Exclusive: Liberty Mutual, Automatic Team Up To Offer Insurance Discounts, Free Services

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Theres no shortage of devices that plug into your cars Onboard Diagnostic (OBD-II) port to gather data. And theres also no shortage of auto insurance companies that want to give you one for free in order to gather data about your driving habits in exchange for premium discounts: Progressive's Progressive's Snapshot, Allstate's Allstate's Drive Wise and State Farm's State Farm's In-Drive, to name a few.

Now Liberty Mutual is sweetening the deal by offering Automatic, an OBD-II device that normally retails for $99.95 but is given for free when a driver signs up for a 90-day evaluation program called RightTrack that will be initially offered in Connecticut. Users who sign up share their driving data to earn up to a 30 percent discount on their Liberty Mutual car insurance by demonstrating safe driving habits such as smooth braking and accelerations, according to the auto insurer. And they also get access to Automatics other services, such as engine diagnostics, vehicle location and emergency crash response accessed via a companion iOS or Android smartphone app.

Automatic OBD-II device. Photo by Automatic.

Users get all the benefits of Automatic, Thejo Kote, CEO of Automatic, told Forbes.com, and theyre shown in the app exactly what they should do to get the discounts and learn how theyre driving. While driving aggressively will obviously send data from an OBD-II device that wont endear you to an auto insurer, Kote said that knowing other information that can affect your premium, such as driving at various times of the day, is the differentiating factor between the RightTrack program and other OBD-II auto insurance trackers.

You get feedback through the application about what you could be doing to earn a higher discount, Kote added. One thing that has never happened with customers who use an [OBD-II device] to earn a discount is knowing exactly what they should be doing and how they are being measured. He contends that the process hasnt always been transparent, and we think it should be.

All customers who participate in the program get at least a 5 percent discount if they finish the evaluation period, and they get to keep the device and all the benefits of Automatic, Kote noted. They can use all the features for those 90 days, and then after the 90 days they get all the features of Automatic without any charge.

Automatic has already partnered with Ford to integrate with the automakers Sync system, Nest to connect with a users home climate control system and even the Jawbone UP wristband to guilt car owners who take short trips by knowing how many steps you could have logged if youd walked instead of drove. Kote said he sees this as a trend of companies leveraging the benefits of data-tracking devices and in many cases giving them away to their customers to deliver value to consumers and to businesses.

The larger theme I see happening here is the example that Nest is doing with utilities, he added. A lot of utilities give away Nest free to their customers. Companies are coming together to give these great experiences to customers. Like having some control over your insurance rates through knowing how your driving can affect the cost, and getting other benefits to boot.

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Exclusive: Liberty Mutual, Automatic Team Up To Offer Insurance Discounts, Free Services

Sen. Paul Enters the Race & the Totalitarian Itch of Libertarianism

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Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky announced his candidacy for the presidency yesterday in a hotel ballroom in Louisville. The hotel was aptly named: The Galt Hotel. Presumably, the name is merely fortuitous as the hotel predates Ayn Rands writing Atlas Shrugged in which her libertarian hero is named John Galt. Pauls candidacy will be a test of the power of libertarian ideas to persuade in America in the early twenty-first century and, just so, is a test for the truths of Catholic Social Teaching which could scarcely be in greater opposition to those libertarian ideas as was manifest at a conference at Boston College in which I participated on Monday.

Dan Balz, of the Washington Post, is an acute observer of politics, but his analysis of Sen. Pauls candidacy in this mornings Post suffered from his repeating a lazy meme. He wrote: Pauls announcement was a reminder of why he often has been called the most interesting politician in the country, with a libertarian message that seemed to sweep across the ideological spectrum and that challenged the establishment of both parties. Libertarianism is many things, but interesting is not one of them.

At the conference at Boston College, entitled, Why Libertarianism Isnt Liberal, the first keynote speaker, Princeton Professor and political philosopher Alan Ryan, took issue with the title of the conference. For him, libertarianism is to liberalism as heresy is to orthodoxy, a truth run amok. They focus so exclusively on property rights, they end up neglecting other important liberal values and insights. He identified quite rightly one of the challenges Sen. Paul will face in his candidacy, the libertarian schizophrenia about whether the movement is a saving remnant, a view held by Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard, or are they a natural third party, a view held by David Boaz at the CATO Institute, the leading libertarian think tank, and the Koch Brothers who have pledged some $800 million to test the proposition in the next two years. Professor Ryan also pointed out that Paul, like all libertarians, will have a hard time answering questions about market failure, which the nation and world experienced in 2008, leading a bewildered Alan Greenspan, longtime Secretary-Treasurer of the Ayn Rand Society in Washington, to admit he could not explain how the economic meltdown happened. The libertarian insistence on property rights as the only useful lens for evaluating public policy is similarly ill-suited to pressing concerns, such as environmental degradation. Much of the pollution in San Francisco, Ryan pointed out, originates in China and it is difficult to see how an assertion of property rights could resolve that problem for those coughing on polluted air in the City by the Bay.

