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1.  Seize -- expropriate -- the big private insurance companies without compensation.

2.  We need a workers' party, not the Democratic and Republican parties, and we need a workers' party that fights for a workers' government, a government comprised of elected councils of working people from every workplace which would seize -- expropriate -- all major industry, banking, corporations, factories, mines, mills, insurance companies, financial institutions, without compensation, and institute a centrally, rationally planned and democratically administered socialist economy, supervised and superintended and controlled by elected workers' councils, with complete workers' control of industry, and accountability of all industries in a workers' socialist society to the working people!

3.  For free health care for all, not health care for private profit!  For a series of socialist 5-year plans to build or re-build massive free public transit available and free to all!  End the private car insurance barrier to building mass transit for all!  For a massive 5-year plan to re-modernize the outdated and decaying highways and bridges!  Bring back and re-modernize the railroads!  For all building and modernization plans to be implemented under workers' control, with full unionization of all workers involved, with elected workers' safety committees with the immediate right to strike against any and all unsafe working conditions on a moment's notice!  All workers and employees temporarily laid off due to unsafe working conditions to receive full wages till all unsafe conditions are repaired and made safe again!

4.  Expropriate the banks and cancel all mortgage debts to small homeowners, working class homeowners, poor homeowners, lower middle class homeowners, so they can live in their homes without fear of being kicked out!  Slash all rents to working class tenants, lower middle class tenants, poor tenants, implement, or where it was wiped out, restore, and expand, rent controls!  Expropriate the real estate industry and biggest real estate robber barons without compensation!  Seize -- expropriate -- all big unused office buildings, all big unused housing, all big unused multi-rooms of the mansions of the mega-rich, all unused space, and give it to the homeless immediately as an emergency measure to insure the homeless have a place to live!  For a 5-year socialist building plan to build housing in the meanwhile!

5.  For a $75 dollar minimum wage!  For a shorter work week at no loss in pay -- 30 hours work at 40 hours pay!  Spread excess work created by this measure to the unemployed, with union-controlled training and upgrading programs, and union-controlled affirmative action training and upgrading programs for minorities and women!  For reimplementation of the old labor union principle of seniority -- as that pilot, Sully Sullenberger, who saved 155 passengers and crew with a safe landing in the Hudson River showed, experience counts in workers and employees!  Just a week later, a terrible airplane crash in upstate New York of inexperienced pilots showed that inexperience counts the wrong way, too!  For a sliding scale of wages and hours!  Payscales to rise with inflation!  The dollar today is worth 21 cents in 1971 terms; restore wage scales and salaries of all workers and employees today so they can buy the same amount they would have bought in 1971, for starters!  No more stinting on pay, working conditions, safety conditions!  Smash low payscales, rotten working conditions, rotten and unsafe conditions!  That peanut plant in Georgia that killed customers from salmonella in peanut butter shows what happens in plants owned and operated by criminal, profit-greedy capitalists who care only for the bottom line!  We need to expropriate all industries without compensation, put them under democratic control of elected, and armed, workers' councils, kick out the rotten corrupt capitalist owners and management, and where such owners and/or management have acted in a downright criminal fashion, as in that peanut plant, lock them up and throw away the key!  No more letting airplanes be flying firetraps, no more letting coal mines be death traps to coal miners!  We need workers' control of industry, and a workers', and socialist, America, and a workers' government, a dictatorship of the racially integrated working class in America and an international federation of workers' governments!  Black, brown, yellow, red, and white:  workers of the world, unite!

6.  We need international labor solidarity!  When labor strikes in a country other than ours, labor in ours must aid labor in the country where labor's on strike!  Where labor strikes here, we must call on labor in other countries to aid us!  Labor picket lines mean don't cross!  For elected labor strike committees!  For daily strike newspapers informing striking workers and employees of the progress of labor strikes!  For labor flying squads moving from plant to plant, worksite to worksite, shop to shop, store to store, factory to factory, office to office, persuading all labor, all workers, all employees to join the strike and come out on strike!  Generalize all local strikes into broader labor strike actions!  For elected assemblies of labor strikers to make daily labor strike decisions democratically!  For racially integrated, armed, levelheaded, responsible, down-to-earth, workers defense guards drawn from responsible and levelheaded workers to defend picket lines, defend the principle that picket lines mean "don't cross," stop scabs and strikebreakers and scabherding by the cops!  No cops, no security guards, no prison guards in the organized labor movement -- they are a dagger pointed at the heart of the labor movement, and they are the state, the hired agents of the bosses!  For mass workers' action to smash fascists, the deadliest enemies of the labor movement and the working class!  For racially integrated mass mobilizations of all kinds of labor, black, brown, yellow, red, white, male, female, "gay," straight, to smash every kind of fascist -- KKK, neo-nazi, extremist right-wing religious fundamentalist terrorist bigot, and others -- as an elementary act of self-defense of labor from its deadliest totalitarian enemies!  Labor, defend the democratic rights of every section of the working class, particularly the sections of the working class historically victimized by the fascist enemies of labor, such as black workers, female workers, gay workers, immigrant workers, ethnic and religious minority workers (Muslim workers, Jewish workers, Arab workers, Puerto Rican workers, Haitian workers, Mexican-American workers, other kinds of religious minority workers and ethnic minority workers)!  Fight on the principle, "An injury to one is an injury to all!"  For the tactic of mass workers' factory occupations, for mass employees' office occupations, for mass workers' occupations of whatever worksite, to fight layoffs, fight wage-slashing!  No reliance on the bosses' rules!  No reliance on the cops, the courts, the legislatures, the capitalist politicians of the Democratic and Republican Parties, the government, local, state, or federal!  Labor must rely only on our own collective strength if we're gonna win victories!  Labor's gotta play hardball to win labor victories!

