I have been seeing a lot of posts about how Columbus was a horrible person who did terrible things generally and, in particular, that his voyage to the Americas triggered the beginnings of some truly awful times for the indigenous people who were already there. I think some of the vitriol is a little over the top for someone who has been dead for half a millennium. That level of emotional response strongly suggests that a person is using Columbus as a proxy for things they dislike about the present. The time was ripe for some European voyage of exploration to bump into the Americas. So, Columbus or not, I doubt the Americas would have been undiscovered by Europeans for more than another 50 years or so.

The experience of the people indigenous to the Americas wouldn’t have been great no matter who arrived first. Among other things, even with the most egalitarian intentions (which wasn’t going to happen), first contact by anyone from Eurasia or Africa was going to mean the introduction of ravaging diseases. It’s my understanding that the mistreatment by the Spaniards, egregious as it was, paled in significance compared to the deaths caused by disease.

Causing Columbus to carry the baggage for the horrors of European society seems like a heavier load than he deserves. But, even if he was a decent fellow — a claim I don’t make — his feats of exploration don’t seem all that impressive, relative to some others you could point to. My knowledge of exploration is heavily white and European, so I apologize for my lack of familiarity outside of that narrow circle. But, Prince Henry the Navigator had Portuguese exploration accomplishing quite a bit prior to Columbus. Magellan’s voyage sailed around the world (though he did not — Enrique of Malacca may have been the first person to go around the world. Juan Sebastian Elcano should probably be credited with the first circumnavigation.) Sir Francis Drake completed the second circumnavigation and did so while in command the whole time and after capturing a bunch of Spanish gold in the process. (He also came back with over 1/3 of his crew, which wasn’t bad by the standards of the time.) And, if we’re talking about sheer feats of navigation, it’s tough to beat James Cook.

So, I’d happily dump Columbus Day as something we celebrate. But, I doubt it will have a significant impact on the social ills associated with Columbus and continuing observation of the day named for him. On the other hand, it might help a little, and I doubt it would hurt anything.

(This is a re-post of an entry I put up in December 2012 on what I’m afraid is an evergreen topic.)

In the wake of these tragic mass murders, firearm advocates, reacting to calls for gun bans, point out that lots of things kill people. Cars, for example, kill lots of people.

We mandate liability insurance for cars. Why not for firearms? Bring market forces to bear on this issue. More firearms make things safer? Insurance rates will go down (if true).

Anyway, what I envision is a requirement that a firearm owner obtain liability insurance that covers injuries caused by that particular firearm. (Runs with the weapon – provides an incentive for people to secure the weapon in a way that ensures, for example, kids don’t have access to the weapon.) I would also envision a policy surcharge used to subsidize coverage for uninsured losses, treatment of mental illness, enforcement of existing regulations, and safety education efforts.

Firearm advocates promote guns as critical for liberty and personal safety. Seems like the price of an insurance policy is a small price to pay for life and liberty. If, on the other hand, your attachment to your guns is more of a cultural affectation, the cost may make you re-evaluate your priorities.

It won’t happen, but it struck me as a compromise position that avoids confiscating weapons on the one hand or continuing, on the other hand, to sit on our hands while mass murderers with firearms gun down the innocent as we idly wonder why this keeps happening to us.

(An additional idea, not in the 2012 entry, is some kind of dealer’s experience account where the dealer has to pay in a certain percentage of the sale. The percentage goes into a firearm victim compensation fund which would pay out some capped amount for individuals injured by firearms. The amount of the percentage for any particular dealer would go up when the dealer’s firearm is found to have injured someone and go down when they have a below average incident-to-transaction ratio. The idea being to create a market incentive for dealers to sell responsibly and penalize those dealers whose transactions are most likely to lead to firearm injuries.)

The big news for the Indiana General Assembly yesterday was majority floor leader, Rep. Jud McMillin’s abrupt resignation. I have not been as careful a watcher of the legislature lately as I have been in years past, but a quick search of my blog shows a few hits for Rep. McMillin, probably most notorious of which was one of those proposals to require poor people to get drug tests before being eligible for welfare benefits and restricts the types of foods available through food stamps. On that, I posted at the time:

Other states have tried the drug testing for welfare recipients and have found it to be a waste of taxpayer money. The idea is, I suppose, that their poverty is the result of their poor moral choices, e.g., doing drugs. If they weren’t so drug addled, obviously they would be productive citizens. But, it turns out, not so much. The welfare population doesn’t seem to do illegal drugs at a higher rate than the population at large. The experience of other states is that it costs as much or more to test people than it saves by denying benefits to those few who test positive.

