PROOF? YOU WANT PROOF?

Your home has been destroyed by a storm, you have no food, shelter, water or job. "Your" insurance company refuses to pay. You call government.

Voice on phone: Hello. Your call is important to us and we want to talk to you. Please stay on the line and the next available representative will talk to you. The waiting time is....approximately two hours. Please hold.

Proof that neither political party is worth a a diseased rat's behind. The multiple disasters that have ravaged parts of Kansas, Oklahoma, Florida, and Mississippi would nudge even a dictator. Nudge where? Keep in mind that most damage is confined to multiple small towns in America; restricted to places designated as (bad) "red states," so that big time movie stars, elite media, and others with money do nothing to help. No college rallies (unless some minority or woman gets "cheated" out of a Welfare Check), citizen demonstrations, or even riots happen to urge government to mitigate the personal damage to the towns.

Try this: tens of millions of people are living where virtually nobody lived prior to WWII and only a few thousand lived as recently as 1960. This means that terrible damage will accrue to people living in the path of whatever storm hits the U.S. The people who have lost their homes, jobs, businesses, and personal belongings are left to fend for themselves. Why? Because insurance companies CANNOT underwrite risks in areas that have a 100% statistical probability of being virtually destroyed in the next twenty years. The word "probability" means that a ton of the areas designated 100% will never be hit at all, and some will be hit twice. Insurance rates in Florida are ruinous, same in New Orleans (where it can be argued nothing should ever ever be built), Mississippi, and in most parts of "Tornado Alley." People cannot get the money to rebuild without putting themselves into permanent hopeless debt. Check Florida two and three years after big storms. Insurance has refused to pay off as much as half of the claims, alleging the storm damage was not covered. Does government come down on companies like State Farm? Hell no, because State Farm will refuse to write ANY insurance in places like the states of Florida and Mississippi and this will paralyze the economy.

Our always awake president says and does nothing. Our posturing preening Congress, focused on impeaching Bush, doesn't even call a Harry Reid TV moment, and our local governments simply cannot act because they lack the money.

We (the collective us, the citizens of the United States) should come up with a system of government underwriting of high risk areas so that the private insurance on property becomes an "umbrella policy" and not the basic insurance. Eeeeeek, that's socialism. Maybe. You can also say that it's citizen participation in disaster relief, a relief that must be forthcoming or nothing can be built anywhere. Insurance cannot provide what they say they can provide at a price that won't stop the economy in its tracks.

As obscene as government underwriting is, the destruction of people's lives is even more so.

Write your slug in Congress. See what you get.

The girl on the left? If I told you she lost everything in the storm you would move heaven and earth to rescue her. Wouldn't you?