Category: reason

It’s not yet time to break out the phony passports or head for
the secret compound in the mountains, but the United States is
taking a bit of a drubbing this year when it comes to assessments
of the country’s freedom and, more specifically, the direction in
which the government is moving in terms of its respect for
individual rights. While the U.S. still gets high marks relative to
the vast majority of the world for the degree to which it respects
the liberty of the individual, those standings are slipping. In two
major rankings of economic freedom, one of Internet freedom, and a
report on freedom of the press, the land of the free has been
called out this year for being a little less free than it has been
in the past, and for signs of a troubling trend toward greater
surveillance and control.

In the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom, the
United States had already slipped out of the Free and into the
Mostly Free
category even before further losing ground
this year.

The United States, with an economic freedom score of 76, has
lost ground again in the 2013 Index. Its score is 0.3 point lower
than last year, with declines in monetary freedom, business
freedom, labor freedom, and fiscal freedom. The U.S. is ranked 2nd
out of three countries in the North America region, and its score
remains well above the world and regional averages.

Registering a loss of economic freedom for the fifth consecutive
year, the U.S. has recorded its lowest Index score since 2000.
Dynamic entrepreneurial growth is stifled by ever-more-bloated
government and a trend toward cronyism that erodes the rule of
law.

The Fraser Institute’s Economic
Freedom of the World: 2013 Annual Report (PDF) agrees that
the country is on the wrong path.

Throughout most of period from 1980 to 2000, the United States
ranked as the world’s third-freest economy, behind Hong Kong and
Singapore. As Exhibit 1.5 indicates, the chain-linked summary
rating of the United States in 2000 was 8.65, second only to Hong
Kong. By 2005, the US rating had slipped to 8.21 and its ranking
fallen to 8th. The slide has continued. The United States placed
16th in 2010 and 19th in 2011. The 7.74 chain-linked rating of the
United States in 2011 was nearly a full point less than the 2000
rating.

What accounts for the decline of economic freedom in the United
States? While the US ratings and rankings have fallen in all five
areas of the EFW index, the reductions have been largest in Legal
System and Property Rights (Area 2), Freedom to Trade
Internationally (Area 4), and Regulation (Area 5). The plunge in
Area 2 has been huge. In 2000, the 9.23 rating of the United States
was the ninth highest in the world. But by 2011, the area rating
had slid to 6.93, placing the United States 38th worldwide. The
2.30-point reduction in the Area 2 rating of the United States was
tied with Venezuela as the largest reduction among the countries
rated.

Unshockingly in the year of Edward Snowden, the United States
also won a booby prize for its treatment of Internet freedom.
Freedom House’s Freedom on the Net 2013
found:

The United States has a robust legal framework that supports
free expression rights both online and offline, and the U.S. does
not typically prosecute individuals for online speech. The broader
picture of user rights in America, however, has become increasingly
complex as a series of U.S. government practices, policies, and
laws touch on, and in some cases appear to violate, the rights of
individuals both inside the U.S. and abroad. Government access to
phone and internet records is a major concern, especially following
newly revealed information about NSA surveillance practices.
Aggressive prosecution under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
(CFAA) has also been criticized. In addition, the privacy of NGOs,
companies, and individual users is threatened by a growing number
of cyberattacks initiated by both domestic and international
actors.

Not just NSA surveillance, but also the prosecution (really,
persecution) of Aaron Swartz rated
mention in the report. As a result, the U.S. suffered a
“significant” loss in ratings of Internet freedom—an assessment
that put it in the company of India, Brazil, and Venezuela in terms
of slippage, though not (and, hopefully, never) in final
ranking.

Freedom House still gives the United States high marks in

press freedom, but that review predates revelations this year
about
secretive Justice Department investigations of reporters at the
Associated Press, Fox News and elsewhere, and controversy over
targeting of whistleblowers and other assaults on transparency by
the Obama administration. Reacting to those developments, the
Committee to Protect Journalists issued a not-so-rosy assessment

warning:

U.S. President Barack Obama came into office pledging open
government, but he has fallen short of his promise. Journalists and
transparency advocates say the White House curbs routine disclosure
of information and deploys its own media to evade scrutiny by the
press. Aggressive prosecution of leakers of classified information
and broad electronic surveillance programs deter government sources
from speaking to journalists.

