A Tale of Two Sovereigns
Canute was a king of Denmark who ruled over an empire that included large parts of Sweden, all of Norway and almost all of England. He ruled over person and property alike. He ruled over the land and sought to …
Bill Legalizing Ridesharing Moving through West Virginia House
What a difference a year makes in the world of ridesharing. Just 18 months ago, only one state (Colorado) had passed comprehensive legislation legalizing and regulating the emerging market of transportation network companies like Uber and Lyft. Now we’re down …
Jones’ Coal Divestment Call Is Irresponsible, Blatantly Political
In the early 1990s, the insolvencies of three major life insurers – Executive Life, Mutual Benefit and Confederation Life – rocked the industry and threatened to bring about the end of the state-based system of insurance regulation the United States …
Study Finds Consumers Benefit from Aftermarket Crash Parts
There’s a good chance that you are paying more for repairing your vehicle after an accident than you need to be. A new study has found that car parts produced and sold by the car’s manufacturer – known commonly as …
Transportation Bill Would Undo Billions in Crop Insurance Savings
The FAST Act (Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act) is aptly named, but for all the wrong reasons. The process for getting to final passage for the federal transportation bill actually has been incredibly long and winding, full of stopgap measures …
California Improves by not Getting Worse
Sometimes, small victories are worthy of celebration. A qualified celebration of just that variety is in order at the California Department of Insurance headquarters in Sacramento to mark the relative improvement in the state’s insurance regulatory environment and what the …
Massachusetts Lawmakers Go Home for Holidays; No Action on Ridesharing
In the home of the Pilgrims, lawmakers have gone home ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday. The Massachusetts Legislature has adjourned for 2015, having failed to move on any of four bills introduced this year that proposed statewide regulation for ridesharing …
Readopted Credit-Scoring Model Highlights NCOIL’s Annual Meeting
Cyber insurance, international regulatory efforts, the sharing economy and the successful state credit-scoring model dominated the agenda of this past week’s National Conference of Insurance Legislators meetings in San Antonio, the state lawmakers group’s final meetings of the year. NCOIL …
Gillibrand Proposes Reinsurance Tax Gimmick to Fund 9/11 Victims
In his seminal 1987 work Crisis and Leviathan, economic historian Robert Higgs traces the pattern of government growth as a response to catastrophic events. The federal government, in particular, grows over time through a “ratcheting up” effect, as politicians respond …
A Landslide of Bad Ideas
Landslides are a problem for which the United States has yet to come up with an answer. A recent essay by Penn State University law professor Christopher C. French – titled “Insuring Landslides: America’s Uninsured Natural Catastrophes” – offers a …
