LEGISLATURE STICKS IT TO LOUISIANA POLICYHOLDERS!

Thursday, August 20^th, 2020

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

 

LEGISLATURE STICKS IT TO LOUISIANA POLICYHOLDERS!

 

Say what?  I’m sure I’m not hearing this right.  After spending 

millions of dollars in lobbying for so called tort reform, and 

promising that limiting policyholders’ legal rights will cause a 

major reduction in the cost of automobile insurance, the 

industry seems to be taking an about face.  Here’s what the 

Morning Advocate reported this week:

 

“Louisiana drivers will pay the highest prices for auto insurance in the nation next year despite having passed a sweeping tort reform law that was sold as a way to dramatically lower premiums by as much as 25%, an insurance industry executive, who was one of the primary forces behind the legislation, told a panel of primarily Republican businessmen and legislators, who helped pass the new law.”

 

The panel was told that “Lowering auto insurance rates really wasn’t the point of the tort reform legislation.”  So after the insurance commissioner told legislators that auto insurance rates would drop by 25% by the end of the year, we now learn that the whole lobbying effort by the insurance industry was a ruse.  A sham! The insurance industry will line their pockets at the expense of Louisiana policyholders.

 

Here are a few of the issues ignored by the legislature that should have been addressed in the recent legislative regular and special sessions. Louisiana has become tolerant of insurance companies that discriminate against certain driving categories.

 

Did you know that there is a “widow penalty” allowed by the Department of Insurance?  That’s right.  If you have lost your spouse, you are charged as much as 15% more for your car insurance by many companies operating in Louisiana.  Most states prohibit discriminating against widows, but not Louisiana.  As Douglas Heller, a nationally acclaimed auto insurance expert, told legislators, “The fact that insurance companies charge more to perfectly safe drivers once their husband or wife passes away is both unnecessary and unseemly, and this widow penalty should be prohibited.”

 

 

If you are a blue-collar worker or if you do not have a college degree, a number of insurance companies operating in Louisiana charge you significantly more, by as much as 15%. I’m puzzled as to how that relates in being a safer driver. So unfortunately, you pay the insurance penalty if you have the wrong job title or if you don’t go to college. And there is absolutely no information or any data that shows this has any bearing at all on a policy holder’s safe driving record.

 

Louisiana’s insurance department also allows companies to charge higher rates to those drivers who do not have a high credit score.  Wealthy drivers with a DWI pay less than drivers with a spotless record but a low credit score. And even though credit scores have nothing to do with a person being a safe driver, a recent study by WalletHub found that Louisiana drivers pay anywhere from 60% to 135% more if they have poor credit scores. As Heller told legislators; “If you drive safely, you should pay the same price as anyone else who drives safely, regardless of your credit score. Your credit history should not matter.”

And get this. Apparently Black lives do not matter all that much here in the Bayou State. African Americans pay significantly more, as much as 70%, for their car insurance than whites according to the Consumer Federation of America. Yet members of the legislature have failed to hold the insurance department accountable for allowing such unfair and discriminatory disparities.

Louisiana continues to be plagued by the nations’ highest insurance rates.  And a major reason is that the legislature and the insurance department continue to allow the favoring of a certain class of drivers over others. Policy holders all over the state are being shortchanged by the failure of those in charge to act and build fairness into the insurance regulatory system.

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the nation and on websites worldwide. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JESSE JAMES AND LOUISIANA!

Thursday, August 13^th, 2020

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

 

JESSE JAMES AND LOUISIANA!

 

With the pandemic keeping us more at home, TV binge watching has become the norm.  My family and I have viewed season after season of Chicago PD, NCIS New Orleans, even old re-runs of The Sopranos and Friends.  And old-time movies.  How many times can you re-watch The Godfather?

 

One group of charlatans we enjoyed watching last week were the colorful characters that make up Jesse James and the James Gang.  You remember.  Like Robin Hood, they robbed banks of the rich guys and spread it among the poor Missouri dirt farmers.  And guess what?  My grandmother, who was delightfully named Sweetie Pearl Brown, claimed to me that she had met Jesse himself.

 

Sweetie Pearl was about the most entertaining person I ever knew. She relished telling me yarns about growing up in the Missouri foothills of Clay County.  She swore to me (and I believe her) that her father, William Hull, hid out Jesse James and his gang as the bank robbers crisscrossed the Midwest. 

 

 According to Sweetie Pearl, she would hear the James gang come riding up to the Hull farm in the middle of the night, enter their family cabin, and lie down on the floor in front of the fire to sleep a spell.  After they left in the early morning hours, Sweetie would see the spur marks in the wood floor. The gang members kept their boots on in case a quick getaway became necessary.

 

She swore that Jesse James never was killed by one of his own men. This was all a ruse, so she said, to get the lawmen off his tracks. The official version in the history books is that gang member Robert Ford shot Jesse in the back for a big reward in 1882 in St. Joseph, Missouri.  Not true, said Sweetie Pearl. She swears the Robin Hood-like folk hero made his way down to northeast Louisiana and spent some ten years in the small community of Floyd in West Carroll Parish, about two miles south of Poverty Point. 

