Links

Below are links to various articles concerning Ralph Hudgens, who represents insurance companies instead of Georgians.

Georgia tops nation for increase in auto insurance rates

Georgia Hopes to Establish State as Captive-Friendly with Revised Law

excerpt from online "Insurance Journal"

According to a spokesperson for the GADOI, Insurance Commissioner Ralph Hudgens also supported amending the current captive law because there were no pure captives domiciled in the state prior to the passage of the bill. He requested the amendments to the Georgia captive law as part of his department package this year.
“Commissioner Hudgens hopes that the law changes will bring more captive insurance companies to Georgia and will also bring the professional jobs necessary to service those captive insurance companies,” the Commissioner’s office wrote in an email to Insurance Journal.

Not knowing exactly what is meant by "captive insurance company" I looked around and will continue to do so because it looks really fishy AND squirrely  simultaneously.
From Wikipedia:

Sheltering income from taxes

Captive insurance policies can be "designed so that the risks they insure are so unlikely that the captives will never pay out a claim and all those premiums will go back to the business owners or their heirs with little or no tax

Most captive domiciles are in the Caribbean which should raise a very red flag.   

The good and bad of captives: http://www.americanbar.org/publications/blt/2014/02/04_adkisson.html  according to the American Bar web site.

 

 BIG INSURANCE DEAL RAISES QUESTIONS. ALBANY HERALD

PDF: Financial disclosure 

11Alive News: Citizen journalist forcibly removed from public event
DAWSONVILLE, Ga. -- Nydia Tisdale still has bruises a week after she was arrested by a Dawson County Sheriff's Deputy for recording video at a public political rally.

Atlanta Journal Constitution: How a plan to keep a GOP rally off the Internet went awry
Linda Clary Umberger, chairman of the Dawson County GOP, followed the citizen journalist and the officer to an outbuilding. “I watched as a woman was bent over the counter on her face, with an officer over her,” Umberger said. “If I had been her, I would have elbowed him in the face, too.

boingboing: Invited citizen journalist at GOP rally violently arrested for recording speakers
Nydia Tisdale, a citizen journalist, was invited to a GOP rally in Atlanta, but State Insurance Commissioner Ralph Hudgens demanded that she (and not other, more friendly press) stop recording his speech; when she refused, he summoned a deputy who violently arrested her and then charged her with felony obstruction after she elbowed him while he was bending her over and pressing his groin into her buttocks.

Atlanta Journal Constitution: Obamacare may put target on Hudgens back.
In August, Hudgens told an enthusiastic GOP crowd in Floyd County of his plans for Obamacare in Georgia. “We’re doing everything in our power to be an obstructionist,” he said. The video clip is still circulating.

Atlanta Journal Constitution: Ga. insurance chief brags about sabotage of ObamaCare
After pausing to let applause roll over him, a grinning Hudgens went on to give an example of that obstructionist behavior, this one involving so-called “navigators” who are being hired to guide customers through the process of buying health insurance on marketplaces, or exchanges, set up under the federal program.

Huffington Post: Georgia Republican Who Made 'Callous' Pre-Existing Condition Remark Has One Of His Own
Hudgens was forced to swallow his words Wednesday after the Georgia Democratic Party circulated footage of him comparing pre-existing conditions to at-fault car wrecks. Making the case against Obamacare's requirement that insurers accept those with pre-existing conditions, Hudgens suggested that such conditions were the fault of those who have them, in the way a car accident is the driver's fault.

Huffington Post: Another Georgia Republican Forgot The Camera Was Rolling, Accidentally Spoke His Mind
Hudgens is now fleeing the scene of his own wreck. He told AJC it was a "really poor analogy” and “nothing could be further from the truth. I’ve had family members, I’ve had friends … who have pre-existing conditions,” he told the paper. “It’s not the person’s fault they have a pre-existing condition.”

Atlanta Journal Constitution: Ralph Hudgens: No longer an Obamacare ‘obstructionist’
“I spoke to a Republican group in Rome, Ga., and I said I was going to be an obstructionist, but I can’t be. I mean, I was talking to a Republican group and I was throwing them some red meat. …

Bloomberg.com: Georgia’s Dangerous War Against Obamacare 
Recent reports by independent investigative journalist Jim Walls and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution have pushed Real PAC to disclose that it has received almost $1 million in donations since late 2011, most of it from the health-care industry, according to an analysis by Better Georgia, an organization that advocates for progressive government policies. 

Insurance Journal:  Georgia Regulators’ Meals, Golf Paid by Insurance Agents Under Scrutiny
The sums spent on Insurance and Safety Fire Commissioner Ralph Hudgens and his staff represent larger-than-average lobbyist spending on executive officials. While lobbyists frequently splurge on those elected to office, it is less common for them to pick up the tab for staff regulators who set and enforce rules. One of the entertainment expenditures would be illegal when a new lobbying law takes effect next year

Insurance Journal: Georgia Lobbying Gift Limit Doesn’t Apply to All in Executive Branch
Hudgens said he didn’t set rules on lobbyist gifts when he entered office in 2011. Lobbyists have made multiple expenditures on Hudgens, buying items ranging from $5 in newspapers to $245 in lodging at an industry conference.Hudgens said he thinks the executive order applies not to his employees but to the people Deal appoints and whose paychecks have his signature.