{"id":10759,"date":"2009-12-22T23:23:34","date_gmt":"2009-12-22T23:23:34","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2009-12-22T23:24:02","modified_gmt":"2009-12-22T23:24:02","slug":"how-many-insurance-executives-does-it-take-to-own-12-million-worth-of-homes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/2009\/12\/22\/how-many-insurance-executives-does-it-take-to-own-12-million-worth-of-homes\/","title":{"rendered":"How Many Insurance Executives Does It Take to Own $12 Million Worth of Homes?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If, out of some prurient curiosity, you ever wondered how an insurance executive lives, <a href=\"http:\/\/stopthesurcharge.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">check out the house<\/a> Mercury Insurance CEO Gabe Tirador bought soon after taking over the reins in 2007 (and about a year before laying off 363 employees).&nbsp; Of course, CEO&#39;s houses are bubkis compared with the Chairmen.&nbsp; That&#39;s where the real square footage is.&nbsp; Mercury&#39;s founding Chairman lives in a Los Angeles palace, also pictured at our new <a href=\"http:\/\/stopthesurcharge.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">StopTheSurcharge.org<\/a> website, which pulls back the veil on these executives and their effort to add a new surcharge to California car insurance premiums for anyone who didn&#39;t have auto insurance at some point in the past five years.&nbsp; Even if they didn&#39;t have a car!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.consumerwatchdog.org\/images\/Joseph_Tirador.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"224\" height=\"203\" align=\"left\" \/>The site will keep updated tabs on Mercury&#39;s attempt to raise car insurance rates as well as the goings-on of these executives who are, not surprisingly, completely out of touch with what it means to be dealing with the economic realities of most Californians.&nbsp; There is info on how this initiative is <a href=\"http:\/\/stopthesurcharge.org\/2009\/12\/21\/soldiers-getting-scrooged-for-the-holidays\/\" target=\"_blank\">scrooging soliders <\/a>as well as info on the <a href=\"http:\/\/stopthesurcharge.org\/2009\/12\/17\/mercury-insurance-submits-sigs-to-raise-car-insurance-rates\/\" target=\"_blank\">front groups<\/a> Mercury is deploying to pitch their scam. <\/p>\n<p>And you can be sure there is more to come, since we&#39;re dealing with an insurance company described by state regulators this way:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Mercury&#39;s lengthy history of serious misconduct, and its attitude &#8211; contempt towards and\/or abuse of its customers, the Commissioner, its competition, and the Superior Court &#8211; are all relevant to determining the penalty needed to best ensure the protection of the public from future violations and wrongdoing&#8230; <\/p>\n<p>Among Department [of Insurance] 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.* <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>*The statement came in a brief submitted by the Department of Insurance in February 2009 in response to a motion by Mercury to exclude evidence of the company&#39;s past conduct. See key pages from that brief <a href=\"http:\/\/www.consumerwatchdog.org\/resources\/MercuryBadFaithStatement.pdf\">here<\/a>. See, particularly, page 4. <\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If, out of some prurient curiosity, you ever wondered how an insurance executive lives, <a href=\"http:\/\/stopthesurcharge.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">check out the house<\/a> Mercury Insurance CEO Gabe Tirador bought soon after taking over the reins in 2007 (and about a year before laying off 363 employees).&nbsp; Of course, CEO&#39;s houses are bubkis compared with the Chairmen.&nbsp; That&#39;s where the real square footage is.&nbsp; Mercury&#39;s founding Chairman lives in a Los Angeles palace, also pictured at our new <a href=\"http:\/\/stopthesurcharge.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">StopTheSurcharge.org<\/a> website, which pulls back the veil on these executives and their effort to add a new surcharge to California car insurance premiums for anyone who didn&#39;t have auto insurance at some point in the past five years.&nbsp; Even if they didn&#39;t have a car!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.consumerwatchdog.org\/images\/Joseph_Tirador.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"224\" height=\"203\" align=\"left\" \/>The site will keep updated tabs on Mercury&#39;s attempt to raise car insurance rates as well as the goings-on of these executives who are, not surprisingly, completely out of touch with what it means to be dealing with the economic realities of most Californians.&nbsp; There is info on how this initiative is <a href=\"http:\/\/stopthesurcharge.org\/2009\/12\/21\/soldiers-getting-scrooged-for-the-holidays\/\" target=\"_blank\">scrooging soliders <\/a>as well as info on the <a href=\"http:\/\/stopthesurcharge.org\/2009\/12\/17\/mercury-insurance-submits-sigs-to-raise-car-insurance-rates\/\" target=\"_blank\">front groups<\/a> Mercury is deploying to pitch their scam. <\/p>\n<p>And you can be sure there is more to come, since we&#39;re dealing with an insurance company described by state regulators this way:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Mercury&#39;s lengthy history of serious misconduct, and its attitude &#8211; contempt towards and\/or abuse of its customers, the Commissioner, its competition, and the Superior Court &#8211; are all relevant to determining the penalty needed to best ensure the protection of the public from future violations and wrongdoing&#8230; <\/p>\n<p>Among Department [of Insurance] 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.* <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>*The statement came in a brief submitted by the Department of Insurance in February 2009 in response to a motion by Mercury to exclude evidence of the company&#39;s past conduct. See key pages from that brief <a href=\"http:\/\/www.consumerwatchdog.org\/resources\/MercuryBadFaithStatement.pdf\">here<\/a>. See, particularly, page 4. <\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"author":2824,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[],"tags":[872,2329,7869],"class_list":["post-10759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-872","tag-2329","tag-7869"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-2Nx","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2824"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10759\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}