Adding Uzbeks to the Travel Ban Will Further Expose its Phony Criteria
Sayfullo Saipov, an Uzbek national,killed at least eight people with a truck in New York yesterday. Uzbekistan is a central Asian country north of Afghanistan ofalmost 30 million people—88 percent of whom are Muslim. President Trump did not include Uzbeks inhis travel ban released last month, but he is already sounding bellicose,writing that he will not allow ISIS to “enter our country” andthat he “ordered Homeland Security to step up our already Extreme Vetting Program,” a phrase which hesometimes uses as shorthand for the travel ban.But adding Uzbekistan to the travel ban would be unwise for a president whose...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - November 1, 2017 Category: American Health Authors: David Bier Source Type: blogs
A Monetary Policy Primer, Part 12: Monetary Alternatives
This primer is supposed to introduce readers to the workings of the present U.S. monetary system. So it ’s only natural that it should take established monetary arrangements for granted, including an official, “fiat” dollar currency managed by the Federal Reserve System.And while I haven ’t hesitated to point out shortcomings in the Fed’s management of the dollar, and have even dared to suggest some ways in which that management might be improved upon, I haven’t questioned the fact that, whether it does so competently or not, the Fed is indeed ultimately “in charge” of the U.S. monetary system. That is, I...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - October 31, 2017 Category: American Health Authors: George Selgin Source Type: blogs
Travel Ban Is Based on Executive Whim, Not Objective Criteria
ConclusionFor countries on the list, and for any country wishing to remain off the list, it is vitally important that they understand which factors led to their inclusion or exclusion. If the United States is acting in good faith —seeking to change behavior as opposed to looking for an excuse to ban people—its criteria should be clearly explained and understood. The Iran nuclear deal, for example, hasvery precise requirements for Iran to avoid sanctions, down to the exact percentage of purity for its enriched uranium. This is very far from the case here.No consistent combination of factors or mitigating factors trigger...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - October 9, 2017 Category: American Health Authors: David Bier Source Type: blogs
Can the Government Destroy Bitcoin?
China-based cryptocurrency exchangeBTCC suspended all domestic trading in yuan last weekend. The decision came on the heels of a September 5statement from regulatory authorities in China, which required all domestic cryptocurrency exchanges publish closing announcements, stop registering new users, and establish a schedule to cease yuan-denominated trading by September 15. Huobi and OKCoin — two other exchanges based in China — haveannounced similar plans to stop trading. To be clear: China has not banned the use of cryptocurrencies. It has banned cryptocurrency exchanges andinitial coin offerings (ICOs). Even still, i...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - October 5, 2017 Category: American Health Authors: William J. Luther Source Type: blogs
New Economic Freedom Report on Prosperity, Gender Equality and Populism
TheEconomic Freedom of the World: 2017 Annual Reportis out today. Co-published in the United States by the Fraser Institute (Canada) and the Cato Institute, it continues to find a strong relationship between economic freedom on the one hand, and prosperity and other indicators of human well-being on the other.The United States ranks 11 out of 159 countries, indicating a slight improvement recently in its rating, but its economic freedom remains far below what it was in the year 2000, when it began a long decline. Since 1970, the index has typically ranked the United States among the top four countries. The top countries in...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - September 28, 2017 Category: American Health Authors: Ian V ásquez Source Type: blogs
New Trump Executive Order Fails Cost-Benefit Test
ConclusionsPresident Trump ’s new executive proclamation would not pass a cost-benefit test. Foreigners from those countries have killed zero people on American soil in terrorist attacks from 1975 through the end of 2015 and the96 deaths that would have to be prevented are more than all of the non-9/11 domestic victims of foreign-born terrorism from 1975 through 2015. There are other costs associated with this new iteration of the travel ban such as the continuation of the cut in refugees that also impacts American wages negatively, fewer nonimmigrants, and a falloff in tourism as a result. It ’s near-impossible fo...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - September 25, 2017 Category: American Health Authors: Alex Nowrasteh Source Type: blogs
New Travel Ban Would Not Have Prevented the Entry of Any Terrorists Since 9/11
President Trump signed anew proclamation this weekend that bans or restricts the travel and immigration of nationals from eight countries. This order drops the pretext of being a temporary measure and includes no end date. Inour amicus brief for the Supreme Court case challenging his prior executive order banning travel from six countries, we criticized the ban as lacking a basis in the evidence regarding terrorism threats and terrorism vetting failures. This new order fares no better. It is even further divorced from threats of terrorism to the United States than the prior order.The new targets are the nationals of the fo...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - September 25, 2017 Category: American Health Authors: David Bier Source Type: blogs
President Trump's New Travel Executive Order Has Little National Security Justification
President Trump issued anew proclamation that expanded a list of the so-called “travel ban” countries that were the subject of an executive order he issued early in his administration. His first order temporarily banned the entry of nationals from six countries fordubious national security reasons. His new order expands the list to eight countries (as Isomewhat predicted). They include Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen. From the original six, he subtracted Sudan and added Chad, North Korea, and Venezuela. The new executive order is also not a complete ban for all of those countries. A...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - September 25, 2017 Category: American Health Authors: Alex Nowrasteh Source Type: blogs
“We need to understand what stimuli and interventions can result in healthy fetus/ baby development” — Eduardo Briceño, CEO of Mindset Works
Question: Eduardo, please share 1-2 major brain health needs you observe right now whose solution demands a creative and significant tech-enabled innovation.
