Scott Walker on Trump’s immigration plan: I oppose birthright citizenship for children of illegals too, you know






Poor Walker, who’s now getting a taste of how Rand Paul felt after he got Trumped. Rand spent five years cultivating his image as the Republican you should support for president if you’re tired of how Republicans in Washington do business. Trump swept him aside and filled that role within a month. Now here’s Walker, who spent the first few months of the year desperately trying to atone for his previous squishiness on immigration as a pol in Wisconsin by taking the hardest line in the GOP field on amnesty, including heavy hints that he might reduce legal immigration as president to protect American workers. Two months after Trump got into the race talking about Mexican rapists and a day after he finally revealed his immigration plan, Walker’s reduced to telling reporters that Trump’s plan is a lot like his own and that, like Trump, he too would eliminate birthright citizenship for children born to illegals inside the U.S. That’s a controversial position, one possibly further to the right than even Walker would have been willing to go had Trump not joined the race. But that’s the power of Trumpmania: It’s capable of moving the entire field towards a stronger conservative stance, at least on select issues.

How controversial is it really, though, to oppose birthright citizenship for illegals? Trump noted a poll yesterday that found the public opposes it by a two-to-one margin. What Walker says here about Harry Reid having once opposed it is entirely true, although Reid recanted many years later. Rand Paul opposed it in 2010, when he first ran for Senate. George Will, the new establishment bete noire among the commentariat for Trump fans, came out against it the same year. Amazingly, even Lindsey Graham, Mr. Amnesty, opposed it. Seriously! Watch the second clip below (also from 2010) for the video proof. How many GOP candidates this year will argue that illegals should be allowed to punch their ticket to permanent residency simply by stealing across the border and giving birth before they’re found out?


[...]
Update: So does Jindal




http://hotair.com/archives/2015/08/17/scott-walker-on-trumps-immigration-plan-i-oppose-birthright-citizenship-for-children-of-illegals-too-you-know/


--------------------------------------
From the comment section:
Trump’s speed boat has stranded several GOP fish on the pier in its wake. They’re gasping for air as all the Oxygen is now gone…

Alpha Phi Video Yanked Because It Is Too Feminine And Too White?





University of Alabama sorority Alpha Phi has yanked a recruitment video because it was slammed for being too feminine and too white. Vocal critics of the ‘Bama sorority video claim the now viral video is “racially homogeneous and lacks diversity,” and is “hyper-feminine.” The Alpha Phi YouTube video has now been completely erased from the internet.

The Alpha Phi sorority recruitment video was made by women, for women, yet critics feel that the content “damages” the view of women. Journalist A.L. Bailey claimed the sorority video is “doing more damage to women than presidential candidate Donald Trump.” The Alabama sorority is the fourth oldest sorority in the United States.

The Alpha Phi recruitment video features 72 members of the Greek organization attending campus events, dancing while at a party, wearing bikinis at a lake, and basically, doing traditional “girly” things.

“It’s all so racially and aesthetically homogeneous and forced, so hyper-feminine, so reductive and objectifying, so Stepford Wives: College Edition. It’s all so… unempowering,” Bailey wrote in a piece for AL.com. “They’re selling themselves on looks alone, as a commodity. Sadly, commodities don’t tend to command much respect. It’s a parade of white girls and blonde hair dye, coordinated clothing.”

Bailey has been deemed a hypocrite by some because she runs a fashion and lifestyle blog.


http://www.inquisitr.com/2343046/alabama-sorority-alpha-phi-video-yanked-because-it-is-too-feminine-and-too-white/

State Department Turns Up Over 81,000 Emails From Top Hillary Clinton Aide They Swore Didn’t Exist…





State Department officials have uncovered thousands of emails between Philippe Reines, a top Hillary Clinton aide, and members of the media, they previously said did not exist.

