Month: September 2006

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Dodging Responsibility

In movies and math, there’s a phenomenon called the butterfly effect. A wing flap anywhere in the world can alter everything in the universe. In the case of insurance companies and Hurricane Katrina, the relationship is tighter. A hurricane in New Orleans will affect premiums in New York, Florida, Maine, California, and elsewhere. It’ll take federal and state intervention to mitigate this problem.

Katrina destroyed homes along 70 miles of the Mississippi Gulf Coast. And another storm’s been brewing there ever since: a set of lawsuits against five major insurance companies for shirking post-Katrina claims. The lawsuits, filed by famed litigator Richard Scruggs, cover 4,000 families, including Scruggs’ brother-in-law, Mississippi senator Trent Lott.

All that’s left on the plot of land that was Lott’s home is brown-twig lawn. His insurance company of 40 years — the nation’s largest insurer, State Farm — refused to pay for damage. As with other homes, State Farm contended the cause of the damage was flooding, something the company was not required to cover. That was despite Lott’s 34-year record of opposing corporate regulation.

State Farm didn’t value that record any more than Lott’s home, treating him like all policyholders: badly. This highlights one indisputable fact. Corporate America may generally discriminate against the less wealthy, but nature and insurance companies are equal-opportunity offenders.

Scruggs and other lawyers aren’t suing just about refusal to pay; the suits allege national, systemic fraud and consultant-concocted ways of shirking claims and stretching payment periods.

Scruggs also has evidence of collusion in engineering reports from firms used to evaluate homes for claims. The story goes: Give us (the insurance company) a report we like (that says we don’t have to pay), or keep coming back until you do. With tens of billions of dollars of unpaid claims at stake, it’s a strategy neither insurance nor engineering firms want illuminated in court.

Meanwhile, insurers pulled policies on the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, increased deductibles and premiums, jacked up rates for late payments, and piled more risk on customers. State regulators allowed this because insurance companies moaned that reinsurance companies (which insure insurers but have zero responsibility to consumers) doubled their premiums and they need to share the cost.

The result of all this is that a disaster in 2006 or later will hit policyholders with greater losses than last year. Meanwhile, insurance company profits have nearly doubled, from $22 billion to $43 billion, in the past six years. Even with Katrina, the industry posted its largest surplus in 2005.

Attorney Pamela Stuart has a place in Vero Beach, Florida. Her premiums jumped from $1,300 to $3,000 in the past two years. She battles insurance companies for consumers and has helped neighbors decipher their policies: “I spent years as a defense lawyer. For a layperson, though, reading them is painful.”

Other problems linger. A glaring one in the Katrina suits is what constitutes wind damage versus flood damage. Blaming floods is the industry’s “get out of payment free” card. But for the decimated coastal homes, it’s a seismic leap to proclaim the cause was spontaneous flood rather than wind-caused storm surge.

Another dilemma is the lack of federal oversight of the industry, leaving states hostage to insurers. While many insurers pulled coverage from Louisiana, Alabama, and Florida, remaining ones hiked premiums. When Mississippi attorney general Jim Hood commenced investigations after Katrina, insurance firms threatened to bolt.

It’s one thing when a senator has his house blown down. But, for lasting reform, we need more federal and state supervision and fewer leniencies with reinsurance and insurance-company price hikes and reneged claims.

Additionally, having the Federal Trade Commission regulate insurance companies alongside states would mitigate their power. Congress should pass the honesty bill to show support extending beyond Katrina. The role of insurance companies is to insure. Regardless of weather, they should be held accountable to that promise. That’s what the companies signed up for.

Categories
Cover Feature News

Coast Towns

CREDIT: Chris Davis

In February 2006, nearly six months after Hurricane Katrina cut a 200-mile gash across Mississippi, the Magnolia State still looked like a war zone. Chris Davis

Before

Chris Davis

Today

More than 65,000 houses had been destroyed, and the damage estimates had climbed to $125 billion. In Biloxi alone, three out of four homes sustained damage, and of those, nearly half were considered irreparable. Demolished neighborhoods were strewn with muddy toys. Furniture hung from trees like surreal fruit. Cars were still in ditches, piled on top of one another. The mangled skeletons of fast-food joints and gas stations decorated the beachfront. To anyone who hadn’t witnessed the digging-out process firsthand, it looked like Katrina might have hit the day before. Everyone I interviewed on that trip, from Biloxi mayor A.J. Holloway to the man on the street, expressed the same sentiment: Things are really bad right now, but there will be visible progress in the next six months. Some, like Holloway, were generally optimistic; others just seemed to need hope in order to press on in their unrelentingly primitive circumstances.

