Consumer advocates today called on the insurance company executive behind Proposition 33 to immediately withdraw new radio advertisements that mischaracterize the impact of the initiative on foreign service and military personnel in the wake of attacks on US embassies abroad.

In statewide radio advertisements paid for by Mercury insurance executive George Joseph, the Proposition 33 campaign erroneously claims soldiers will be able to keep auto insurance discounts they now lose, and that Prop 33 is about “supporting our heroes.” In fact, foreign service officers would be surcharged under the proposal for not driving while working oversees when they restart their auto insurance in California. Moreover, Prop 33 will not protect any current discount for soldiers.

In a letter sent to Mercury Chairman Joseph today, Consumer Watchdog wrote: “Out of respect for military officers and foreign service employees, who face life-threatening circumstances at our embassies abroad, we call upon you to immediately withdraw your deceptive and disrespectful radio advertising campaign in favor of Proposition 33.”

Download Consumer Watchdog’s letter here, or read text below

Listen to the Prop 33 radio ad here

A Los Angeles Times opinion staff blog published yesterday took the campaign to task for the deceptive ad: “The 30-second spot declares: ‘Proposition 33 protects our veterans and military families, and allows them to keep their discount on car insurance, saving them money.’ It would do nothing of the kind.”

Read the Times blog here:

Consumer Watchdog’s letter continued: “Your radio advertisement claims Prop 33 is about “supporting our heroes.” But under Prop 33, good drivers who have stopped driving for legitimate reasons – like serving abroad in our foreign service – would be hit with large surcharges if they decided to drive again and buy insurance in California. For political reasons, you exempted from Prop 33’s large rate increases a small segment of those who stop driving for legitimate reasons, active duty military officers. That certainly does not mean you are helping soldiers keep a discount. Moreover, foreign service officers, families of military officers, disabled veterans and others who stop driving for good reason, but cannot prove active duty military service is the reason for their coverage lapse, would get slammed under Prop 33 with big rate hikes.”

This month, Joseph also gave $195,000 to a nonprofit organization for its support of Proposition 33 in another attempt to mislead voters about the impact of Prop 33 and camouflage its insurance industry backing. Joseph gave 99%, $8.4 million, of the funds in support of Prop 33.

The measure would overturn a 24-year-old law banning discriminatory practices by auto insurance companies that were brought to light in a 1987 California civil rights case, King v. Meese. Proposition 103, passed by the voters in 1988, banned auto insurers from charging more, or refusing to sell insurance, to people who were not previously insured.

Read more about Proposition 33 at www.StopProp33.org

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September 13, 2012

Mr. Joseph,

Out of respect for military officers and foreign service employees, who face life-threatening circumstances at our embassies abroad, we call upon you to immediately withdraw your deceptive and disrespectful radio advertising campaign in favor of Proposition 33.

You began your disingenuous “Heroes” radio advertising campaign for Proposition 33, the California ballot measure for which you have given 99% of the funding, the day after September 11th with the hope of fanning patriotic sentiments for your insurance company’s cause.   You could not have known that those cynical advertisements – which misrepresent your measure’s impact on our nation’s military, their families and foreign service officers – would air when American military and foreign service members are under grave threat worldwide.

Nonetheless, you now have an obligation not to betray the seriousness of the current circumstances our heroes face abroad with radio advertisements that lie about what Prop 33 does in their name.

As the Los Angeles Times editorial staff blog noted Wednesday:

“Proposition 33, an initiative to let auto insurers offer discounts to competitors’ customers, isn’t quite the same as Proposition 17, a similar proposal that voters rejected in 2010. But the campaign in favor of the measure seems to be following the same truth-distorting playbook.

“The Yes on Proposition 33 campaign has bought airtime on 19 radio stations in five cities for what appears to be its first commercial, which is due to begin broadcasting Wednesday. The 30-second spot declares: ‘Proposition 33 protects our veterans and military families, and allows them to keep their discount on car insurance, saving them money.’