The other keynoter, Alan Wolfe, delivered a trenchant indictment of libertarianism, root and branch. To him, the movement has more in common with the totalitarianism it ostensibly opposed than with liberalism. Libertarians like to place both Adam Smith and Friedrich von Hayek in their pantheon of heroes, but while both embraced laissez-faire economics, they did so in different circumstances and for different reasons. Smiths free market would liberate individuals from the caprice of an inflexible mercantilism, Wolfe explained. Hayeks free market would chain individuals to a system of rules over which they have no control and cannot, by themselves, fully understand. But, the problems with libertarianism are deeper than a misreading of their heroes. Liberalism raises questions. Libertarians seek answers, and always find the right ones, Wolfe said. Their philosophy is an antidote to the doubt, inconsistency, and vagueness that has always been built-into liberalism. There is nothing tentative, nothing haphazard, nothing weak-kneed about libertarianism.. If you believe in God, respect hierarchy, and venerate tradition you can oppose liberalism by becoming a conservative. If you prefer a social order that hides its authoritarianism behind opaqueness, you become a libertarian.

The other speakers at the conference, approaching the topic from different perspectives, all took libertarianism to the intellectual woodshed. Boston College theologian Mary Jo Iozzio looked at how Americas happy, and largely successful, efforts to make life better for people with disabilities rests on a view of human society that is anathema to libertarians. Providence College theologian Dana Dillon noted the limits of rights as a political lens, asking how much more effective the Churchs opposition to the HHS contraception mandate would have been if Catholic institutions were at the forefront of efforts to provide liberal maternal leave policies, providing day care to employees, and other pro-family provisions. And, Mark Silk of Trinity College, who has happily published his talk, introduced a new phrase into the political lexicon: spiritual libertarianism. More on that tomorrow when I discuss the fallout from the Indiana RFRA fight.

The other panel featured Catholic Universitys Stephen Schneck, who explained in detail why John Locke and James Madison also do not fit into the libertarian pantheon despite their efforts to claim them as their own. Schneck is working on a book on this topic and his talk reflected the careful research and analysis we have come to expect from him. St. Johns University theologian Meghan Clark explained that libertarianism and Catholic Social Teaching are at odds at the root, with radically different conceptions of humankinds creation in the image and likeness of God, the universal destination of goods, and the purpose of government. And Harvards Mary Jo Bane, who described herself as a hopeless pragmatist, noted that liberals and Catholics could draw policy threads from libertarianism on issues like school choice, criminal justice policy and social welfare policy. An expert in these policy areas, Bane is familiar with the way establishment thinking can resist improvements to systems that are not working, and she can be forgiven for seeking allies where she can find them. Nor did she evidence any sympathy for libertarian values or ideas, saying, Both markets and governments can be exploitative and corrupt.

In the end, however, what became obvious in the course of the day is that libertarianism is not very interesting at all. It is little more than an effort to turn selfishness and self-assertion into a political platform. That is not to say it does not strike some deep roots with plausible misreadings of liberalism and specifically Americanism. But, the problems the nation faces, from income inequality to environmental degradation to the rise of Islamicist terrorism, none of these problems can be solved, or the issues even clarified, by someone schooled in libertarian thinking, even a senator speaking at the Galt Hotel. The reporters covering his announcement should have come to our conference at Boston College the previous day. They would not use the word interesting to describe him, more like scary and juvenile. I wish, too, that some of those Catholics who serve as fellow travelers for libertarianism, our friends at the Acton Institute for example, had been there too. They must confront these issues or admit they are undermining Catholic Social Teaching. And, they must confront something else, a point the shone through the varied presentations. There is a totalitarian itch at the heart of libertarianism, an itch that could not be more different from the complex, rich, nuanced understandings that emerge from both liberalism and from Catholic Social Teaching. I will give the last word to Alan Wolfe:

Libertarianism goes out of its way to reduce the complexities of the world to one thing and one thing only, whether it be how we make decisions, what decisions we make, and what our decisions imply for others. The often-noted attraction of libertarianism for young minds is, I believe, a reflection of this. There is something so satisfying when one is young about the Faustian idea that all of reality can be unlocked with one simple key. It is when we grow out of that fantasy and begin to understand just how complex the world actually is that adherents to libertarianism begin to understand the limits of what had once been so appealing to them.

