Dartblog
Special Feature: Give a Rouse
Whither the College on the Hill? Dartblog brings you news and commentary from Hanover and the world at large, including deep coverage of the maturing tenure of Dr. Kim.
Archived post
This is an archived post. Please click here to see the latest entries.
« Ron Paul on the Bailout | Home | Marilyn Maxwell & the Electoral College of Musical Knowledge »
The Nation’s Freest Cities
Reason Magazine ranks 35 major US cities on scales of freedom. Some of the variables that they look at are more traditional: sexual freedom, tobacco, alcohol. guns, drugs, and gambling. But as a testament to more recent anti-freedom innovations they have also included the categories of ‘movement’ and ‘food.’ The movement category comprises factors like number of traffic cameras, cell phone laws, government-operated surveillance cameras, and good, old-fashioned helmet and seatbelt laws. The food (and other) category reflects recent bans on trans fats, sin taxes on soda and snacks, menu labeling laws, foie gras bans, bans on specific types of dog breeding, and “any other notable laws of a paternalistic nature,” as Reason puts it. Scores are presented overall and broken down by each of these categories.
Among the top 5 least free cities (of the 35 ranked) included New York, Seattle, and Boston. Chicago is the least free.
The most free cities are…
5. Kansas City led by freedom-minded alcohol laws, as well as few prohibitions on movement, guns, and tobacco.
4. Louisville on the strength of guns and alcohol.
3. Denver because, despite moving in the wrong direction of late, the city still has open laws on food and recently passed ballot initiatives on marijuana.
2. Miami “melds Florida’s conservative guns ‘n’ smokes freedom with the licentiousness you might expect from a cosmopolitan port. Food, movement, and sexual freedom lead this city ranking in the top half of all major categories.
1. Las Vegas tops the list with all the features one would expect from ‘sin city,’ gambling, sexual freedom, etc. When the mayor of the city was asked what he would take to a desert island he replied, a show girl and a bottle of gin. Enough said.
Featured posts
-
October 18, 2009
When Love Beckoned in 52nd Street
We were at San Francisco’s BIX last evening, enjoying prosecco, cheese, and a bit of music. A full year of inhabitation in Northern California has unraveled to me no decent venue for proper lounging, but… -
October 9, 2009
D Afraid of a Little Competish
So our colleague and Dartblog writer Joe Asch informed me that the D has rejected our cunning advertising campaign. Uh-oh. The Dartmouth is widely known as a breeding ground for instant New York Times successes,… -
September 4, 2009
How Regents Should Reign
As Dartmouth alumni proceed through the legal hoops necessary to defuse a Board-packing plan—which put in unhappy desuetude an historic 1891 Agreement between alumni and the College guaranteeing a half-democratically-elected Board of Trustees—it strikes one… -
August 29, 2009
Election Reform Study Committee
If you are an alum of the College on the Hill, you may have received a number of e-mails of late beseeching your input for a new arm of the College’s Alumni Control Apparatus called… -
August 23, 2009
Fare Thee Well, Tom Crady
And now Dean Tom Crady has precipitously announced his departure from the College after only 20 months on the job. How to read this? By way of background, prior to coming to Dartmouth, Crady had… -
May 31, 2009
Kangaroo Court, Indeed
In an interview with The Dartmouth, alumni-elected trustee T.J. Rodgers ‘70 explained his reasons for declining to participate in future evaluations of trustees up for “re-election,” namely the “kangaroo court” nature of such discussion in…