The developments former Washington Post executive
editor Leonard Downie Jr. highlights in his report aren’t new, nor
are they unique to the Obama administration. But they have worsened
with time and seem to be hitting critical mass, representing a sea
change in the federal government’s treatment of aggressive scrutiny
by journalists and of government employees who talk to the press.
Downie describes the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 as a
“watershed” that triggered growth in the security state and
hostility to independent scrutiny.

Again, the United States still ranks higher than most countries
in terms of civil liberties, economic freedom and overall
government respect for individual rights. But, across-the-board
slippage in these areas, especially when it seems to be a
continuing trend, isn’t exactly a good sign.

It’s not yet time to break out the phony passports or head for
the secret compound in the mountains, but the United States is
taking a bit of a drubbing this year when it comes to assessments
of the country’s freedom and, more specifically, the direction in
which the government is moving in terms of its respect for
individual rights. While the U.S. still gets high marks relative to
the vast majority of the world for the degree to which it respects
the liberty of the individual, those standings are slipping. In two
major rankings of economic freedom, one of Internet freedom, and a
report on freedom of the press, the land of the free has been
called out this year for being a little less free than it has been
in the past, and for signs of a troubling trend toward greater
surveillance and control.

In the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom, the
United States had already slipped out of the Free and into the
Mostly Free
category even before further losing ground
this year.

The United States, with an economic freedom score of 76, has
lost ground again in the 2013 Index. Its score is 0.3 point lower
than last year, with declines in monetary freedom, business
freedom, labor freedom, and fiscal freedom. The U.S. is ranked 2nd
out of three countries in the North America region, and its score
remains well above the world and regional averages.

Registering a loss of economic freedom for the fifth consecutive
year, the U.S. has recorded its lowest Index score since 2000.
Dynamic entrepreneurial growth is stifled by ever-more-bloated
government and a trend toward cronyism that erodes the rule of
law.

The Fraser Institute’s Economic
Freedom of the World: 2013 Annual Report (PDF) agrees that
the country is on the wrong path.

Throughout most of period from 1980 to 2000, the United States
ranked as the world’s third-freest economy, behind Hong Kong and
Singapore. As Exhibit 1.5 indicates, the chain-linked summary
rating of the United States in 2000 was 8.65, second only to Hong
Kong. By 2005, the US rating had slipped to 8.21 and its ranking
fallen to 8th. The slide has continued. The United States placed
16th in 2010 and 19th in 2011. The 7.74 chain-linked rating of the
United States in 2011 was nearly a full point less than the 2000
rating.

What accounts for the decline of economic freedom in the United
States? While the US ratings and rankings have fallen in all five
areas of the EFW index, the reductions have been largest in Legal
System and Property Rights (Area 2), Freedom to Trade
Internationally (Area 4), and Regulation (Area 5). The plunge in
Area 2 has been huge. In 2000, the 9.23 rating of the United States
was the ninth highest in the world. But by 2011, the area rating
had slid to 6.93, placing the United States 38th worldwide. The
2.30-point reduction in the Area 2 rating of the United States was
tied with Venezuela as the largest reduction among the countries
rated.

Unshockingly in the year of Edward Snowden, the United States
also won a booby prize for its treatment of Internet freedom.
Freedom House’s Freedom on the Net 2013
found:

The United States has a robust legal framework that supports
free expression rights both online and offline, and the U.S. does
not typically prosecute individuals for online speech. The broader
picture of user rights in America, however, has become increasingly
complex as a series of U.S. government practices, policies, and
laws touch on, and in some cases appear to violate, the rights of
individuals both inside the U.S. and abroad. Government access to
phone and internet records is a major concern, especially following
newly revealed information about NSA surveillance practices.
Aggressive prosecution under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
(CFAA) has also been criticized. In addition, the privacy of NGOs,
companies, and individual users is threatened by a growing number
of cyberattacks initiated by both domestic and international
actors.