Chris Davis

Six months later, the Gulf Coast is showing some signs of improvement, although it would be a stretch to say that things appear to be much better. Tons of rubble have been carted away, but the area still looks like a war zone. Neighborhoods reduced to splinters by Katrina have been converted into sprawling trailer parks with temporary porches and plumbing. Communities where the damage was severe but not terminal remain as empty as an Old West ghost town, with gaping holes in the walls and ceilings of every home. In some areas, the rumble of earth-moving vehicles blends with the sounds of busy saws and hammers, but it seems like the exception rather than the rule. Little, red “For Sale” signs dominate the landscape.

On Thursday, August 31st, the sumptuous Beau Rivage casino reopened on the beach in Biloxi, creating nearly 4,000 new jobs and an atmosphere of renewed hope. Casino employees paraded through the street in front of dignitaries such as Senator Trent Lott and Holloway. Mississippi governor Haley Barbour hailed the event as a “milestone in the recovery of the coast.”

“[The casino opening] underscores an important message that Mississippi is again open for business,” Barbour said. “The private sector will determine the success of our efforts to build a Mississippi that is bigger and better than ever.”

Even with commercial growth and the steady rebirth of the Gulf’s tourist industry, unemployment throughout the region ranges from 10 to 15 percent. Chris Davis

Today

Chris Davis

Before

In spite of the obvious need for jobs, many businesses in Biloxi, Bay St. Louis, Pass Christian, and Waveland are unable to keep regular hours due to a lack of manpower, and “Help Wanted” signs are almost as common as the ones reading “For Sale.” Business owners, according to reports in the Biloxi Sun Herald, blame the situation on the area’s lack of housing.

Property values have soared as homeowners, frustrated by their inability to get insurance companies to pay a fair price for damage incurred and daunted by new building codes and inflated insurance premiums, are hoping to sell their land to casino and condo developers. This, along with the federal government’s failure to produce funding beyond an initial $7 million HUD emergency grant, has further hindered the development of affordable middle-class housing. Chris Davis

Before

Chris Davis

Today

The Gulf Coast may be less cluttered than it was six months ago, but the damage is no less shocking. And while there is no doubt that many aspects of Mississippi’s tourist industry are bouncing back, the human disaster can still be easily measured in the number of tents, trailers, and ruins that dominate the landscape. Mississippi may be “open for business,” but beyond the beautifully appointed casinos, it’s understaffed and keeps irregular hours. Reservations are advised. Chris Davis

Before

Chris Davis

Today

Although much of the rubble has been removed and

temporary fences have been erected, vast portions of the

Mississippi Gulf Coast are still in ruins.

Bay St. Louis’ historic downtown was wrecked by Katrina. Many buildings not demolished by wind and rain were made uninhabitable by human waste and black mold. The road separating downtown from the beachfront had been completely erased but is slowly being reconstructed. Some buildings that seemed unsalvageable are being rehabilitated, but much of the town still looks the same as it did six months ago. Chris Davis

Before

Chris Davis

Today

It’s difficult to measure the devastation in places like Waveland, where many neighborhoods were completely blown away. Many former residents have hung flags and signs to speak for them in their absence. Lower photos: In February, the Biloxi Community Center housed FEMA and a not-for-profit group called Midwest Help. It was also a relief station for National Guardsmen. Midwest Help was evicted in late February and FEMA has moved. On September 2, 2006, the building was open and empty.

Chris Davis

Today

Chris Davis

Before

Chris Davis

Before

Chris Davis

Before

Chris Davis

Today

Chris Davis

Today

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

All Fired Up

“I wanted Smonk … to get dirty,” author Tom Franklin says in the press release for his latest novel. “Or rather, it got dirty on its own. I was constantly shocked at how the characters behaved. I winced at the sex. I worried about the violence. Can I do this? I kept wondering.”

A few pages into Smonk (William Morrow), you might well wonder, Can I stomach this? The sex is positively unhealthy. (Even by today’s substandards.) The violence is way beyond over-the-top. (Think: biblical proportions.) And as for the title character, consider:

Eugene Oregon Smonk is a syphilitic, one-eyed dwarf with a major mean streak. He’s been terrorizing everybody everywhere for years, but in 1911, he’s terrorizing the citizens of Old Texas, Alabama. So the law drags Smonk into court, but it’s Old Texas that’s put to the test: murder, incest, “ray bees,” you name it.

