Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Help -- Am I Imagining This?

Gov. Blanco wants to refund $192 million to homeowners in LA, all of whom paid a 15% surcharge on their insurance bills in order to help bail out the state Citizens' insurance plan or whatever they call it. The state is also trying to figure out how to keep the program solvent, seeing as how it's needed since the cold-hearted scum-of-the-earth, greedy, spineless big insurance companies have bailed out on us. Per Blanco and State Treasurer Kennedy, we need about $1 billion to keep the insurance program afloat until about 2016 or so. Kennedy said on Garland's show yesterday, if I heard correctly, that if we don't find the $1 billion dollars, homeowners will have to pay a 3.5% surcharge on their insurance next year, and the surcharge will go up 7% each year after that for the next 19 years.

Did anyone else hear this or is it just me? Because if it's true, why the hell would she use nearly $200 million from a projected surplus to refund us instead of using it towards the one billion dollars the State needs to keep the program afloat?

Surely, it has nothing to do with her being up for re-election next year. Can someone tell me I'm imagining this?