In a court filing last Thursday, the State Department estimated that a recent search turned up more than 81,000 emails from Reines’s official account while at the State Department. And 17,855 potentially fall within a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed by Gawker earlier this year.

That is a reversal from 2013, when the State Department said a thorough search turned up no responsive records for Gawker’s request. In 2012, Gawker requested all emails between Reines and reporters from 34 media outlets.

The State Department did not explain the reversal in the court document, nor did it return a request for comment.

It will begin releasing a tranche of Reines’s emails by the end of September.

After it was revealed earlier this year that Clinton, and potentially some of her aides, used personal email accounts for official business, Gawker sued the State Department over its initial request for communications between Reines and reporters.


http://thehill.com/policy/technology/251297-in-reversal-state-turns-up-thousands-of-emails-from-top-clinton-aide

FLOODGATES OPEN: TOP DEMOCRAT PROFESSOR SAYS ‘I’VE NEVER SEEN ANY POLITICIAN’ WITH BETTER IMMIGRATION PLAN THAN TRUMP





Demonstrating the broad appeal of his in-depth immigration plan released Sunday, Trump’s proposal has won the accolades of one of the nation’s leading experts on the H-1B visas program. The H-1B is a visa designed to provided corporations with cheaper and less experienced guest workers to fill technology jobs.

Norm Matloff, a professor at UC Davis, has written extensively about H-1B visa abuses, and his work is widely cited in the H-1B reform community.

Matloff, a self-described Democrat and “longtime admirer of Sen. Bernie Sanders gave Donald Trump’s H-1B policy “an A+” and was pleased that the Republican frontrunner was willing to take aim at the Republican establishment’s preferred candidate, Sen. Marco Rubio.

Rubio is pushing a plan to triple H-1B visas so that corporations can more easily import substitute guest workers.



As Matloff wrote in a blog last night:


Presidential candidate Donald Trump stunned the H-1B visa watcher community today with his platform on immigration. which includes surprisingly detailed, helpful provisions regarding H-1B… On H-1B, the man gets an A+. I’ve never seen any politician, even Tom Tancredo, put up such an effective platform as Trump has. He decries that most of the visas go to the bottom two (out of four) wage levels in the legal requirements for H-1B, recognizing that the unrealistic prevailing wage law is at the heart of the problem. He insists that employers be required to give hiring priority to Americans. Most important to me is that, at least as stated, these provisions would go a long way to stem the visa abuse by not only the “Infosyses” (rent–a-programmer firms) but also the Intels, who are just as culpable. One nice added touch: He refers to pro-H-1B Senator Rubio as “Mark Zuckerberg’s personal senator.

Matloff writes that Trump’s platform distinguishes from politicians on both the left and right:

Trump says in his platform what no other politician, including Sanders, is willing to say: Immigration is great in sensible quantities, but in its present form,  both legal and illegal, it’s hammering the lower and middle classes. Take for example the high black and Latino unemployment rates. The Democrats say the solution is education and the Republicans say the path is lower taxes and regulation, and though both may have points, Trump states the obvious — bringing in large numbers of low-skilled immigrants is going to harm the most vulnerable people in our society, our own low-skilled (including earlier immigrants)… Latino activists don’t seem to care, nor do their allies in the Democratic Party care. I haven’t heard a peep out of Rep. Luis Gutierrez about the blight that the immigration-swelled labor market brings on the Latino community. Indeed, the Latino activists want to shut down talk of harm to American low-skilled workers… I say, ‘¡Arriba Señor Trump!’… Immigration policy must be a sensible one that is beneficial to those already here. We need a national dialog on the issue, not selfish posturing by politicians. Hopefully Trump’s platform will lead to a broader — and more honest! — dialog on this crucial topic.

Matloff’s praise is echoed by NumbersUSA–a nonpartisan group that calls for immigration moderation–and conservative activists alike.

Conservative icon Ann Coulter and author of new book Adios America has called Trump’s policy paper, “The greatest political document since the Magna Carta.”

