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Report: U.S. contributes to ongoing decline of freedom worldwide
More bad news for democracy defenders: A new report confirms worldwide declines in freedom for the 15th year in a row, and the United States isn't helping matters.
Freedom House, a nonpartisan research organization, on Wednesday released its annual report, Freedom in the World, detailing how global democracy was further weakened by the Covid-19 pandemic, economic and physical insecurities and violent conflict. While the United States is still considered "free," the country's score has continued to decline over the last decade, dropping 3 points in 2020 alone.
Countries were graded based on the political rights and civil liberties enjoyed by their populace, rather than government performance. This report is the latest in a series of studies calling attention to global issues involving democracy and corruption.
America's democratic integrity took serious hits from the contentious 2020 election, which was plagued by disinformation and attempts to undermine the results, led by former President Donald Trump. The country's response to the pandemic and instances of police violence against protestors advocating for racial justice also negatively impacted its score, per the report.
As a result, the U.S. scored an 83 out of 100, its lowest score to date and an 11-point drop since 2010.
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"Only a serious and sustained reform effort can repair the damage done during the Trump era to the perception and reality of basic rights and freedoms in the United States," the report concluded.
Overall, 73 of the 195 countries analyzed in the report received lower freedom scores in 2020 than the year prior. Only 28 nations saw improvements. (The 94 remaining countries didn't have any significant changes.) This difference in the number of countries that improve versus worsen — the so-called "democracy gap" — has been growing over the last 15 years and saw its widest rift last year.
The 2020 report labeled 82 countries as "free," which is the fewest since 2005 and they account for less than 20 percent of the world's population. Meanwhile, the number of countries considered "not free" reached an all-time high of 54. And 59 countries were considered "partly free."
While Freedom House noted many losses for freedom last year, the report also recognized the resiliency of democracy and the many people around the world committed to fighting for it.
"Our report concludes that democracy today is beleaguered but not defeated," said Freedom House President Michael Abramowitz. "Its adversaries have grown more powerful, making the world a more hostile environment for self-government, but its enduring appeal among ordinary people — which we've already seen this year in places like Russia and Myanmar — bode well for the future of freedom."
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U.S. government's corruption score gets even worse in global rating
The United States has continued a troubling trend: According to a widely respected annual index of government responsibility around the word, the nation is seen as the most corrupt it has been since 2012.
Transparency International, which has produced the Corruption Perceptions Index since 1995, released the latest edition Thursday and it paints a bleak picture for the United States. On a scale of 0 to 100, where a lower score equals greater corruption, the United States earned a 67, ranking as the 25th least corrupt nation — right between Bhutan and Chile. Last year, the U.S. ranked 23rd with a score of 69.
The report's authors blamed Donald Trump's White House for the backsliding.
"Attacks by the previous administration on a landmark anti-bribery law, on whistleblowers with evidence of fraud and corruption in the government, on oversight of pandemic relief funding, and on the nation's electoral process were all likely factors impacting assessments of corruption," said Gary Kalman, director of Transparency International's U.S. office. "Add to all that the release of the [Financial Crimes Enforcement Network] files documenting failures in the nation's protections against money laundering and it is safe to say it was a difficult and troubling year for anti-corruption advocates."
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The United States was among 47 countries to score lower in 2020 than in the previous year. And while Transparency International admits a two-point drop is not significant on its own, the continued downward trend means the U.S. is now on the "countries to watch" list, which includes Honduras, Myanmar, Belarus, Lebanon and Zambia.
Denmark and New Zealand tied for the top score (88) while Canada (77) received the highest marks in the Americas. The United States has never ranked higher than 14, which it achieved in 2000, when the scoring methodology was different.
Transparency International grades 180 countries, not on data about corruption but on experts' and business leaders' perception of corruption.
The coronavirus pandemic is at the root of much of the perceived corruption in 2020.
"As the past tumultuous year has shown, Covid-19 is not just a health and economic crisis, but a corruption crisis as well, with countless lives lost due to the insidious effects of corruption undermining a fair and equitable global response," the report says.
They identify four steps to fighting corruption and Covid-19: strengthening oversight institutions, defending democracy, ensuring open and transparent contracting, and making more data available to the public.
Transparency International's U.S. office will be following up another report that offers recommendations for boosting the score. The blueprint is designed to work in parallel with HR 1, the catch-all democracy reform package pushed by most all Democrats in Congress but opposed by almost all Republicans.
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Conservatives' hard choice: National security vs. political corruption
Earlier this year, I tried to explain to Congress how today's special-interest-controlled pay-to-play campaign finance system is hostile to the conservative agenda.
It puts Republicans at an electoral disadvantage, I testified. It floods swing races with torrents of out-of-state negative advertising dollars. It guts federalism and the 10th Amendment. Crony capitalism now dominates our economy. Alarming to conservatives, young voters subjected to this rigged and corrupt economic system prefer socialism over free markets.
