Phoenix: Not so free, not so unfree
Phoenix isn't a terrible place when it comes to personal freedom. It's not so great either, despite Arizona's overstated Wild-West reputation.
Reason magazine's Radley Balko raised a fuss in Chicago with his column in the Chicago Tribune taking that city to task for "treating its citizens like children" with a variety of nanny-state interventions into everything from sex laws to booze restrictions to firearms regulations that are designed to turn local politicians' obsessions and bugaboos into punishable offenses.
The full article from which Balko drew, rating 35 cities according to semi-scientific rankings of the various city governments' treatment of personal freedom, is available on Reason's Website. The cities are assessed on the environment they provide for personal autonomy in the areas of: Sex, Tobacco, Alcohol, Guns, Movement, Drugs, Gambling and Food/Other.
Chicago came in dead last, setting itself up for its public excoriation. Las Vegas, with a generally laissez-faire attitude toward matters that draw political and legal attention elsewhere, ranked first.
I note that Phoenix, the metropolitan behemoth of Arizona, ranks a mediocre 14. With its middle-of-the-road status, the city doesn't even rate a full text analysis of its advantages and disadvantages. The magazine merely notes: "If harassment of suspected illegal immigrants were measured in this list, the stomping grounds of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio would rank dead last."
I've written plenty about Sheriff Joe's shenanigans, so I can't disagree.
Reason's rankings are a welcome tool for assessing the livability of America's many and various jurisdictions by a variety of criteria. Measures of economic freedom are relatively easy to come by, but attempts to assess local openness to gays and lesbians, personal choice on smoking, drug laws, the ability to defend yourself within the law and other measures of the breathing room to live in a given area according to your own preferences are rare.
In fact, it's interesting to cross-reference, say, the Pacific Research Institute's U.S. Economic Freedom Index (full document here in PDF format) with Reason's rankings. Chicago's miserable last-place personal freedom ranking correlates depressingly with Illinois's overall 46 (out of 50) rank among the states for economic liberty.
Las Vegas, the top dog for personal-freedom, is located in pretty-good twelfth-ranked Nevada for economic liberty.
But the best bargain may be Denver, ranked third for personal freedom, and nestled comfortably in second-place Colorado, for economic liberty.
(Phoenix, ranked a mediocre 14 out of 35 for personal freedom, does a bit better on economics, given Arizona's slot at 11.)
Of course, rankings are only snapshots; you need to see what direction a jurisdiction is going, or you're at risk of moving to a garden of freedom just in time to watch it transform into a gulag. As David Harsanyi notes in Reason's write-up of Denver:
Oh well. Reason is going to have to repeat these rankings on a regular basis, so we have a better idea of how our homes, current and prospective, fare. It just might be better to stay in a town ranked at 14 that stays at 14 than it would be to move to a burg that starts off good and then slides, heartbreakingly, down the scale.
Reason magazine's Radley Balko raised a fuss in Chicago with his column in the Chicago Tribune taking that city to task for "treating its citizens like children" with a variety of nanny-state interventions into everything from sex laws to booze restrictions to firearms regulations that are designed to turn local politicians' obsessions and bugaboos into punishable offenses.
The full article from which Balko drew, rating 35 cities according to semi-scientific rankings of the various city governments' treatment of personal freedom, is available on Reason's Website. The cities are assessed on the environment they provide for personal autonomy in the areas of: Sex, Tobacco, Alcohol, Guns, Movement, Drugs, Gambling and Food/Other.
Chicago came in dead last, setting itself up for its public excoriation. Las Vegas, with a generally laissez-faire attitude toward matters that draw political and legal attention elsewhere, ranked first.
I note that Phoenix, the metropolitan behemoth of Arizona, ranks a mediocre 14. With its middle-of-the-road status, the city doesn't even rate a full text analysis of its advantages and disadvantages. The magazine merely notes: "If harassment of suspected illegal immigrants were measured in this list, the stomping grounds of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio would rank dead last."
I've written plenty about Sheriff Joe's shenanigans, so I can't disagree.
Reason's rankings are a welcome tool for assessing the livability of America's many and various jurisdictions by a variety of criteria. Measures of economic freedom are relatively easy to come by, but attempts to assess local openness to gays and lesbians, personal choice on smoking, drug laws, the ability to defend yourself within the law and other measures of the breathing room to live in a given area according to your own preferences are rare.
In fact, it's interesting to cross-reference, say, the Pacific Research Institute's U.S. Economic Freedom Index (full document here in PDF format) with Reason's rankings. Chicago's miserable last-place personal freedom ranking correlates depressingly with Illinois's overall 46 (out of 50) rank among the states for economic liberty.