Tea Party co-founder, Mark Meckler, writes:

Trump sets the standard for specificity in his immigration plan that all the other candidates will now have to meet.  His immigration plan will resonate with a broad cross-section of grassroots voters, particularly tea party and conservative voters and this will benefit him in the primaries and caucuses. Love it or hate it, everyone else is now playing catch-up.

Conservative HQ editor, George Rasley writes:

The ‘donor class’ of the Republican (and Democratic) Party – whom [Alabama Senator Jeff] Sessions calls the ‘Masters of the Universe’—are losing influence in a big way over the Republican Party. Their candidates, Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, have been fading so fast under the heat of the conservative populist message of Donald Trump…

By embracing a platform of immigration moderation — i.e. returning immigration to lower, more normal historical levels from today’s surging record highs — Trump could begin to see increased support from a wide range of voters.  For instance, polls from Fox News and Gallup show that Americans — by a 2-to-1 ratio — want to see visa issuances reduced. A 2012 Pew Poll found that 69 percent of Americans want to place greater restrictions on who was allowed into the United States. A recent poll from Kellyanne Conway found that a plurality of Americans wish to see a moratorium on immigration for the time being. And a separate poll by KellyAnne Conway found that Hispanics, by nearly a seven to one ratio, want employers to hire workers already in the country rather than importing foreign workers to fill jobs. Black voters support this measure by a ratio of almost 30 to 1. As Matloff explains, both of these groups suffer every day from the federal government’s policy of adding millions of new competitors to the labor pool.

The immigrant to native population ratio is already at it’s highest level in 105 years, since during the height of the European immigration wave. The Census Bureau forecasts that in a few short years, driven by our visa issuances to poor countries, the immigrant to native population ration will explode past all known historical markers.


http://www.breitbart.com/immigration/2015/08/17/floodgates-open-top-democrat-professor-says-ive-never-seen-any-politician-with-better-immigration-plan-than-trump/

This jumping of conclusion was in their head, so they need to make sure you are not making, in turn, the same jump in your head, thus creating an unintended domino effect of thoughts in your mind, to the realization of the non existence of other religions within isis members...

 

Yes. Beside running a Linux distro on a brand new hard drive, you could do like hillary and manage your own email server at your home. The thing is it will not change a thing if you do stuff the fbi and most people on this planet find disgusting. They will simply come to your home and grab your server, instead of asking google to do it.

Until we move to a true decentralized search engine it will not matter if it is google search or bing, etc.

youtube, google search those:

https://www.chromium.org/getting-involved/download-chromium

http://www.iredmail.org/

Less safe than the secret pin number of your stolen debit card?

Arkansas and Utah defund Planned Parenthood over aborted baby parts scandal


WASHINGTON, D.C., August 17, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) — Two more states have defunded Planned Parenthood in light of videos showing the organization is engaged in the illegal sale of body parts from aborted babies.

On Friday, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert said that “allegations against Planned Parenthood are deeply troubling,” and ordered his state’s Department of Health to stop sending federal funds to Planned Parenthood.

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson likewise said his state was ending Medicaid contracts with Planned Parenthood. “It is apparent that after the recent revelations on the actions of Planned Parenthood, that this organization does not represent the values of the people of our state and Arkansas is better served by terminating any and all existing contracts with them,” Hutchinson said in a statement.

More than $400 million of Planned Parenthood’s over $500 million in public funding comes from Medicaid and other programs that combine state and federal funds.


https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/breaking-arkansas-and-utah-defund-planned-parenthood-over-aborted-baby-part

Bernie Sanders apologizes to #BlackLivesMatter group holding his campaign hostage “I Apologize It Took Our Campaign So Long”





After protests twice derailed campaign events in recent weeks, the Bernie Sanders campaign has asked to meet with Black Lives Matter activists in Washington.

