Shortly before President Obama took office, I posted a freedom scorecard by which I could judge his presidency. Although it was hardly a formal assessment document, it’s a nice framework for a post reviewing Obama’s first 100 days.
I started with a list of some discrete things Obama could do to make us more free:
Stop the federal government from raiding medical marijuana users and suppliers.
Done. Eventually. At least for a while, although the Obama administration sure isn’t bothering to help Charlie Lynch.
End warrentless wiretapping.
Obama doesn’t seem much better than Bush, and he may be worse.
Allow needle exchange.
Nope. And, in general, Obama sucks on the drug war.
Fire U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan.
There were also some things Obama could do to make us less free:
Reinstitute any version of the Fairness Doctrine.
There’s talk, but it’s more Republican fear mongering than Democratic legislation at this point.
Ban assault weapons.
Obama’s still in favor of this, and he’s playing it up as a solution to the drug-war-related violence in Mexico. No legislative movement to speak of.
Prohibit gay marriage.
Nope. But he hasn’t gone the other direction either.
I also listed a number of general trends. For example, the population-adjusted size of the prison population is a negative indicator. I’d like to find indicators or discrete events I can use to track some other subdivisions of our national freedom:
Government transparency.
Obama has released a lot of documents, but he hasn’t kept his promise to post legislation on the web for five days before signing, and he’s actively obstructing queries into torture under the Bush administration.
Free trade.
I don’t think there’s been much action, but there’s been a lot of nasty anti-free-trade talk.
Immigration.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Right to keep and bear arms.
As always with the Democrats in charge, our right to keep and bear arms is threatened. There hasn’t been much activity other than talk of renewing the assault weapons ban.
Property rights v.s. civil forfeiture.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Property rights v.s. eminent domain.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Access to elected office.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
I didn’t even bother to list the economy or the war on drugs, I guess because they seem so large and obvious (and hard to measure). Perhaps I should have included them.
Obama is actively taking parts of the economy away from the free market, building on the financial panic started by the Bush administration.
As for the war on drugs…meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
A few other notes:
Obama’s release of information about waterboarding and the Gitmo detainees is a good thing, but I have a hard time getting excited about it because (1) it seems to be a niche issue that doesn’t affect most Americans, (2) it seems to be more about scoring partisan points than about justice, and (3) it’s not clear Obama’s approach will be much better.
Obama appointed the Mother of All Nannies, Chuck Hurley, to head up the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Look for more of MADD’s crazy policies to become federal law.
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