Not just NSA surveillance, but also the prosecution (really,
persecution) of Aaron Swartz rated
mention in the report. As a result, the U.S. suffered a
“significant” loss in ratings of Internet freedom—an assessment
that put it in the company of India, Brazil, and Venezuela in terms
of slippage, though not (and, hopefully, never) in final
ranking.

Freedom House still gives the United States high marks in

press freedom, but that review predates revelations this year
about
secretive Justice Department investigations of reporters at the
Associated Press, Fox News and elsewhere, and controversy over
targeting of whistleblowers and other assaults on transparency by
the Obama administration. Reacting to those developments, the
Committee to Protect Journalists issued a not-so-rosy assessment

warning:

U.S. President Barack Obama came into office pledging open
government, but he has fallen short of his promise. Journalists and
transparency advocates say the White House curbs routine disclosure
of information and deploys its own media to evade scrutiny by the
press. Aggressive prosecution of leakers of classified information
and broad electronic surveillance programs deter government sources
from speaking to journalists.

The developments former Washington Post executive
editor Leonard Downie Jr. highlights in his report aren’t new, nor
are they unique to the Obama administration. But they have worsened
with time and seem to be hitting critical mass, representing a sea
change in the federal government’s treatment of aggressive scrutiny
by journalists and of government employees who talk to the press.
Downie describes the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 as a
“watershed” that triggered growth in the security state and
hostility to independent scrutiny.

Again, the United States still ranks higher than most countries
in terms of civil liberties, economic freedom and overall
government respect for individual rights. But, across-the-board
slippage in these areas, especially when it seems to be a
continuing trend, isn’t exactly a good sign.

The Obamacare website’s roll out has been
almost universally seen as a disaster. But that doesn’t mean the
contractor behind the fiasco can’t still gorge at the federal
trough.

From Fox News:

CGI Federal Inc, the company that created large parts
of the error-plagued ObamaCare exchange website, which it says it
is scrambling to fix, has recently been awarded several other
government contracts.

Since the ObamaCare exchange website launched on Oct. 1, government
officials have signed at least five different agreements with CGI
totaling $7 million, according to USASpending.gov, a government
website that lists government contracts. The contracts were for
computer and software development at the Department of Health and
Human Services, the Department of Commerce, and the Environmental
Protection Agency.

Meanwhile, Democrat Senator Barbara Mikulski, who is not up for
re-election until 2016, said in a hearing that the rollout of
Obamacare has created “fear,
doubt, and a crisis of confidence.” Obamacare may
also be to blame for CNN’s recent abysmal ratings and the
doctor shortage Obamacare is helping exacerbate
could in turn exacerbate Obamacare’s problems.

Follow these stories and more at Reason 24/7 and don’t forget you
can e-mail stories to us at 24_7@reason.com and tweet us
at @reason247. 

In October, Reason Intern Jess
Remington
updated readers with the latest about Atlanta’s war on street
vendors. The city revoked the business permits of independent
vendors and handed the rights to sell to a monopoly. The Institute
for Justice represented some of the affected vendors and fought
back. A judge ruled in their favor last year, but rather than
comply, Mayor Kasim Reed shut down all street vending. In October,
the judge ruled yet again that Reed must allow the street vendors
back their permits.

But the city and the mayor still hadn’t complied and are now
facing a potential contempt ruling for defying the judge’s
orders.

In order to get the judge off the city’s backs, Atlanta’s City
Council passed an ordinance Monday creating more regulations and
conditions for vendors to operate. The Institute for Justice is not
impressed.

“The ordinance is a step back for Atlanta vendors,” Institute
for Justice Attorney Rob Frommer told Reason. Among the problems
with the new rules, Frommer explained, is that it replaces the
proposed private monopoly with the government instead. The
government will still control where vendors can sell goods, mandate
how they sell things, and even control exactly what goods they may
sell. A street vendor may not sell items that are the same as
what’s being sold in nearby brick-and-mortar shops.