Speaking of poor moral choices, Rep. McMillin’s resignation does not appear to be due to, as the original press release indicated, his ardent desire to spend more time with his family. Rather, as Lesley Weidenbener reported for the IBJ, and Tony Cook and Chelsea Schneider reported for the Indy Star, there is something to do with sex and a phone. And Canada. From the Weidenbener article:

Sources close to the Republican caucus said someone obtained McMillin’s phone and discovered at least one video that showed the lawmaker involved in sexual contact. The sources did not detail who else was involved.

But before his resignation, McMillin sent a message alerting contacts that his phone had been stolen and to disregard any messages they had recently received from him. “I am truly sorry for anything offensive you may have received,” the text said.

From the Cook/Schneider article:

McMillin said in a text message last week, “My phone was stolen in Canada and out of my control for about 24 hours. I have just been able to reactivate it under my control. Please disregard any messages you received recently. I am truly sorry for anything offensive you may have received.”

The inference has to be that there is something about the sex video that goes beyond just sex that happened to be recorded. It’s not for everybody, but there is nothing particularly scandalous about couples choosing to record themselves. If McMillin and his wife had a video distributed without their consent, then they’d very much be the victims and there would be no reason for him to resign. So, I assume an extra detail or two will be forthcoming before too long.

The Associated Press is reporting that INDOT is making demands on Fort Wayne based Brooks Construction with respect to problems in the recent highway projects having to do with prematurely crumbling asphalt.

In a letter sent Friday, INDOT gave Brooks Construction one week to commit to returning the money or replacing three miles of the Hoosier Heartland Highway near Logansport that was completed in 2012, the Indianapolis Star reported.

The letter represents INDOT’s first action against a contractor since acknowledging last week that it suspects as much as $71 million in faulty asphalt was used in 188 projects across the state.

For its part, Brooks said they followed the state’s specifications and that the asphalt repeatedly passed state testing. INDOT says the asphalt Brooks used on the Hoosier Heartland was not the same as asphalt it submitted for testing.

This is one of apparently 188 projects INDOT currently suspects of having asphalt problems. So, there is likely more of this to come.

Hayleigh Colombo, writing for the Indianapolis Business Journal, has an article reporting on yesterday’s passing of long-time state representative, Bill Crawford. Crawford served in the General Assembly from 1973 to 2012.

Crawford, who was in the crowd gathered at 17th and Broadway Streets on April 4, 1968, when Bobby Kennedy announced King’s death, was inspired then to live a life of community activism. He was later inspired to run for the legislature by former U.S. Rep. Julia Carson.

Among other things, Crawford was chairman of the House Ways & Means committee from, I believe, 2002-2004 and again from 2006-2010. Additionally:

Indiana House Democrats said his legislative accomplishments include funding minority health issues, co-authoring the Second Chance Act that gave people with criminal records a path back into society, changing the makeup of the Indianapolis Public School Board, and creating the Low-Income Housing Trust Fund and the Minority Teacher’s Scholarship Fund.

Looks like a life well-lived which, ultimately, is what we should all strive for.

The Indiana Court of Appeals today reversed a trial court decision adverse to Founder’s Insurance in a 2-1 opinion with Judge Robb writing the majority opinion and Judge Mathias concurring with Judge May writing the dissent. The case was Founders v. May (pdf). Founders insured a vehicle owned by May. Coomer took the vehicle without May’s permission (and without a valid driver’s license) and got in an accident with Hoke, killing him.

Founders filed a declaratory action requesting that a court recognize that its insuring contract imposed on the company no duty to defend or provide coverage for the accident. The insurance policy excluded coverage for a person operating the vehicle without a reasonable expectation that they were authorized to use the vehicle and also excluded coverage for a person operating the vehicle without a valid license. Hoke’s estate objected because Hoke was an innocent third party who wouldn’t be compensated if Founders wasn’t compelled to pay for the damages caused by the accident. The trial court granted summary judgment to Founders with respect to May and Hoke but denied as to Hoke’s estate. The Court of Appeals does not explain the trial court’s rational, if one was articulated.

The general argument in favor of tagging Founders with the bill seems to be that the fact that automobile insurance is compulsory in Indiana means the General Assembly recognized the danger of automobiles and that individuals who suffer loss due to the tragedy of accidents ought to have some means of recovery. But, as the majority recognized, this is not the same as “a social policy to guarantee compensation to all victims of motor vehicle accidents.” Founders had no relationship to Coomer. She took the vehicle without permission and without a license — both exclusions under the policy. Why look to Founders? If the policy is a generalized one to provide recovery to every innocent person hurt in an automobile accident, why not impose liability on the State or on every insurance company? Just because Founders would have provided insurance if May had been driving doesn’t mean they signed up to compensate everyone who crossed paths with that particular automobile. If May had satisfied the State’s financial responsibility requirements by posting a bond rather than buying insurance, would his bond be forfeit even if he had no involvement with the accident?