 

I somewhat doubted her version until I read a story in the Bastrop Enterprise dated June 23, 1938, about how Jesse and some of his gang holed up in northeast Louisiana for over ten years after his reported death. One local account is from a Mrs. W. A. Ober, who told the paper: “It happened on a boat on Bayou Bartholomew tied up at Old Lynn Grove. During a card game, a card shark was discovered winning the game and Jesse pulled out his pearl handle pistol with his name engraved on it. The card cheater, in a sharp tone, demanded, ‘To whom do I owe my disgrace?’ The reply came, ‘to Jesse James.’”  

 

Could it have been that one of the most famous outlaws in the nation’s history pulled a ruse and spent his final days right down here in Louisiana?  We know that Bonne and Clyde met their just rewards in the northwest parish of Bienville, near the small town of Sailes back in 1934.  There is even a small memorial stone to mark where the shooting took place.

 

So who knows?  Maybe, instead of being gunned down by a fellow gang member as many history books tell us, grandmother Sweetie Pearl could have been right on the money in both having met Jesse James, and knowing that his final resting place was right here in the Bayou State.  And as Paul Harvey used to say, now you know the rest of the story.

.

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the nation and on websites worldwide. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

 

 

 

 

NUTRIA-IT’S WHAT’S FOR DINNER!

Thursday, August 6^th, 2020

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

 

NUTRIA-IT’S WHAT’S FOR DINNER!

 

Those little critters are taking over the state. With so many problems on Louisiana’s plate, add to the list what we can do about the onslaught and continuing invasion of nutria.  That’s right.  And we even have U.S. Senators from both parties in Washington joining forces in trying to stop this assault on the Bayou State.  Now remember, that there is almost no cooperation among each political party in Washington.  But the nutria blitz has brought together both sides of the normally partisan spectrum.

Louisiana’s own, Senator John Kennedy has reached across the isle joined by California Senator Diane Feinstein to offer bipartisan legislation that will fund a more aggressive effort to wipe out these swamp-like beavers.  “Nutria have devoured miles of our marshes, and some areas have no chance of growing back. This bill would help prevent these invasive swamp rats from further destroying Louisiana’s marshland,” said Senator Kennedy.

This ongoing effort to eliminate nutria is nothing new down here in bayou country.  Efforts have been going on for years to try and keep these pesky varmints out of Louisiana.  The state even pays $6.00 a hide to hunters who bring in nutria pelts.  But so far to little avail.  So let me put forth another idea.  Now don’t roll your eyes or hold on to your stomach.  How about skinning, roasting or pan searing, then (gulp!) eating these invaders out of our marshland?

Now slow down and don’t get your dander up.  Remember that we eat about anything down here in the deepest of the deep southern states.  Some folks might even feel that if we could stick a bike tire in fried batter, we just might eat it.

As a sole attorney practitioner in Ferriday back in the 70s, I took about any case that walked in the door. Often, my clients were slow paying, or could not pay anything at all. Hunting has always been quite prevalent in northeast Louisiana, and clients would drop off an array of creatures from the wild. I was never short of deer meat, ducks, wild geese, doves, squirrels, racoons, frogs, catfish; the assortment of outdoor delicacies seemed endless. Luckily, we had a large freezer in which to pack my culinary acquisitions.

 

Our newly renovated Lisburn Plantation was a mile off the highway with access by a dirt road that turned to mud in the winter. Often it was hard to get out of the house, even with my winch-loaded truck. So on rainy weekends, we experimented with creating a variety of recipes using our varied meat collection. Nutria weren’t around back then in any significant numbers. A backyard garden added to the flavors, and weekend cookery became a de rigueur ritual. Out of all this gastronomic adventure came my cookbook, Jim Brown’s World-Famous Squirrel Stew and other Country Recipes, available at www.TheLisburnPress.com.

 

So how about them nutria? They only eat plants. Can you believe that famous New Orleans chefs like Suzanne Spicer and John Besh argue that nutria meat is very high in protein, low in fat and actually healthy to eat? There are a number of ways these chefs and many others prepare the meat.  You can try Ragondin salad.  (Ragondin is French for nutria.  Sounds a bit more agreeable to eat.) Soupe au Ragondin, Heart Healthy “Crock-Pot” Nutria, nutria jambalaya, even Nutria fettuccini.  And of course you could stir up nutria in sauce piquante, etouffee, and bisque.

 

So I say you should break out the barbecue tongs and give this exotic dish a try.  And such a gastronomic effort will help wipe out these critters from out marshlands.  Over nine million nutria have been taken in the state over the past 15 years. But there are still plenty to go around.

 

And I can even suggest a Louisiana state slogan to go along with the new campaign.  “If you can’t beat ‘em, eat ‘em!”

 

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the nation and on websites worldwide. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.