Claims And Issues

TAKING A BREAK.

We at the Claims and Issues Blog are taking a temporary break.  In the meantime, feel free to visit our sister blog at Claims and Bad Faith Law.

Thanks for being here.  We'll see you again soon.

Please read the disclaimer. ©2020 Dennis J. Wall.  All rights reserved.

MEATPACKING PLANTS ARE SLAUGHTERHOUSES. YOU CAN'T REFINE SLAUGHTER WITH NAMES.

"The evidence is strong that meat and poultry plants warrant more stringent oversight than other manufacturing facilities." Michael Hiltzik, Business Column: A Century Later, Meatpacking Plants Still Resemble Upton Sinclair's Depiction in 'The Jungle', LOS ANGELES TIMES online Tuesday, May 5, 2020.

    From the beginning, the evidence was strong that slaughterhouses are dangerous to worker safety. This does not necessarily mean that slaughterhouses should be dismantled. It does mean they should be watched. Carefully. They are not a mail drop. They have effects on people's health and safety.

    So they should be watched carefully. They were not seen for the most part until Upton Sinclair's book was published 100 years ago. They should be seen -- and watched -- now. The evidence is strong that action is required and also that assessing the risk before acting is a necessary part of the pandemic response.

Please read the disclaimer. ©2020 Dennis J. Wall. All rights reserved.

MORTGAGE ON YOUR DREAM HOUSE: DID YOU IMAGINE THIS?

Mortgage delinquencies are climbing.  Insurance premiums force-placed on homeowners will not be long in coming once again, just like they came in the 2008 Mortgage Crisis. See Emily L. Mahoney, Mortgage Delinquencies Rise in First Quarter, With Florida a Hotspot, TAMPA BAY TIMES online May 12, 2020.

Dennis Wall knows about insurance force-placed by mortgage lenders and wants you to know more about it. See his Introduction to what's in the Loan Documents you sign when you buy a house, Section 2:1 in LENDER FORCE-PLACED INSURANCE PRACTICES published by American Bar Association Publishing, accessible at no charge at https://www.dennisjwall.com.

Please read the disclaimer. ©2020 Dennis J. Wall. All rights reserved.

LENDERS FORCING INSURANCE PREMIUMS ON HOMEOWNERS. WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

Mortgage delinquencies are climbing. Insurance premiums force-placed on homeowners will not be long in coming once again, just like they came in the 2008 Mortgage Crisis.  See Emily L. Mahoney, Mortgage Delinquencies Rise in First Quarter, With Florida a Hotspot, TAMPA BAY TIMES online May 12, 2020.

Dennis Wall knows about insurance force-placed by mortgage lenders and wants you to know more about it. See his Introduction to what's in the Loan Documents you sign when you buy a house, Section 2:1 in LENDER FORCE-PLACED INSURANCE PRACTICES published by American Bar Association Publishing, accessible at no charge at https://www.dennisjwall.com.

Please read the disclaimer. ©2020 Dennis J. Wall. All rights reserved.

NOW THEY'RE ALL TOO BIG TO FAIL. EXCEPT YOUR HOME.

Mortgage delinquencies are climbing.  Insurance premiums force-placed on homeowners will not be long in coming once again, just like they came in the 2008 Mortgage Crisis.  See Emily L. Mahoney, Mortgage Delinquencies Rise in First Quarter, With Florida a Hotspot, TAMPA BAY TIMES online May 12, 2020.

Dennis Wall knows about insurance force-placed  by mortgage lenders and wants you to know more about it.  See his Introduction to what's in the Loan Documents you sign when you buy a house, Section 2:1 in LENDER FORCE-PLACED INSURANCE PRACTICES published by American Bar Association Publishing, accessible at no charge at https://www.dennisjwall.com.

Please read the disclaimer. ©2020 Dennis J. Wall.  All rights reserved.

This IS THE ELECTION THAT THEY ARE AFRAID TO LOSE BY MAIL.

One party is afraid of losing by mail. The Leader of the party in power says that if people vote by mail they will never elect a Republican again.

    Many people who respond to this include members of the party out of power. They respond in overwhelming numbers with historical arguments. They tend to point to the facts, that historically voting by mail does not generally favor one party or the other. They say that, further, although in some places voting by mail can make a difference for either party, historically the differences are a wash and the results turn out not to favor either party over the other.

    They miss the point entirely.

    In my judgment, what opponents of vote-by-mail are saying is that they are afraid of losing this election.

    Recent election results reveal that in 2018, the party in power was rejected in great numbers, numbers so great that some might call them "huge." On April 7 of this year in Wisconsin, where State supreme court justices apparently run on partisan lines on the ballot, the candidate for justice backed by the party out of power shellacked (to coin a phrase) the candidate of the party in power. The strength of her victory was provided by mail-in ballots although, giving due, the courage displayed by voters in person at the polls that day was enormous in its own right.

