The insurance industry has a great scam of a gravy train going on with home and business owners. Think about it. Collect the premiums, deliberately fail to pay out the claims, pocket the profits, leave town, reduce the coverage, increase the premiums, repeat.

Just as a bookie collects from its gamblers, these companies collect money from us, the home and business owners of America. If we never have a situation where we need to make good on our policy, the insurance company has kind of made out like a bandit. All of this is legal and above board. We understand it’s a form of legal gambling, and we know the risks of what may happen if we don’t participate.

In essence, we’re essentially betting that we may one day need to tap into our policy, our legally biding contractual agreement with our legal bookie. When something happens and we need our gamble to pay off, we expect our insurance carriers—our bookies—to make good on our legally binding agreement.

Here in the Katrina-ravaged region of the country, our bookies are skipping town with our money pointing their proverbial fingers to the water in the Gulf of Mexico. If a drop of water hit our property, then the insurance carriers said that ALL of the damage would be paid from the U.S. Government’s federal flood insurance program. Remember, the private insurance companies were adjusting claims for their own wind insurance policies and for the federal government’s flood insurance program. A conflict of interest that has become apparent in Katrina’s aftermath. [See Wind? Water? More like a Bunch of Hot Air! for more information on that end.]

Since the private insurance carriers were adjusters for the same properties and these companies lack integrity or ethics, it was easy for them to fraudulently claim that the damage was from water and to hand their own bills to the U.S. government to the tune of $23 billion. With each home and business owner claim that these companies fraudulently denied, they have betrayed our trust.

New research from the University of South Alabama’s Coastal Weather Research Center is proving that the insurance industry’s profit generating plan doesn’t hold water.

Dr. Blackwell works at the Coastal Weather Research Center.

Winds battered residents long before water came ashore. This past May, the university announced the discovery of a “Second, Devastating Eyewall Inside Hurricane Katrina”. The university’s “hurricane expert Dr. Keith Blackwell used the latest in microwave satellite technology to look inside Hurricane Katrina’s storm clouds, leading to the discovery of a second, or outer, very potent eyewall, which extended severe hurricane winds far outward from the storm’s center.

Blackwell’s research concluded the following.

1. Before landfall, Katrina was a Category 5 storm with . . . sustained winds of 175 mph.
2. The hurricane’s highest reported surface gust was 135 mph, in Poplarville, Mississippi; many weather stations were destroyed, so Katrina’s highest gusts were not measured.
3. Video evidence from storm chasers suggests gusts on the ground in Gulfport, MS, could have been as high as 150 mph.
4. The hurricane spawned 22 documented tornadoes in Mississippi and Alabama.

FACT SHEET: Double Eyewalls and Hurricane Katrina
Coastal Weather Research Center
May 17, 2007

Dr. Blackwell’s documented research concluded the following.

“Initially, high winds in the outer eyewall struck the Mississippi coast up to three to four hours before the highest water arrived. The problem with water created by the storm’s devastating tidal surge arrived later,” explained Blackwell.
[Emphasis added.]

What does this mean?
Well, Poplarville is inland by about 60 miles from Bay St. Louis, Miss., one of the tiny coastal beach towns that comprised Katrina’s ground zero. So if Katrina’s gusts were 135 mph after it had been over 60 miles of land and these massive winds were battering homes, businesses, schools, fire and police stations, and other government buildings for THREE to FOUR hours before the surge came ashore, Katrina’s winds did plenty of damage for which the private insurance companies are financially responsible. That’s what this research means.

ABC News was able to obtain a copy from State Farm files of the original FAEC [Forensic Analysis & Engineering Corp.] damage report, which included the image of an attached "Post-it" note that read, "Put in wind file - do not pay bill - do not discuss"

Image at ABC's The Blotter.

That’s what this research means. It’s fantastic news for home and business owners as well as schools, cities, towns, counties and other governmental entities that have been going up against the insurance industry and its reported $108 billion in profits that it made in 2005 and 2006 alone.

With this new evidence from the Coastal Weather Research Center coupled with the RICO lawsuit that the Scruggs Katrina Group has filed [See State Farm, Partners, and RICO: What a Racket!] in which it has uncovered evidence that the companies deliberately failed to pay wind policy claims it knew that it was responsible for paying, this may also mean that that policy holders with settled claims may seek out attorneys to reopen their cases. Sure would be a pity were the insurance companies to find themselves in a whole lot of hot water.

The gig is up. As this information comes out more and more, these really bad bookies—the insurance companies peddling their property and casualty insurance wares—will continue to be exposed.

Like a bookie, insurance companies are running a numbers game on its property and casualty customers—residential, commercial, government, you name it. They're scamming us. But the big pimp daddy-O is out in full force protecting them.