Redemption, Old Testament-style, is at issue in Smonk, but the order of the day is mayhem at its most visceral. You want a man shot so full of bullets he’s reduced to what looks like afterbirth? You got it. You want a fake eyeball fought over, swallowed, digested, and then some? You got it. And you want all of this told with shocking wry humor? You got that too, courtesy of Tom Franklin, the John and Renee Grisham writer-in-residence at Ole Miss, the author of Poachers and Hell at the Breech, and the gunman pictured here, playing a prospector on the TV series Deadwood.

However: Speaking for your fans, Mr. Franklin, can we ask that you drop the firearm for your booksigning at Burke’s? As with any independent bookseller these days, that store’s got enough problems.

Tom Franklin booksigning, Burke’s Book Store, Tuesday, September 12th, 6 p.m.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Conspiracy movie gives voice to emerging movement.

As the fifth anniversary of September 11th approaches, sober Hollywood reenactments such as United 93 and World Trade Center are being countered by a different brand of 9/11 “truth,” one where the American government is being blamed as directly complicit in the attacks, if not outright perpetrators.

Over the past year, these conspiracy theories have moved from margins to mainstream, finding their strongest voice in the widely viewed Internet documentary Loose Change. Written and directed by amateur filmmaker Dylan Avery and compiled largely from found media footage from the day of the attacks, the documentary contends that 9/11 was “a psychological attack on the American people … pulled off with military precision.” In the world of Loose Change, the collapse of the World Trade Center was a planned demolition, the Pentagon was likely hit by a cruise missile, and Osama bin Laden had nothing to do with it.

It might sound crazy, but Loose Change is at the forefront of a growing conspiracy movement. The film was the subject of a lengthy profile in Vanity Fair and is ubiquitous on the Internet.

One person who’s been swayed by the film is Kim Walker, a 49-year-old Memphis editor and videographer, who has rented out a screen at Malco’s Studio on the Square to show the film.

Walker says he’s holding a public screening of Loose Change — which anyone can watch online — as a means of drumming up publicity for the “9/11 Truth” movement.

“I wanted to bring media attention to it,” Walker says. “Slowly but surely, it’s getting out there.”

Walker says he doesn’t necessarily endorse all facets of the 9/11 conspiracy theories.

“In an age of disinformation, I’m scared to believe anything 100 percent,” Walker says. “To me, it’s like the Kennedy assassination. When Oswald said ‘I’m just a patsy’ and Ruby stepped out to shoot him, everyone knew something was up. From there, everyone’s imagination went crazy. I’m sure some people hit the mark. On 9/11, there needs to be a real investigation.”

Loose Change‘s opening stretch, which begins with rejected Bay of Pigs-era black ops plans and climaxes with a September 2000 report from the neo-con Project for a New American Century (which listed among its members Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld) that specifically mentions a “new Pearl Harbor” as a condition for re-militarizing America, is a masterfully engrossing blast of paranoia on a par with the most powerful passsages in Oliver Stone’s JFK. This pre-9/11 overture, in concert with the subsequent behavior of the Bush administration, makes it crystal clear why so many citizens are primed to believe the worst.

The movie’s physical evidence is less persuasive, especially in light of a Popular Mechanics cover story — “Debunking 9/11 Myths” — that counters many of the most common bits of conspiracy-hound evidence. Regardless, this battle continues to rage online. See 911Truth.org and 911Myths.com for the latest.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Hollywoodland

Set in 1959 Los Angeles, Hollywoodland revolves around the still-mysterious death of actor George Reeves (played by Ben Affleck), who got his big break as Stuart Tarleton in Gone With the Wind but achieved minor fame and career type-casting as television’s Superman. Hollywoodland offers up three different scenarios to explain Reeves’ death by gunshot wound — the suicide that was the official story, an accidental shooting by fiancée Leonore Lemmon (Robin Tunney), and a murder-for-hire at the bequest of movie mogul Eddie Mannix (Bob Hoskins), whose wife, Toni (Diane Lane), Reeves was allegedly having an affair with — and doesn’t tilt the scales in favor of any of the options.

As a Hollywood murder mystery, Hollywoodland suffers from a subpar performance by the physically and conceptually well-cast Ben Affleck. (Like Reeves, Affleck has fame but not artistic respect.) Affleck is so likable in Kevin Smith movies and in television interviews that it pains me to admit he’s as bad an actor as his reputation suggests, but the uncertainty and discomfort he brings to Hollywoodland are a huge hindrance. Another strike is the artificial insertion of a private-detective protagonist (Adrien Brody) to lead the viewer through the maze.

