Michael Mayo The Sun-Sentinel.

March 13, 2011

Michael Mayo
The Sun-Sentinel.
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301

RE: Hymie, Jaime, non-sequiturs, brown spots in London, something that’s in worse financial shape than Social Security, and, wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles, the truth - some comments on your column today about the rotters ruining the disappearing Florida middle class. At least the Governor didn’t say, “You’re fucking dead”.

Mr. Mayo,

Maybe you had an Uncle Hymie, a sporting gentleman, who entertained other similar gentlemen by accepting their friendly wagers on sporting events. Maybe when he couldn’t resist the siren call of Del Boca Vista, and in a bow to multi-culturalism, he sold his book to someone now known as Uncle Jaime.

Both had one thing in common.

If they had too much business on one event they called someone named Uncle Nunzio – today, he would probably be Uncle Vladimir – to “lay off” some of the action.

And that’s how the neighborhood bookmaker and the CEO of Engulf and Devour Insurance, a wholly owned subsidiary of Anaconda Mutual, are related.

I could say that “It’s turtles all the way down” but that would only muddy, forgive me, the rising waters. [Speaking of rising waters, didn’t Lord Barack the Beneficent say that he would make the oceans recede? Did a perpetual low tide in San Diego, doubtless a result of a “shovel ready” project, cause the surfers’ delight in Japan?

As a native New Yorker, as someone who believes that the only thing better than Mitchell-Lama for the fortunate few and rent stabilization for the working class, is rent control for the undeserving poor, you speak of the “Charlie Crist [insurance] price shackles”, as the golden age of besieged and beleaguered Floridians. You speak of their coming “unshackling” as if it were orchestrated by Bush and Cheney.

You say, in an absolutely mind boggling way
“Imagine a health insurance company that caters only to
the sick and those at the highest risk of cancer, diabetes
and heart disease – that’s Citizens Insurance in a nutshell.”

It is a truism that a political gaffe occurs when someone accidentally tells the truth. A big time fart in church has just sounded in the hallowed halls of modern American Liberalism.

As the great Dr. Johnson said, “Any public policy that involves robbing Peter to pay Paul will always have Paul’s support”.

If Florida property owners are “entitled” to insurance full disclosure demands that they be told how many chairs are left in the musical deck dance on the Titanic. Have the names Madoff and Rothstein gone down the memory hole? The next future claimant to Citizens Insurance should be told two things.

#1 – There ain’t no lock box.
#2 – There ain’t no Uncle Hymie or Uncle Jaime, willing to pay the winning number. There ain’t no Nunzio or Valdimir to take the call.

Do you think Uncle Wong, our Cheshire Cat Chinese banker, will lend us the money should Andrew and Wilma hook up?

I think not.

I mention “brown spots in London”, not because of the potential claims of “Under the Lion’s Paw” Floridians but, forgive me again, the coming tsunami of actual claims from Japan. I am referring to Lloyd’s of London. It is not an insurance company like, heh heh, Citizens but rather a market where syndicates pledge “their lives, their fortunes, and their scared honor” to honor the marker they have laid down. It is traditional that floor brokers wear blue or gray suits. The Lutine Bell has been pealing non-stop since Friday. Tomorrow will feature the darkest suits in the closet. Shortly after the opening there will be many brown spotted blue or gray trousers.

The “balloon juice” paradigm that is the basis of modern American Liberalism, that there is free lunch, the denial of “the sins we do two by two are paid for one by one”, that, Lysenko-like, gravity will respond favorably to men of good will, faces collapse from something that Nunzio would have told Uncle Hymie.

“If no profit is possible the risk is obvious.”

If Hobson’s Choice morphs into the Devil’s Alternative it may be time for the whole world to go Chapter X1 and start over.

“Man will not only endure; he will prevail.”

I hope.


Kevin Smith