“It would do nothing of the kind.”

As you well know, Prop 33 has nothing to do with military officers keeping any discount under current law. All your initiative does is legalize a now-illegal rating factor: Whether a driver has had auto insurance continuously or not.

Your radio advertisement claims Prop 33 is about “supporting our heroes.” But under Prop 33, good drivers who have stopped driving for legitimate reasons – like serving abroad in our foreign service – would be hit with large surcharges if they decided to drive again and buy insurance in California. For political reasons, you exempted from Prop 33’s large rate increases a small segment of those who stop driving for legitimate reasons, active duty military officers. That certainly does not mean you are helping soldiers keep a discount. Moreover, foreign service officers, families of military officers, disabled veterans and others who stop driving for good reason, but cannot prove active duty military service is the reason for their coverage lapse, would get slammed under Prop 33 with big rate hikes.

Mr. Joseph, you have repeatedly cited your experience as a veteran to justify why one insurance company billionaire should be allowed to change the insurance laws through Proposition 33.   We urge you to take a moment of silence to think like a veteran now and withdraw these advertisements.

Sincerely,

Jamie Court

Consumer Advocates Call On Group To Withdraw Support For Measure That Would Raise Car Insurance Rates on Good Drivers

The nonprofit Greenlining Institute acknowledged in a San Francisco Bay Guardian story published today that it received a $25,000 donation from Mercury insurance company, and expects more for its work in support of Mercury-backed Proposition 33. Prop 33 is funded by Mercury insurance’s billionaire chairman George Joseph and would raise car insurance rates on good drivers who have a break in insurance coverage, even if they’re not driving.

In a letter, Consumer Watchdog urged Greenlining to reverse its decision to support Proposition 33. Greenlining opposed a nearly identical ballot measure proposed by Mercury insurance company in 2010, Prop 17.

Download the letter here

Read the San Francisco Bay Guardian story

“We are writing to urge you to reconsider your shocking support for Proposition 33 and the auto insurance redlining it seeks to legalize,” wrote Consumer Watchdog founder Harvey Rosenfield and Washington DC director Carmen Balber. “Greenlining purports to represent the very low-income drivers who will be hurt the most if Proposition 33 is approved next November, allowing insurance companies to surcharge Californians who stop driving for legitimate reasons and then choose to get back on the road.”

Prop 33 would overturn a 24-year-old law banning discriminatory practices by auto insurance companies that were brought to light in the 1987 California civil rights case, King v. Meese.

“The rampant practice of surcharging, or refusing to sell insurance to, people who were not previously insured was one of the most pernicious of the discriminatory techniques employed by the insurance industry,” said the letter. “In signing the ballot argument for Proposition 33, you have aligned yourself with George Joseph and Mercury Insurance, the most persistent partisans for the legalization of the old redlining tricks that made auto insurance inaccessible to low-income families and communities of color for decades.”

The letter notes that Proposition 33 targets Californians who stop driving for legitimate reasons:

• When low-wage workers who commute by bus need to get a car in order to maintain their job, they will be surcharged by about 40% for auto insurance;
• When immigrant drivers are finally able to obtain a California driver’s license and try to buy insurance, they will be forced to pay hundreds and possibly thousand of dollars more than the drivers who purchased insurance in the past, even though they are equally good drivers;
• When drivers who have found it financially impossible to maintain uninterrupted insurance coverage turn to the auto insurance market in hopes of complying with the mandatory insurance law, they will face a financial penalty for being poor;
• Those who cannot afford these massive surcharges will be exposed to penalties and seizure of their vehicles for failure to comply with the Financial Responsibility Law.

The Mercury Insurance initiative’s lawsuit to stop the Attorney General and us opponents from telling the truth about Proposition 33 – how it will raise auto insurance rates – got tossed out of Sacramento Superior Court last Thursday. The Mercury campaign asked the court to rewrite the Official Ballot Pamphlet, which is sent to every voter’s home, so it would contain only Mercury’s false claim that everyone will get “discounts” if Proposition 33 passes.  After an hour-long argument, the judge said no.