In an email obtained by BuzzFeed News, the campaign’s African-American outreach director, Marcus Ferrell, told a group of activists that Sanders wanted a more formal interaction. As a sitting U.S. senator, the meeting could be arranged as a means of “possibly introducing legislation and making a constitutional change. We would like to know what YOU would like to see happen.”

Campaigns are rushing to curry favor with Black Lives Matter activists, whose public actions confronting Sanders twice disrupted the campaign, forcing Sanders to more forcefully voice his support of the movement. He has also since announced Symone Sanders, who is a young black woman, as his national press secretary; she was hired after she met with the senator about the activism and criminal justice. Bernie Sanders has also released a comprehensive racial justice platform, referenced by Ferrell in the email.


http://www.buzzfeed.com/darrensands/sanders-campaign-reaches-out-to-black-lives-matter-activists#.yaXG6bNdm

Exactly what the REAL Batman would have said...

Donald Trump Lies to Little Boy: "I Am Batman." (Gawker.com)



Noted Donald Trump enthusiast Donald Trump lied to a group of children yesterday during an incredible series of events that played out like the bleakest of CNN wet dreams. In a video posted to Facebook, a boy points a camera at the petulant clown running for president and asks, point-blank, if he is Batman. Trump’s response: “I am Batman.”

The deplorable instance of deceit all started when Donald Trump decided to offer a little something extra—free helicopter rides—to the Iowa State Fair’s customary candidate pageantry.

[...]
It’s at this point that Trump turned to the camera to bellow, “Where are the children? Get them over here.”

(Words that were presumably followed by a crack of lightning and a growing, palpable tension as the precious children’s world inexplicably began to dim.)

But the children did not come. So Trump roared, once again, “I love my kids. Come ‘ere.”

Finally, the children obey. “Taking their cue, nearly 50 children stood behind him on the asphalt as he answered questions about what he would do if elected president.”

Then, it was time time for two parents to willingly send their children hurtling through the sky in a small, metal box with Donald Trump. From CNN:

William (9) brought a GoPro camera to capture the experience; a clip later wound up on Facebook.

“Mr. Trump,” he said, aiming the camera at his benefactor.

“Yes,” Trump said, pulling on the lapels of his jacket.

“Are you Batman?” the boy asked.

“I am Batman,” Trump said.

Lies. Blatant, brazen lies.





http://gawker.com/donald-trump-lies-to-little-boy-i-am-batman-1724468255



 

HALPERIN: TRUMP REACHED ‘TURNING POINT,’ ‘MOST’ ESTAB CANDS THINK HE CAN WIN NOMINATION


Bloomberg Politics Managing Editor Mark Halperin stated that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has “reached a turning point” where the “establishment candidates” think he can win Iowa, “most” believe he can win the nomination, and “a significant number think he could win the White House” on Monday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

Halperin was asked his writing that “Most importantly, we’ve reached a turning point with Trump, the major establishment campaigns of both parties now think Trump could win Iowa, and most of them think he could win the nomination, and a significant number think he could win the White House.” And that the campaigns were in “full freak out mode.”

He said, “Trump may not end up as the nominee, but right now, he’s changed the race, not just leading in the Fox poll, but coming to the fair. I’ve been to the fair with Barack Obama at his peak, Sarah Palin at her peak, with other candidates, George Bush. The reception Trump got here was not just about celebrity. I walked with him for 45 minutes after the helicopter ride, he came to the fair, and people were yelling things to him with passion. ‘Save us,’ ‘You’re the only one who can stop Hillary,’ ‘Thank you for making America great again.’ The other campaigns — the other leading Republican campaigns, monitored Trump’s behavior here. And that was part, along with the Fox poll, and along with the developments of the last couple of weeks, of them saying, as you just quoted, they now believe Trump can win Iowa.”

