INSURANCE COMPANY PROFITS DOWN; BLAME RISE IN ENTITLEMENT PAYOUTS

By R J Shulman

HARTFORD, Connecticut – The American Insurance Association has reported a steady fall in insurance company profits over the last two decades and has issued a report that pinpoints the problem as the entitlement mentality that has swept across the country in which people have come to believe that big government and big insurance should take care of them rather than they take care of themselves.  “We have lost that great trait of American Exceptionalism that when things happen that knock you down, like losing a job or getting too old to work or a flood, tornado or injury accident, that you pull yourself up by your bootstraps rather than look to the government or an insurance company to bail you out,” said Walter P. Chisholm, CEO or Aetna Insurance.

 “Government entitlements such as Social Security are to blame,” echoed Stetson W. Hansberger, CEO of AIG Insurance Group. “People expect that payments that may have been promised to them when they paid into Social Security will always be there, regardless of changes in the market forces or demographics,” Hansberger said, “so naturally it got them thinking that they would receive the financial coverage from insurance companies that they were promised when they paid their premiums without understanding that such continued high payouts could hurt insurance company profits due to changes in market forces such as housing crises, worthless investments, too many major storms or just plain bad luck.”

“We don’t have a premium problem, as raising premiums would be like a tax increase” said Wayne C. Cynthiana, President of State Farm Insurance, “what we have is clearly a spending problem, and until we get these pay outs under control, we will have hell to pay.”

The report also noted that while it has become fashionable and politically correct to blame the increase in damage from super storms such as Katrina and Sandy on the increase in global carbon emissions, it is clear these severe weather patterns are caused by God’s displeasure with the gay lifestyle that is running amok in America.  “It is patently unfair for the insurance companies to be forced to pay for the damages caused by the immoral acts committed by those who choose to engage in homosexual behavior,” the report said.

The insurance companies have asked Representative Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) to prepare a new insurance industry budget that will reduce insurance payouts by up to 18% over the next decade.  “We feel that Ryan gets it,” Chisholm said, “He knows that if America and the insurance industry are to remain strong, we must end the nanny state mentality of hand outs and entitlements and get back to the business of each of us taking care of our own business and not expecting big government and big insurance to bail us out.”

PTSD Musings #2

SANTA FE, New Mexico – (PTSD News Service) – So today is ten years after all of us Americans (yep, we all paid for it), represented by our appointed leaders, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, and fueled by the greed of big oil, shock and awed the world with a devastating attack and invasion of Iraq, a country where the oldest known written law was ever found.

Being that today is the ten year anniversary of all of this shock and awe, we are going to be forced to think about all of that shock and awe for a moment or two with some reflection.  We will reflect for a moment that over 4,000 American citizens died there, countless others were severely wounded physically and mentally, not to mention probably over one million Iraqis killed, their homeland crushed and looted, but who is really counting each and every Iraqi who died due to the shock and awe and its aftermath (although doing the math - that is like the entire population of San Francisco being wiped out, which might not bother some people all that much either).  Oh, and don’t forget the trillion dollars it cost for all of this world class shock and awe, and how these funds to power it and its aftermath were taken out of the shared sacred pot of gold called “taxpayer money.”

So, today, anniversary day, there will be a few comments on the news channels about Iraq and the shock and awe and the aftermath, all made between news reports of who is on this season of Dancing With the Stars and bets taken on how soon Tiger Woods and Lindsey Vonn’s newly announced relationship will go downhill like one of Vonn’s legendary ski runs or comments about whether President Obama looks like the actor who portrayed the Devil on the History Channel’s historically questionable Bible miniseries, and other talk show comments on whether it should be considered immoral to ask rich people and gigantic corporations that are too big to fail to have to pay more in taxes when these mega shortfalls in the budget and gargantuan deficits can easily be taken care of by first raiding entitlements like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid and programs like Head Start and Food Stamps before daring to suggest that we penalize the successful.

So before we forget about the ten year anniversary of shock and awe and we move on to the next celebrity break-up or jailbreak, or a story of how two teenaged football heroes were victimized by a drunk girl who went to a party asking for it and then claimed rape, or whether New Yorkers who are already all hyper, (as in the speed of a New York minute) are allowed to get even more jacked up with mondo sized sugary drinks,  here are some shock and awes I would like to see:

1.       Bush and Cheney and anyone else responsible for the original shock and awe be given life in prison with no parole, but with enhanced interrogation allowed.  Don’t worry, the interrogators wouldn’t be allowed to do to them anything Cheney wouldn’t do.

2.      All the money made by these war criminals and their cronies and immoral clown friends be confiscated to help pay for the rebuilding of Iraq and toward fixing the harm to the Iraqi people and to our soldiers and their families and maybe be used to build a hospital, or bridge or school or two back here in the Homeland.  Oh and none of these funds to fix these problems will be awarded to Halliburton.

3.      Similarly, strip all of the banksters, greedy CEO’s, Wall Street Gang bangers and others whose gangsta greed caused all that financial meltdown and take their ill begotten wealth to pay off bad mortgages, put people back in houses that they got kicked out of and maybe build a hospital, or bridge or school or two and then place these money changers in the same jail as Bush and Cheney, etc. and oh, yeah, it won’t be a country club federal prison, but a jail filled with members of the Bloods and Crips and other members of outlaw gangs, since all these white collar clowns and their gang of thugs have certainly killed more people and stole more money than all the other gangs combined.

4.      That it would be thought of as being just as unpatriotic and un-American as being against the shock and awe of the Iraq invasion back then as to now think it is ok now to raid Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to pay for the sins of the massive greed of the originators of the original shock and awe, which ten year anniversary we are celebrating today.

Now, I could come up with some more shock and awes that I would like to see, but I am about to download a file filled with some juicy celebrity gossip, so maybe you could fill out some shock and awe wishes of your own.    

PTSD MUSINGS #1

SANTA FE, New Mexico – (PTSD News Service ) -  So the GOP just spent millions over the past four months to put out a white paper on what is wrong with their party and why their standard bearer, a rich white guy with endless amounts of cash at his disposal just could not get a black guy fired last November.  This comprehensive 100 plus page report, which was just released this past weekend, found that the problem with today’s Republican Party is that it is racist, intolerant and completely out of touch with the needs of the vast majority of Americans who have to work for living. While not saying it directly, the report also proves that Republicans are fiscally irresponsible too, spending all that money to find out what everybody already knows - that the GOP is racist, intolerant and out of touch with the vast majority of Americans who have to work for a living.

So the main solution that they came up with for fixing the problem that the party is racist, intolerant and out of touch with the vast majority of the Americans who have to work for a living is to improve their messaging.  Hey Dudes (and I mean the angry old white dudes who essentially control the GOP agenda) “those people” as you like to call them already know your message, no matter how you might try to re-package it.  Saying that something is “unused biological matter” does not change the fact that what you are talking about is still shit. 

And if you want to attract gays and blacks, don’t’ be nominating no Rand Paul (yes he seems to get it right about drones and war being worse than marijuana, but the rest of what he stands for is so 18^th century) but as I said, if you really want to attract gays and blacks, forget Rand Paul and nominate RuPaul.  Now that could be a game changer.  At lest it would bring a party to the Grand old Party, if you know what I mean.