--Allan

Harold J Macek

     What house insurance.. I dropped mine..

I just recieved a non renewal notice from my insurance company.  Now I have until June next year to hear all the horror stories, but in the mean time I will be changing my Life insurance policies, and Auto insurance policies to other companies.    I feel that if you are going to drop home owners like a hot potato, then you don't don't need the other business from me either.  It's a shame we have to put up with crooked Corporations and Politicians. I say let Citizens write all the policies (home, Auto and life) and tell the big boys to leave.  As for our politicans, vote all of them out and start anew. 

The persistent vexations in the homeowners’ insurance market are caused by: (1) the losses experienced in the 2004-2005 hurricane seasons aggravated by large scale development of the barrier islands, the coastal plains, and other vulnerable areas; (2) the free enterprise system based on risk/benefit factors; and (3) the profit incentive which motivates the carriers to purchase their re-insurance coverage from parent or affiliated companies rather than the Florida Catastrophic Fund.

Although the legislature is powerless to prevent hurricanes, it can enact legislation to control areas of coastal development which, however, is compromised somewhat by political correctness, reductions in the ad valorem tax base, and the prospect of inverse condemnation lawsuits which would ensue from such action. It is important to remember that insurance companies are not charitable or eleemosynary institutions- they are business entities entitled to make a profit after payment of the losses underwritten by their policies. Whether the legislature can compel carriers to purchase their re-insurance coverage from a state fund depends on constitutional considerations.

At some point in time, the legislature will have to tackle the question of whether the public welfare and economy of Florida requires the state to underwrite windstorm losses over and above the coverages that can be feasibly provided by the private carriers albeit such action would create a layer of socialized insurance underwritten by the taxpayers. This is a philosophical question which, along with the ongoing property tax challenge, may require a comprehensive revampment of the entire tax structure of this state rather than attempting to do so on a piecemeal basis.

On the other hand, the legislation now traversing through Congress, which proposes to consolidate windstorm with flood insurance coverage through the federal program, will need to be considered in order for the Governor and Cabinet to formulate any new plan to present to the state legislature. It would be helpful to know whether any actuarial models have been created and studied from the standpoint of how this might influence homeowners’ coverages and premiums here in Florida.

Jack B. McPherson, New Port Richey

What you are talking about in your memo is just the kind of Solution Floridians are now taking action to be involved in! We at www.FloridianOwnedInsurance.com have an attainable goal to be Self-Insured for the future...When you get a chance check out the site and get involved...

Kind Regards,

Fellow Supporters 

www.FloridianOwnedInsurance.com

If you are angry enough and you are motivated enough, you can eliminate ALL INSURANCE COMPANIES INCLUDING CITIZENS and solve your insurance ripoff yourselves. How, you might ask?

In Pennsylvania there are two groups of people who do NOT utilize insurance companies at all. They would be the Amish and the Mennenites. They SELF INSURE.

The Amish contribute to a pool within their own community and when a family has a problem, the Amish draw from this pool of reserves to purchase materials and the community members rebuilds the lost home or barn.

The Mennenites do it a bit differently. They all contribute to a pool of reserves just as the Amish do, however, they hire business contractors within the community or outside the community to rebuild.

The key to both groups success is that THEY ARE BOTH NON-PROFIT, all legitimate losses are covered and there are no disallowed coverage. They make the rules as a group and they police themselves against fraud and deception.

How wonderful would it be to tell State Farm, Allstate, Prudential and all the others they do not need to be here, there is no profit for them here, TAKE A HIKE.

Food for thought.

Wise Merlin

In a story today, we learn that Citizens insurance is on a path to bear half the state's total property risk. Considering that Citizens is the "insurer of last resort," that also means that half is the riskiest half. Why not go whole hog and just insure the whole state? We've taken on the hard part, the rest would be easy. The government is the ultimate backstop in any case, so should we formalize the arrangement?

