Ward Room: Illinois Ranked Last In Personal Freedoms

Well how's that?

Even though Illinois has done more for freedom than any state -- one of our presidents freed the slaves, and one of our generals made that stick -- we’re ranked #45 overall for freedom, and dead last for personal freedoms. We’ve been at the bottom of that list since 2007. The reasons? It’s hard to get high and/or carry a gun around here. Illinois also has harsh asset forfeiture laws, which put the burden of proof on property owners and grant 90 percent of proceeds from seized property to law enforcement.

From the study:

In the personal freedom dimension, Illinois has the sixth harshest gun control laws in the country, though these were improved by the McDonald v. Chicago decision striking down local gun bans. The state’s victimless crimes arrest rates are very high. In 2010, arrests for victimless crimes (excluding minors) made up over 1.5 percent of the state’s population; the vast majority of these were for drugs.

However, that figure is actually an improvement on 2008. Illinois’s marijuana laws are more restrictive than Georgia’s, which is surprising for a left-leaning state. Its asset forfeiture laws are also among the worst in the nation. On the plus side, Illinois’s home school regulations were effectively as minimal as Idaho’s—a case of benign neglect, it seems. The state’s marriage freedom score will improve in the next version of the index since civil unions were legalized in 2011.

You can read the report on Illinois here. Also here's more from Reason although they don't really talk about Illinois:

Rule-bound Massachusetts inspired the line, "everything's illegal in Massachusetts" in the Mel Gibson flick, Edge of Darkness. And, if that line isn't technically true, as a former resident of the Bay State I can testify that it's close enough to capture the feel of a place so ensnared in laws and taxes that you can safely assume that whatever the hell you're doing can get you in hot water if the wrong person takes notice. So it's no surpise that the state ranks poorly in the Mercatus Center's new report, Freedom in the 50 States, published today. If anything, Massachusetts's ranking of 30 seems generous, but the place has a lot of competition in the race to the bottom. And, the Bay State offsets hideous gun laws and land-use restrictions by recognizing same-sex marriage, and keeping arrests for victimless crimes, including marijuana use, rather restrained. The state also has a modestly sized government workforce and average tax rates, which let it shine relative to states like last-place New York.

But Massachusetts, like many less-free states, is losing population to states that rank more strongly overall in their respect for freedom. Not incidentally, freer states also tend to have higher growth in personal income than less-free states. And, there's a direct link between that prosperity and certain types of freedom. Specifically, note authors William P. Ruger and Jason Sorens, "[o]ur study has found that a positive relationship exists between a state's fiscal freedom and its net migration rate and income growth."

But the top-ranked states are red states, with the exception of New Hampshire, and the usual assumption is that red states favor economic liberty and blue states favor social freedom. Does that mean that Americans looking for economic opportunity have to trade off some leeway in their personal lives? Surprisingly, not really — or maybe a little, but in return for leeway in other areas.

I just looked over at the CapFax again and I see that there may be legislation although very strict could allow for medicinal marihuana. As far as personal freedom goes in Chicago at least police are authorized to issue tickets instead of making arrests at least when it comes to possession of marihuana.

My position is that personal liberty is very important, but it must go hand in hand with economic liberty. Bad news is too many people think they know best. When it comes to economic freedom we have had many debates on that issue and look no further than Wal-Mart where opposition was mostly over how much they pay their employees.

What would it take to make the 10 least free states in our union more free?

Interesting research regarding the OBL raid...

Presented by one of my former Morehouse professor in the Political Science Deptartment. Something I found on FB:

Dr. Tobe Johnson is conducting preliminary research on African-American responses to the Osama bin Laden capture. If you're a current Man of Morehouse, please help him out by answering three short questions in this survey. All answers are completely confidential and we have no way of knowing who you are or what you said:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/KF8NQ5R

Well alas I would like to know more about this survey, but I'm a Morehouse alum unfortunately. If you do know any current Morehouse students feel free to share this link.

Also, I look forward to whatever the research would conclude. It should be interesting.

Morehouse Economist Find HBCU Graduates Do Better In Labor Market Than Non-HBCU Graduates

Found this via none other than Morehouse's official website. This is bound to be an ego boost to both the students and faculty. I should find this study and see how it's justified:

Graduates of historically black colleges and universities do better in the labor market long term than non-HBCU grads, according to a new article by Morehouse economist Greg Price and two fellow economists from Howard University.

