Just saw this year's Coast Guard Auxiliary safe boating decal. Can you believe
it has a name of an insurance company on it?

"Listen to the live broadcast of 'Nautical Talk Radio' with Captain Lou every
Sunday afternoon from 4 - 5 (Eastern Standard Time) on the web at
www.959watd.com or if you are in Boston or Cape Cod set your radio dial to
95.9FM.

"Capt Lou" wrote in message

Just saw this year's Coast Guard Auxiliary safe boating decal. Can you
believe
it has a name of an insurance company on it?

Yeah, I don't much care for it either. Budget issues, is the story I hear.
I guess it costs a few M to print and distribute them all. Its the same
circumstance that has us viewing events at the "Tampax Arena"

JG

John Gaquin wrote:

"Capt Lou" wrote in message


Just saw this year's Coast Guard Auxiliary safe boating decal. Can you

believe

it has a name of an insurance company on it?


Yeah, I don't much care for it either. Budget issues, is the story I hear.
I guess it costs a few M to print and distribute them all. Its the same
circumstance that has us viewing events at the "Tampax Arena"

JG




George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, brought to you by Halliburton, Big Oil,
the American Pharmaceutical Association, the NRA, and the Insurance
Industry.

"Harry Krause" wrote in message
...
John Gaquin wrote:

"Capt Lou" wrote in message


Just saw this year's Coast Guard Auxiliary safe boating decal. Can you

believe

it has a name of an insurance company on it?


Yeah, I don't much care for it either. Budget issues, is the story I
hear.
I guess it costs a few M to print and distribute them all. Its the same
circumstance that has us viewing events at the "Tampax Arena"

JG




George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, brought to you by Halliburton, Big Oil,
the American Pharmaceutical Association, the NRA, and the Insurance
Industry.

"Harry Krause" wrote in message news:c568n0

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, brought to you by Halliburton, Big Oil,
the American Pharmaceutical Association, the NRA, and the Insurance
Industry.

Go and clean the toilets at Ullico before you offer any further puerile
comment on the Bush Administration.

Just saw this year's Coast Guard Auxiliary safe boating decal. Can you
believe
it has a name of an insurance company on it?

Could be worse. For what seemed like a zillion years, our state had a Sec. of
State who would issue official state documents with his signature, name and
title prominently displayed in huge font at the bottom.In every case, the
documents should have been signed buy the SOS, but this guy turned every
fishing regulation, campaign initiative, or policy proposal into the equivalent
of a campaign yard sign.

At least the insurance company is (presumably) paying for the privilege.

Harry Krause wrote:

John Gaquin wrote:

"Harry Krause" wrote in message news:c568n0

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, brought to you by Halliburton, Big Oil,
the American Pharmaceutical Association, the NRA, and the Insurance
Industry.



Go and clean the toilets at Ullico before you offer any further puerile
comment on the Bush Administration.





From Business Week


MAY 27, 2003

COMMENTARY
By Aaron Bernstein

Big Labor's Governance Lesson

At scandal-tainted Ullico, AFL-CIO leaders ousted one of their own as
CEO and set an example Corporate America should heed

When it comes to good governance, Corporate America can learn a useful
lesson from, of all places, the labor movement. For more than a year,
the AFL-CIO has been plagued by a stock scandal at Ullico, a labor-owned
insurer. The company's former chief executive and more than a dozen of
its 28 directors, mostly union leaders, pocketed millions of dollars by
selling Ullico stock at the expense of the union pension funds that own
most of the company.

What's notable, is that after months of internecine battles, AFL-CIO
President John Sweeney and other labor leaders who sat on Ullico's board
moved decisively to clean up the mess. They ousted CEO Robert Georgine
and put directors on notice that they'll have to pay back the profits
they made. That could amount to at least $6 million.

These actions stand as a model for other large companies. It's painfully
clear today that corporate boards rarely fulfill their designated role
as watchdogs over the CEO. Complacent directors allowed apparently
illegal abuses to occur at a string of companies, from Enron to Tyco
International. Many other directors do little to rein in executive
excesses: Consider former General Electric (GE ) CEO Jack Welch's
outsize retirement package, or the tens of millions raked in this year
by the CEOs of American Airlines (AMR ) and Delta Air Lines (DAL ),
despite huge losses.

TOUGH FIGHT. The problem, of course, is that many boards remain clubby
conclaves with little desire to check egregious CEO behavior. Ullico's
board was perhaps even more inbred than most, since many of the
directors Sweeney confronted are leaders of unions that elected him and
pay dues to the AFL-CIO.

