In a move that is expected to jump- start rebuilding along the Mississippi Gulf Coast, State Farm Insurance says it has reached an agreement with state officials to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to owners of homes along the coast that were wrecked by Hurricane Katrina.

It would also remove a major public relations headache. While State Farm and the other insurers may have had some strong legal arguments, they have been widely perceived as insensitive and uncaring. In many cases, residents whose houses were reduced to concrete slab foundations received just a few thousand dollars in payments. Some received nothing.

State Farm got a vivid picture of the hostility toward it in the first jury trial a little more than a week ago. Senter abruptly declared that State Farm had failed to prove its case and the jury quickly came back with a decision requiring the company to pay $2.5 million in punitive damages to a couple in Biloxi who lost everything in the storm. The judge also awarded the couple the full value of their insurance policy — $223,000. State Farm had maintained that it owed them nothing.

You would have to pay me to insure with creeps like this. Voting with your dollar is an American tradition — and boycotting insurance companies that refuse to help Katrina victims is legitimate and overdue.