Host Joe Scarborough then remarked, “that really changes everything in this campaign about how they react to him.” Halperin agreed with this point.


http://www.breitbart.com/video/2015/08/17/halperin-trump-reached-turning-point-most-estab-cands-think-he-can-win-nomination/

Clinton campaign reverts back to old ways (video)

The Washington Post's Karen Tumulty explains how the email controversy has caused Hillary Clinton to revert back to secrecy when she had originally promised an open campaign.


http://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/clinton-campaign-reverts-back-to-old-ways-506658371822

Constantly checking your mobile phone can lead to 'cognitive failures'


Whether sitting on a train or having dinner at a restaurant, many people find it hard to stop fiddling with their mobile phones – firing off a never-ending stream of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter posts.

If this online hyperactivity looks exhausting, it’s no surprise to discover that these high-frequency internet users find it much more difficult to pay attention to what’s going on around them than the rest of us – even when they are not consumed by the web.

New research finds that the most frequent mobile phone and internet users are the most likely to be distracted, for example by being prone to missing important appointments and daydreaming while having a conversation.

In the first study of its kind, an academic from Leicester’s De Montfort University has found that the more times a person uses the internet or their mobile phone, the more likely they are to experience “cognitive failures”.

These include a whole range of blunders, and a general lack of awareness of a person’s surroundings that stretches as far as people forgetting why they have just gone from one part of the house to the other says Dr Lee Hadlington, author of the research.

The study draws the same conclusions among users of mobile phones without internet access as with it – suggesting that mobile phone conversations and surfing the web are similarly associated with distraction.


But whether the most digitally active people are more distracted because their excessive online activity makes them jittery or hyperactive, or whether it is the other way around – that they are more drawn to these activities because they naturally have short “attentional control” – is unclear at this stage, he says.

Dr Hadlington does have a theory, however: that it is a mix of the two. In other words, those people already suffering from short attention spans are drawn to the distractions of modern technology, which makes it even harder for them to pay attention to their surroundings.

His research has been published in the journal Computers in Human Behaviour. He is now working on research to answer this question more comprehensively and to look for ways to solve the problem.

“This is a very underexamined area and a very important one. We are using technology on a daily basis but we don’t understand its effect on us,” Dr Hadlington said.

“We don’t know what’s actually happening to our cognition when we are using this technology and that’s the important thing. What we do know from this research is that there are some statistically significant numbers of people who say they use the internet or their phone a lot and who experience cognitive failures,” he added.


The study asked people a series of questions to determine whether they experienced certain types of “blunders” – defined as factors relating to their ability to focus, physical blunders such as bumping into things, and memory.

The study was conducted among 107 men and 103 women between the ages of 18 and 65, who spent an average of 22.95 hours a week online.


http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/constantly-checking-your-mobile-phone-can-lead-to-cognitive-failures-10458210.html

Minimum-wage offensive could speed arrival of robot-powered restaurants





Crowded. That’s how Ed Rensi remembers what life was like working at McDonald’s back in 1966. There were about double the number of people working in the store — 70 or 80, as opposed to the 30 or 40 there today — because preparing the food just took a lot more doing.

“When I first started at McDonald’s making 85 cents an hour, everything we made was by hand,” Rensi said — from cutting the shortcakes to stirring syrups into the milk for shakes. Over the years, though, ingredients started to arrive packaged and pre-mixed, ready to be heated up, bagged and handed out the window.

“More and more of the labor was pushed back up the chain,” said Rensi, who went on to become chief executive of the company in the 1990s. The company kept employing more grill cooks and cashiers as it expanded, but each one of them accounted for more of each store’s revenue as more sophisticated cooking techniques allowed each to become more productive.

The industry could be ready for another jolt as a ballot initiative to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour nears in the District and as other campaigns to boost wages gain traction around the country. About 30 percent of the restaurant industry’s costs come from salaries, so burger-flipping robots — or at least super-fast ovens that expedite the process — become that much more cost-competitive if the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour is doubled.