Elec Year
Status
Date
Title
Serial Number
Sponsor
PDF

2008
Active
02/06/2007
Citizens Insurance shall be re-formed as a mutual ownership private company
07-01

Hurricane Insurance Creation

HIC.PAC 
 Citizens (pdf)

2008
Active
06/08/2007
Homestead Exemptions shall be indexed, removed from Flood V Zones and Save our Homes repealed
07-04

Hurricane Insurance Creation

HIC.PAC 
Homestead (pdf)

2008
Active
06/08/2007
Hurricane Insurance as a Local Property Taxing Authority at Market Value
07-03

Hurricane Insurance Creation

HIC.PAC 
 Hurricane (pdf)

2008
Active
06/11/2007
Referenda Required for Adoption and Amendment of Local Government Budget
07-05

Hurricane Insurance Creation

HIC.PAC 
SpendingLimit (pdf)

John Lane Chairman HIC.PAC Hurricane Insurance Creation PAC

``Are you kidding me?'' says Senator Trent Lott, a Mississippi Republican, when asked why he's so critical of insurance companies. ``I'm like a woman scorned,'' Lott says. ``I'm prepared to continue to kick their fanny until the last day I'm alive on this Earth because they have mistreated too many people.'' Lott, `Scorned' After Katrina, Targets State Farm, Allstate Water and flood damage is covered by a federal program, while wind and other damage is generally covered by private insurers. Most investigations into the insurers, including a state grand jury investigation by Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood, have focused on whether property insurers tried to avoid paying for damaged homes and businesses by claiming that water and not wind had caused the destruction. Allstate gets subpoena from U.S. grand jury and Homeland Security on issue of wind versus water. Here is a proposed State hurricane disaster fund at HIC.PAC: Hurricane shall be defined as Wind &/or Flood (FHW) which covers most of the unique disaster in Florida. Hurricane Insurance Creation PAC proposal integrates financial market response through Hurricane bonds as well as insurance market via reinsurance and State run reserve fund strictly for FHW events. The coverage would be in the property tax base and could be used as a voucher by the owner to procure added private market insurance. Hurricane.pdf petition defines wind &/or water ( hurricanes ) to keep Floridians out of Federal court. The petition links wind and / or water, i.e. hurricane insurance, which none of us have, in fact. Citizens.pdf petition creates a mutual policyholder owned Citizens out of the State controlled Citizens. Homestead.pdf petition phases out SOH over 10 years 10% per year , allows full portability , indexes the 25K homestead exemption and removes homestead from V flood zones. V zones are beachfront high wind high flood areas. John Lane Chairman HIC.PAC Hurricane Insurance Creation PAC

private insurance companies have one goal in mind to make money for their shareholders, policyholders will always have to pay the price regardless of hurricanes or what the weather forecasters predict. I propose that the entire state should work together and find a way to self insure, maybe a penny sales tax or something along those lines might be worth cosideration for the peace of mind, of not having the private insurance companies dictating what they feel is fair and appropriate. Their stock prices continue to rise even after a busy hurricane season at the expense of their policyholders!!!

NEW ORLEANS — Allstate Insurance Co. must pay a Louisiana man who lost his home to Hurricane Katrina more than $2.8 million in damages and penalties, a federal jury decided today in a case that hinged largely on whether it was wind or storm surge that wiped out his house. The jury found Allstate — which claimed most of the damage was due to storm surge, an event not covered in its policy — did not pay Robert Weiss enough money to cover wind damage to his home. The verdict included a $1.5 million penalty for the company's failure to pay the claim quickly enough. rest at Allstate ordered to pay $2.8 million in Katrina case

Hurricane.pdf petition defines wind &/or water ( hurricanes ) to keep Floridians out of Federal court.

Citizens.pdf petition creates a mutual policyholder owned Citizens out of the State controlled Citizens.

Homestead.pdf petition Phases out SOH over 10 years 10% per year , allows full portability , indexes the 25K homestead exemption and removes homestead from V flood zones. V zones are beachfront high wind high flood areas.

John Lane
Chairman
HIC.PAC
Hurricane Insurance Creation PAC

And would that be a bad thing? Read here

I could not have been more disappointed in our ability to find bona fide solutions to our state’s insurance crisis than when I read of the proposed storm shutter plan offered in Sen. Bill Posey’s bill. It is incredible to think with all the campaign bravado spread across Florida on this subject, with one special session of the legislature already behind us and with two-thirds of the general session gone by that this is the best a state senator can come up with.

Sen. Posey thinks we need to zero in on “shutterless” coastal residents who probably make up the greater part of the state’s population and in general already pay the highest insurance premiums and the highest taxes in the state. His bill seems to be based on non-authoritative, anecdotal information, and reflects inadequate consideration of the widespread impact, financial and otherwise, it will have on the public.

