Legal Commentary

Obama, Katrina and the Banksters

By Ethan Brown

Over at the Big Picture, Barry Ritholtz links to the much discussed WSJ piece on Larry Summers receiving mountains of hedge fund cash and writes that Obama may go down in history as "the smart guy who decided to continue the 'dumb guy's' policies."

Exactly right. But there's more to be frustrated about in the WSJ piece than just the revelations about Summers. For example, the WSJ writes that New Orleanian and White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers "collected a $350,000 salary from Allstate Financial as president of the social networking division..."

Allstate has a richly deserved horrible reputation down here in New Orleans. Check out this account of one New Orleanian's battle with Allstate over Katrina-related claims: [More...]

Back in September 2005 we filed a claim with Allstate that Hurricane Katrina racked our house. Eight months later, they denied that part of the claim based on a fraudulent engineer's report by Haag Engineering Co. that both ignored the most obvious evidence and even claimed that the hurricane wasn't windy enough to cause structural damage.

And one of the most devastating moments in Spike Lee's great Katrina documentary When the Levees Broke came when The Wire star and New Orleanian Wendell Pierce recounted how Allstate denied claims on his elderly father's home in Pontchartrain Park.

Shame on Desiree Rogers for cozying up to the corrupt insurance industry, particularly when that industry so deeply failed her hometown. And shame on Obama for continuing the failed policies that got us into this mess in the first place.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on April 04, 2009 (boomark / email).