“The problem with the ­minimum-wage offensive is that it throws the accounting of the restaurant industry totally upside down,” said Harold Miller, vice president of franchise development for Persona Pizzeria, who also consults for other chains. “My position is: Pay your people properly, keep them longer, treat them right, and robots are going to be helpful in doing that, because it will help the restaurateur survive.”

Many chains are already at work looking for ingenious ways to take humans out of the picture, threatening workers in an industry that employs 2.4 million wait staffers, nearly 3 million cooks and food preparers and many of the nation’s 3.3 million cashiers.

‘Why wait?’
The advent of fast-food chains may have ushered in an era of new efficiencies, but the industry as a whole has largely been resistant to cuts in labor. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, since 1987, labor productivity in ­limited-service restaurants has grown at a rate of only 0.3 percent per year, which is low compared with most other industries.

The market research company IBISWorld has calculated that the average number of employees at fast-food restaurants declined by fewer than two people over the past decade, from 17.16 employees to 15.28. And restaurants tend to rely more on labor than other food outlets: According to the National Restaurant Association, dining establishments average $84,000 in sales per worker, compared with $304,000 for grocery stores and $855,000 for gas stations.

Labor isn’t the only ingredient that factors into the price of a Big Mac: There’s also real estate, which has been getting more expensive, especially in the hot urban markets where restaurants are seeking to locate. Wholesale food costs, meanwhile, have escalated 25 percent over the past five years.

The avalanche of rising costs is why franchisers are aggressively looking for technology that can allow them to produce more food faster with higher quality and lower waste. Dave Brewer is chief operating officer with Middleby Corp., which owns dozens of kitchen equipment brands, and is constantly developing new ways to optimize performance and minimize cost.

“The miracle is, the wage increase is driving the interest,” Brewer said. “But the innovation and the automation, they’re going after it even before the wages go up. Why wait?”

All that innovation helps restaurants streamline other parts of their operations — and draw more customers. Electronic menus can be constantly updated so that items that are out of stock can be removed. Connecting the point of the sale to the oven’s operating system allows precise amounts of food to be cooked, which helps cut down on costs. Other inventions save energy, reduce maintenance and better dispose of grease. On the digital side, restaurants are working on apps that include reward systems and location tracking that prompt customers to eat with them more frequently.

It’s possible that new inventions could start to eliminate positions faster than they have in the past.

The labor-saving technology that has so far been rolled out most extensively — kiosk and ­tablet-based ordering — could be used to replace cashiers and the part of the wait staff’s job that involves taking orders and bringing checks. Olive Garden said earlier this year that it would roll out the Ziosk system at all its restaurants, which means that all a server has to do is bring out the food.

Robots can even help cut down on the need for high-skilled workers such as sushi chefs. A number of high-end restaurants use machines for rolling rice out on sheets of nori, a relatively menial task that takes lots of time. Even though sushi chefs tend to make more than $15 an hour, they could be on the chopping block if servers need to make $15 an hour, too.

“For our operation, we’re not buying entry-level labor, but if entry-level labor goes up a huge amount, everything goes up,” said Robert Bleu, the president of True World Group, a seafood distributor and consultant that also owns a sushi restaurant in Chicago. “I don’t consider rice-forming a high art. You can escape some of the drudgery.”

Of course, it’s possible to imagine all kinds of dramatic productivity enhancements. Persona ­Pizzeria’s Miller predicts that drone delivery systems will eventually get rid of the need to come into a restaurant at all, for example. Brewer has a bold prediction: He thinks that all the automation working its way into restaurants could eventually cut staffing levels in half. The remaining employees would just need to learn how to operate the machines and fix things when they break.

“You don’t want a $15-an-hour person doing something that the person who makes $7 an hour can do,” Brewer said. “It’s not downgrading the employees. It’s that the employees become managers of a bunch of different systems. They’ll become smarter and smarter.”

