“If you’re a corrupt foreign official or drug trafficker, there’s a pretty easy way to protect your illicit cash: create an anonymous shell company.
You form a shell company — meaning a business that exists only on paper, with no employees, no products it makes or sells, no revenue, nothing except maybe a bank account and some assets — but you do it without disclosing your (the owner’s) real name, offering a convenient way to launder your money and evade law enforcement in the United States.
Except that might now be a lot harder to do in the US. A provision in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the $741 billion defense bill, will effectively ban anonymous shell companies.
If signed into law, when someone opens a shell corporation, they’ll be required to provide the owner’s name and some basic identifying information. This simple step will give law enforcement and national security officials a powerful tool to crack down on corruption.”
“At least $63 billion—an amount larger than the current annual budgets of 42 states—of the boosted unemployment payments distributed as part of the federal government’s pandemic response has been distributed improperly, according to an estimate from the Department of Labor Office of the Inspector General. The office attributes a “significant portion” of those improper payments to fraud, and preliminary audits indicate that the actual amount of improper payments may be higher.”
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“The inspector general reports “a forty-fold increase” in the number of fraud-related matters, which have “exploded” since the CARES Act passed.”
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“payments to people who can’t work because of the pandemic (or due to the government’s response to it) is a defensible proposal. But even defensible proposals have costs to consider. Extending the federally boosted unemployment payments through August will cost taxpayers an estimated $246 billion—and that likely means that another $24 billion, or more, will be lost to fraud.”
“What the 95 percent figure really means here is that vaccinated people in the clinical trials had a 95 percent lower risk of getting COVID-19 compared with the unvaccinated control group participants. That means that vaccinated people were 20 times less likely than the control group to get COVID-19.”
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” There is even more good news about COVID-19 vaccine efficacy. As LiveScience reports, the Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson clinical trials all found that their vaccines were essentially 100 percent effective in preventing severe disease six to seven weeks after trial participants had received a first/single dose. As biotech journalist Anna Nowogrodzki notes, “Zero vaccinated people in any of the trials were hospitalized or died of COVID-19 after the vaccines had fully taken effect.” Now that’s the kind of vaccine efficacy that we can all cheer.”
“After more than a year of warnings that Alabama’s gore-soaked prison system violates the Constitution, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit against the state on Wednesday for its failure to prevent violence and sexual assault against incarcerated men.
The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division alleges in its civil rights complaint that Alabama’s prison system for men is overcrowded, unsanitary, and that it is deliberately indifferent to the frequent and often deadly assaults against inmates, violating the Eighth Amendment and the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.”
“In 1984, they introduced MediSave, a health savings account that was part of the country’s mandatory savings scheme, called the Central Provident Fund (CPF). Adding the MediSave bucket to the fund (which also has a bucket for housing and a bucket for retirement) forced all Singaporeans to pay something for medical care. This was followed in 1990 by the introduction of a catastrophic insurance policy called MediShield Life that is mandatory for all Singaporeans and permanent residents. Finally, in 1993, Singapore introduced MediFund, a government-managed endowment for Singaporeans who cannot cover their medical bills using the above two funding methods, cash, or family assistance. Interest from the endowment is given to certain health care institutions to underwrite the bills of patients who can’t pay. (The family help aspect is important, as MediSave funds can be used to pay the health bills of an immediate family member.) Although the country also has a supplemental private insurance market, Singaporeans under 55 must contribute 20 percent of their salaries, and their employers another 17 percent, to the CPF.
A network of public hospitals are meant to encourage what Lee Kuan Yew called a “self-administered means test.” Patients can choose any kind of hospital “ward” they like, but the subsidies slide based on consumer income and ward grade. A public hospital’s cheapest ward might sleep four patients to a room and lack air conditioning, while its most expensive wards sleep one person to a room and are cooled. While the vast majority of Singapore’s hospital beds are in public facilities, there are also private hospitals. (The situation for primary care and clinics, where care is cheaper, is the opposite: Most practices are private.)
Singapore has found that making people pay a nominal amount for every type of medical service discourages unnecessary consumption and that the spectrum of service upgrades—from shorter wait times to one-person rooms—allows prices to work as a mechanism for allocating resources. The system is greatly aided by a requirement from the Ministry of Health (MOH) that all public hospitals report to the government what they charge. The MOH then posts facility-specific averages on an easily searchable website where consumers can sort hospitals and wards by how much they charge for specific procedures. Private hospitals aren’t required to submit this information to the MOH, but many do so voluntarily. The differences are stark: The median cost of repairing a one-sided lower abdominal hernia at Singapore’s cheapest public hospital ward in 2018–2019 was $966. The median cost for the same procedure at Singapore’s most expensive private hospital was $15,729.”
