NCCo Budget 2010

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Yesterday evening, County Executive Chris Coons delivered his budget address. He took about 40 minutes to deliver this, including an extensive setup of his Listening Tour (which rhetorically at least)…

NCCo Budget Address

NCCo Executive Chris Coons rolls out his budget for FY 2010 tomorrow night, Tuesday 17 March 2009 in the Council Chambers of the Redding City/County Building in Wilmington. No idea…

Revisiting Reserve Requirements

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I wrote to highlight a blog post redwaterlily wrote over at her blog discussing the current rule change by KWS to reduce the reserve requirements by life insurers — reserves intended to try to ensure that these companies are adequately funded to pay policyholder claims.

The conversation continued over at that post on a number of different fronts, but I want to go back to the reserve requirements, as KWS’s Chief of Staff has added to a comment in that thread.

While I don’t see a ton of news releases, I was struck by how this one was written. It goes through the history of a review of these reserving requirements via analysis groups at an industry trade association (NAIC) and how this association rejected the Life Insurance Industry group’s request for a broad recommendation for reserve “relief”. You can see the summary of that meeting here — this is the NAIC’s own Press Release. This is how Elliot Jacobson characterizes the current position of the NAIC:

On January 29, 2009, the Executive Committee of the NAIC decided to withhold their support of this relief on a national, uniform basis for the 2008 year-end preliminary annual statement filings that are due March 1st due to the inadequate time to perform the necessary evaluation.

The NAIC actually voted against these life insurance industry proposals, saying:

“Today’s vote reflects our belief that it is not appropriate to make emergency, permanent industry-wide changes for which the need has not been demonstrated.”

You should read the whole thing yourself, but even the NAIC decided that there was not enough information to demonstrate that the industry had any real need of relief at this time. Further, they caution against rushing to provide help where the need is not yet proven. This ruling, of course, doe not restrict these companies from appealing directly to the states, which is exactly what has been happening. Elliot Jacobson says that the list of states granting such relief is up on the NAIC website, which I can’t find. (And it may be there, this is a tough to navigate website, I think.) A Google search turns up Ohio as an approver of some reserve relief and Virginia and NH as against.

Elliot’s press release also refers us to the NAIC website for the insurers who got this relief. Why wouldn’t the ICs office just say who they are? It is only three companies and in a release this long, it wouldn’t take up much room. And why wouldn’t these just be listed on the Delaware IC’s website? In any event, I can’t find these on the NAIC website.

Credit Where Credit Is Not Due

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Steve Newton of Delaware Libertarian has written two recent posts (more on his latest posts at the bottom) on the Glenn Beck organization We Surround Them. In the first post Steve appears far more concerned with those who take Beck and Norris seriously, claiming that it’s those (read:us) attempting “to stereotype everybody who disagrees with them is a danger to society.”  And it’s this cherry-picking of what’s dangerous that bothers me.  Why aren’t both dangerous?  Why aren’t both a joke?  It’s this break in consistency that keeps eating at me.  Now, I suppose I could view Steve’s words as a backhanded compliment, as in he expects more from us than he expects from the likes of Beck and Norris.  But after reading the post several times I keep reaching the same conclusion:  We are wrong (and over-reacting) for being concerned and criticizing these groups.

We are also, according to the post, late to the game.  There’s a reason for that, and it’s not that we just suddenly discovered these secession groups.  It’s that while we’ve been quite aware, for years, of these groups, they’ve resided on the fringe of our minds – just like they resided on the fringe of society.  What has brought them to the forefront of our minds is their sudden resurgence and growing voice.  Hence, our concern.

The second post attempts to legitimize these groups by citing Civil Rights and Civil Liberty concerns.  In my opinion, Steve is giving the new members of these groups too much credit, simply because if they weren’t part of these organizations during Bush’s Presidency then they lose the legitimacy argument.  Let’s be honest, the sudden growth and popularity of these groups has nothing to do with Civil Rights or Liberties, and everything to do with President Obama.

And that’s the point, unless… you can honestly say that the same thing would be happening under a McCain/Palin Administration.  And, if you agree with me that it wouldn’t (other than what has always existed on the fringe) then the legitimacy argument doesn’t hold water.  Which isn’t to say that I’m dismissing Civil Rights and Civil Liberty concerns, nor am I dismissing Steve’s arguments in relation to them.  I’m not.  In fact, my bet is that Steve Newton has given more thought to these issues than 95% of the We Surround Them members.  What I’m dismissing is this groups attempt to wrap themselves in the cloak of these rights and liberties and claim validation for an agenda whose sole purpose is ridding the country of Obama.