The value of a human touch
Not everybody, however, agrees that machines could make that much of a dent in labor costs. Implementing new systems is expensive, and mistakes can be devastating. And for some concepts, it’s possible that the presence of employees is actually a restaurant’s competitive advantage. Compared with grocery stores and gas stations, many people come to restaurants exactly because they want some human interaction.

Andy Wiederhorn, chief executive of Fatburger — who is testing tablet systems in his sit-down chain, Buffalo’s Cafe — doubts improvements in technology are going to be enough to keep up with the mandated wage increases, especially when actual people can be his best sales tool.

“I think that tablets have a place at the table, but it’s pretty hard to ask questions, get suggestions from a tablet. I don’t think they replace a server, they make a server more efficient,” Wiederhorn said. “We’re selling hamburgers shakes and fries, and [customers] want to talk to somebody and say, ‘Here’s how I want it.’ So I think in the hospitality industry, to assume that technology will take the place of workers is a false assumption.”

That’s why some restaurants have tiptoed in the direction of increased automation, rather than sprinted, even as minimum-wage hikes loom.

“Because the industry remains overall an industry of hospitality, their challenge remains how to remain high-touch in a high-tech environment,” said Hudson Riehle, the National Restaurant Association’s senior vice president for research and knowledge. If they’re not careful, restaurants could jettison the one thing that kept people coming through the doors.

“Being a service industry, and the need to deliver a personalized experience, means that many of the restaurant operators focus on ensuring that the overall customer experience remains competitive,” Riehle said.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/minimum-wage-offensive-could-speed-arrival-of-robot-powered-restaurants/2015/08/16/35f284ea-3f6f-11e5-8d45-d815146f81fa_story.html

QUITO, ECUADOR

Jaime Rojas keeps his antiquated cellphone on the dashboard of his taxi. He can’t use it to play games or check Facebook, but his “dumb phone” has recently become a powerful tool: He can use it to buy gas, receive fares and send money to family.

Mobile banking has been around for a decade, but this tiny Andean nation recently became the first country in the world to create its own virtual currency. Unlike Bitcoin, Ripple or Peercoin — crypto-currencies with no central bank backing — Ecuador’s dinero electrónico is legal tender, trading alongside the U.S. dollar, which has been the official currency since 2000.

Authorities say the mobile money scheme is a way to offer financial services to those in remote areas where banks are scarce and to help jump-start small businesses. Skeptics, however, fear the system opens up a backdoor for the cash-strapped administration to shed the restrictions of its dollarized economy and, just perhaps, “print” its own digital currency.

Rojas, 55, is among the 47,456 people who have opened mobile accounts since the system went live in December. He says he primarily uses it to buy gas. And while he rarely encounters customers with e-money, he’s grateful when he does.

“This way you don’t have to struggle to find the exact change,” he said, as he plowed his yellow cab down a busy street. “And it’s safer than carrying cash — because of the risk of getting robbed and all that business.”

The government’s control of the virtual currency market (all others are illegal, including Bitcoin) has its advantages. Within a few minutes, anyone with a cellphone on any carrier can open up a mobile account — and money can be added at any bank or other registered outlet.

Growth in the system, however, has been slow. There’s only $645,669 worth of digital cash in circulation and less than 1 percent of the country’s 17 million cellphones are registered to the service, according to Central Bank figures.

Dual Currency?

But it’s the potential for government abuse that worries many.

While mobile money is commonplace throughout Africa and in countries like Haiti and Paraguay, “this is the first time that [electronic money] has been created as a monopoly by a state,” said Abelardo Pachano, who was the head of Ecuador’s Central Bank on two occasions. “In the event that its use becomes widespread, it could generate profound distortions and call into question the viability of our monetary system.”

On the surface, the innovation seems benign: To receive a digital dollar, a customer has to turn in a physical greenback. But Pachano and others worry that the central bank has too much leeway over the use of those physical dollars, including financing the national debt by buying government bonds.

