Jeb Bush Takes Aim at His Successor over Insurance
Then-Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (left) and Charlie Crist talk during a Crist campaign event in 2006.
Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images
President Bush's brother, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, is not too happy with how his Republican successor, Charlie Crist, is handling the state's insurance crisis — Bush's biggest challenge while in office.
Florida and other Southern states have found themselves with major insurance problems, largely brought on by the aftermath of Katrina and other hurricanes. The governors of Alabama and Mississippi have said that insurers' refusal to write new policies in certain areas, especially near the coast, have "forced the state to pick up the riskiest property and not charge sound rates," the St. Petersburg Times reports.
Bush, addressing the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies convention outside Dallas this week, criticized Florida's latest efforts at reform, the Times reports. He specifically targeted "a January special session bill that doubled the state's catastrophe fund to $32-billion and allowed state-backed Citizens Property Insurance to directly compete with the private market."
The Times reports that Crist has all but "declared war on State Farm, Allstate, Nationwide and other large insurance companies operating in the state" because of their refusal to grant coverage to some homeowners. But Bush, without mentioning Crist by name, said the expansion of risk into the public domain would come back to hurt the state.
Crist said he did not take the remarks personally.
4:29 PM ET
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09-19-2007
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GOP Candidates Urged to Attend Minority Forums
Senior GOP officials are starting to get worried. They are concerned about the apparent reluctance of many of the GOP presidential contenders to appear at forums sponsored by prominent minority groups. For instance, take what Jack Kemp told The Washington Post.
"We sound like we don't want immigration; we sound like we don't want black people to vote for us," said former congressman Jack Kemp (N.Y.), who was the GOP vice presidential nominee in 1996. "What are we going to do — meet in a country club in the suburbs one day?"
Senior GOP officials have been trying to get the four leading candidates (Sen. John McCain, former Sen. Fred Thompson, ex-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani) to reconsider after they said they could not attend a debate at Morgan State University organized by PBS host Tavis Smiley. Sen. Sam Brownback, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Rep. Duncan Hunter, Rep. Ron Paul and Rep. Tom Tancredo will attend. Organizers plan to have empty podiums for the other candidates on stage in "a testament to their absentia," says a Smiley spokesman.
(GOP candidates aren't the only ones, by the way, taking heat when it comes to minorities. The Rev. Jesse Jackson reportedly said this week that Democratic Sen. Barack Obama is "acting like he's white" for not speaking out more about the case of six young black men in Jena, La. Jackson endorsed Obama's candidacy in March.)
One candid reason for the GOP candidates' absence from the Morgan State event comes from an adviser to one of them, who told the Post anonymously: "Why would [the candidates] go into a crowd where they're probably going to be booed?"
3:16 PM ET
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09-19-2007
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Iraqi Report: Blackwater Convoy Was Not Ambushed
The Iraqi Interior Ministry's preliminary report on a shooting involving security firm Blackwater USA, in which several Iraqis were killed, seems to contradict the company's account that their employees only fired after they were fired upon. According to The New York Times, the report, though unverified, says that Blackwater personnel "were not ambushed ... but instead fired at a car when it did not heed a policeman's call to stop, killing a couple and their infant."
The ministry also says 20 civilians were killed in the shooting, a higher number than was reported earlier.
The United States has suspended all land travel by diplomats and other civilian officials in Iraq outside Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone — a sign of just how much the shooting has increased tensions between the U.S. and the Iraqi government. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has called on the U.S. to replace Blackwater with another firm.
"This is what happens when government fails to act," writes Peter Singer, a security industry expert, on the Brookings Institution's Web site. According to Singer, The Associated Press reports, nearly a year after a law was passed that holds contracted employees to the same code of justice as military personnel, the Bush administration has not published guidance on how military lawyers should do that.
Laura Dickinson, a University of Connecticut law professor who has studied the use of private contractors on the battlefield, says to enforce the many laws that apply to contracted security firms, a single government office should monitor contracts and keep Congress informed.
12:06 PM ET
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09-19-2007
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Experts: Fed Rate Cut May Not Help Borrowers Much
You know, I hate to be a pessimist, but the more I read about the Federal Reserve's decision to cut the Fed Funds rate by half a point, the less sure I am that it's going to make much of a difference.
Although Tuesday's rate reduction will help "banks, lenders and Wall Street," says Christopher Cagan, research director for First American Real Estate Solutions, it probably won't have much effect on homeowners struggling to pay their mortgages or trying to refinance to make their loans more affordable.
"But I don't think we'll see credit card rates dropping, or that all of a sudden the spigot will open and everyone will be making all those mortgages loans again," Cagan told the San Jose Mercury News.
Although the Fed cut the rate by more than expected, Richard Hastings, an analyst at Bernard Sands LLC, told MarketWatch that the Fed can't help the subprime-mortgage borrowers. "It will help those who need it the least," he said. "But for those who need the most help, this does nothing for them."
Some experts say the cut sends a signal to reassure lenders, Jim Zarroli reported on Morning Edition, although a change in the housing market may take time.
Edward Leamer of the UCLA Anderson Forecast says even if mortgage rates decrease, that alone won't be enough to stop the housing recession. "There's not going to be a lot of joy out there in those neighborhoods where the foreclosures and delinquencies are already high," he said.
One group who may benefit? Folks who have home-equity lines of credit, whose rates are tied directly to the prime rate. Lenders generally match the Fed rate changes on these loans.
To be honest, I lose and win on this one. It won't help my house in Massachusetts sell faster, but it means the monthly payment on my home equity loan goes down. How about you?
9:38 AM ET
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09-19-2007
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