Yet Sweeney and a few others, such as Laborers' Union President Terence
O'Sullivan, who has since been named Ullico's new CEO, defied the
institutional taboos and took on their chums. "We still have boards that
are handpicked by the CEO, for the most part, and those directors don't
usually stand up to the CEO," says University of Delaware management
professor Charles Elson. "Directors need to have the guts to make
change. That's the lesson from Ullico."

No question, it wasn't easy for labor leaders to oppose Georgine. He was
was the head of the AFL-CIO's building-trades department for 26 years --
10 of them after he took over at Ullico in 1990. Georgine packed the
insurer's board with building-trades pals, who remained loyal even as
the scandal triggered investigations by a grand jury, the Labor Dept.,
and other agencies.

Sweeney, O'Sullivan, and other labor leaders had to mount an all-out
battle. When the scandal broke last year, Sweeney, then a Ullico
director, prodded fellow board members to mount an investigation.

CREDIBILITY BOOST. Sweeney didn't make any money from selling stock
himself and quit the board in December after Ullico refused to release
the resulting report. After failing this year to win over a majority of
directors, Sweeney and O'Sullivan lined up the union pension funds to
vote their shares against Georgine at Ullico's annual meeting on May 8.

Even so, the battle went down to the wi Georgine handed O'Sullivan
his resignation at 2 p.m., just as the meeting began. AFL-CIO and
Laborers' officials had arrived armed with proxy resolutions that would
have forced emergency changes to Ullico's bylaws if Georgine hadn't
offered his resignation. Those would have allowed shareholders to
override directors (see BW Online, 5/9/03, "Tense Moments in a Labor
Power Struggle").

In the end, Georgine backed down, and on May 13, a new board with a
dozen union leaders untouched by the scandal voted to require directors
to return their stock profits. Georgine's lawyer didn't return calls for
comment.

The outfit still faces plenty of trouble. Congressional hearings are due
in June, and the criminal investigation remains unresolved. But the
AFL-CIO now can cite Ullico -- not just as a case of executive greed but
as an example of how to deal with it. Good thing, too, since the AFL-CIO
is spearheading dozens of shareholder resolutions on CEO pay this year.
Having fixed its own greed problem, labor can claim some credibility in
that campaign.


Bernstein follows labor unions from Washington

Copyright 2000-2004, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.



We clean up our own messes, John. No member of ULLICO management who
participated in the stock deals is still employed by the company, and
those few directors who profited in the deals have either paid back the
profits, are paying back the profits, are off the board, or are being
sued for repayment.

The new management team is squeaky-clean, our outside auditors are
signing our financial statements without dissenting notes, and our chief
regulator has approved our capital program.

Business Week was a strong critic of ULLICO, but it was an honest one,
without a political agenda. The right-wing controlled media, of course,
is still playing its own game for its own purposes.

The Congressional hearings on ULLICO ended last summer without any
recommendations of action against the company. A few weeks ago, the
company consented to a settlement on a nearly 10-year-old civil suit for
about 20 cents on the dollar.

ULLICO is still a company with problems, but these are business-related.
It lost money in 2003, again, but it looks as if it will turn a small
profit in 2004. The corporation isn't a not-for-profit, but it wasn't
established to "make money" for its shareholders. It was established to
provide insurance and other financial services for working men and women
and their unions and jointly-managed trust funds.

At that, it excels. In its 78 years, the company has never failed to pay
a legitimate claim or benefit to a policy holder, and it operates a
couple of investment vehicles, such as "J for Jobs," that fund hundreds
of thousands of family supporting jobs each year. The first concern of
our shareholders is that we serve working men and women. If we do that,
a small profit is all that is expected.

We just introduced a new insured pharmacy product for self-funded health
plans. It is going to be gangbusters. We guarantee a fund that its
monthly per member/per month price for prescriptions will not go up for
a year, and will be less expensive than what the plan is now paying. Too
bad your employer doesn't qualify, eh?


Thanks for asking.




Oh...I forgot. A significant number of our policyholders were killed in
the 9-11 disasters. We paid all beneficiaries within 10 days, months
before most other insurance companies even processed their paperwork.

For many of the low paid workers killed in the Twin Towers' restaurants,
ours was the first and for a while only compensation their families
received. Their status in this country was uncertain, but their status
as union members covered by our insurance was not.

"Harry Krause" wrote in message news:c56go2

From Business Week
snip

That's good.

They made Georgine an "offer he couldn't refuse" because the whole Fed Govt
was in their pants.

I'm glad you're on the right track. Here's hoping you stay that way. Big
Labor's track record is not encouraging in that regard.

"Harry Krause" wrote in message news:c56h02


Oh...I forgot. A significant number of our policyholders were killed in
the 9-11 disasters. We paid all beneficiaries within 10 days, months
before most other insurance companies even processed their paperwork.

That's impressive, and worthy of commendation, which should be given when
due.