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“Singapore doesn’t control just the pharmaceutical choices of its residents; it also controls most of their media choices. Consider that Singapore’s buskers—the independent street performers one sees in public transportation systems and parks around the U.S.—not only need a permit (as is the case in Boston and several other American cities) but “are required to attend an audition to ensure consistency in the quality of busking activities,” according to guidelines published by Singapore’s Media Development Authority (MDA). Video games and movies “deemed to undermine public order” or that are “likely to be prejudicial to national interest” are prohibited. Press freedoms are nonexistent.”
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“Even people who abhor the draconian policies in Singapore begrudgingly admit that it is a well-put-together place. The science fiction writer William Gibson visited the island for a 1993 Wired article in which he described the airport, streets, and buildings as perfectly maintained and the flora as immaculate. He could find no “wrong side of the tracks” or dilapidated infrastructure. The whole country was safe and polite and advanced. “Only the clouds were feathered with chaos,” Gibson wrote.
Following the publication of the piece, which described the country as “Disneyland with the death penalty,” Singapore banned the distribution of Wired.”
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“Singapore is complex, but its core tension comes from the pairing of highly effective public and private institutions that take into account how people respond to incentives while engaging in shocking incursions on personal liberty and bodily autonomy. Imagine for a moment that it were possible for America to import what’s “good” about Singapore—the effective institutions, the economic growth, the tranquility. Could it be done without accidentally importing what’s bad?”
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“Singapore is one of the few countries in the world where the public sector outbids the private sector for talent, thanks to the fact that “cabinet level pay may exceed U.S. $800,000, with bonuses attached that can double that sum for excellent performance.” The country’s culture of public service is also bolstered by “complex and overlapping incentives whereby top public sector workers are…respected highly and develop the personal networks for subsequent advancement in either the public or private sectors.””
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“Bryan Caplan has argued that Singapore is unique in a way that does not bode well for policy adoption in either direction. In a 2009 paper, he summed up the “Singapore paradox” thusly: The island nation “persistently adopts policies that the democratic process would overturn almost anywhere else on earth, but the same party keeps winning election after election by a landslide. Why doesn’t a rival party promise to abolish the PAP’s unpopular policies and soar to power? How, in short, is Singapore’s political-economic equilibrium possible?”
Caplan probed several explanations in his paper, which he presented in Singapore. He ruled out the idea that the country is not actually a democracy, since it has free and fair (though not competitive) elections. Instead, he found strong survey evidence that Singaporeans were both “unusually concerned about economic performance” and deferential to the party that has delivered consistent economic growth for decades. The 2002 World Values Survey, where Caplan derived his data, reported that 58.8 percent of Singaporeans say “a high level of economic growth” should be their nation’s top priority, compared to 48.6 percent of Americans. In terms of political culture, the differences were much starker: 3.2 percent of Singaporeans reported being “very interested” in politics, and 32.8 percent were “somewhat interested” in politics. In America, the World Values Survey reported those numbers at 18.3 percent and 47.2 percent respectively.
Based on both the last eight months of social upheaval and on the United States’ decadeslong preference for swapping Democrats and Republicans in and out of federal power, Americans are almost certainly less deferential than are Singaporeans. And therein lies the rub: Being 10 percent less democratic requires American voters to trust elites and government far more than they do and, frankly, far more than they should.”
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“Yana Chernyak, the assistant director of strategic initiatives at the American Enterprise Institute (and Cowen’s stepdaughter), wrote a guest post for Cowen’s Marginal Revolution blog in 2014 in which she posited that people “run in circles discussing whether Singapore is replicable based on its public and economic policies” and generally miss that “what actually makes Singapore so unique and probably impossible (or at least very difficult) to replicate” is its culture—specifically, Peranakan culture, which is passed down by the descendants of pan-Asian merchants and which holds a “positive view of commercial activity as the machine of wealth creation and basis of improving one’s life.””
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“Singapore has combined classical liberal policies such as free trade, an open port, and low taxes with an authoritarian single-party government that centrally plans large swaths of the island’s economy and infrastructure, plays the role of censor in practically every media sector, canes petty criminals, and executes drug offenders. Because of, or despite, this seemingly incongruous combination, Singapore for most of the 21st century has reported higher annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth than the U.S., as well as lower infant mortality, greater trust in government, a comparable GDP per capita, and a longer life expectancy. The island city-state, as its proudest inhabitants love to mention, is also cleaner than the U.S. and has much less crime.”
“The report, which clocks in at more than 130 pages, is based on surveys, interviews with prisoners and experts, and a review of state policies. It reveals some sobering figures. Three out of every four prison survey respondents said they’d been served spoiled or rotting food in prison, while more than nine out of 10 prisoners surveyed said they weren’t provided with sufficient food while incarcerated.