The article, which was spotlighted in a blog on The Chronicle of Higher Education’s website, was published in the current edition of The Review of Black Political Economy.

Their findings consider the returns of earning a baccalaureate degree from an HBCU relative to a non-HBCU for black Americans. Their findings counter the results of a 2010 study that concluded long-term returns of graduating from an HBCU were negative.

“Our results lend support to the idea that HBCUs continue to have a compelling educational justification, as the labor market outcomes of their graduates are superior to what they would have been had they graduated from a non-HBCU,” according to their article.

Here are links to the research:

• The Relative Returns to Graduating from a Historically Black College/University: Propensity Score Matching Estimates from the National Survey of Black Americans 
• The Returns on an HBCU Education

Reading a little into that shall prove to be very interesting.

Two more weeks until Election Day

In a way I can't wait and in a way I dread it.

If things go smoothly we will know who will be the next President of the United States. Will it be John McCain, Barack Obama, Bob Barr, Cynthia McKinney or Chuck Baldwin? I know one of those names you've never heard of (you know the curse of being a third party candidate), but the others have served in Congress either as a Senator will obviously in the case of McCain and Obama or in the case of Barr & McKinney in the US House of Representatives where they used to hold seats.

Let me take back my statement on third party candidates. We've all heard of Ross Perot or Ralph Nader. I recall a few years back that Nader had some support because no one was particularly happy with either George W. Bush or Al Gore as they vied for the Presidency in 2000. In which case what's the difference between a Perot or a Nader vs. Baldwin. At least Baar who is the standard bearer for the Libertarian Party and McKinney who's the standard bearer of the Green Party have name recognition. We might especially remember McKinney for the controversy that caused her to lose the Congressional Seat she's held in 2006. BTW, Baldwin represents the Constitution Party.

In any event I don't have much news on my end. I expect to do some exit polling on Election Day down here in Atlanta. This is connection with Morehouse and the goal is to track the behavior of black voters in the city. Morehouse's Brisbane Institute is also coordinating with Tougaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi to conduct exit polling of black voters there.

There was a sample size I forgot the number that the coordinators of this project was shooting for, but I heard Gallup goes for at least 1200 to represent the entire nation. However I do believe this project is shooting for a larger sample size than that and surely this is supposed to reflect the voting behavior of blacks all over the nation. Besides in this election turnout is expected to be high for blacks, is the primary reason because of Sen. Obama's run for the Presidency? Hopefully these exit polls will establish why blacks chose to vote on Election Day in two weeks.

Of course in order to assure that a single voter who takes part in the exit poll survey could very represent say 100 people or 200 people. That number of course will be numerically quantified in time depending upon how the sample is proportional to the population. I wonder if the statistical margin of error will have a role in the sample proportion.

Anyway the expectation here is that in offering the survey to voters who have voted at the polls we won't be handing surveys to every single voter. We might have to do every 3rd or 5th voters or however random it has been determined that we should be. Perhaps that's especially important if one voter is suppose to reflect however many black voters that this one voter is suppose to represent.

I'm sure most of you reading this blog are familiar with exit polls. There are more than a few elections where relying on exit polls became troublesome. Exit polls have been used by the media to call an election. This was the case in Florida in 2000, exit polls were released before the closing of the polls in the Florida panhandle. Of course we know about the confusion that occurred on election night and lasted into December of that year when George W. Bush was finally declared the winner in Florida and thus the Presidency.

I want to also note that in 2004, exit polls had predicted a victory by John Kerry. Exit poll figures were leaked onto the internet and there were discrepancies between the exit poll data and the vote count was outside the margin of error. Compound this problem with irregularities in the election.

I'm sure that this project will have learned some lessons from what happened in past elections. I'm not totally sure if the data in this poll could be used to call an election. This project is expected to be academic anyway of course the main idea again is to have some type of projection of Black voting behavior.

Also there is supposed to be a watch party for this election in Forbes Arena open to all students. So election day should be an exciting day for students in the Atlanta University Center. The majority of students, I would expect, will be largely in the tank for Barack Obama. They hope their boy will win this election, but on that day we shall see.