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Email: jmbelth@gmail.com
Blog: www.josephmbelth.com
SHIP has committed one or more acts which constitute grounds for rehabilitation. Specifically, SHIP's most recent annual statement demonstrates that the company is statutorily insolvent. Additionally, SHIP's most recent risk-based capital ("RBC") report indicates that the company's total adjusted capital is substantially below its mandatory control level RBC, therefore triggering a "mandatory control level event." Finally, the Trustees of the Senior Health Care Oversight Trust [which oversees SHIP] and SHIP's directors have consented in a signed writing to the company being placed in rehabilitation and have waived a hearing.
Table of Contents (5)
How to Provide Comments and Objections (1)
Important Notice (3)
Basic Information about the Plan (6 pages)
General Plan Details (18)
Details of Phase One of the Plan (16)
Details of Phase Two of the Plan (22)
Phase Three (1)
Other Matters (22)
Glossary (14)
The following description of the Plan is intended to provide policyholders the basic information required for them to make the required election(s) if the Plan is implemented as proposed. To that extent, it should also enable policyholders to decide what if any comments or formal objections they may offer in response to the request for approval of the Plan. Much more detail about the Plan and related matters is provided in the sections that follow.
This illustration is provided solely for the purpose of demonstrating how premiums and benefits under each option in the proposed rehabilitation plan compare to each other. Every policy is different and produces different results.
Because of the extraordinary circumstances facing our nation, the Rehabilitator will ask the Court to provide policyholders and others a prolonged period of time to review the Plan before such comments are due.
The application for stay presented to Justice Kavanaugh and by him referred to the Court is granted. The District Court's order granting a preliminary injunction is stayed to the extent it requires the State to count absentee ballots postmarked after April 7, 2020.
Wisconsin has decided to proceed with the elections scheduled for April 7, 2020. The wisdom of that decision is not the question before the Court. The question before the Court is a narrow, technical question about the absentee ballot process....
The Court's decision on the narrow question before the Court should not be viewed as expressing an opinion on the broader question of whether to hold the election, or whether other reforms or modifications in election procedures in light of COVID-19 are appropriate. That point cannot be stressed enough.The Dissenting Opinion
The District Court, acting in view of the dramatically evolving COVID-19 pandemic, entered a preliminary injunction to safeguard the ability of absentee voting in Wisconsin's spring election. The Court now intervenes at the eleventh hour to prevent voters who have timely requested absentee ballots from casting their votes. I would not disturb the District Court's disposition, which the Seventh Circuit allowed to stand....
The majority of this Court declares that this case presents a "narrow, technical question." That is wrong. The question here is whether tens of thousands of Wisconsin citizens can vote safely in the midst of a pandemic. Under the District Court's order, they would be able to do so. Even if they receive their absentee ballot in the days immediately following election day, they could return it. With the majority's stay in place, that will not be possible. Either they will have to brave the polls, endangering their own and others' safety. Or they will lose their right to vote, through no fault of their own. That is a matter of utmost importance—to the constitutional rights of Wisconsin's citizens, the integrity of the State's election process, and in this most extraordinary time, the health of the Nation.A Bill Introduced in the U.S. Senate
Officials have identified seven people [six voters and one poll worker] who appear to have contracted the coronavirus through activities related to the April 7 election in Wisconsin, Milwaukee's health commissioner said, and advocates worry it could be just the "tip of the iceberg."Available Material
Jack D. Warren Jr. on George WashingtonDavid McCullough
David McCullough on John Adams
Jon Meacham on Thomas Jefferson
Ron Chernow on Alexander Hamilton
Walter Isaacson on Benjamin Franklin
Cokie Roberts on Founding Mothers
Doris Kearns Goodwin on Abraham Lincoln
A. Scott Berg on Charles Lindbergh
Jay Winik on Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Jean Edward Smith on Dwight D. Eisenhower
Richard Reaves on John F. Kennedy
Taylor Branch on Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement
Robert A. Caro on Lyndon B. Johnson
Bob Woodward on Richard M. Nixon and Executive Power
H. W. Brands on Ronald Reagan
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. on the U.S. Supreme Court
Rubenstein
In addition to being the most ardent advocate for independence, Adams made two decisions. He recommended somebody to be the general of the army for the American colonies and somebody to write the Declaration of Independence. Why did he pick George Washington and why did he pick Thomas Jefferson?