It concludes that food served to incarcerated people “and the conditions under which it is served are harmful to physical and mental health and can erode self-esteem, with immediate and long-term impacts.”
The report also notes the COVID-19 pandemic has made lousy prison food even worse.”
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“There’s no good reason to wait to implement these and other necessary changes—which can help reduce waste and fraud, lower recidivism rates, and improve human rights, health, and dignity.”
“The day before last month’s deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol, an FBI bulletin warned that some of President Donald Trump’s supporters were calling for violence to prevent Joe Biden, then the president-elect, from taking office. The bulletin cited “specific calls for violence” in an online discussion thread.
“Be ready to fight,” the thread said. “Congress needs to hear glass breaking, doors being kicked in, and blood from their BLM and Pantifa slave soldiers being spilled…. Get violent. Stop calling this a march, or rally, or a protest. Go there ready for war. We get our President or we die. NOTHING else will achieve this goal.”
The FBI shared that bulletin, which originated from its office in Norfolk, Virginia, with a joint terrorism task force that included representatives of the Capitol Police and D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department (MPD). It was also posted on the Law Enforcement Enterprise Portal, which is accessible to law enforcement agencies across the country, and emailed to the MPD and the Capitol Police.”
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“Acting MPD Chief Robert Contee said he never saw the FBI warning. The email account to which it was sent is not monitored “24 hours a day,” he said, and a message sent to that address would not “generate an immediate response.” He suggested that the FBI should have called him instead: “I would certainly think that something as violent as an insurrection in the Capitol would warrant, you know, a phone call or something.” Former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, who resigned after the riot, said he first heard about the FBI bulletin on Monday.
Contee and Sund blamed their inadequate preparation for the violence at the Capitol on a failure of intelligence.”
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“That defense is complicated not just by the overlooked FBI bulletin but also by a January 3 Capitol Police intelligence report. “Due to the tense political environment following the 2020 election, the threat of disruptive actions or violence cannot be ruled out,” said the 12-page memo, parts of which were obtained by The Washington Post. “Supporters of the current president see January 6, 2021, as the last opportunity to overturn the results of the presidential election. This sense of desperation and disappointment may lead to more of an incentive to become violent. Unlike previous post-election protests, the targets of the pro-Trump supporters are not necessarily the counter-protesters as they were previously, but rather Congress itself is the target on the 6th.”
The memo noted “a worrisome call for protesters to come to these events armed” and “Stop the Steal’s propensity to attract white supremacists, militia members, and others who actively promote violence.” It said “there is the possibility that protesters may be inclined to become violent,” creating “a significantly dangerous situation for law enforcement and the general public alike.”
The Post says that memo “does not appear to have been shared widely with other law enforcement agencies, including the FBI.” Sund, who said he did not know about the FBI’s bulletin until the day before he testified, does not seem to have made much of an effort to keep the FBI apprised of his own agency’s assessment. He told the Post “it would be inappropriate to publicly discuss an internal intelligence memo, given its sensitive nature and the risk of revealing sources and methods.””
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” While it can be difficult to distinguish between macho posturing and concrete plans of violence, the fact that some people who planned to attend the “Save America” rally were arguing that peaceful protest was inadequate to the occasion, combined with the clear warning that “Congress itself is the target,” should have prompted the people charged with protecting the Capitol to reevaluate their expectations.”
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“Even while noting the possibility of violence, the Capitol Police minimized the danger. According to Sund, its January 4 daily intelligence report “assessed ‘the level of probability of acts of civil disobedience/arrests occurring based on current intelligence information’ as ‘remote’ to ‘improbable’ for all of the groups expected to demonstrate on Wednesday, January 6, 2021. In addition, the daily intelligence report indicated that ‘the Secretary of Homeland Security has not issued an elevated or imminent alert at this time.'””
“Early on in his administration, Trump raised tariffs. The Cato Institute’s Scott Lincicome describes the president’s trade war as having “implemented five different tariff actions on almost $400 billion in annual U.S. imports (as of 2018) under three different laws with different rationales: ‘safeguards,’ ‘national security,’ and ‘unfair trade.'” We were promised ever-more jobs thanks to the tariffs. But as numerous academic studies have shown, the people who shouldered nearly all of the burden of these import taxes were not foreigners but, rather, Americans.
Protectionism reduces the overall wealth of the nation. Aside from a few favored and protected producers, Americans, in general, are made poorer. Consumers have to spend a higher share of their incomes to buy goods that they could otherwise get for less. As a result, ordinary Americans save less and have less to spend—even on nontariffed goods and services. The American producers of goods that use tariffed foreign inputs also see their production costs driven up, which drives their ability to compete down.