Perhaps it is time that Florida’s hurricane loss history is shared with the public? I mean in sufficient detail that we might all better understand the whys and wherefores of fixing this problem. It surprises me that we only hear about total losses and loss projections. Knowing real facts, like the number of claims, the mean, mode and medium amount of the claims, the nature of the losses, the incidents and dollar amount of claims geographically, and other statistics might help us all better understand the problem and zero in on the right solutions. Maybe even Sen. Posey.

NORMAN MANSOUR, ANNA MARIA

From this story on a bill to fix January's special session bill, do you get the feeling the Legislature is listening to the problems of real people, or the complaints of lobbyists?

Several weeks ago I read in the St. Petersburg Times that homeowners insurance would be going down an average of 14%. It didn’t seem like much but it was a start. That same day in the mail came the renewal notice from my insurance company. Imagine my surprise when I discovered instead of a decrease I had an 88% increase. On March 12, 2007 I E-mailed Govenor Charlie Crist, with a copy going to my Representative Kevin Ambler, and also to Senator Rhonda Storms asking for help in this matter, and requesting a reply. The only one I heard from was Senator Storms and she wouldn’t help me because I do not live in her district. On March 19, 2007 I sent a follow up E-mail to Govenor Crist and Representative Ambler again asking for their help, but neither one has seen fit to reply.

I hope you print this letter so the people of Florida see how their elected officials care about them. I voted for both of these men but I will not make that mistake again.

Gene Fricke, Tampa

On a Sunday afternoon in Paris I asked in French for a taxi driver to take me to the post office on Wagram. He turned to me and said in English “is it open?” That started a conversation for the 10 minute ride to Wagram. This taxi driver asked about living in Florida and living in the USA. He made a joke in French by saying “Socialiste est caviar”. I asked, what does that mean, he said socialism is for the rich! Truly, the new motto of Florida should be “Socialiste est caviar.”

As a single homeowner in Treasure Island, I thought I had overcome being house poor. I was wrong. Now I live to pay for property insurance. Since Andrew in 1993, I’ve been tossed out of several JUA’s, Nationwide, QualSure and now I’m lucky to have Citizens.

All of my neighbors were non-renewed in 2006 and were thrown into the Citizens pool. Here’s the best part: in the event of a direct hurricane hit on Pinellas County my neighbors and I will receive a FEMA trailer, some bottled water and if we’re really lucky we’ll get some bug spray and that’s all we’ll ever get. We’re penalized because our homes were built in the 50s, 60s and 70s. No insurance company with a brain will touch what we have so we’re lucky to have Citizens.

Last year I had tickets to France and Croatia for September. The non-renewal notice came in July. I knew what I would owe for the Citizens increase and I knew what an escrow shortage of that amount would do to my house payments. My Doctor wrote a letter to the airline carrier and I was lucky to get a full refund on the Euro flights.

Now instead of planning vacations to Europe I plan on paying my electricity bills, cable bill and for automobile gasoline. I’m thankful to have cable, electricity and a car with gas. What’s next for Florida? Abandoned property waiting for a bank auction? What’s next for the banks? Insolvency?

I work for an insurance company in Treasure Island, so I’m lucky to live and work in TI. Lucky really isn’t the correct word to use now is it? I moved to Florida to live at the beach. It was a life long dream of mine and I am proud to have accomplished that goal. I once told people that I had self actualized as I didn’t know what Maslow meant years ago in college. Now those positive feelings have become fears of dread and what happens next? I have to hold onto the cash I have for potential hurricane loss of wages and the total loss of everything I own. I’ve worked to hard and I’m too old to start over.

All of the articles about the insurance crisis in Florida mentioned Socialism. Now I completely understand what that Parisian taxi driver meant when he said “socialist est caviar”.

Marion Marilla, Treasure Island

I'm for boycotting. My Insurance Agent bought a 36 foot boat and a house on the water. He evidently doesn't need my business since he neglected to (automatically) renew my policy at years end. He said he doesn't keep track of customers' policy expiration date. Now, that's confidence that the next "chump" will pay (even) more for insurance through his agency. I'd pay if I thought I'd be duly compensated, but I have no faith in that either.

I'm going to boycott and invest the dollars in preventive maintenance. If the house is destroyed by tornado - I'll move to Brazil and sell the land which is worth more than the structure (according to the County Appraiser), which, btw is included as part of the "replacement value" on your homeowners policy. That is just arrogant. Why is the land considered part of the replacement value? Because they know we are rubes to be extorted - all whine and no action. Thankfully, I'll have no mortgage next year and can afford to play hardball - most can't.

Dear Gov. Crist,

Are all insurance companies reducing our premiums, or just citizens? If yes, when will this take affect? When are property taxes being reduced or eliminated???

After 25 years, I can not afford to live here anymore!

Boca Raton Resident