“The end result is the same,” Frommer said. “There’s less
opportunities, less choice, and less benefits for consumers.” He
described the anticompetitive product restrictions as “patently
unconstitutional.”

Frommer said the Institute for Justice will have to assess the
ordinance more thoroughly before deciding their next steps, as it
was rammed through in just two weeks, and there’s been little
analysis. In the meantime, they’re still pushing forward to try to
have the judge rule Mayor Reed in contempt.

“For 11 months, Mayor Reed violated the law by preventing honest
entrepreneurs from working,” Frommer said. “We expect the court to
call him to account for his lawless actions.”

Below, the Institute for Justice’s video explainer about the
ongoing fight. According to the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the city is not
providing in these new rules an option for street vendors around
Turner Field, where the Braves play:

“Are human beings smart enough to overcome scarcities through
their intellectual powers?”

Reason science correspondent Ron Bailey says this is the
question that scientists and economists have been grappling with
for decades. In a talk in front of a live, in-studio audience at
Reason’s LA headquarters, Bailey answered that question with a
resounding, “Yes!”

Bailey previewed his upcoming book, The End of
Doom, in this thought-provoking talk of the same name. By
documenting numerous errors in prediction from the past, from Paul
Ehlrich’s famous
commodities bet with Julian Simon to unfounded concerns
about “peak oil,” Bailey takes on the doomsayers and argues that
it’s much more rational to expect a more prosperous, resource-rich,
and ecologically sound future than it is to fear armageddon.

Approximately 20 minutes. Produced by Zach Weissmueller. Shot by
Alex Manning, Paul Detrick, and Tracy Oppenheimer.

Click the link below for downloadable versions of this video,
and subscribe to Reason
TV’s Youtube channel for daily interviews, documentaries
and more.

View this article.

“Are human beings smart enough to overcome scarcities through
their intellectual powers?”

Reason science correspondent Ron Bailey says this is the
question that scientists and economists have been grappling with
for decades. In a talk in front of a live, in-studio audience at
Reason’s LA headquarters, Bailey answered that question with a
resounding, “Yes!”

Bailey previewed his upcoming book, The End of
Doom, in this thought-provoking talk of the same name. By
documenting numerous errors in prediction from the past, from Paul
Ehlrich’s famous
commodities bet with Julian Simon to unfounded concerns
about “peak oil,” Bailey takes on the doomsayers and argues that
it’s much more rational to expect a more prosperous, resource-rich,
and ecologically sound future than it is to fear armageddon.

Approximately 20 minutes. Produced by Zach Weissmueller. Shot by
Alex Manning, Paul Detrick, and Tracy Oppenheimer.

Click the link below for downloadable versions of this video,
and subscribe to Reason
TV’s Youtube channel for daily interviews, documentaries
and more.

View this article.

John F. Kennedy places near the top 10 in most
presidential ranking surveys of historians, and in a 2011 Gallup
poll, Americans ranked him ahead of George Washington in a list of
“America’s greatest presidents.” Kennedy’s murder was a national
tragedy, to be sure, but an honest assessment of his record shows
that our lawless and reckless 35th president was anything but a
national treasure. That may sound harsh, writes Gene Healy, but 50
years after his passing is not too soon to take a clear-eyed look
at JFK’s legacy.

View this article.

Amid reports that the alleged LAX gunman Paul Ciancia left a
note that referred to the “NWO” — widely believed to be a
reference to the New World Order — Lizzie Crocker of The Daily
Beast has written a short
piece about the history of the phrase. I make a few
appearances in her story:

It might be easy to mistake the
NWO as a concept born out of Tea Party politics, since the movement
occasionally throws the term around, especially when talking about
the Obama administration. But Jesse Walker, author of The
United States of Paranoia, says that the idea has been a
constant in modern American political life and its historical roots
run deep….

