. U.S. Senators Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and Trent Lott (R-MS) are among its four co-sponsors. To close the loophole, click here for delightfully fun political hell raising activities. Turning up the heat is as easy as cutting and pasting into an email and reading a script into your phone. It’s hot as you-know-what down here in Katrinaville. Let’s help Washington DC feel the heat.

Between the increase in health care costs and increases in insuring our homes—in those areas of the country where we can still purchase it, this bread-and-butter issue is ripe for the Democratic Party to embrace and run on to expand its control of Congress and to recapture the White House. One or both of these areas impact each American some way or another. It’s certainly an issue that hits home with most folks, as long as we articulate our framework in a way that is smart, savvy, and sophisticatedly simple.

Broadening Katrina’s Lens: A five Part Series
Part 1: Broadening Katrina's Lens
Part 2: Recovery’s Two Major Impediments: $$$ and the “F” word
Part 3: The "F" Word: FEMA
Part 4: Katrina’s Bigger Picture
Part 5: Katrina’s Karmic Payback: Insurance Reform

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