| | | | Trump's Misguided Scapegoating: WSJ | | Better vetting of immigrants to the United States would be welcome. But President Trump's decision to politicize Tuesday's attack in Manhattan by attacking the diversity lottery that allowed the suspect to get a visa is misguided, the Wall Street Journal editorializes.
"Each year, 50,000 visas are awarded at random to immigrants from countries whose admissions totaled fewer than 50,000 over the preceding five years. Lottery winners make up less than 5% of the total legal immigrants. Applicants must have graduated from high school or have at least two years of formal training in an occupation. Initially, most visas went to European countries, but Africa has lately been soaking up the most," the paper says.
"While it would make sense to substitute the diversity lottery for more guest-worker visas, restrictionists aren't interested in this trade. The Gang of Eight bill that passed the Senate in 2013 would have replaced the diversity lottery with more employer-sponsored visas, but the bill stood no chance in the House. Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton has proposed eliminating the lottery as part of a bill to shrink legal immigration by half.
"In any event, reducing immigration or improving background checks wouldn't have prevented the New York attack or many of the other two dozen or so Islamist-motivated attacks since 2001."
| | Why Russia Does What It Does | | | Whatever the results of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, it is unlikely to answer a fundamental question: Why did Russia interfere in the election? writes Ivan Krastev in the New York Times. To understand the answer, you need to look at Moscow's foreign policy -- and the position of weakness it finds itself in. "[C]ontrary to conventional wisdom, Russia's craving for global power status is not simply about nostalgia or psychological trauma. It is a geopolitical imperative," Krastev writes. "Only by proving its capacity to be a 21st century great power can Russia hope to be a real, equal partner with countries like China, which it needs to take it seriously. Believe it or not, from the Russian perspective, interfering in the American presidential election was a performance organized mostly for the benefit of non-American publics. "Although Russia knows that it is vastly weaker than the United States militarily, economically, technologically and in just about every possible other way, the Kremlin still believes that power and weakness are complex concepts today, and that the stronger party doesn't always win. The Russians see great power rivalries as a game of rock-paper-scissors. What is critical is what kind of power you aspire to or are ready to use: Rock beats the scissors, but it is defeated by paper; paper, of course, has no chance against the scissors." | | Are Facebook and Twitter American Companies? | | | This week's testimony in Congress from technology firm executives over Russian interference in the 2016 election revealed a fundamental tension at the heart of the internet, argues Alexis Madrigal in The Atlantic. "Do American tech companies, such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google, operate as American companies? Or are they in some other global realm, maybe in some place called cyberspace?" "Across the board, the companies resisted attempts by various Senators to get them to say that action by state actors should be placed in a different category from other misuses of their social-networking and advertising systems," Madrigal writes. "Though it's obvious that the companies don't want to create new rules or have new rules imposed upon them, these deflections seemed to make clear that what Senators on both sides of the aisle find themselves objecting to is not the specific Russian revelations, but what the companies' responses expose about the very nature of the internet business: It amasses data about people—American citizens—that anyone can use to sell them stuff. It's effective, automated, and has only a coincidental relationship with the goals of nations." | | Janet Yellen deserved another four years as Federal Reserve chair. After all, "the economy is in sound shape, and there's precedent for re-appointment by both Republican and Democratic presidents," writes Daniel Moss for Bloomberg. But in nominating Jerome Powell to replace her, President Trump has picked the next best thing: Yellen without Yellen.
"On regulation, Powell probably is inclined toward some easing of post-crisis rules. But he generally isn't seen as someone who would take a flamethrower to them either. The difference with Yellen is probably around the margins," Moss says.
"It's true we don't really know how someone will lead until they actually, well, become the leader. Events can shape policy way more than personal inclinations do. Remember when the Bernanke chairmanship was supposed to be about inflation targets? In retrospect, that initiative almost seems like a footnote given what else Bernanke contended with.
"Unlike his immediate predecessors, Powell doesn't have a doctorate in economics. It would be unfair to hold this against him. Paul Volcker didn't have one, and he is generally recognized as a titan of central banking."
| | Brazil Gets (a Different Kind of) Religious | | | Brazil has more Catholics than any country in the world, but by 2030 they are expected to be a minority, in part because of a Protestant movement that is sweeping across Latin America and Africa, writes Sarah Pulliam Bailey for the Washington Post: Pentecostalism. "The Catholic Church has 1.1 billion members worldwide, about half of all Christians. But much of the global growth in Christianity is found in Pentecostalism, with about 300 million followers, according to the Pew Research Center," Bailey writes. "Known for charismatic practices such as the laying on of hands for healing, exorcisms and speaking in tongues, and its emphasis on cultivating a personal relationship with Jesus, Pentecostalism has done a particularly good job of adapting itself to Brazilian culture, with pastors who tend to look and talk more like their flocks than Catholic priests do." "The belief that faith can lead to riches -- known as the prosperity gospel -- is a form of Pentecostalism," Bailey says, and has helped the faith "spread quickly in poorer neighborhoods as the unemployment rate has climbed to a record 13 percent. The movement's promises of a better material life through actions such as giving and prayer, as well as its strict social rules in Brazil banning urban ills such as drinking and smoking, give followers a sense of structure and agency over their lives, said Paul Freston, a sociologist and an expert in Pentecostalism in Latin America." | | The Easiest Country to Do Business in Is… | | | New Zealand is the easiest country in the world to do business in, according to the World Bank's latest "Doing Business" rankings, thanks largely to the ease of starting a business, registering property and its system for securing credit. Rounding out the top five are Singapore, Denmark, South Korea and Hong Kong. The United States is considered the sixth easiest place in which to do business. The annual index ranks countries and territories on a range of factors including ease of paying taxes, enforcing contracts and dealing with construction permits. "A high ease of doing business ranking means the regulatory environment is more conducive to the starting and operation of a local firm," the report says. The most difficult countries to do business in? Venezuela, Eritrea and Somalia. | | | | | | |
No comments:
Post a Comment