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Roger Wicker's Maiden Senate Speech

The Sun Herald has consistently reported he would make Hurricane Katrina recovery the major part of his speech and they were true to their words. Perhaps Congressman Taylor now has a true champion for the multi peril concept in the Senate. Without further analysis here is the insurance exerpt of Senator Wicker's maiden Senate speech:

Much has been done, but there is much left to do.

Chairman Donald Powell, the Federal Coordinator for the Office of Gulf Coast rebuilding, acknowledged these challenges last week when he announced he was stepping down. He said it would be "some time before the area recovered."

I say this to my colleagues in the United States Senate: Katrina is not over. There are tall hurdles still to overcome. There is more the United States Congress must do.

The most urgent issue facing the Mississippi Gulf Coast is insurance. If you can't insure it, you can't build it or finance it. The rising cost of insurance cripples the efforts of small businesses, increases the cost of home-ownership, and drives rental rates beyond affordability.

This is not just an issue for Mississippi. From Bar Harbor, Maine to Brownsville, Texas, millions of Americans live near the coastline, in the path of a future hurricane. For many years, insurance companies have refused to offer insurance protection for water damage caused by hurricanes; this led to the creation of the National Flood Insurance Program. After Katrina, the most important question for a homeowner or a small businessman was "wind or water?"

Wind versus water. That is the debate which still occurs today in courtrooms on the Mississippi Gulf Coast between insurance companies and storm victims.

This debate is what necessitated the multi-billion dollar supplemental appropriations package this body approved after Katrina, and unless Congress changes the law, the wind versus water debate will result in a multi-billion dollar supplemental appropriations package after the next big hurricane - wherever it may land.

Even worse, since Katrina, it is also common practice for insurance companies to not offer wind insurance at a rate that is even close to affordable. This is driving more and more homeowners and business owners into a state-sponsored wind pool, which acts as an insurer of last resort. But this is not a reasonable long-term solution, because too much risk is being placed in a too small of a pool.

The best solution available is to allow homeowners to purchase wind and flood insurance coverage in the same policy.

This will not only help the storm victims so they can know their hurricane damage will be covered; it also will protect the United States taxpayer. The American people are the most generous in the world, and their elected representatives will continue to respond to natural disasters, whether it is a hurricane on the East Coast or an earthquake in California, with supplemental disaster appropriations packages. But the size of these packages will be smaller if more people have insurance.

As a member of the House, I voted for Congressman Gene Taylor's multi-peril insurance legislation when it passed last September. I am committed to achieving the same success here in the Senate.

Breaking: Several Insurers Dropped from Whistleblower Suit

It's mono y mono now. The Rigsby sisters against State Farm.

Three insurance companies dropped from whistle-blower suit

By ANITA LEE calee@sunherald.com

Ocean Springs whistle-blowers are dropping three major insurance companies from a lawsuit filed over Katrina claims handling, choosing to focus on State Farm insurance companies as they press for damages under the federal False Claims Act.

Attorneys for the whistle-blowers Cori and Kerri Rigsby, who are sisters, expect a federal judge to approve the request that Allstate, Nationwide and USAA be dismissed from the lawsuit.

"We wanted to focus our case and make it as detailed as possible against State Farm," said Anthony DeWitt, a Missouri attorney who specializes in False Claims Act cases. Such cases allow employees who uncover fraud against the government to file lawsuits.

The government is given the opportunity to press the claim. In this case the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Southern District of Mississippi has so far decided against intervening, leaving the sisters to pursue the case. They would be entitled to up to 30 percent of any damages assessed if fraud is proven.

The Rigsbys claim State Farm used biased vendors to blame Katrina damage on tidal surge covered by federal flood insurance in order to avoid paying claims for wind damage. State Farm has denied the allegations, saying the company covered Katrina damage owed under its policies.

Along with State Farm, the Rigsbys are suing seven engineering firms that assessed damage for the insurance company, a State Farm claims manager and the couple who employed the sisters as claims adjusters.

Famed attorney Dickie Scruggs filed the lawsuit on the sisters' behalf, but is no longer active in the case because he faces unrelated charges involving bribery of a state court judge. DeWitt said he expects that Scruggs will at some point officially withdraw, as he did from lawsuits being pursued on behalf of Coast policyholders.

The Rigsbys worked on State Farm claims under a contract between the insurance company and their employer, Alabama adjusting firm E.A. Renfroe. Renfroe is suing them in Alabama, claiming they breached their contract to keep State Farm records confidential.

A judge in the case issued an injunction in December 2006 that required the Rigsbys to return State Farm records they took while adjusting claims, from September 2005 until they downloaded thousands of State Farm computer records in June 2006. DeWitt said the Rigsbys will seek permission from the Alabama court to use those records in their lawsuit.

"If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts"

Einstein got that right – so did the acclaimed journalist Walter Lippman who said the news and the truth are not the same thing.

Lippman believed many people, including journalist, make judgments by condensing ideas into symbols that are stored in the brain and released when triggered. When journalists take this shortcut, it is their opinion, not fact, that influences public opinion.

Once triggered, these shortcuts to judgment are a cognitive map governing the processing of new information – denying some and inventing other.

Here, 'cognition' can be used to refer to the mental models, or belief systems, that people use to perceive, contextualize, simplify, and make sense of otherwise complex problems. Put more simply, cognitive maps are a method we use to structure and store spatial knowledge, allowing the “mind’s eye” to visualize images in order to reduce cognitive load, and enhance recall and learning of information.