Answer: We need to understand what stimuli and interventions can result in healthy fetus/ baby development, reducing the percentage of children developing significant brain deficiencies and providing means for pregnant women, parents, and health care providers to deliver those stimuli and interventions.
Question: And what advice would you give an entrepreneur launching an innovation to address those needs–for the approach to be successful and sustainable?
Ans...
Source: SharpBrains - August 29, 2017 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Alvaro Fernandez Tags: Cognitive Neuroscience Education & Lifelong Learning Technology baby brain development fetus growth-mindset Source Type: blogs
The Macro View – Health, Financial And Political News Relevant To E-Health And The Health Sector In General.
August 17, 2017 Edition.On the overseas front we now see President Trump not only beating up on North Korea but now thinking about having a go at Venezuela for some bizarre reason.Trump seems to have developed a taste for international meddling because he is having so little domestic success!One gets the feeling this may not end as well as we hope! Time will tell.-----In Australia Labor continues to lead in the polls and letting same sex couples marry is causing havoc in the Coalition to the extent we are now having a postal plebiscite – subject to the High Court agreeing. Energy policy, tax policy and a few others are a...
Source: Australian Health Information Technology - August 17, 2017 Category: Information Technology Authors: Dr David More MB PhD FACHI Source Type: blogs
Stopping the President from Going Nuclear
Add yesterday ’s rage-spasm of a press conference to the growing list of reasons reasonable people are inclined to worry about Donald Trump’s proximity to nuclear weapons. In addition to what it suggested about Trump’s moral compass (“Very fine people” aren’t attracted to posters that look like this), his performance also highlighted questions about the judgment, temperament, and impulse control of the man entrusted with the world ’s most fearsome arsenal.Last week, recall, Trump threatened North Korea with nuclear annihilation: “North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States…. They will ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - August 16, 2017 Category: American Health Authors: Gene Healy Source Type: blogs
A'Venezuela' Gas Price Spike?
Talk of oil sanctions is in the air. Some would like the Trump administration to ban the importation of crude oil from Venezuela in response to that country ’s recentfraudulent election. Andsome are predicting that if such a boycott were implemented, gasoline prices would increase by 10 –15 percent, or 25–30 cents a gallon.Venezuelan production is about 800,000 barrels a day, approximately 1 percent of the 80.4 million barrels a day world output. If 1 percent of world output were suddenly and permanently removed from the world market, then a 10 to 20 percent increase in price would certainly be a reasonable predictio...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - August 4, 2017 Category: American Health Authors: Thomas A. Firey, Peter Van Doren Source Type: blogs
We have an ingrained anti-profit bias that blinds us to the social benefits of free markets
By Christian Jarrett
“Harnessing the ‘base’ motive of material self-interest to promote the common good is perhaps the most important social invention mankind has yet achieved,” said the American economist Charles Schultz. And you can see why. While acknowledging its problems, many credit free market capitalism for the dramatic reduction over recent decades in the proportion of people in the world living in extreme poverty, not to mention rising health standards and technological advances. Conversely, according to some commentators, one only has to look to modern-day Venezuela to see the dangers of ...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - August 4, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Cognition Decision making Money Political Source Type: blogs
Venezuela ’s Opposition: Divided They (Still) Stand
One reason why the Venezuelan regime has been so effective in slowly —but surely—installing a full-fledged dictatorship is because of the internal divisions of the opposition. Unfortunately, those divisions are once again coming to the fore, even now that Nicolás Maduro’s fraudulent constituent assembly has revealed the regime’s ultimate goal beyond reasonab le doubt. The opposition boycotted the legislative elections of 2005 in protest of the lack of independence of the Electoral National Council (CNE), which granted the government total control of the National Assembly for five years. It only decided to part...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - August 3, 2017 Category: American Health Authors: Juan Carlos Hidalgo Source Type: blogs
What ’s Next for Venezuela?
Yesterday ’sfraudulent and illegitimate vote to install a constituent assembly in Venezuela is the definitive step towards consolidating ade jure dictatorship in that country.The constituent assembly will enjoy supra-constitutional powers, which means that its prerogatives go beyond writing a new constitution and include,inter alia, dissolving and removing all existing institutions —including those controlled by the opposition or held by critics of the regime, such as the National Assembly and the Attorney General’s Office—and calling off scheduled elections, which the government would certainly lose. In the hours ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - July 31, 2017 Category: American Health Authors: Juan Carlos Hidalgo Source Type: blogs