“That initial liquidity that backs the whole system could be turned into non-liquid assets that could cause economic problems under certain circumstances,” he said. In short, if e-money became widespread, and there was ever a mass rush to redeem the currency, it could collapse the system.

Others imagine a future where the indebted administration begins paying public salaries or servicing domestic debt in virtual currency — essentially pumping new, unsupported money into the market and fueling inflation.

Ecuador’s Central Bank insists that safeguards are in place and that no such moves are in the works.

Sucre death

Even so, there are historical reasons to worry about Ecuador’s money. After seeing soaring inflation and the collapse of the sucre currency in the 1990s, then-President Jamil Mahuad took the drastic decision of dollarizing the economy on Jan. 9, 2000. The currency switch was brutal as people saw their life savings evaporate overnight and Mahuad was toppled just weeks later. But it also helped turn the economy around. In 2000, inflation topped 90 percent, but by the following year it had dropped to 22 percent and has been in the single digits ever since.

The stability helped spur investment and led to solid growth. But using a foreign currency means that monetary policy is set in Washington, not in Quito.

President Rafael Correa, a U.S.-trained economist who has embraced Venezuelan-style 21st century socialism, has bristled under the dollar. In his 2009 book, Ecuador: From Banana Republic to No Republic, he wrote a chapter called “Ecuador’s Monetary Suicide,” in which he equated dollarization with “going backward” and adopting the restrictive gold standard, which the United States abandoned in 1933.

“It seems like dollarization is a type of Latin-American machismo applied to monetary policy,” he wrote. “You eliminate the national currency and you’re forced to compete or die.”

Correa blames the recent dollar appreciation and falling oil prices for sapping $2 billion worth of exports during the first quarter. But he’s also admitted that the costs associated with abandoning the buck would be “catastrophic.”

Not everyone believes that the president is unwilling to make the leap. Simon Pachano, a political analyst with the Latin American Faculty for Social Sciences in Quito, worries that the virtual money may be Correa’s stealth route back to a national currency.

“Correa has always wanted to abandon the dollar,” he said. “For him it’s an aberration. It bothers him to be the president of a dollarized country.”

Political backlash?

In a sense, one of the biggest drawbacks of Ecuador’s system is the government backing, said Lindsay Lehr, a mobile money expert and the senior director of Americas Market Intelligence.

In countries where mobile money is offered by the private sector, it’s often seen as a much-needed solution. In Paraguay, 17 percent of all cellphone users also have mobile money accounts, and in Haiti 15 percent are in the system, according to Americas Market Intelligence data.

In Ecuador “since it is the government behind it, it’s receiving a lot of opposition, criticism and cynicism,” she said from her offices in San Francisco. There’s the perception that “the government has ulterior motives or that it’s a political play — which very well may be true.”

Almost nine years into his administration, Correa has been facing demonstrations over his economic policies and his belligerent attitude toward the opposition. In this environment, almost all of his proposals, including e-money, are facing a backlash. On Thursday, labor groups, indigenous organizations and the opposition are planning to begin a national strike asking for reforms.

So even as Ecuador continues to expand the system (users will be able to pay utility bills and bus fares soon) it’s unclear whether people are ready to embrace the initiative.

Rojas, the cab driver, says he’s proud to be an e-money pioneer, but he also recognizes its limits.

“I know old taxi drivers who don’t even have a mobile phone so they’re never going to use this system,” he said. “But I hope it does catch on.”

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/article30968391.html

That is why I stand for "Orange is the new black" for hillary...

 

Google image: porn, or sex.
Do you see a lot of gay sex?
If not then it is propaganda. There is nothing new in the food. No more gays today than back in ancient Greece. They were more popular back then maybe, but the % is always the same and has never been 50% of any tribes, groups, societies, families, villages, towns, cities, countries, continents... You cannot grow up to 10 billion humans that fast if half was gay or questioning. Even gay kings had to find a way to have kids.

50%? Never. Not even by re-coding our DNA as the gay gene has yet to be found...