Hurricane Katrina created a host of complex problems that triggered an explosion of mental maps – many stemming from the handling of insurance claims.

In many cases, public opinion on the new and complex problems of post-Katrina Mississippi was shaped with little or none of the discernment, analysis, and evaluation needed to form a solid judgment that reconciles scientific evidence with common sense – critical thinking.

Critical thinkers gather information from all senses, verbal and/or written expressions, reflection, observation, experience and reasoning. Critical thinking has its basis in intellectual criteria that go beyond subject-matter divisions and which include: clarity, credibility, accuracy, precision, relevance, depth, breadth, logic, significance, and fairness.

No where has the absence of critical thinking been more noticeable than in the rush to judgment over the intended meaning of facts contained in the various legal documents related to the federal indictment of five including attorney Dickie Scruggs and the public indictment of others such as Attorney General Jim Hood – bringing to mind the everyday application of Einstein’s wisdom – if facts and theory conflict, ignore the facts and keep the theory.


All would do well to remember this simple rhyme from one of Rudyard Kippling’s Just So stories – The Elephant’s Child – else they, too, may be seeking something they’ve already seen and denied:

I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.





UPDATE:
Today’s Clarion Ledger contains a related guest opinion column, Tendency to Oversimplify Scruggs Case. Marc Harold, senior counsel and visiting professor at the National Center for Justice and the Rule of Law at the University of Mississippi School of Law, noted In certain cases, media outlets have exaggerated the impact pretrial motions may have on the outcome of the trial itself…

...the media almost inevitably attempt to simplify the events or stages of the trial process. This is not a negative, in and of itself. One of the major goals of any type of news reporting is to distill information into a digestible format for a broad audience… In most interviews, the "expert" is asked to put the legal or procedural issues "in simple terms… While explaining the law in lay terms can certainly be helpful in informing an interested general audience, oversimplifying what is not simple can act to misinform rather than educate…

The motions are often based on complex legal theories; in other words, like in math, sometimes giving the answer without "showing your work" is of little value.
Finally, and perhaps most damaging, is our desire to predict. Admittedly, this can be fun, and everyone likes to ultimately be proven correct...

In most of the interviews the legal "expert" is asked to speculate on the strategy of the prosecution or the defense. Attorneys should always be hesitant to engage in this type of speculation. Again, as in other facets of news coverage, it can, when undertaken irresponsibly, act to misinform rather than educate as the line between speculation and fact can become blurred…

Exactly Lippman’s point and ours as well– the news and the truth are not the same thing.A journalist’s version of the truth is subjective and limited to how he constructs his reality. The news, therefore, is “imperfectly recorded” and too fragile to bear the charge as “an organ of direct democracy.”

Gene Taylor Issues + Answers Lecture

Gene Taylor's issue + answers lecture at USM Gulf Park was a well attended event. Besides Congressman Taylor, Senatorial hopeful Ronnie Musgrove, State Senator David Baria and Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney were in attendance. While I organize my thoughts and before I give my personal impressions, I'll post the Sun Herald story along with the actions of our fellow blogger and friend Steve, aka Topbanana, who shouted down an insurance agent that heckled Congressman Taylor. The agent in question was forcibly removed from the premises by campus security while Steve received a round of applause from the crowd for shutting the guy up.

This news story contains a factual inaccuracy, HR 3121 does not repeal the McCarran Ferguson anti trust exemption. sop

Taylor asks residents to act

Wants support for multi-peril coverage

By MICHAEL A. BELL

Continuing his fierce pursuit of federal multi-peril insurance, U.S. Rep. Gene Taylor on Friday urged South Mississippians to flood senators with e-mails, letters and phone calls in support of a bill that would allow property owners to purchase both wind and flood insurance under one policy.

"We're all in this together," he told hundreds at the University of Southern Mississippi's Gulf Coast Campus.

Taylor's lecture, "The Insurance Crisis: A Case for Multi-Peril Coverage," was part of the Issues + Answers series sponsored by the school and the Sun Herald.

The U.S. House has approved multi-peril insurance. But the legislation faces heavy opposition in the Senate.

"We need our senators to champion this issue," said Taylor, who's trying to convince senators to support the addition of wind coverage to the National Flood Insurance Program.

Taylor argued insurance agents who probed the post-Katrina wreckage blamed the damage on wind. "I think the taxpayers got hosed on that," he said. "Insurance is killing us."

He said the private insurance industry made nearly $50 billion the year Katrina hit, then nearly $70 billion in 2006.

But people stuck in FEMA trailers - "42,000 little cubicles of love," he quipped - continue to grapple with recovery.

"A lot of people are hesitant to rebuild," he said. "And that's not a good thing for our country."

He argued his bill would provide peace of mind to residents that they won't have to prove wind or water caused property damage.

"You don't have that lingering feeling that 'maybe I ought to stay behind with a video camera and have some evidence'," he said.

He added his bill would no longer exempt the insurance industry from anti-trust laws.

Former Gov. Ronnie Musgrove and current Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney attended Taylor's presentation.

Taylor's 60-minute speech was followed by a standing ovation and a Q&A session.

One woman asked how much Taylor's policy would cost if it were approved by the Senate.

"The answer is, 'We don't know,'" Taylor said, adding the coverage would be optional. "But it's got to pay for itself."

Kenneth Trawick, 76, of Gulfport called the insurance industry a "runaway group of thieves" and thanked the congressman.