Unsurprisingly, the administration’s belligerent trade policies disturbed our trading partners. They retaliated with their own tariffs on American exports (to the detriment of their consumers). Adding insult to injury, the president’s erratic behavior, threats, and contradictory tweets about his trade policy likely spooked investors. The overall uncertainty and negative effects of the trade disputes surely dampened the beneficial effects of the president’s few good fiscal policies and regulatory reforms.
Take, for instance, the corporate income tax reduction as part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. This reform should attract to the United States much foreign direct investment, or FDI. Yet, FDI flows into the United States were 10 percent lower in 2019 than during the two previous years. Simeon Djankov and Eva Zhang of the Peterson Institute for International Economics recently looked into the fall of FDI flows into the United States. “It is likely that the positive effect of the corporate tax cut in attracting FDI to the US,” they concluded, “was outweighed by trade disputes and threats of withdrawal, as well as actual withdrawals, from international treaties and organisations, which may have scared investors away.”
As for trade treaties, the Trump experiment is one that I hope we won’t repeat. First, he impulsively withdrew the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a multilateral trade agreement designed to oblige China to behave better on trade while opening up a large free-market zone with other Asian nations.
Trump renegotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement with overall negative net impacts, thanks to an anti-growth minimum wage and increased domestic content requirements. And he moved to extend high tariffs on Korean trucks as part of the one-sided reform of the George W. Bush-era U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement, to the detriment of U.S. consumers.
Finally, the president inflicted serious damage to the World Trade Organization—the great arbitrator of all international trade disputes—on the specious claim that the organization wasn’t sufficiently deferential to the United States. Here’s how Lincicome sums it up: The administration chose “to shut down the organization’s appellate body (basically the supreme court of trade dispute settlement) instead of negotiating new and necessary reforms in good faith (e.g., by teaming up with like-minded countries while offering actual concessions on longtime irritants like U.S. agricultural subsidies and ‘trade remedy’ rules).””
“Once upon a time, the Arizona GOP nursed a distinctly individualistic skepticism of government and politicians. Long-time U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater famously wrote, “my aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them.” A hand-wringing September 2020 Kurt Anderson column in The New York Times held Goldwater responsible for introducing Milton Friedman’s free-market economic ideas to a wide audience during events that “opened the door to libertarian economics.”
Sam Steiger, a colorful five-term member of the House of Representatives, said there were some of his colleagues “you wouldn’t hire to wheel a wheelbarrow.” He ran for governor as a Libertarian in 1982, earning 5 percent of the vote. When he returned to the Republican fold to unsuccessfully seek the party’s 1990 gubernatorial nomination, the Phoenix New Times noted that while he had backed off advocacy of drug legalization, Steiger “is an admitted ‘Libertarian at heart.'”
Those were Republicans you couldn’t really imagine assuring party faithful that a politician “loves” them. Grudging tolerance for an officeholder was more characteristic for their breed.
Since then, however, the Arizona GOP has undergone a strange transformation. It took a distinctly nativist and nationalist turn, best exemplified by Joe Arpaio, who held the office of Maricopa County sheriff for 24 years.
Where Goldwater promoted a Bracero-type temporary worker program to make illegal border crossings less tempting, and Steiger accused the Immigration and Naturalization Service of exaggerating illegal immigration in order to pad its budget requests, Arpaio made border enforcement the focus of his local law enforcement department. He went so far as to ignore a judge’s order to stop detaining people his officers suspected of undocumented status—earning himself a conviction for contempt of court in the process. (Trump pardoned the former sheriff.)”
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“The party isn’t yet entirely consumed by Trumpism. Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, has championed old-school issues such as school choice. He’s been savaged by the usual suspects for his relatively light touch in terms of mandated restrictions and lockdowns in response to the pandemic. Ducey also appointed libertarian legal scholar Clint Bolick to serve on the Arizona Supreme Court.
But the governor’s defense of the integrity of the state’s voting process won him a juvenile slap from Kelli Ward, who tweeted #STHU (shut the hell up) at her party’s own elected official. Ward had unsuccessfully challenged the vote tally after the presidential election.
The Arizona Republican Party’s transformation into a Trumpist cult isn’t just antagonizing a governor elected from its ranks, it’s eroding the organization’s support by alienating whole segments of the population. After Flake decided against running for reelection, his former seat went to Democrat Kyrsten Sinema in 2018. Democrat Mark Kelly defeated incumbent Trumpist Republican Martha McSally (who was appointed) for the other seat in 2020. And, in a squeaker of a vote, the state’s electoral votes went to Joe Biden in the latest presidential contest.”