BoatBanter.com - View Single Post - I will pay more in federal income taxes this year than ExxonMobil

hk

On 4/11/10 2:24 PM, wrote:
On Sun, 11 Apr 2010 13:40:05 -0400,
wrote:

On 4/11/10 1:32 PM, wrote:
On Sun, 11 Apr 2010 13:00:26 -0400,
wrote:

You can't do it is semi-rural Florida if you want decent coverage
(more than the legal minimum).

When we moved to the Jax area, I was astonished by the high rates for
auto and homeowner's insurance. They were twice what we were paying up
north. I attributed the high auto rates to the crappy drivers and the
hundreds of cars we saw without license plates, and the high homeowners'
to the plethora of hurricanes.

Both are probably accurate assessments. They now separate wind storm
from homeowners so you can see it. My pure homeowners is about $1100 a
year for replacement coverage.
I think the car insurance problem has to do with the number of
tourists. We have so many people who are lost and making turns across
3 lanes of traffic that it makes it real easy to get hit.
Add to that a huge population of people who should have surrendered
their driver's license during the Reagan administration and you can
see the problem.
My mother was dead when we got her "mail in" license sticker, renewed
for another SIX years. She would have been 90 when it expired. They
have not seen Judy for over 18 years. She has 3 renewal stickers on
the back of her license.

Florida's lax laws and regulations were a constant source of amusement.
I was pulled over once because the annual sticker on my license plate
had expired. I was not aware it had expired...and in fact the county or
state had not sent me a renewal notice. I fought the ticket and in fact
the judge let me off the hook, but reminded me that it was not the
government's responsibility to remind me about expired stickers. Well,
hell, everywhere else I had ever lived, I got a renewal notice.

I always get my notices, did you have 2 homes listed or something?
Although the tax collector is officially a state office, it is really
county by county so a lot depends on which county you live in. Lee has
always had a good tax collector. They make the tag process easier than
any place I have ever lived. You can usually transfer a title, buy
tags and get out the door in 10 minutes. They have a lot of offices.
For a while, before that had that many, they had a fleet of RVs that
would set up in various parking lots around town on a schedule what
was in the paper. That was really sweet. They used that data to decide
where to place offices.

BTW you must have been in a place where the cops were jerks. I always
call SW Florida "tags optional". I see cars all the time without them.
If the cops stop you and you have proof of insurance you will usually
just get a warning ticket. Tags on trailers are far less than
universal. There is no title and no insurance requirement.

This was in the mid -1990's...perhaps the renewals are handled better now.

In those days, the county mounties, like school teachers, were grossly
underpaid and the educational requirements were not very high. Teachers
also were paid peanutes. Hopefully, that has changed, too.

NE Florida was a strange place in many ways, especially for a
transplanted yankee like me. Charming, but backwards, which I attributed
in no small part to the religious fundies who controlled a lot and were
hungry to control more. I enjoyed our stay there, but I was glad to get
back to the civilized world.

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