Why Am I Like Pierre?

Why don’t I care about my professional continuing education? I just finished my 24 hours of continuing education to maintain my Florida insurance license. I breezed through the material; studying for the test as opposed to learning anything. I’ve been doing this for almost seven years and there are now only two types of professional information for me: stuff I already know and stuff it is physically impossible in the universe I occupy to care less about. If the Large Hedron Collider ripped a hole in space and time, and created a black hole that was sucking the universe back into a singularity maybe the massive gravitational forces could produce an instant where I cared less about this stuff than I currently do. The calculus can go both ways. I don’t deal with traditional health insurance because it’s a domain of evil. The only way to gain access to its inner workings is to howl like a wolf, and a witch will open a door. However, I do deal with long term care insurance and disability insurance so I’m forced to hold a health insurance license. One is good for retired people who want to keep their stuff, sometimes. The other is good for working people who want to keep their stuff, sometimes. That’s all that’s really important about the subject to me. I can’t force myself to slog through ten thousand words about the amendments made to ERISA in 1983. That was twenty-five years ago. A child conceived in the excitement of those amendments is now old enough to run for congress. Even if I did run into an entity still operating under the pre-1983 ERISA, we would rip everything up and start all over like we were in a new millennium or something. I put off my CE until the last moment. I was going to get fined $250 if it wasn’t done by Saturday. I’ve had two years to do it. I don’t like this attitude. I want to be super extra excited to learn about the subtleties and nuances of my chosen craft, or at least have the discipline and willpower to pretend that I am.

We're Not You're Good Neighbor. State Farm is Goonne

thank you Mr. Manilow

It’s been a banner day in the Sunshine State. Gov. Crist made sure board certified teachers would get the bonuses they were promised, and State Farm bailed on the homeowners. I haven’t checked the bulletin boards for bonus chatter, but I did take a look at what was being said about State Farm. One good thing is that Liberals didn’t get blamed until about the tenth post, and the poster got flamed for it. What made me laugh is that people are screaming for deregulation of the insurance industry in the state so the market can set a fair price. The insurance companies have been screaming for this since before Hurricane Andrew, but the fine citizens of Florida elected only representatives who swore never to let that happen. State Farm asked for permission to raise their rates 47%. Florida said no. State Farm said adios. Now Floridians are crying about it. There’s nothing free about a free market. Strangely enough in the market this and market that discussions, no one has said, “Hey! I’m going to start an insurance company!” We are a state of problem spotters not problem solvers. Maybe I missed the day in economics class when they taught that the job of the free market was to force companies to make people happy. Apparently, I should be able to live in a house in South Beach that I don’t have to have inspected by anyone; the insurance company should trust that I didn’t cut corners when building it to save money, and insure my house at its lowest rate. When a hurricane destroys my glorified shack I should get my money immediately so I can rebuild, and there shouldn’t be a rate hike. We really are just children in this country. I wonder if this is going to reduce Charlie Crist’s chances of getting reelected from 100% down to 98%. After all, we wouldn’t want a big government Liberal in Tallahassee.