According to Walker, the [debate over the] League of Nations
introduced the term to the political and cultural lexicon after the
First World War to describe “evolving world institutions.” The New
World Order was also the titular subject of writer H.G. Wells’ 1940
treatise, published one year after the outbreak of World War II,
which advocated that nation states band together to prevent future
outbreaks of war (“I am not going to write peace propaganda here,”
Wells wrote.) The idea of a one-world government also appears, in a
thinly-veiled form, in Wells’ 1933 book The Open Conspiracy:
Blue Prints For a World Revolution (whose subtitle he later
changed to, “What Are We To Do With Our Lives?”), which encouraged
a “mental sanitation process” to erase nationalistic ideals from
people’s consciousness so they can accept their new roles as “world
citizen[s].”

From there the article goes on to describe the John Birch
Society’s discovery of the phrase, as figures such as Nelson
Rockfeller and Richard Nixon deployed the term in various contexts
in the 1960s. And then we jump to the ’90s and President George
H.W. Bush, who used the words “new world order” while sketching a
vision of the post–Cold War world. Bush’s fondness for the phrase
helped unleash a new wave of New World Order fears, not just on the
populist right but in the counterculture.

One point I stressed in the interview is that it’s possible for
critics of the New World Order to use the term to describe broad
political trends or to use it to describe a
conspiracy allegedly driving those trends. It is not an innately
conspiracist concept, though it is frequently bound up with
conspiracy stories.

If you’re interested in reading Wells’ book The New World
Order, it’s online here. The
Open Conspiracy is here.
And it’s been a while since I last did a roundup of United
States of Paranoia links, so:

• Arthur Goldwag, who has written a
couple of
books about conspiracy theories himself,
reviews the book on his blog.

• Seth Blake reviews
it in the Los Angeles Review of Books.

From the “folks, this is just wrong” department of our War on
Drugs, reported
by KOB-TV 4 in New Mexico. They are reporting on a lawsuit that
arose from an:

incident [that] began January 2, 2013 after David Eckert
finished shopping at the Wal-Mart in Deming.  According to a
federal lawsuit, Eckert didn’t make a complete stop at a stop sign
coming out of the parking lot and was immediately stopped by law
enforcement.      

Eckert’s attorney, Shannon Kennedy, said in an interview with
KOB that after law enforcement asked him to step out of the
vehicle, he appeared to be clenching his buttocks.  Law
enforcement thought that was probable cause to suspect that Eckert
was hiding narcotics in his anal cavity.  While officers
detained Eckert, they secured a search warrant from a judge that
allowed for an anal cavity search.  

The lawsuit claims that Deming Police tried taking Eckert to an
emergency room in Deming, but a doctor there refused to perform the
anal cavity search citing it was “unethical.”

But physicians at the Gila Regional Medical Center in Silver
City agreed to perform the procedure and a few hours later, Eckert
was admitted.

While there…

1. Eckert’s abdominal area was x-rayed; no narcotics were found.
 

2. Doctors then performed an exam of Eckert’s anus with their
fingers; no narcotics were found.

3. Doctors performed a second exam of Eckert’s anus with their
fingers; no narcotics were found.  

4. Doctors penetrated Eckert’s anus to insert an enema. 
Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police
officers.  Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool. 
No narcotics were found.

5. Doctors penetrated Eckert’s anus to insert an enema a second
time.  Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and
police officers.  Eckert watched as doctors searched his
stool.  No narcotics were found.

6. Doctors penetrated Eckert’s anus to insert an enema a third
time.  Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and
police officers.  Eckert watched as doctors searched his
stool.  No narcotics were found.

7. Doctors then x-rayed Eckert again; no narcotics were found.
 

8. Doctors prepared Eckert for surgery, sedated him, and then
performed a colonoscopy where a scope with a camera was inserted
into Eckert’s anus, rectum, colon, and large intestines.  No
narcotics were found.  

Throughout this ordeal, Eckert protested and never gave doctors
at the Gila Regional Medical Center consent to perform any of these
medical procedures….

There are major concerns about the way the search warrant was
carried out.  Kennedy argues that the search warrant was
overly broad and lacked probable cause.  But beyond that, the
warrant was only valid in Luna County, where Deming is
located.  The Gila Regional Medical Center is in Grant
County.  That means all of the medical procedures were
performed illegally and the doctors who performed the procedures
did so with no legal basis and no consent from the patient.
 ….

