Venezuela's Supreme Court bombed

[vanguard96]

The biggest thing is how far they have fallen. Venezuela used to be one of the most  prosperous countries in South America. It now has the highest murder rate in the world and tons of corruption.

Well, they used to be free...since I still had the Freedom House spreadsheet open I looked 'em up.  In 1972 they had a 2/2 (political rights/civil liberties...lower is better 1-7 range) rating.  On par with Finland, Fiji and Lebanon.  And not too far behind Ireland and Italy's 1/2 and Japan's 2/1.  Way better than Spain and S.Korea (5/5) and Brazil (5/6).  In '98 when Chavez came to power they still were pretty good at 2/3.  By 2011 they had fallen to a 5/5.  5/6 last year, which would look fine if they were in Africa, but the numbers look out of place compared to the rest of the western hemisphere (except Cuba of course 7/6).

Fraser Institute's Human Freedom Index Rating on the following Categories:
https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/human-freedom-index-2016

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Bolded Venezuela and two other S. American nations - Chile and Brazil.

2008
Venezuela 135th
Personal 6.17, Economic 4.30 Human Freedom 5.24 Rule of Law 3.10, Security & Safety 6.67
2010
Venezuela 149th
Personal 6.17, Economic 4.01 Human Freedom 5.09 Rule of Law 3.10, Security & Safety 6.00
2012
Venezuela 143rd
Personal 6.59, Economic 3.88 Human Freedom 5.24 Rule of Law 2.45 Security & Safety 6.33
2014
Venezuela 154th
Personal 6.53, Economic 3.29, Human Freedom 4.91, Rule of Law 2.21, Security & Safety 6.33

From 2008 Rule of Law has Degraded by almost a full point and was the world's worst with the war torn Central African Republic, DR Congo and Libya all ahead of it.

It shares the lowest possible score for homicide with S. Africa, Lesotho, Colombia, Belize, Jamaica, Honduras, Guatemala, and Trinidad & Tobago.

In the Heritage / Wall Street Journal rankings of Economic Freedom Venezuela ranks 2nd from bottom ahead of only N. Korea which is not ranked by the Fraser Institute. Iraq, Libya, Lichtenstein, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen are not ranked.

Under the Rule of Law Category:

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http://www.heritage.org/index/country/venezuela

http://www.heritage.org/index/visualize?cnts=venezuela|chile&src=country

This graph tracks that Venezuela was at 59.8% in 1995, 57.4 in 2000, 47.9 in 2007, 36.1 in 2013 (the year of Chavez's death), and now 27.0 in 2017. In the region only Barbados and The Bahamas had a larger drop from 2016 to 2017. Cuba actually rose 4.1 points...

Congrats Mr. Maduro - you are worse than the next Castro.