So why be skeptical of several insurance companie being supportive of the Multiple Peril Insurance Act of 2007? Ever heard of a bookie willingly giving up territory? How ‘bout a pimp that lets a prostitute get out of the business and on to a more respectable profession? Yeah, me, neither.

Since the Multiple Peril Insurance Act of 2007 would severely cut into the insurance bookies’ ability to run this numbers game on American families and businesses, they are transforming themselves from bookies to pimps. Seeing the hand writing on the wall, the industry is taking solace in the fact that they have the big insider Daddy-O of a Pimp out there hustling inside the political trenches.

The Insurance Industry’s Big Daddy-O Pimp
In 2005, Marc Racicot, the former chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC), became the president of the American Insurance Association. When George Bush named his buddy as chair of the ReTHUGlican party, Racicot continued as “an active, registered lobbyist . . . for the Houston law firm of Bracewell & Patterson, personally representing the controversial energy firm Enron.” I suppose there’s something to be said about being upfront with one’s lack of good ethics and integrity. Not much to say, of course.

When Racicot became the president of the American Insurance Association, he characterized the association as being “widely regarded as one of the most effective business advocacy groups in state capitols and in the halls of Congress.”

Today, Racicot is pimping the association’s fraudulent Towers Perin report that tells Congress that the proposed Multiple Perils Insurance Act of 2007 is on shaky financial ground. What a load of baloney. Their analysis is on shaky ground and when the dust settles on the court cases that are pending, I’m personally hoping the companies’ financial positions are below the ground. What they have done here in Katrina Land is sinful and criminal in every sense of those words. Do I hear an Amen?!

Congressman Gene Taylor (D-MS) sent a letter to the Racicot requesting that he “retract and disavow the fraudulent Towers Perin report.” Taylor stated, “the assumptions, scenarios, and conclusions in the report are impossible under the bill.”

In other words, Bush’s Boy—the big Daddy-O Insurance Industry Pimp Marc Racicot—is pimping the industry’s trade association’s fraudulent information.

So here’s where we come in with today’s Political Hell Raising Activities.

On Tuesday, July 17, 2007, the House of Representatives’ Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity will hear testimony regarding the proposed Multiple Peril Insurance Act of 2007. Below are the members of this committee. Are any of these members your congressional representative? If so contact them, inform them that you are you their constituent, and that you support the Multiple Perils Insurance Act of 2007.

Contact Chairwoman Waters and any of the others and inform them that you support the Multiple Perils Insurance Act of 2007. This hearing is an important step in the road to stopping the bookies from ripping off any other families and business owners. Sharing our perspective on this critical matter is how we protect our families through expanding the flood insurance program to include wind coverage. Sharing our perspective is how we put a gust of powerful wind under our political sails.

[Here are political hell raising email and phone activities.]

Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity
Rep. Maxine Waters (CA), Chairwoman
Rep. Nydia Velázquez (NY)
Rep. Julia Carson (IN)
Rep. Stephen F. Lynch (MA)
Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (MO)
Rep. Al Green (TX)
Rep. William Lacy Clay (MO)
Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (NY)
Rep. Gwen Moore (WI)
Rep. Albio Sires (NJ)
Rep. Keith Ellison (MN)
Rep. Charles A. Wilson (OH)
Rep. Christopher S. Murphy (CT)
Rep. Joe Donnelly (IN)
Rep. Judy Biggert (IL)
Rep. Stevan Pearce (NM)
Rep. Peter King (NY)
Rep. Paul E. Gillmor (OH)
Rep. Christopher Shays (CT)
Rep. Gary G. Miller (CA)
Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (WV)
Rep. Scott Garrett (NJ)
Rep. Randy Neugebauer (TX)
Rep. Geoff Davis (KY)
Rep. John Campbell (CA)
Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (MI)

Listen to podcast.

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From the Gulf Coast of Miss., to the heartland of Nashville, Tennessee, from the nation’s capitol to Silicon Valley, California, Ana Maria has been politically active as a professional and a volunteer on the local, state, and national levels.  

In Spring of 2007, this native daughter drove from her home in Silicon Valley, Calif., to surprise her mother with a visit in her hometown in Bay St. Louis—ground zero for Katrina’s devastation. The surprise was on Ana Maria.

In May 2007, she launched her blog A.M. in the Morning! and added podcasts in June 2007 to express her dismay and provide detailed, poignant, on-the-ground accounts of what the people of the Gulf Coast are still experiencing nearly two years after Katrina’s devastation. She is committed to using her blog to reinvigorate the discussion and generate a renewed national sense of purpose to efficiently and effectively rebuild the area. The blog includes the Center for Political Hell Raising, which provides phone scripts and email letters readers may use when contacting whoever is the lucky ones Ana Maria targets.