But the ink was hardly dry on Thursday’s court order when Mercury told yet another lie – this time about what we said in court.

In a press release issued Friday morning, Mercury said: “CONSUMER WATCHDOG ARGUES IN COURT THAT THE TRUTH IS ELASTIC.”

We never said that, of course. (The release also called us “corporate lawyers,” which the corporations we take on would no doubt find bewildering.)

I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that George Joseph, the multi-billionaire Chairman of Mercury Insurance who has contributed 99.1% of the $8.29 million received by Proposition 33, can’t stop lying about his proposition and the consumer, citizen, senior and patient’s organizations who vehemently oppose it.  After all, according to the California Department of Insurance:

“Mercury [has a] lengthy history of serious misconduct, and its attitude – contempt towards and/or abuse of its customers, the Commissioner, its competition, and the Superior Court….Among Department staff, consumer attorneys, and consumer victims of its bad faith, Mercury has a deserved reputation for abusing its customers and intentionally violating the law with arrogance and indifference….”

Mercury’s dirty propaganda campaign didn’t work back in 2010, when the company mounted a nearly identical proposition to deregulate auto insurance, also sued the Attorney General and us, spent $16 million, and still lost. Joseph and the pigs at the Mercury trough (an assortment of PR hacks, phony non-profit groups, insurance agents and bought-and-paid-for politicians) think the voters are stupid. But they are wrong. California voters can smell a dirty, self-serving initiative a mile away.

The Mercury Insurance campaign might have gotten away with its Friday fabrication, except we were able to catch them red-handed.

Hours before Thursday’s hearing, I found out that Joseph’s lawyers had not requested a court reporter be there to take down everything that was said in court. (Thanks to severe budget cuts, state courts can no longer afford to pay for court reporters – the parties in a lawsuit have to pay.) It seemed odd that this mega-billionaire would not spring for someone to record the truth… and then I realized that the Mercury campaign might not want a transcript of what happened in court, so they could lie about it later.

So I pulled out my checkbook, went to a special window at the Sacramento Superior Court, and paid the $30 for the court reporter myself.

Good thing, as it turns out.

The court reporter’s transcript confirms that our lawyer, the highly respected James Harrison of Remcho, Johansen & Purcell, never uttered what Mercury quoted him as saying. Rather, citing the First Amendment and many legal decisions, he urged the court to reject Mercury’s attack on our conclusion that Proposition 33 will “deregulate” auto insurance premiums. Here are his words:

“Your Honor, as the Court noted, deregulation is an elastic and ideological concept. In the Huntington Beach case, for example, the Court refused to make a change to the argument that the measure requires AES, the electricity company, to pay its fair share. And the reason that the Court refused to intervene was that the term ‘fair share’ is a very elastic and ideological concept. What you understand to be a fair share might not be what I understand. The same is true of deregulation, your Honor. What I understand to be deregulation may have a very different meaning to someone else. It’s a very elastic concept.”

Mercury’s legal shenanigans wasted a lot of taxpayer money at a time when California courts are struggling to deliver justice fairly and efficiently despite a gaping hole that the Legislature has inflicted on the judicial branch budget. (Late Friday, Joseph’s lawyers filed an appeal, hoping to overturn the Superior Court’s decision.  It was summarily denied.)

Forcing the Attorney General to defend in court her summary of Proposition 33, which she is required by law to prepare for the ballot, was also an unnecessary drain on that law enforcement agency’s scarce resources. (Joseph was also furthering a strategy recently adopted by Wall Street and other corporate interests: Attacking Attorney General Kamala Harris in an attempt to intimidate and undermine her.)

The Mercury campaign’s public relations minions don’t care about the cost to taxpayers. To them, filing a lawsuit in court is just another gambit in their greed-driven, deceptive campaign to get the voters to pass a law allowing companies like Mercury Insurance to raise your auto insurance rates and make more money.