Las Vegas, the top dog for personal-freedom, is located in pretty-good twelfth-ranked Nevada for economic liberty.
But the best bargain may be Denver, ranked third for personal freedom, and nestled comfortably in second-place Colorado, for economic liberty.
(Phoenix, ranked a mediocre 14 out of 35 for personal freedom, does a bit better on economics, given Arizona's slot at 11.)
Of course, rankings are only snapshots; you need to see what direction a jurisdiction is going, or you're at risk of moving to a garden of freedom just in time to watch it transform into a gulag. As David Harsanyi notes in Reason's write-up of Denver:
Often the relevant question isn’t where you are but where you’re headed. And Denver, alas, is moving in the same godforsaken direction as the rest of the country. Safety, economic and social “justice,” the children, the environment, the pets (unless we’re talking about pit bulls, a breed banned from city limits)—all of them trump individual freedom. ...
Denver is one of the freest cities in the country? That’s dreadful news for the rest of you suckers.
Oh well. Reason is going to have to repeat these rankings on a regular basis, so we have a better idea of how our homes, current and prospective, fare. It just might be better to stay in a town ranked at 14 that stays at 14 than it would be to move to a burg that starts off good and then slides, heartbreakingly, down the scale.
Labels: civil liberties, drugs and prohibition, firearms/Second Amendment, free speech, government out of bounds, nanny state, render unto Caesar, sex
posted by J.D. Tuccille at
11:10 AM
10 Comments:
I lived in a certain medium-sized town in northern Colorado for a couple of years. They were always patting themselves on the back that "we're not Denver," "we're not a big city," etc. They were always talking about that (now-vanished) old-fashioned Wild West Spirit of self-reliance.
Yet, in point of fact, they had all the problems of the big city and then some. It was a very white town, yet a lot of ghetto behavior was "trickling" up among its younger set.
Unwed teen pregnancy was a big problem in that town, as were a lot of kids who were into drugs big-time, as were a lot of young people who would just couch surf and live off other people, whether or not they were on the dole.
Also: I can't entirely agree with you versus the good Sheriff Arpaio. There is, unfortunately, a noticeable contingent of people among those wonderful "illegal aliens" who commit crimes on both sides of the border (not to mention the questionable status of someone who broke the law in getting here).
Almost everyone I know has had either a loved one or friend who got mangled or killed by the carnage on the highways caused by people who don't drive well, and who drive around without license, registration, or insurance.
One friend of mine lost two out of three children to such criminals. And in one instance, even though the perp was apprehended, he was never even arrested, but let go to kill again. He was drunk on his a@@, and his whole fricking family was in the car with him.
Also, the sheer noise level when you're living in close proximity to some of these illegal aliens will cause some of us to be more careful where we move next time. Some of us are prefer peace and quiet, and are now allergic to mariachi "music" and the constant noise.
There's a good reason why some of us prefer to shop at Wal-Mart in the wee hours of the morning, and it has to do with many fewer screaming children whose parents don't bother to shush them.
I lived in a certain medium-sized town in northern Colorado for a couple of years. They were always patting themselves on the back that "we're not Denver," "we're not a big city," etc. They were always talking about that (now-vanished) old-fashioned Wild West Spirit of self-reliance.
Yet, in point of fact, they had all the problems of the big city and then some. It was a very white town, yet a lot of ghetto behavior was "trickling up" among its younger set.
Unwed teen pregnancy was a big problem in that town. There were a lot of kids who were into drugs big-time, and there were a lot of young people who would just couch surf and live off other people, whether or not they were on the dole.
Also: I can't entirely agree with you versus the good Sheriff Arpaio. There is, unfortunately, a noticeable contingent of people among those wonderful "illegal aliens" who commit crimes on both sides of the border (not to mention the questionable status of someone who broke the law in getting here).
Almost everyone I know has had either a loved one or friend who got mangled or killed by the carnage on the highways caused by people who don't drive well, and who drive around without license, registration, or insurance.
One friend of mine lost two out of three children to such criminals. And in one instance, even though the perp was apprehended, he was never even arrested, but let go to kill again. He was drunk on his a$$, and his whole fricking family was in the car with him. But no arrest was ever made.
Also, the sheer noise level when you're living in close proximity to some of these illegal aliens will cause some of us to be more careful where we move next time. Some of us prefer peace and quiet, and are now allergic to the hideous mariachi "music" and the constant noise.
There's a good reason why some of us prefer to shop at Wal-Mart in the wee hours of the morning, and it has to do with many fewer screaming children whose parents don't bother to shush them.
