Go go idiots in Florida!

Today is the first day of October in the year of two thousand and seven and our illustrious Florida, State Government has allowed the no-fault insurance system that we have had here in Florida to sunset and adopted a new tort system.

What does this all mean?

Simply, what it means is that PIP, the minimal insurance you had to carry to operate a motor vehicle in the State of Florida, will be gone. The Insurance companies would have you believe that this will save motorist money and that this is a good thing for everyone. After all, why should you need insurance to cover your medical costs if your are not at fault, that’s the responsibility of the other guys insurance right? Sure, in a utopian society everyone is carrying insurance that will cover you if someone hits you. The reality, however, is very different and often times the person at fault either has no or insufficient insurance to cover your injury, lost wages etcetera.

What can you do?

Unfortunately there isn’t much you can do at this point, the no-fault system expired today and I am not totally sure when it will be able to be brought back, if it that is a possibility at all. What can and should do is protect yourself in case you are in an accident with a couple options that many insurance providers won’t tell you about or if they do, they down play the importance and sometimes even try and have you sign away your options.

The first one is called UM (uninsured/under-insured motorist) this basically protects you against being hit by an uninsured motorist or one who doesn’t have enough coverage to cover all of your costs/damages. This places the burden on your insurance provider to pick up the slack.

The other one is called stacked insurance and will only apply to you if you have more then one vehicle on the same insurance policy. This one is a little more complicated but is easily broken down into understandable terms. What a stacked policy does is stacks the amount of coverage by an amount multiplied by the number of vehicles on the policy. In other words if you have medical coverage of one hundred thousand dollars ($100,000.00) and you have two (2) vehicles on your policy, if you have stacked your coverage, your medical coverage is actually two hundred thousand dollars ($200,000.00). This is the one that most insurance companies will try and hide from you and that requires you to sign or initial away, the common practice is to get you to deny it early on when you first get your policy set up and then they don’t offer it to you again and instead just ask if you want any changes made to your policy, most of the time people will just say no and that’s the end of it.

So in closing I will give a proud “bird” to our legislators and say, “Go home, nobody loves you.”

You got a license for that CD son?

Recently some very disturbing legislature was passed here in Florida that we will refer to as "pawn shop" laws. These laws basically set forth restrictions and regulations regarding the sale and purchase of used compact discs. Yes, you read that correctly, that Nirvana CD you bought last year can no longer be sold at the flea market, a garage sale, Goody's, or your local mom and pop music store.

Struggling college student trying to sell some CDs to buy your books? Too bad, now stores in Florida can only grant in store credit, no more cash. Not only that, but in order to purchase used CDs you will now have to leave your thumb print and a copy of your state issued identification.

What does this mean for the retailers though? Well it means that now you get the privilege to pay up to ten thousand dollars to treat your customers like felons. Not to mention that you also have to hold the CDs for thirty days before you can resell them for in store credit only.

So what brought about these draconian laws? Well they came in under the guise of laws to help the poor starving artists and the terrible people who defraud them by making illegal copies and boot leg copies of their work. *sarcasm*

The truth is, the used CD business eats away at about ten percent of the music industries profits and they want to make sure that they are getting every single penny they can. You may remember a few years back when the recording industry tried to use some strong arm tactics to force music stores to stop buying used media, that didn't work, so this time they came back with government support.

I think it's due time that someone did something to stop this MAFIAA (RIAA) and put an end to this crap.

In short, both the Florida legislature and the RIAA, deserve the following.

Go home, nobody loves you, and take your fucked up laws with you. . .

You can find more information here.

This is the law in discussion I believe, I have NOT had time to read it yet thought.


ch_2006-201.pdf