The majority lists some other practical difficulties with the trial court’s decision:

The trial court’s determination raises several practical questions, such as, if Founders has no duty to defend or indemnify May or Coomer, from where does a duty to Hoke’s Estate arise? How exactly
would the action proceed if Founders has no duty to defend May or Coomer? Does Founders appear in Hoke’s Estate’s lawsuit against May and Coomer and defend itself? Does Hoke’s Estate institute a direct action against Founders if it should succeed in its lawsuit against May and Coomer?
Could Founders assert the terms of the contract of insurance as a defense in any such action? What would be the limits of Founders’ liability to Hoke’s Estate if the contract is unenforceable as
to May or Coomer? If the exclusionary provisions of the contract are unenforceable, are the limits provisions nonetheless enforceable, and would that be a matter of judicially picking and choosing which provisions of the contract may be enforced and which may not? Because of our resolution of this case, however, we need not answer these questions.

The dissent acknowledges some of the difficulties raised by the majority but reasons that these are outweighed by good public policy which would provide for recovery by an innocent victim of an automobile accident. “An innocent victim’s ability to recover should not depend on an automobile owner’s income level.” The dissent does not believe non-motorist victims of automobile accidents should be at a disadvantage when compared to motorist victims. (That disadvantage, I believe, being that motorist victims have the opportunity to purchase uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage for when they are driving their own vehicles whereas bicyclists and pedestrians are not provided with an opportunity to buy such coverage.)

If we decide that the general public should have financial options if they are victims of automobiles — no matter who is driving or whether that driver contracted for insurance or paid premiums — that such victims don’t have if they are victims of most other hazards in the world, then, in my mind, we shouldn’t rely on insurance to do it. At that point, we’re talking about a need for general taxation.

The problem about writing a blog for a decade or more is that sometimes you forget stuff. I had seen some discussion about an academic named William Bradford and his outlandish article bloviating about the perils of pro-Islamic academics giving aid and comfort to the enemy. He suggested treating U.S. scholars as “enemy combatants.” The name seemed vaguely familiar but not enough for me to try to figure out why.

Fortunately, the Indiana Law Blog forgets very little and posted a reminder about Prof. Bradford’s less than graceful exit from Indiana’s academic legal circles. That jogged my memory. I too had a brief piece about Prof. Bradford about 10 years ago entitled, “Sometimes they just don’t like you because you’re a wanker:”

Ruth Holladay has a column entitled Truth comes out about professor’s background. Professor William C. Bradford resigned after being revealed as a fraud. Apparently he had promoted himself as a war veteran and Silver Star recipient. He was neither. He held himself out as a conservative persecuted by the liberal elites of academia because fellow professors voted against Bradford receiving tenure. Sometimes it’s not your politics or philosophy. Sometimes it’s just you. Good riddance.

Looks like Prof. Bradford is, again, forced to move along from his academic position, not because of any grand conspiracy, but because he doesn’t seem to have the right temperament for the job.

Niki Kelly, writing for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, has an article about the interim study committee meeting on Roads and Transportation from earlier in the week. The committee “recommended approving the renewal of the plate for the Indiana Native American and Indian Affairs Commission, as well as issuing group plates for the first time to the Indiana Golf Foundation; Indiana Recycling Coalition; and the Indiana Emergency Medical Services Association.” The committee recommended rejection of plates for the Indianapolis Children’s Choir and Memorial Hospital of South Bend as being too local, rather than statewide, in nature.

According to the article, there are currently 92 speciality plates in place with a statewide cap of 125. That’s just too many plates, in my opinion. It is supposed to be a tool for the state to register, identify, and otherwise regulate vehicles. They are turning into bumper stickers. The joke at LSA 15 years ago was that, sooner or later, every Hoosier motorist would simply design their own. We’re getting there.

A good article from a couple of days ago by Maureen Groppe on Indiana’s transportation infrastructure spending which is definitely worth a read if you haven’t seen it yet. (h/t Sen. Charbonneau).

Indiana spends less per capita on roads than most states and, the U.S. as a whole spends less than other countries and less than it used to:

Indiana, which already spends less per capita than most states on highways and transit, is not collecting enough gas taxes to adequately maintain its roads and bridges, much less pay for the new projects the state deems a priority.
. . .
Indiana is one of 21 states that have not raised the gas tax in more than a decade, even as revenues have declined in recent years.
. . .
Indiana ranked sixth from the bottom in per capita state and local dollars spent on highways and transit from 2008 through 2012, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts. That made Indiana more reliant on federal funding than most states, getting 37 percent of its transportation spending from Washington, compared with the national average of 25 percent.