Support for campaign finance reform in Congress remains nonetheless deeply partisan. But what may finally compel conservatives to action is the grave threat to national security posed by the status quo.
Pay-to-play crony capitalism is much more profitable than the rough-and-tumble, generally incremental gains of market competition. Companies can generate a stunning 760-to-1 return on lobbying and campaign contributions in the form of no-bid supply contracts, regulatory favors, loan guarantees, bailouts and tax loopholes. Monopolies and market concentration are up. Innovation and new business startups are down. This is why we have the world's highest drug prices, way too many broadband and cellular dead zones and ethanol in our gasoline.
National security cannot be walled off from our corrupt and corrupting political money system.
Crony capitalism is why we have failed weapons systems like the trillion dollar fleet of F-35 fighters, the $30 billion Littoral Combat Ship and $85 billion in redundant ground-based nuclear weapons. All are designed more to spread pork and campaign money into almost every congressional district than to enhance our defense.
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It has also been made weaker by the industrial concentration wrought by crony capitalism. The Center for Strategic and International Studies found there was no "effective competition" for more than half of military procurement four years ago — and only one viable recipient for 80 percent of the aircraft dollars. And the big five suppliers — Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and General Dynamics — are claiming most new contracts, leaving competition "at extremely low levels."
Under "crony cap," in other words, weapons makers have militarized American foreign policy to grow revenue — and the result is a more destabilized world. Since 9/11, with crony cap military policy in full flower, the United States has engaged in a series of quagmire wars lacking defined missions or exit strategies. We have lost every one.
Today, we are flying military drones in the airspace of 17 nations and dropping bombs on seven. Silenced into submission by rivers of campaign money from the weapons industry, revolving door sinecures and a fog of think tank opinion-shaping, Congress has abandoned its non-delegable and sole constitutional authority to declare war. This summer, a bipartisan House Armed Services Committee majority memorialized its neutering of Article I, Section 8, voting to kill a measure to block war against Iran without congressional approval.
Republicans in Congress have ceased even pretending to be fiscal conservatives. The $1.2 trillion spent in the past year on national security got just added to our nation's record-shattering credit card balance. Our economy is only temporarily being insulated by the Federal Reserve's easy money policy. Most of the cost of this debt accretion and monetary distortion is dumped on our kids and grandkids. Of the world's 25 economically "advanced" nations, the United States has by far the largest national debt growth forecast. It's gotten so bad we are fast approaching a time when the U.S. dollar will lose its status as the world's reserve currency. Admiral Mike Mullen, a former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, ranks this credit-card patriotism as the single greatest threat to our national security.
Most unbearable, though, is the abuse of our armed forces by crony-driven military policy. During this generation of failed wars without defensible security objectives, our troops and their families have suffered over 300,000 deaths and injuries and record rates of active-duty suicide and PTSD. But most policy-makers are insulated from this suffering because neither they nor their family members have worn a uniform.
Money-equals-speech conservatives must confront yet another threat to national security. Supreme Court rulings in Citizens United v. FEC, which opened the door to unlimited campaign spending, and McDonnell v. U.S., which legalized most quid pro quo public corruption, have eliminated most of the guardrails in the political money system that Congress and states raised in the previous century in the wake of intolerable corruption.
The hawkish Alliance for Securing Democracy has issued a report cataloguing how Iran, China and Russia use our loophole-ridden system against us to influence our elections and foreign and military policies.
Our overseas enemies use unrestricted money to finance online political ads and web publishers. These hostile acts are concealed using in-kind contributions, favorable terms on loans from state-controlled banks, untraceable shell companies, American subsidiaries of foreign companies, nonprofit organizations, think tanks and "dark money" political groups. It's also likely software-based bots are pouring millions of untraceable cash into campaigns through straw donors giving $200 or less, the cutoff for remaining anonymous.
Writing in Foreign Affairs, Sarah Chayes makes the case that all this "weaponized corruption" is possible only because we soiled our own nest first — by allowing domestic crony capitalists to corrupt our political money system.
The solution is reform so candidates and elected officials are motivated to serve citizens rather than big businesses and our adversaries. Foremost among these reforms is to amend our Constitution to restore power to Congress and the states to impose reasonable limits on campaign money. Conservatives must confront the reality that our corrupt campaign finance system is dangerously weakening our ability to protect ourselves from foreign enemies.
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National Phonebank to Fight Corruption Around the U.S.
Organizer: RepresentUs
Take action on the most urgent and impactful anti-corruption campaigns in the U.S. The Call Team helps win campaigns through the most effective voter outreach method: one-to-one contact. Call Team members activate the movement through phonebanks, turning people out to events, connecting them to their representatives, and encouraging them to volunteer for local campaigns.
We're calling RepresentUs members and bringing them to action to fight corruption.
Location: Virtual