The warrant also had expired in time when the “medical
procedures” were carried out. Eckert is suing the city of Deming
and Deming Police Officers Bobby Orosco, Robert Chavez
and Officer Hernandez, as well as three Hidalgo County Deputies and
two doctors from the Gila Regional Medical Center.

The petty legalities of time and place of the carrying out of
these hidieous tortures will, I hope, be sufficient for Eckert to
win his suit; but of course the entire thing is an abomination from
beginning to end. If only he could just sue for “police being petty
officious asshole morons, and doctors violating their professional
standards and all human decency by going along.”

I blogged yesterday on military doctors
also violating their oaths and decency in the name of
orders.

From the “folks, this is just wrong” department of our War on
Drugs, reported
by KOB-TV 4 in New Mexico. They are reporting on a lawsuit that
arose from an:

incident [that] began January 2, 2013 after David Eckert
finished shopping at the Wal-Mart in Deming.  According to a
federal lawsuit, Eckert didn’t make a complete stop at a stop sign
coming out of the parking lot and was immediately stopped by law
enforcement.      

Eckert’s attorney, Shannon Kennedy, said in an interview with
KOB that after law enforcement asked him to step out of the
vehicle, he appeared to be clenching his buttocks.  Law
enforcement thought that was probable cause to suspect that Eckert
was hiding narcotics in his anal cavity.  While officers
detained Eckert, they secured a search warrant from a judge that
allowed for an anal cavity search.  

The lawsuit claims that Deming Police tried taking Eckert to an
emergency room in Deming, but a doctor there refused to perform the
anal cavity search citing it was “unethical.”

But physicians at the Gila Regional Medical Center in Silver
City agreed to perform the procedure and a few hours later, Eckert
was admitted.

While there…

1. Eckert’s abdominal area was x-rayed; no narcotics were found.
 

2. Doctors then performed an exam of Eckert’s anus with their
fingers; no narcotics were found.

3. Doctors performed a second exam of Eckert’s anus with their
fingers; no narcotics were found.  

4. Doctors penetrated Eckert’s anus to insert an enema. 
Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police
officers.  Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool. 
No narcotics were found.

5. Doctors penetrated Eckert’s anus to insert an enema a second
time.  Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and
police officers.  Eckert watched as doctors searched his
stool.  No narcotics were found.

6. Doctors penetrated Eckert’s anus to insert an enema a third
time.  Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and
police officers.  Eckert watched as doctors searched his
stool.  No narcotics were found.

7. Doctors then x-rayed Eckert again; no narcotics were found.
 

8. Doctors prepared Eckert for surgery, sedated him, and then
performed a colonoscopy where a scope with a camera was inserted
into Eckert’s anus, rectum, colon, and large intestines.  No
narcotics were found.  

Throughout this ordeal, Eckert protested and never gave doctors
at the Gila Regional Medical Center consent to perform any of these
medical procedures….

There are major concerns about the way the search warrant was
carried out.  Kennedy argues that the search warrant was
overly broad and lacked probable cause.  But beyond that, the
warrant was only valid in Luna County, where Deming is
located.  The Gila Regional Medical Center is in Grant
County.  That means all of the medical procedures were
performed illegally and the doctors who performed the procedures
did so with no legal basis and no consent from the patient.
 ….

The warrant also had expired in time when the “medical
procedures” were carried out. Eckert is suing the city of Deming
and Deming Police Officers Bobby Orosco, Robert Chavez
and Officer Hernandez, as well as three Hidalgo County Deputies and
two doctors from the Gila Regional Medical Center.

The petty legalities of time and place of the carrying out of
these hidieous tortures will, I hope, be sufficient for Eckert to
win his suit; but of course the entire thing is an abomination from
beginning to end. If only he could just sue for “police being petty
officious asshole morons, and doctors violating their professional
standards and all human decency by going along.”

I blogged yesterday on military doctors
also violating their oaths and decency in the name of
orders.