Nationwide, the country is spending half as much on infrastructure as a share of the economy as it did in the 1960s, when much of the interstate system was built. The United States spends about 2.4 percent of its GDP on transportation and other infrastructure, compared with about 5 percent in Europe and 9 percent in China.

As Gov. Pence said, “If you’re going to be the Crossroads of America, you better have the roads to back it up.”

Partisan gridlock and an anti-tax fetish is not doing our infrastructure any favors.

I have touched on this topic a few times before, but it seems apropos in light of Labor Day and an article an acquaintance of mine shared about a battle in California with respect to the line between public and private beach areas and access to the public areas. He linked to the article and complained about the public beach advocates invoking the power of the State to the detriment of the private beach advocates. I read the article and was a little startled at how my take was almost 180 degrees different from his. To me, it was pretty clearly the private property owners who were invoking the power of the State to the detriment of the public beach advocates.

Now, I’m not naming the acquaintance and have not particularly inquired about his thinking, so the assumptions I make here should probably best not be ascribed to this individual. But, I speculate that my disagreement with what I assume he thinks comes from some very deep assumptions about the nature of property that I don’t share or about which I’m at least skeptical. And, I believe, it comes down to a notion that property is somehow independent of government. It’s not. Property is government. You’ll see arguments that property is a “natural right” — it’s in the Declaration of Independence, after all. How could it not be natural? But, from what we can tell about how humans have lived and conducted themselves for the 200,000+ years that homo sapiens has existed as a species, fixed, heritable, exclusive rights to land is very much not the norm as a matter of nature. We see the concept of property rights to land taking root roughly 10,000 years ago with the Agricultural Revolution — we’re looking at something like 95% of human history not involving real property rights. The point being, not that property rights are bad, just that they are an artificial construct, not “natural.”

And, those rights are inextricably dependent on government. Having real property rights means, as a general proposition, that the government will, on your behalf, exclude the rest of the world — by force if necessary — from using that patch of ground. A startling concept if you think about it. Here is a patch of dirt that, for thousands upon thousands of years was available for the use of anyone who could reach it (and, assuming a disinclination to share, was strong enough to fight off anyone else who happened to also want to use the area). Now, in a fairly dramatic shift, we are going to create a system of ownership, dispossess (usually by government force) anyone who isn’t part of our system (in the American case – the Native Americans), and, thereafter, use communal resources (including the military, the police, the courts, government surveyors and recording offices) for the benefit of the individual owner to exclude the rest of the world from interfering with the ownership rights the person enjoys under our system.

Again, these property rights are not bad. So much of the good civilization has achieved in recent millennia depends on them. All well and good, but so what? Why the history lesson and focus on semantics? Because it takes a huge blind spot to regard those private property rights as somehow not being government. And this has a real impact on modern political discourse.

Advocates of “small” government are, in no way, proposing to limit government support for and enforcement of private property rights. That this is a legitimate function of government is taken for granted. Not even thought of as government, really. So the “small” government advocates can “Other” government and run against it without jeopardizing the huge infrastructure of government upon which they depend extensively. They don’t have to get into the messy business of arguing about why their government-backed policies are better than your government-backed policies. They can just rely on the fact that, by ignoring their government-backed, pro-property preferences and limiting or eliminating government involvement in other policy initiatives, their interests will be preserved. And they’ll be preserved without the need for haggling over whether their interests are better than yours. They aren’t self-interested. They are merely “against government” (if you ignore the extensive government required to create, define, preserve, and enforce property and contractual rights.)

Again, contractual and property rights are very, very useful. But there are costs and benefits to everything and, with this huge blind spot we have with respect to those sorts of rights, the people who benefit most from these particular kinds of rights are largely let off the hook when it comes to demonstrating the utility of the government support they enjoy.

To add some Labor Day flavor, think about the usual sorts of arguments we see when it comes to unions. Collective bargaining rights are seen as artificial and suspect — justified only if the public is very clear on their ongoing need. (See, e.g., the “Oh, sure, unions used to be necessary but things are better now, so we don’t need them anymore” argument.) It’s not uncommon to hear someone argue that labor laws constitute an artificial constraint on the market — let laborers and owners negotiate a price without government putting its thumb on the scale of the negotiations with these unfair labor laws that benefit unions and workers. Meanwhile, the property rights and contractual rights that give owners much or all of their leverage in negotiations are simply regarded as “natural” and government policy in creating and enforcing such rights are never questioned. The utility of property rights versus labor rights are rarely compared directly and weighed one against the other. And the reason such cost/benefit analyses are rarely conducted is because of this blind spot that takes property rights for granted and being somehow outside of government.

Property is government. Mostly it’s *good* government. But, government nonetheless.