    Opponents of mail-in balloting look at these recent elections and see a coming tidal wave that will wash away their power. They see a tsunami that will sweep them out of office in very large numbers.

    In many ways both parties are driven by fear, and in many ways they are victims of opposite fears. The party in power is afraid of losing power. This party recognizes that they will not win the popular vote without restricting the popular vote. They are afraid that the coming election will be so devastating to their hold on power that their best chance to stay in power is to make it harder for voters to vote.

    The party out of power is moved by a diametrically opposite fear. Despite all evidence to the contrary, they are afraid that the party in power will stay in power. They do not recognize the fear that moves the party in power because it is so diametrically opposed to their own fear. They do not even recognize that fear permeates the party in power. Both fears cannot be right, so one consequence of the party out of power indulging their own fear is that they are blind to the fact that the party in power is afraid, too.

    The party out of power fails to see, in the end, that the party in power is like them: motivated by emotion and not by logic. They try to reason with the opponents of vote-by-mail when emotion, not logic, is what drives their opponents.

    So, do not ask for whom the mail-in ballot historically votes. Ask for whom the mail-in ballot votes today, now, in 2020.

Please read the disclaimer. ©2020 Dennis J. Wall. All rights reserved.

WHY DO REPUBLICANS WANT YOUR SOCIAL SECURITY?

As part of the economic recovery from the effects of the pandemic, Republicans propose that people should take out loans against future Social Security payments.  The intent is to propose a loan instead of direct payments from the federal treasury to replace all or part of the wages that workers have lost during the pandemic shutdown.  This comes from concern that has developed after large corporations and their wealthy executives have already gotten their bailouts.  See, e.g., Michael Hiltzik, Column:  Republicans Seek to Exploit COVID-19 Crisis to Cut Social Security Benefits, LOS ANGELES TIMES online Monday, May 11, 2020;  Helaine Olen, Retirement in America is Already Uncertain.  Republicans Want to Make it Worse, WASHINGTON POST online Wed., May 13, 2020.

    Apparently this thought was inspired by the familiar use of taking out a loan against your life insurance policy.

    But here's a huge difference between the two kinds of insurance:  You never collect your own life insurance.  Somebody else always does.  Life insurance only pays when you die.  The proponents of this plan are right that Social Security Old Age Insurance is insurance, but they are wrong to compare it to life insurance.  Social Security Old Age Insurance is wage insurance or old age insurance.  It pays only when you reach retirement age, to replace part of the income the ordinary person loses when they reach old age.

    In essence, the Republican proposal is to make future Social Security collateral for a loan now.

    Corporations and wealthy people usually have life insurance policies available.  Corporations famously take out life insurance on their executives, pay the premiums, and name themselves as the sole beneficiaries.  Yet they are not asked to put up their own insurance as collateral to get money from any federal stimulus plan so far.  There is no reason to ask normal people to put up their retirement as collateral for the income they are losing now.

    Treating these people differently would not solve problems.  It would make them.

    Most important, it would not be American.  See generally Dennis J. Wall, § 9:38, Try Taking it Away:  Social Security as a Right, in Volume 2 of LITIGATION AND PREVENTION OF INSURER BAD FAITH (3d edition Thomson Reuters West, 2020 Supplements in process), accessible at https://www.dennisjwall.com/works.

Please read the disclaimer.   ©2020 Dennis J. Wall.  All rights reserved.

 

 

"Socialism for Investors, Capitalism for Everyone Else."

Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post writes a very informed column about the world of finance.  He knows more about finances and the people who live in the U.S. financial system than most people alive.  

    So it's worth listening when he says that it's time for the Federal Reserve to "fix" the financial system.  Fixing it, Pearlstein writes, is something that "surely the overpaid lawyers and investment bankers who created the shadow banking system are clever enough to figure it out."  

    See Mr. Pearlstein's proposed solutions here in his recent article, Socialism For Investors, Capitalism For Everyone Else in THE WASHINGTON POST.

Please read the disclaimer. ©2020 Dennis J. Wall.  All rights reserved.

"The Alternative to Solidarity is Death."

George Packer has valuable insights in his article in the forthcoming June 2020 issue of The Atlantic.  He has looked deeply into where we have been as a country, where we are today, and where we can go if we choose.  Packer's article is titled and subtitled, We Are Living in a Failed State / The coronavirus didn't break America.  It revealed what was already broken.

    Here are excerpts:

 It turns out that everything has a cost, and years of attacking government, squeezing it dry and draining its morale, inflict a heavy cost that the public has to pay in lives.  All the programs defunded, stockpiles depleted, and plans scrapped meant that we had become a second-rate nation.  Then came the virus and this strange defeat.