McCullough
He picked Thomas Jefferson because he felt he was the best writer. And he liked him very much and admired him very much.
Washington was a clear choice. There wasn't really much mystery about that. There were so very few to choose from, and they were all young in their thirties or early forties, with no experience. They'd never done this before; none of them had. And it's just miraculous out of this tiny population—2,500,000 people and 500,000 of them were slaves held in bondage. Couldn't vote, had no say.
One of the most important virtues or admirable qualities that we all should know and understand about John Adams is he's the only Founding Father to become president who never owned a slave. As a matter of principle. And [his wife] Abigail was staunchly of that same point of view. The slaves weren't all in the South. They were sort of a status symbol in Boston, and you had servants who were slaves. That was the thing to have.
Rubenstein
[Adams] was not an abolitionist, though?
McCulloughRobert Caro
No, he wasn't. Nobody was making an issue of that at the time because they had determined that "we can't solve this one now—we've got to sidestep that." They were really putting in the closet an issue they knew eventually had to be solved.
Rubenstein
We've largely covered the four volumes of The Years of Lyndon Johnson that you've written. With the beginning of the Johnson administration, you end the fourth volume. When is volume 5 coming out? Is it going to be one volume or two volumes?
Caro
Well, you're ruining this terrific interview. I'm about halfway through.
Rubenstein
You do all your research and then you write—or type—on your Smith-Corona?
Caro
That's in theory true, but when you get into each chapter, you suddenly realize that some file that you had thought wasn't important at the Johnson Presidential Library is key. So you have to go back and look into it.
I want the last book to be in one volume. I'll tell you why: because the arc of Lyndon Johnson's presidency is one arc. He starts with the greatest victory in the history of American politics—to this day, still. Sixty-one-point-one percent over Barry Goldwater, his Republican opponent in the 1964 presidential election.
So he starts with the greatest triumph you can imagine. By the end of it, Vietnam has consumed his presidency, and he has to leave office and go back to his ranch. I want that all to be in one book because I see it as one story....
Rubenstein
Lyndon Johnson died of a heart attack at the age of sixty-four, relatively young. Would he have been able to survive with modern medical technology?
CaroConclusion
I asked his cardiologist that very question. He said, "We could have fixed him in a half-hour angioplasty."
Indexed Universal Life (IUL) has long been touted as a product that provides upside potential with downside protection. With the precipitous market decline in the first quarter of 2020 caused by COVID-19, this is no doubt a great opportunity for those who sold or purchased IUL products to take a victory lap. But should they be celebrating? And more broadly, are IUL products everything they are cracked up to be?The next section of Witt's review consists of four paragraphs entitled "Understanding IUL Policy Mechanics." The section also includes four "critical observations to understand about the IUL policy mechanics."
In my opinion, no. They certainly look good on paper, and you can contrive situations where an IUL policy can perform well for short (or even relatively long) periods of time, but over the long haul I do not believe a compelling case can be made for an IUL policy outperforming a whole life policy from a good carrier (say a highly rated mutual insurance company)—particularly if the whole life policy were optimized to reduce agent compensation and maximize policy efficiency.The third section includes ten numbered and detailed discussions of "issues with many IUL illustrations." The fourth section is entitled "Do IUL Policies Have an Investment Advantage Over Whole Life Policies?" The fifth section is entitled "Premium Financing—Even More Leveraging."
When you put it all together, many IUL illustrations resemble a house of cards. When you inject heavy internal borrowing into the illustration (using a favorable and potentially unsustainable arbitrage assumption), you now have another house of cards put on top of the first house of cards. (And for those that are so inclined, you can add another house of cards by introducing premium financing into the mix.)General Observations