Last night Lorenzo and I were in Colorado Springs for a very successful wine dinner at one of our top restaurants and tonight Lori and I have the Snow Ball benefiting the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Team. Should be fun.
First up though is a trip to the airport at 6am (it’s now 4:43) to put Lorenzo back on a plane to New York, then Lori has a dentist appointment at 9am and the boys of course have school. It’ll be in the high 40’s today which is like summer considering what we’ve had and what a lot of the country has right now. Buffalo New York has over 6 feet of snow!
After today we’ll get a mini break and try to coast, which means normal hard overwhelming days full of work, until next Tuesday evening when the whole family will then be off until the following Monday! So that’s it, time to run as it’s 5:02 and time to slug my coffee and get moving. God Bless. Check this out, nice, good job Mr. President!
Under Obama, U.S. personal freedom ranking slips below France
Americans’ assessments of their personal freedom have significantly declined under President Obama, according to a new study from the Legatum Institute in London, and the United States now ranks below 20 other countries on this measure.
The research shows that citizens of countries including France, Uruguay, and Costa Rica now feel that they enjoy more personal freedom than Americans.
As the Washington Examiner reported this morning, representatives of the Legatum Institute are in the U.S. this week to promote the sixth edition of their Prosperity Index. The index aims to measure aspects of prosperity that typical gross domestic product measurements don’t include, such as entrepreneurship and opportunity, education, and social capital.
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The freedom scores are based on polling data from 2013 indicating citizens’ satisfaction with their nation’s handling of civil liberties, freedom of choice, tolerance of ethnic minorities, and tolerance of immigrants. Polling data were provided by Gallup World Poll Service. The index is notable for the way it measures how free people feel, unlike other freedom indices that measure freedom by comparing government policies.
“This is not a good report for Obama,†Legatum Institute spokeswoman Cristina Odone told theWashington Examiner.
In the 2010 report (which relied on data gathered in 2009), the U.S. was ranked ninth in personal freedom, but that ranking has since fallen to 21st, with several countries, including France, Germany and the United Kingdom passing the U.S.
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The nation’s overall personal freedom score has declined by 17 percent since 2009, with a 22 percent drop in combined civil liberty and free choice contributing to that decline.
Of the eight categories in the index, personal freedom was America’s second lowest performance relative to other countries. The U.S. had its lowest ranking when it came to safety and security (a broad measure of how threatened citizens feel in instances such as walking late at night, or expressing their opinions) — ranking 31st out of 142 countries.