Interesting article by Richard Florida entitled, The Geography of U.S. Gun Violence.

-City level correlation between unemployment and murder by gun as well as overall death by gun.

-No association between mental illness, stress, or illegal drug use and gun deaths at the state level.

-No state level association between gun violence and unemployment or economic inequality. Some association at the city level between economic inequality and murder by gun (but not suicide).

-State level associations with gun deaths and poverty, lower incomes, “red states,” and blue collar economies.

-Negative state and city level correlation between gun violence and college graduation levels and knowledge-based economies.

-[This one stood out to me]: Association between gun suicides (but not murders) and share of people who drive alone to work. Both are probably a function of social isolation.

-At the metro level, a negative correlation between share of young males and overall rate of gun death.

-Share of black population has a positive correlation with both gun related homicides and overall rate of gun death. No similar correlation with share of Hispanic population.

-“[S]tate level analysis found gun deaths to be significantly lower in states with stricter gun control laws. We found substantial negative correlations between the rate of gun deaths and states that ban assault weapons, require trigger locks, and mandate safe storage requirements for guns.”

I’m sure data will have precious little to do with the gun control debate, but it’s out there, apparently.

Some interesting thoughts on corporate religion today from some of my favorite bloggers. Tipsy, who is opposed to the Obamacare contraception mandate has a post entitled Corporate Freedom of Religion? wherein he notes that, opposed as he is to the policy, the idea of corporations having religious beliefs gives him pause.

Sheila Kennedy, generally in favor of the mandate, has a post entitled Thus Spake the Profits noting that the religious beliefs of the Hobby Lobby corporation doesn’t seem to extend to an objection to stocking inventory produced cheaply in a country with mandatory forced abortions.

Both raise the question of when and how a corporation, a legal fiction, can be said to believe anything. How close do they have to be to the activity? Is the corporate veil pierced to allow its owners’ religious beliefs to leak through to its employees but not to allow its owners’ profits to leak through to its creditors? Are those religious beliefs offended if its employees are allowed to use money from their paycheck to fund immoral behavior? Allowed to use compensation in the form of insurance to fund immoral behavior? Are those religious beliefs offended where products come from suppliers with morally objectionable behavior?

And, just because it’s a hobby horse of mine, I’ll take a moment to reiterate that I don’t think libertarians can logically embrace the corporate form. It’s a government construct designed to shield an individual from personal responsibility for the consequences of his or her actions; about as anti-libertarian as you can get.

In any event, I already think we’ve gone too far with the “corporations are people” legal fiction. They have their uses, and policy and legal protections should reflect those uses. But, they are different from flesh and blood people in fundamental ways. Not having the capacity to believe anything is one of those differences.

A column at CNN by an IU Medicine professor named Aaron Carroll is entitled America flunks its health exam, and highlights a whole lot of fail in the health of the American public.

It’s a good thing that we Americans don’t spend a whole lot of time paying attention to the rest of the world, let alone traveling to their countries, otherwise we’d start having questions that couldn’t be answered by a bunch of hand waving about how we just can’t afford good things or how your average person is an irresponsible (or worse, immoral!) brute, who should be blamed for his condition.

Anyway, per Prof. Carroll:

Compared to peer countries, we’re the worst when it comes to still births, infant mortality and low birth weight (even adjusting for different metrics).

Our little kids (5 and under) die more often than 16 peer countries. In this category our rates of neglect and abuse are the worst.

Our growing children are the fattest and most likely to get pregnant and STDs. (Our adolescent pregnancy rate is 3.5x the average).

Our males 15 – 19 are more likely to die, especially from gun violence and, from 20-24, our males are 7 times more likely to die of violence.

It seems that other societies are doing better by their people than we are. At some point, if we are not, it’s not because we can’t but because we’d prefer not to. We’d rather hold on to our cherished ideologies and notions of life-as-morality-play instead of pragmatically looking at what’s working in other countries and what’s not working in our own.

Joe Weisenthal, writing for Business Insider has a column entitled Why The ‘Mint The Coin’ Debate Could Be The Most Important Fiscal Policy Debate You’ll Ever See In Your Life. And the reason he says it’s important is because it gets to a central economic question that’s almost never discussed: “What Is Money?”

The background is the idea floating around to have the President circumvent the artificial debt ceiling crisis with the artificial creation of a trillion dollar platinum coin. The rejoinder from opponents is mostly some variation of “that’s silly,” but they can’t quite explain the particulars of why its silly because that requires them to explain their underlying notion of the essence of money; a notion that is most likely vague and quite possibly incorrect.

Money is a symbol of value, not inherently valuable itself. It’s possible that the things we use to symbolize value have inherent value of their own; but, to the extent you’re exchanging goods and services relying on the inherent value of the thing you receive (a gold coin perhaps), you are not getting paid with money so much as you’re bartering for goods.

