Source: Washington Post

Florida’s insurance market has been teetering toward collapse for years. After destructive storms in 2005, several big carriers including State Farm pulled back coverage in the state, and newer, more thinly financed, smaller companies swooped in and began to operate. Then came 2017, one of the costliest hurricane seasons ever. Hurricane Michael battered Florida the following year.

Adjusters said they started to see carriers greatly reduce damage estimates, fully deny roof replacements more often and force claims of a certain value into litigation. Payouts started to get delayed or not come at all, adjusters and attorneys said.

At the same time, rates kept rising, and fast. Florida homeowners paid an average of $4,231 for home insurance in 2022, nearly three times the price in any other state — and rates are expected to increase again this year. Ten property insurers that operated in Florida have gone insolvent since January 2021. About 125 property insurers remain in the state, but experts said many are either not taking on new business or are greatly limiting policies because of the volatile market.

But the adjusters interviewed for this investigation said the major cuts and revisions to Hurricane Ian survivors’ claims are unlike anything they’ve ever seen before.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/03/11/florida-insurance-claims-hurricane-ian/

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The Florida homeowners insurance fiasco is metastasizing. DeSantis called two special legislative sessions to address the crisis last year but ultimately acted to protect insurance companies, not homeowners.

Approved for grades K-12.

Paul Krugman Twitter thread from November 13 unrolled.


Can Ron DeSantis effectively challenge Trump? I have no idea. But one thing I hope doesn't get forgotten in the horse-race coverage is DeSantis's major achievement as governor: the unnecessary death of around 20,000 Floridians 1/

Here's how I get that number. Compare Covid deaths by state since Jan. 1, 2021 — roughly when vaccines became widely available. (2020 comparisons distorted by early carnage in New York areas when we didn't know it was airborne) 2/

By state, deaths since then are FL 59,170 CA 70,565 NY 35,247 But CA has a much larger population than FL, NY a slightly smaller one. 3/

Adjusted for population, the Florida-equivalent death toll was FL 59,170 CA 39,217 NY 39,551 So states that didn't have governors promoting Covid disinformation and anti-tax propaganda lost far fewer people — the equivalent of ~20K excess in FL 4/

Why didn't DeSantis pay a price for this? Because Covid victims die out of the public eye, offscreen as it were. A resident of Florida is ~20X as likely to die gratuitously from Covid as a resident of NY is to be murdered, but crime makes headlines while other deaths don't 5/

And no, it's not about freedom. We're not talking about lockdowns and restrictions at this point, just about lifesaving shots that DeSantis deterred people from getting. Truly awesome 6/

It's crude. It's sacrilegious. It's a DeSantis campaign commercial: https://twitter.com/i/status/1588539069243473924
The mass media may be too embarrassed to give this video the coverage it deserves. Also, there's a risk it could derail the DeSantis narrative that they have been busily assembling in advance of the 2024 presidential campaign.

This video should not be confused with a random exercise in repulsively bad taste. In fact, DeSantis has been carefully crafting and refining his message with the objective of claiming evangelical Christians as his dependable base.

Protecting the right to lob verbal Molotov cocktails in the town square.

Ron DeSantis is working to reshape public education in Florida by pushing all the far right hate buttons. He is not failing. With his Moms For Liberty allies, he engineered a takeover of several school boards, including where I live in Martin County.

The latest installment of the Martin County story started less than a year before the nonpartisan school board election scheduled for primary day on August 23. A “Mom” moved from Virginia to Martin County and decided to run for our school board. Her qualifications were a single semester of community college and 6 years of experience as an administrative assistant at a Christian daycare/pre-K center. The facility was also licensed to teach grades K-4 and enrolled about 40 students. In MFL world, this is more than adequate experience to be one of 5 people sitting on a school board that supervises the education of 15,000 students.

Both MFL candidates were members of the same megachurch. They got support from the church in the form of endorsements from the pulpit and help for parishioners in filling out their ballot. The church also featured the candidates on their podcast. When a listener on the podcast asked “don’t you think it’s a good idea to have a cross in every classroom?” the candidate’s response was “Praise the Lord!”

The governor endorsed the candidate and was featured standing with her in her campaign materials. PACs allied with the governor flooded mailboxes in the “nonpartisan” race with heavy-handed attacks on her opponent’s WOKE liberalism and the imminent threat of “indoctrination” in our schools. The governor’s candidate won comfortably against her far better qualified opponent. The second Moms candidate also won a closer race against a long-term incumbent, sealing the deal.

Florida schools are open again after the summer break and substantive change will likely have to wait until the next budget cycle. In the meantime, though, there are hints of what classrooms will look like under the “Stop WOKE Act” and “Don’t Say Gay” legislation. All classrooms are required to display a “safe place” notice. The old notices were ordered to be removed and replaced with a new version. It looks like some students are going to be safer than others.