    The fight to overcome the pandemic must also be a fight to recover the health of our country, and build it anew, or the hardship and grief we're now enduring will never be redeemed.  Under our current leadership nothing will change....  But putting an end to this regime, so necessary and deserved, is only the beginning.

 ***

We can learn from these dreadful days that stupidity and injustice are lethal; that, in a democracy, being a citizen is essential work; that the alternative to solidarity is death.  After we've come out of hiding and taken off our masks, we should not forget what it was like to be alone.

Please read the disclaimer.  This blog article ©2020 Dennis J. Wall.  All rights reserved.

            

 

 

 

 

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL ABOUT THE END OF MAY?

Mother's Day is May 10. Happy Mother's Day!

After modelling experts at the University of Arizona and Arizona State went to work on modelling the pandemic in Arizona -- working for free -- and said that the best possible case was the end of May to start loosening stay-at-home orders, the Governor of Arizona said that he is going to use a White House "model" instead.  (No-one knew that the White House even had a model.)  The White House pandemic model, he said, predicts a much earlier date than the end of May. He also said that the WH model is a secret. No-one can see it. We should take his word that it exists, I suppose. That is all we have, his word.

    This ties in with Vice President Pence predicting that the worst of the pandemic would be over by Memorial Day. So, what we have is that the pandemic is going to be in the way of something that is planned for May.

    Sometimes these people say things without meaning to convey the information that they do. It seems like a reasonable conclusion to draw, that something is in the wind to happen sometime before the end of May.

    A May surprise this presidential election year, instead of say an October surprise as in past presidential election years?

    And again, what's the big deal about the end of May, what's happening then? Pentecost? Memorial Day? Who can say?

    But something, I think.

Please read the disclaimer. ©2020 Dennis J. Wall. All rights reserved.

 

MOSCOW MITCH CALLS THE SHOW. DEMS ARE EXTRAS.

There will be a show trial on Wednesday, May 6, 2020. Senator Mitch McConnell's orders. The show trial will be a hearing in Washington, D.C.

    Senator McConnell has called back 100 U.S. Senators for the purpose of holding a hearing to confirm another person as a federal appellate judge.

    I have previously issued calls for the Senators, and particularly the Democrats on the committee holding the show hearing, to give Moscow Mitch the show trial he demanded when he called them all back during a pandemic. Show Truth.

    Here are some more topics to raise. Democrats, you can act like Republicans at this show trial, you know. You can make long statements and ask short questions, if asking questions don't get in the way.

    Remind people that this is a crisis. That this is a pandemic. That this is a matter of health, and life, and death. Come back to Washington to deal with the coronavirus. Not to anoint proteges of the powerful.

    Remind the people of the United States, or at least those people who have ears to hear, of things like:

• The number of people who tested positive for coronavirus yesterday.
• The hospital admissions yesterday for coronavirus.
• The number of people who have to use ventilators to breathe, at last report.
• The number of people who have died in the United States, and the number of people who have died across the globe, so far.
• The small number of tests that the U.S. has for anyone not named Kushner.
• The low number of ventilators that the U.S. has available, unless you work in the White House.
• The total absence of face masks especially N95 masks, and why, in the United States.
• And other similar topics that some people need to be reminded of.    
• Show Truth.

    Democrats, you want our respect. Earn it.

Please read the disclaimer. ©2020 Dennis J. Wall. All rights reserved.

THEY MAY HAVE GONE TOO FAR THIS TIME.

The Federalist Society says that diversity is important.  (That was their response to an Ethics Committee of Federal Judges that said that Federal Judges should not belong to the Federales, but that judges can attend the society's secret events, just not participate in them or plan them.  The Federalists want to eliminate the Ethics Committee now.)

    So diversity is a value, is it?  That's good to hear.  But let's see if you walk the walk, and not just talk the talk.  Here are a few questions.  We'll keep Comments open on this so that we can receive the answers.

    First, how many Black people belong to your Federalist Society?

    How many Hispanics?

    How many women?

    If diversity is a value in your professional and personal lives, then you will have the answers ready.

    An opportunity to ask these and similar questions and to get answers to all of these questions, is coming on Wednesday.  That is when one Justin Walker of Kentucky is scheduled to take the first step to be confirmed to a Federal Appeals Court when he appears for his coronation in Lindsay Graham's committee.  Walker is a protege of both Brett Kavanaugh and "Moscow Mitch" McConnell.  See Rebecca R. Ruiz and Ben Protess, Trump Nominee is Among Judges Opposed to Banning Membership in Conservative Group (NEW YORK TIMES updated Online Monday, May 4, 2020).

    What an opportunity.

Please read the disclaimer. ©2020 Dennis J. Wall.  All rights reserved.