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Sen. Paul Enters the Race & the Totalitarian Itch of Libertarianism

Sunday liquor sales debate burns on in House, absent a committee vote

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The debate over Sunday liquorsales burned on Wednesday, where backers and detractors of a repeal of the states 80-year-old ban stated their cases to lawmakers, with rationale ranging from profit margins to libertarianism.

The House Commerce Committee held an informational hearing on the bill by Rep. Jenifer Loon, R-Eden Prairie, though no vote was taken. Regardless, dozens of witnesses testified on the bill in a packed hearing room.

Dave Erickson, owner of DEricks Tower Liquors near Lake Vermilion said its frustrating to turn down customers year-round who stop in his adjoining bar and cant take a bottle of wine or six-pack home with them on a Sunday.

As a bar owner, I hate seeing all the visitors, the tourists if you will, come to Minnesota and not be able to enjoy what they probably enjoy at home, Erickson said.

In the midst of a struggling Iron Range economy, where hundreds of miners were just laid off, This would be just one little thing for a little economic growth, he said.

Other liquor store owners, like Terry Furlong, owner of Furlongs liquor in Oakdale, say staying open seven days a week will only create more costs without the profits.

Our current regulations are a fine balance between the desires of consumers, public health and public safety, he said.

Loons Sunday sales bill, like many of its House and Senate companions, failed to receive a hearing before committee deadlines passed, and there is no full Sunday sales repeal in the House liquor reform billthough its possible that it may come up as a floor amendment when the bill is debated on the House floor.

Loon thanked Committee Chair Rep. Joe Hoppe, R-Chaska, for giving the bill a hearing, although absent a vote. She said she respects the opinions of liquor store owners that do not want a repeal in the interests of having a day off, but added that her measure would not force stores to be open. (Liquor store owners insist they would have to remain open to keep up with competition.)

This is not such an easy cut-and-dried issue, she said. Its not my goal to say that every small business who sells liquor has to be open on Sunday. I would never say that. This is just to give other businesses that opportunity.

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Sunday liquor sales debate burns on in House, absent a committee vote

Noel Gallagher and Future Islands at the Royal Albert Hall for Teenage Cancer Trust – Video

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Noel Gallagher and Future Islands at the Royal Albert Hall for Teenage Cancer Trust
We stopped for a quick chat with the headliner of our penultimate night at this year #39;s #teenagecancergigs! http://www.teenagecancertrust.org/royalalberthall2015 To help transform the lives of...

By: Teenage Cancer Trust

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Noel Gallagher and Future Islands at the Royal Albert Hall for Teenage Cancer Trust - Video

Japan's Diaoyu Islands documents "out of context"

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BEIJING, April 8 (Xinhua) -- China on Wednesday blasted Japan over its claims that a new collection of documents prove its sovereignty over the Diaoyu Islands.

"Although Japan tried its utmost in searching for supportive documents, which were taken out of context, it can never change the fact that China has sovereignty over the Diaoyu Islands," said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying at a regular press briefing.

The Japanese government claimed on Tuesday that it had collected 500 documents showing Japan's rule over the islands before World War II (WWII).

Hua said numerous Chinese and foreign historical facts and materials can confirm that the Diaoyu Islands and their adjacent islets are China's inherent territories.

China discovered the Diaoyu Islands and has long-term effective administration over the area, according to Hua.

"We can find the Diaoyu Islands clearly marked in many maps dating back to the Ming and Qing dynasties," Hua added.

Prior to the first Sino-Japanese War, maps by Western countries also described the Diaoyu Islands as belonging to China, she said.

Japan colonized Taiwan and its affiliated islands, including the Diaoyu Islands, after the Sino-Japanese war in 1894, and the Diaoyu Islands were given back to China following international legal instruments after WWII, Hua went on.

The 1969 map posted on the Japanese Foreign Ministry website recently only proves that the Diaoyu Islands are part of China, she said, adding, "We hope to remind Japan of the need for caution in releasing such documents, in order not to make any blunder."

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Japan's Diaoyu Islands documents "out of context"