Tax increases are necessary to cover the 'ever increasing' cost of monogrammed polo shirts for the state, parish and local officials!! Potholes can wait. LOL

In about 10 to 15 years Admiral, it will truly be the big exodus. Only the very rich will be living south of I-10. I was paying $1,200 for homeowners on a $180,000 house the year before Katrina. The year after Katrina, my rate went up $1,000, and continued to go up that amount each year. I paid $6,000 this past year for homeowners on a house that is probably now valued at $140,000. Insurance companies are the new Mafia. No insurance company would write me a policy the last 7 years, and I was stuck with this company. The state did not give a hoot to what amounted to extortion. I finally got a company to write me a policy for just under $3,000 per year, so then I could tell the other company to take a flying leap. I have a $1,000 deductible, but now have one for 2% of the value of my home, which they are showing as $200,000. Every time a hurricane comes through, all these companies start the same junk. I'm hearing now that for policies in the future, a 5% value of the property deductible will be the norm. I've lived hear my entire life and have loved it, but I am only a couple years from retirement and living on a fixed income. I will probably not be able to afford all this. I have been scoping out other options in places like Arkansas, where the cost of living is nowhere like it is here, or about to be. Everyone talks about saving the coast, but there won't be many people living near it to give a hoot. These are the people paying the taxes, millages, and funds for parish and state departments. CHEERS!!

rocknet, you and Cork hit it right...trouble w/most Louisiana people is that we are believers and followers w/o a lot of self-esteem... I was the same way till I saw the light and made a late turn at about 60 y/o...right now we all skidding on a downgrade and can't see the U-turn...I'am not far from 80y/o and sometimes 'ya get tired of watch'n spider hole politicians pick the lint out of our pockets !!!...if I could afford it we would move tomorrow(it's just too late in life and too far from the cemetary)...cheer/cheers

P/S...Fish, do 'ya know if they collect tolls on them big black hearses and all the followers ???...I heard a Jazz Band permit is quite a few hundered and the money disappears in a justified 'general' fund ??? ...cheers ???

P/S...deerman and Let-Um Lite...according to 'Media Studies Journal' only about 20% try to set ethical examples for the young...cheer

If most of the people we put in office (not all) would spend more time trying to help the people and less time trying to get themselves on TV and making promices they know they can't keep. we would be a lot better off. It cost the tax payers about 15 million dollers for the president to come down to politic, that money could have been better served building levees.

Rock, I know exactly how you are feeling. After Katrina, my insurance more than doubled cause the state allowed Farm Bureau to remove Wind n Hail from our homeowners policy then sold us that policy through the state, at about 125% of the cost of our total policy before the storm. Now, all you hear every year is that the state Wind n Hail policy has to be about 10% above the going rate of a Wind n Hail policy through an insurance company to get us off the state, but ain't no insurance company willing to write us and the state won't make them. State went up I think about 52% just this year in Terrebonne. How am I suppose to get off the state insurance if the state don't make the insurance companies sell me a policy??? Bunch of SORRY low-life politicians!!!

' Rabbit , An old man once told me ' What do you tell a woman with two black eyes ? ' , he said ' You can't tell her nothing as someone tried to tell her twice and she didn't listen ' did I get that from you ------------ Wasn't it a famaous Indian Chief that said ' At what point does resiliency become stupidity '

I talked to some folks about ten years ago from Florida. They told me after Andrew tore up south Florida in 92, several of the biggest insurance companies started to notify people with homeownner policies in Florida. They told them that they would not be offering any homeowners insurance in the state. Florida is a state that has a tremendous amount of shoreline along the Atlantic and Gulf waters....bilions of dollars in homes and condos. The State of Florida got wind of this and called them in to a meeting. The State told the companies, OK....if you do not write homeowner's insurance here, you do not write any insurance here. That means life, auto, health, all of it. There is billions of life insurance alone in the state of Florida with lots of elderly people. The insurance companies did an about face and kept offering insurance....and Florida controlled their rate increases. I just have to believe that the Insurance Commission of La. is some how tied into the big insurance companies...I just can't see it any other way.
The rates that people are paying in South La. is astrnomical, and I believe in the next 15 to 20 years, people will be leaving these areas in waves. Most folks, especially young couples and retirees, just won't be able to afford this type of financial abuse.

It has gotten absurd. Luckily for me, I own my place now and have the option of ditching the wind and hail coverage. Hate to do it, but at this point, I feel like I'm being completely extorted. Will definitely be voting for a new insurance commissioner next time around.

What was about 13 hundred in 2006 for complete homeowners for me is now 35.5 hundred. I'm sure with Isaac, it's only going to increase even more. I'm not playing their game. I've cut all the pines from off my lot and now there's not a single tree in danger of falling on my house. I feel pretty confident we won't be getting an F4 tornado anytime soon.

What I never could understand about wind and hail is that trees don't matter. You could have 100 trees all leaning towards your house or none and that's not taken into any actuarial account in regards to your rate.