Mark WeisbrotThe Guardian Unlimited, May 30, 2013

May 31, 2013 (Social Security Byte)

May 31, 2013

The Venezuelan National Electoral Council (CNE) is nearing the end of the third and final phase of its audit of the remaining votes from the April 14 presidential election, reportedly scheduled to finish on June 7. As we have noted, the English-language media has generally neglected to report the audit’s progress, despite that the process was originally demanded by opposition candidate Henrique Capriles as a means to resolving the dispute over the election’s outcome. Capriles has also underscored the audit’s relevance – despite having shifted his demands and decided to officially boycott it – by claiming this month that he had actually won the election by 400,000 votes.

As predicted through a statistical analysis of the initial “hot audit” of 53 percent of voting machines on April 14, the audit of the remainder has so far produced results upholding the official results showing Maduro to be the winner. According to the CNE, the first two phases “have yielded 99.98% agreement between the voting receipts deposited in boxes and the data recorded on the tallies issued by the voting machines," media outlets report.

Does Capriles have a plausible claim that the election could have been stolen? Contrary to his characterization of a biased and obstructionist CNE, as we have previously noted the CNE has made many concessions to the opposition, including 18 different audits, all of which involve witnesses from both parties. Capriles talks of numerous opposition observer complaints from throughout Venezuela on election day, yet our election live-blog on April 14 included numerous live reports from election monitors who talked to opposition representatives at dozens of voting centers in several states; few had any complaints, even less that could be considered serious. Capriles has shifted the focus of his attack to the electoral registry, but demographers from the Catholic University had reviewed the electoral registry prior to the election and found it trustworthy.

Dean Baker
Debate Club (U.S. News & World Report), May 30, 2013

Mark WeisbrotAl Jazeera English, 26 de mayo, 2013El Mono Político, 30 de mayo, 2013En Inglés

Dean Baker
Room for Debate (The New York Times), May 29, 2013

The two biggest gangs in Honduras publicly agreed to a truce on Tuesday, calling it an effort to reduce the violence that plagues the country and asking for forgiveness and government support. Romulo Emiliani, the Catholic bishop of San Pedro Sula—the world’s most violent city outside a warzone—helped broker the agreement along with Adam Blackwell, a security ambassador for the Organization of American States (OAS). President Pepe Lobo has reportedly said he is prepared “to do whatever is necessary" to back the initiative.

The truce has been compared to a similar agreement between the same transnational gangs in El Salvador, made in March of last year. That country’s government reported a halving of the murder rate after the truce, and a 45 percent drop in the first four months of 2013 compared to the previous year. Despite such pronounced success, in January the U.S. State Department issued a travel warning for El Salvador that many (including the gangs themselves) interpreted as an effort to undercut the truce’s effectiveness. Responding to the warning, which referred to outdated murder tallies, the Salvadoran Minister of Justice and Security wondered aloud whether the State Department was misinformed and said the notice demonstrated that for the United States, “street violence, deaths, robberies mostly committed by gang members, that is not their priority—their priority is drug trafficking.”

Some commentators have already questioned whether the latest truce will result in outcomes similar to those seen in El Salvador. These doubts are due in part to the recognition that the police are widely believed to be involved in death squads and the military has been blamed for murders and disappearances, many against land rights and opposition activists. Associated Press reporter Alberto Arce quoted the rector of the National University of Honduras, Julieta Castellanos, as saying “The dynamic of violence in the country goes beyond gangs and reflects the existence of multiple actors that are difficult to pinpoint.” In December Castellanos presented a Violence Observatory report that showed police responsibility for at least 149 violent deaths in the previous 23 months, including the rector’s son, Rafael Alejandro Vargas. Castellanos also voiced concern that the truce could exacerbate the already extraordinary level of impunity in Honduras.

Dean Baker
The Exchange (Yahoo! Finance), May 29, 2013

Eduardo Porter has a column discussing the increasing ability of corporations to escape income taxes. The idea is that they can play games on where their income originated so that it always shows up in countries with the lowest tax rates.

There are different possible responses to this problem. One is to follow the lead of many state governments which tax companies in proportion to the share of total sales that occur within the state. That seems like a reasonable path, but I remember an even surer route to collecting tax that was proposed some years back. (I apologize to the person who came up with this one, who I cannot remember.)

Suppose we give companies the option of giving the government an amount of non-voting stock (I would suggest something like a 30 percent stake) which would be treated exactly like the company's common stock, except without the voting privileges. This means that if the company distributes profits to the shareholders through dividends, then the government's shares get the exact same dividend. If it buys back 10 percent of its shares, then it also buys back 10 percent of the government's shares.

The beauty of this approach is that there is no way to escape the implicit taxation. In addition it has the enormously beneficial effect that there would no longer be any money in playing tax games. Companies could focus on doing business -- making better products or providing better services -- rather than gaming the tax code.

The share option can even be voluntary. If companies want to keep trying to play games with the tax system, they can refuse to go the route of giving shares to the government. Of course everyone will then know what these companies are doing, but that's their call.