The St. Petersburg Times reports that State Farm Insurance withdrawing from Florida property market

State Farm, the largest private property insurer operating in Florida, filed plans to stop selling property insurance statewide.

The pullout includes insurance coverage for home and condo owners, renters, personal liability, boats, personal articles, and business property and liability. The company will continue to write auto policies, where it is the market leader, and other insurance lines.

Another million home and business owners are going to be applying for the state’s insurance coverage. State Farm and other insurance companies are in trouble because of bad investments, and the policy holders are being tapped to make up the Wall Street losses. These companies aren’t really insurance companies anymore, they are Wall Street gamblers. The policies they write are an excuse to get enough money to feed their addiction.

The entire insurance industry is broken. Governments should just give up on them as a bad idea, and create their own insurance pools. Flood insurance has already been forced upon the Federal government, so they may as well provide full coverage and stop this charade of the “free market”. The insurance industry is only interested in guaranteed profits and no risks.

John Updike died today. His writings have dominated American fiction for so long that it was a shock to hear he passed.

Over the years he has written such an amazingly large collection of stories and novels that he is almost guaranteed his own shelf at a library. After a while you forgot that he was just a man, and therefore mortal.

The Miami Herald reports that they’re back: Jury selection begins in Liberty City Six terror retrial.

In this absurd contest between the legal acumen of Liberty University and the down-and-outers of Liberty City, the Federal government is again wasting tax money trying to prove that the Miami Haitian Ninja Terrorists are a danger to the United States for the third time.

The background on this farce is available in MHNT – Episode Three – The Empire Loses Again.

January 27, 1967

Virgil “Gus” Ivan Grissom, Lieutenant Colonel, USAF

Edward Higgins White, II, Lieutenant Colonel, USAF

Roger Bruce Chaffee, Lieutenant Commander, USN