_______________________

Posted by Harvey Rosenfield, Founder of Consumer Watchdog and Author of California Proposition 103, the landmark Auto Insurance Regulation law in California.

Consumer Advocates Say Prop 33 Means Auto Insurance Rate Hikes of 33% or More

The newly numbered Proposition 33, funded by Mercury Insurance’s billionaire Chairman George Joseph, is a replay of Mercury’s unsuccessful 2010 initiative aimed at raising auto insurance premiums on millions of Californians.

According to the Attorney General’s official title of the initiative, Prop 33: “Changes Law to Allow Auto Insurance Companies to Set Prices Based on a Driver’s History of Insurance Coverage.” The Attorney General’s summary explains that Prop 33 “Will allow insurance companies to increase cost of insurance to drivers who have not maintained continuous coverage.”

Prop 33 aims to change over 20 years of insurance law by repealing a key anti-discrimination provision from the 1988 voter initiative Proposition 103. In addition to broadly reforming insurance rates in California, Proposition 103 specifically prohibited an insurance industry redlining scheme first brought to public attention by the 1985 California civil rights case King v. Meese. While Prop 103 made that scheme illegal 24 years ago, Prop 33 would rollback that protection and revive this discriminatory practice by insurance companies that particularly targets low-income and other Californians struggling financially.

Consumer advocates opposing Prop 33, including Consumers Union, Consumer Federation of California and Consumer Watchdog, say that Prop 33 is another deceptive insurance company trick to raise auto insurance rates for millions of responsible drivers in California. While the insurance industry backers of Prop 33 promise that it will give people discounts, the measure is actually designed to get around an existing law that prevents unfair surcharges on good drivers.

Prop 33 allows insurance companies to charge dramatically higher rates to customers with perfect driving records, just because they had not purchased auto insurance at some point during the past five years. Drivers must pay this unfair penalty even if they did not own a car or need insurance at the time.

“The insurance companies are at it again with another deceptive initiative that says one thing but does another,” said consumer advocate Douglas Heller with Consumer Watchdog Campaign. “When an insurance billionaire spends millions of dollars on a ballot measure, hold onto your wallet. Prop 33 is the newest edition of Mercury’s long-running effort to give insurance companies a new way to unfairly raise auto insurance premiums.”

Mercury Insurance Chairman George Joseph has already spent eight million dollars on Prop 33 and will likely spend more than the $16 million spent by Mercury for its 2010 initiative, according to consumer advocates. Prior to his serial attacks on consumer rights at the ballot box, Joseph and his company pushed for legislative repeal of the consumer protection laws, but that change was ruled illegal by the California Court of Appeal.

About ten years ago, Mercury was caught illegally surcharging many of its customers using the same so-called “continuous coverage” scheme proposed in Prop 33. At the time, Mercury added a 40% surcharge on drivers with perfect records who did not have prior insurance coverage at some point in the past, even if they did not need coverage. In other states where Mercury is allowed to add the Prop 33 surcharge, rates jump by 50% to 100% and sometimes more.

“Wherever Mercury has imposed the financial penalty that would be allowed under Prop 33, premiums for many drivers skyrocket,” said Heller. “When California voters go to the polls in the November, they should ignore the insurance industry’s slick ad campaigns and simply remember that Prop 33 will raise auto insurance rates by 33% or more.”

Prop 33 would increase premiums for Californians who stopped driving for legitimate reasons, including:

• graduating students entering the workforce;
• people who dropped their coverage while recuperating from a serious illness or injury that kept them off the road
• Californians who previously used mass-transit; and
• the long-term unemployed.

Californians who had chosen not to drive for a time and did not need insurance would be surcharged when a new job, move or some other circumstance requires them to buy insurance again. Prop 33’s unfair penalty would punish drivers with premium surcharges that could reach $1,000 a year or more just because they took a hiatus from driving their automobile.

For more information about Prop 33, Consumer Watchdog Campaign has created: www.StopTheSurcharge.org

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