Hollywoodland would be a decent slice of subterranean movie-world history, but as its title indicates, it wants to be something more than that. Hollywood types — Rita Hayworth, Lana Turner, Robert Condon, Johnny Stompanato, etc. — fill the edges, but the movie, a feature-film debut from television veteran Allen Coulter, never comes close to the crackle or juiciness of its inevitable comparison, L.A. Confidential. As a slice of infamous movie-land murder, Hollywoodland is nothing more than a run-up to next week’s much more anticipated The Black Dahlia.

Opens Friday, September 8th

Multiple locations

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

I fear that heaven will have to help us all for the next couple of months, as this week seems to be the official dig-in and get-down for the upcoming November elections, and it is going to be relentless for anyone who pays attention to the news. And you can bet that it is all going to be about terror, terror, terror. Blah, blah, blah. As if we haven’t heard enough about that already. And about 75 percent of it is B.S. Why can’t politicians talk about something important, like Osama bin Laden’s until-recently-secret crush on Whitney Houston? Now, there is a topic I would like to know more about. If Osama has been secretly obsessed with Whitney, as the ex-bin Laden sex slave’s new book asserts, why don’t we send her over to vamp him and bring him out of hiding? If Osama wants to smoke the peace pipe (insert crack pipe joke here) with Whitney, I say bring it on. At least it would make some people running for office finally have to face the fact that their “war on terror” is not half as dangerous as the utility bill I got in the mail the other day. And I can’t wait to see the new bombardment of television campaign commercials. Yes, I certainly plan to vote for Bob Corker based on the fact that he used to pour concrete. That definitely qualifies him to be a U.S. senator. And how about Katherine Harris in Florida? Eew-weee. She is just plain grotesque and I bet you couldn’t get a needle up that woman’s … Oh, I don’t even want to think about that. Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum — now, there is a fellow who is happy-go-lucky. Did anyone see him on Meet the Press last Sunday? He all but kept screaming at his opponent, “Did not! Did not! Did too! Did too!” It’s like a bunch of talking-head robots without one original thing to say. I watched someone named Fran Townsend on the news the other morning. Apparently, she is a Homeland Security adviser for the current flea circus in the White House. I don’t know where they came up with her, but she was a real gem. She couldn’t say “cut and run” fast enough or often enough, and it had nothing to do with the questions she was asked. That crap just bubbles involuntarily out of pro-war freaks’ mouths. Why can’t Hugo Chavez run for some office in the United States so I could vote for him? I hope he starts charging ExxonMobil about 10 times more for his oil, just so they would have to sweat over their profits. I know it would mean higher gasoline prices here in the States, but I think it would be worth it to see them get screwed for once. But at least Paris Hilton’s new CD is doing well, so that’s one thing about which America can rejoice. She is so incredibly talented — not to mention smart. Too bad she isn’t running for political office in November. At least in her commercials she might not be wandering around a farm. Have you noticed how many political campaign commercials take place on a farm? Why is this? Why do people with aspirations for public office think strolling around the countryside with horses and cows makes them more appealing? There’s nothing wrong with farming, but why do they have to have this backdrop? At least Harold Ford Jr. has been appearing in a soybean field to make a point. But the rest of them seem to be there just for the hell of it. I think someone should film a campaign commercial in the shower. NOT Katherine Harris, although it would be interesting to see her without the four or five inches of makeup she usually has on her face, especially those magic marker eyebrows. Yowza, those are scary. No, I want to look up at my television and see Hugo Chavez in the shower talking politics and asking for my vote. I would certainly give it to him. But then that’s just me and I am weird that way.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Burritos & 9/11

After a long delay, the second location of Blue Coast Burrito is opening at the Avenue at Carriage Crossing on Monday, September 11th — a date, certainly, that doesn’t conjure images of tacos and salsa. Making the best of it, Blue Coast Burrito will donate 10% of all total sales earned opening day to the Families of September 11 charity.

Categories
News

Dress Up for Success

Playhouse on the Square will be opening up its costume closet on Friday and Saturday, October 19th and 20th for Halloween rentals. Available for rent are costumes from the disco musical Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens and stage weapons. Fees range from $20 to $50, but a white Elvis jumpsuit will set you back $150.

Categories
Music Music Features

Death Cab to Play Orpheum

Death Cab for Cutie has announced its fall tour dates, which includes a November 28th show at the Orpheum. OK Go will open.

Categories
News

When Animals Attack

Check out this video posted on the site of downtown blogger Paul Ryburn. It’s of a lobster fight in the tank at Big Foot Lodge. As promised by Ryburn, things take an ugly turn during the last 30 seconds.