In some of the local restaurants where I now live, these wonderful idiotic parents never bother to shush their darling spawn after the first scream, so it doesn't matter where you sit in the restaurant--you will be assaulted by the shrieking.
I guess, when the Mexican government published their oh-so-helpful comic books about how to sneak into the United States, they didn't bother to mention that it would help to fit in if you actually acted more like an American.
Oops... sorry for the double post. I didn't proofread the first one, so I revised and posted again. The second one is what I meant to say. Sorry about that.
At the risk of making a pest of myself, I have to add that there might be a wee bit of a culture clash going on between people already here and the illegal aliens from Mexico and further south (not to mention other would-be immigrants from the Third World).
Apparently it's an acceptable thing, south of the border, to get drunk on one's a$$, and then climb into a car and mow down innocent people. It's mostly men who do it, but now and again I see a medical report for some Hispanic female who did the same thing.
A lot of people up here in El Norte wonder why it is that these perps don't even get arrested in many cases (even when their identity is known), and why a lot of other crimes go unpunished as well.
Oh, yeah... gang members from south of the border (such as those in Salva Maratrucha, or MS-13) are NOT nice, hardworking, Hispanics who are "just doing the jobs Americans won't do." They're violent and they're leaving a trail of murders in their wake.
At least Arizona has a reputation for not giving these criminals as much of a pass as they do in places like Los Angeles.
The first generation of Hispanics may be too busy working, but their offspring are sure joining gangs in large numbers.
One final comment... I'm not in favor of the nanny state; however, if I am subject to the laws of the United States (I'm not supposed to murder people with my car or by other means; not supposed to steal, rob, rape; I must have insurance for my car, etc.), then if the Hispanics want to come here and live (leaving aside for the moment the question of open borders), then they should be subject to the same laws. In other words, if it's bad for me to do those things (and I'm not saying I agree with all laws) then it's bad for them to do those things too; and if I were to be punished for murdering someone else with my car, so should other people (Hispanic or not).
The fact that a person (of whatever nationality or ethnicity) flouts the law is not, in and of itself, evidence that that person is a lover of freedom, or that he in fact even has two functioning brain cells to rub together.
Those Americans who wish to live in Mexico generally have to go through the paperwork and legal rigmarole in order to do so, especially if they wish to own property.
And the Mexican government doesn't give a pass to illegal aliens coming north from south of its own border, either. It generally throws them back to wherever they came from.
I used to be an open borders advocate, but no more. To paraphrase Thomas Sowell, should everyone who is able to come here be allowed in?
Don't forget about all those wonderful diseases which are making a comeback in North America thanks to Third World folks coming in here... among them leprosy, drug-resistant tuberculosis, parasites (including worms in the brain!), not to mention a new one: CHAGAS disease, for which there is supposedly no cure.
Supposedly, a century ago, people were at least cursorily screened for communicable diseases.
I'm not without sympathy for people who wish to better their lot in life... but I'm not eager for it to be at my expense, which will be ON TOP of all the homegrown layabouts who have existed for generations on one form or another of welfare.
As you are probably aware, many libertarians can barely afford to take care of themselves, let alone the crushing burden of the world's freeloaders.
When my partner and I do escape Southern California for other parts, when it comes time to choose *where* to go from here, the fact that Phoenix has Sheriff Joe doing his job would probably be a point in FAVOR of the Phoenix area.
So, let me see if I'm clear on this ...
You're concerned about illegal immigration and you like Sheriff Joe?
Oh, I kid.
Look, I'm not going to debate the immigration issue in this thread, but even if that's what's important to you, there's the matter of tactics and respect for civil liberties. For instance, you might want to peruse this post.
Sorry, I hadn't read your previous article. I have been getting some of my information from a friend-of-a-friend who lives in Mesa, and who is part of a group which lunches with Sheriff Joe on occasion.
Most of Sheriff Joe's reputation with which I am familiar is the part about him not giving illegal immigrants a pass. The part about his corruption is actually new to me.
At any rate, most of Arizona is less expensive than So. California, it's still on our short list of places to move, and at least *some* of the illegal alien criminals get arrested in Arizona, instead of being given a pass like they are out here.
If I do hear of a "freer" city where it's also less expensive to live than So. Cal., and where the crime rate is also lower than here, I would certainly consider it.
I'm all for protecting those precious civil liberties... but that includes the civil liberties of native-born Americans, not merely giving a pass to the illegal aliens who rob, burgle, rape, and murder.
I would love to someday read that the drunk perps who mowed down my friend's two children finally got arrested and put away. But no, that probably won't happen. I just wonder how many other people those drunk a$$holes have mowed down since they killed his two children.
^^ nice blog!! ^@^
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