Weisenthal says that “money is the creation of the state.” In recent history it has been, and that might be the most practical way of creating money; but I don’t think money has to be a creation of the state. Rather, it has to be regulated in some fashion so that the money supply is proportional to the value created by the economy. If that ratio is maintained, then the money retains its ability to store the value of the goods and services you exchange for that money.

I would have liked to see more in the article about the nature of money, but much of the discussion is the process of how governments create it. But, there is a good quote at the bottom:

Remember, money is a fiction. Real wealth is capital assets, our infrastructure, our cars, our houses, and most importantly the potential human ingenuity and cooperation. Money is just something that the government creates to facilitate the trade in all of those things.

In the case of money, it’s easy to mistake the symbol for the thing being represented. Money is a representation of value, a proxy for value, not the value itself. The economic doctrine of bullionist form of mercantilism was premised on this misconception.

Howard Schneider, writing at the Washington Post has a column entitled An amazing mea culpa from the IMF’s chief economist on austerity. The IMF has determined that it underestimated the “fiscal multipliers” at work in Greece, such that the austerity measures imposed actually seemed to increase the country’s fiscal problems even as it imposed more pain.

As I’ve suggested before, we seem to have this almost subconscious view of the economy as a morality play. If people aren’t suffering under government economic policy, we’re at least distrustful that it’s encouraging sloth or one of the other deadly sins. It’s like we think medicine can’t possibly be effective if it tastes good.

Anyway, the IMF seems to be acknowledging that Greek austerity has actually weakened its economy. Nobody could have predicted.

Sen. Banks has introduced SB 35 which makes a law enforcement officer liable in a civil suit if the officer interferes with an individual’s videotaping or photographing an officer while the officer is engaged in his official duties. It creates an exception if the officer reasonably believes that the interference was done to enforce the law, protect public safety, preserve a crime scene or criminal investigation, or enforce a court rule against video taping court proceedings.

First, this bill should clarify whether it intends individual liability or municipal liability. Under the Indiana Tort Claims Act, you can’t sue a government employee directly, you have to sue the governmental entity the person works for. There are exceptions for when the person was clearly acting outside their scope of duty and the plaintiff sufficiently alleges the individual liability of the government employee. This statute kind of looks like it’s creating personal liability, but I sort of doubt that’s really the intent.

Second, I’d recommend a specific exception for where the officer has probable cause to believe that the recording device contains evidence of a crime or is being used to commit a crime.

Third, I’d suggest consideration of an objectively reasonable officer standard such as they use in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence instead of the subjective reasonable belief standard that seems to appear in this statute. This gets you away from the whims of individual intent a little bit, and it gets you away from the need to have a jury trial every time you want to determine whether a seizure or interference constitutes reasonable police behavior; a process that is resource consuming and inconsistent.

I like the idea of protecting law abiding citizens who are just video taping the proceedings. But, people who are committing crimes shouldn’t get extra protection just because they jam a camera in the officer’s face.

Sen. Holdman has introduced SB 32 concerning the requirement that the County Board of Commissioners establish a schedule of regular meeting dates on the first meeting in January of each year. Instead, the provision would be amended to simply say, “The executive shall hold a regular meeting at least once each month and at other times as needed to conduct all necessary business.”

I don’t suppose there is anything magic about the first meeting in January. I know that a lot of organizational stuff has to get jammed into that first meeting or two and maybe it would be good to give the Commissioners flexibility to take care of such business in the manner that best suits their needs.

Bishop Senator Kruse has introduced SB 23 which would allow schools to require the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer at the beginning of each school day. If it decides to impose this requirement, the school board is directed to select the version it wants recited.

Students are generously allowed to draw attention to themselves by not participating if they or their parents decide they don’t want the student to participate.

On the one hand, this is clearly unconstitutional and would burden a participating school with court mandated legal fees. On the other hand, Mike Huckabee has said, “We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools. Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?” So, maybe proponents of this legislation envision that the legal fees would be offset by reduced security costs.

Sen. Banks and Tomes have introduced SB 97 which expands work done last session to allow the public to carry firearms on government property. Currently IC 35-47-11.1 restricts the ability of local government to prohibit members of the public from carrying firearms on local government property.

SB 97 would extend this restriction to state government and its agencies. I note, however, that firearms could still be restricted at the State House because there is an exception for “the enactment or enforcement of a provision prohibiting or restricting the possession of a firearm in any building that contains a courtroom used by the supreme court, court of appeals, or tax court.” I can’t remember if the tax court is there, but “any building that contains a courtroom used by the supreme court” means the State House.

I don’t think firearms would be permitted in either of the Indiana Government Center buildings either, under section 5(6) because they use metal detectors, are staffed by law enforcement officers, and require the inspection of each individual and their bags.

So, this would seem to be meaningless for a huge chunk of state government operations.