Tier Rated Car Insurance

I was shocked last week when I received notice from Horace Mann Insurance Company (HM) that the premium on our two cars was increasing 16.3% due to a change in my “tier score.” My shock is a result of my not understanding how my credit score is related to my ability or willingness to pay my monthly premium. Credit worthiness makes sense when purchasing a car that if the payments aren’t made will result in the expense and bother of repossession, but for car insurance it would be a simple matter of sending me a note that my insurance has lapsed if I don’t pay my bill. I am paying a month in advance so HM is out nothing if I don’t pay and the insurance is canceled within that thirty-day window.

In just the past year or so, we incurred an increase in premium because a deer ran into our Buick. A few months ago there was some confusion in my rating, that while changed, the mistake was not refunded. Since I retired in February 2011 we were hit with an increase because I no longer use either vehicle for “business” driving. The funny thing is that being retired means I may be out on the streets and highways more than ever. I questioned, but did not revolt at those problems, but I’ve reached my limit.

Particularly, I’m upset that the Horace Mann Company is paying such attention to my tier (credit score), while negating my forty years of loyalty. In that length of time I’ve never been late, let alone missed a payment. That loyalty should be much more important to the company than a tier-score that predicts the odds that I might miss a payment.

I am sufficiently upset that I spent time the past several days inquiring of other insurance companies about rates and terms. While I doubt that their rates and service could match, let alone exceed what I’ve received from HM, I am willing to take that chance in order to make my point over the tier rating.

Duplicitous Standards

Listening to the ABC news on Denver’s Channel-7 I learned that the Englewood School District had not notified students parents of one of its elementary schools that several children had lice. The assistant superintendent said her sources said it wasn’t necessary and they didn’t want to ostracize any affected children or their parents. Parents interviewed on the newscast were incensed that they were not given notice that their children could be infected.

Now after a week since the discovery of the pesky bugs the district sent a letter home explaining the problem. If the district thought it not advisable to notify parents last week why now after the reporter began questioning school officials?

The very next report on the newscast was about a student at Colorado State University that was found dead Sunday morning in his dorm room. The reporter went on to tell his name, that he was from Texas, and had track marks on his arm and black heroin in his pants.

Okay, so one school won’t tell parents that some unnamed kids have lice, and their children could be infected, while another school tells that a named student is a heroin addict and died of an overdose.

I wonder about the Channel-7 reporter and newscaster as well as the news director choosing not to name kids with lice, but willing to share the sad death of a college student. Not very balanced when it all occurred on live TV in less than a minute.

Along that line I’ve wondered for several years about newspaper and television policies that won’t identify the name of a sexual assault victim while hurrying to tell the name of the probable assaulter. I understand wanting to protect the identity of a rape victim, but until proved why is the probable perpetrator not given the same degree of anonymity? 

Dutch Oven Ranch

Some may have noticed that I have created a new website called http://dutchovenranch.com. I've started a company that makes me available to personally cook meals in one's home or campsite. My intention is to prepare "gourmet comfort food" for families, river rafters, trail riders, and big game hunters wherever they camp. They can play all day and return to a delicious sophisticated meal that will allow them to sit up in the evening playing cards and talking about their day. I'll take care of the cooking and cleanup! They can enjoy dinner, and breakfast the next morning, without having to do a thing.

I'm having fun working on recipes from my files as well as some from the following websites:

GREAT DUTCH OVEN COOKING SITES

'Round the Chuckbox

Camp-Cook.com

Carolyn's Outdoor Cooking in Oz

Everyday Dutch Oven

Dutch Oven Madness

Mark's Black Pot

Outdoor Cast Iron Cook Videos

Rogue Dutch Oven Cookers

Tough Choices or Tough Times

This blog is almost three years old. I just came across it in my computer while looking for something else. 

Reaction to “Tough Choices or Tough Times”

Stephen Dean Bohrer

February 12, 2007

A recent Denver Post editorial (Sunday, February 4, 2007, page 4e; “U.S. Education Needs Sweeping Reform”) restates the case made by a report released in December entitled “Tough Choices or Tough Times.” The report[1] calls for early-childhood education, paying for first order teachers (up to $110,000 per year), more resources for the toughest schools, a 10th grade exam that would kick low scoring students to trade schools, diminishing of local district control and a federal individual student account to assist with higher education.

Primarily written by business CEOs, the report maintains that an insufficient percentage of high school students are ready for the workforce upon graduation. For the past twenty years, similar business leaders lobbied that all workers should have the same skills as those attending college. This is the mantra of the Colorado Commission for Higher Education in its demand that all graduates entering state colleges (beginning with the class of 2010) must have completed a curriculum that includes four years of mathematics and two years of the same foreign language. Governor Bill Owens’ School Alignment Council endorsed that same conclusion, but also asserted that high school graduates who did not aspire to college were not ready for the workforce.

The fact of the matter is that the federal government and state boards of education have for any number of years undervalued students who wanted to work with their hands for a living. They have twisted federal Perkins funds while states have reduced funding for vocational schools and have forced the closing of programs that could have led to productive blue-collar jobs such as mechanics, heavy equipment operators, plumbers, and electricians. Vocational funding for traditional woodworking classes or home economics no longer exists. One cannot even use the term home ec., but are obliged to say family and consumer science to denote the unlikelihood that students should ever know how to cook, sew, can tomatoes, or crochet.

The Denver Post article goes on to repeat a statement from the Tough Choices report that says “Thirty years ago, the United States could lay claim to having 30 percent of the world’s population of college graduates” (Tough Choices, “Executive Summary” page 4) and “that number is now 14 percent.” The Post’s editorial and the Tough Choices report use these numbers to scare folk into thinking American schools are doing something incorrectly. The truth is that the developing nations of the “flat earth[2]” (namely China and India) have discovered the importance of college and encourage and fund college for their populations. As the U.S. has only 4.5%[3] of the world’s population; it is pure arrogance in this age of worldwide prosperity to expect our nation to have more than its fair share of college students. One can see in Colorado how undervalued a college education has apparently become as the state legislature continually cuts away at funding for higher education.

Some in the media and legislature interpret Tough Choices as a reflection of how wrong-headed school districts are conducting themselves. The truth of the matter is that schools are conducting the business of the districts as prescribed by state and federal laws. The implication of the editorial and quotes from some current state legislators are more interested in placing blame than improving schools and their students’ readiness for college or the workforce.

The report deserves conversation by all stakeholders, but endorsing the Tough Choices report without adequate discussion is not fair to the educators who would have to implement any decisions and the students who would have to live with the results.

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[1] National Center on the Education and the Economy; www.ncee.org

[2] A reference to a 2006 book by Thomas L. Friedman entitled The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century, that talks about the interconnectivity of our world’s peoples and how we must compete with workers all over the world for jobs, not just workers in the U.S., the lowering of trade and political barriers, and the exponential technical advances of the digital revolution that have made it possible to do business, or almost anything else, instantaneously with billions of other people across the planet. (paraphrased from Amazon.com)

[3] Population Reference Bureau; www.prb.org