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The latest
Reason-Rupe poll finds that 54 percent of Americans think
government, while necessary for certain functions, is generally
burdensome and impedes them more than helps them. Conversely 41
percent view government as primarily a source of good and helping
people improve their lives.

A majority of Democrats (54 percent) view government as
primarily a source of helping people, while 40 percent generally
view it as an obstacle. In contrast, majorities of Republicans (69
percent) and independents (57 percent) disagree, viewing government
as primarily as burdensome making it more difficult for people to
improve their lives. Twenty-six percent of Republicans and 39
percent of independents view government as primarily helpful.

As education rises, Americans become more optimistic in
government’s ability to help people. For instance a majority (55
percent) of post-graduates agreed the government is a source of
good, compared to 37 percent among those with high school degrees
or less.

Most Caucasians (58 percent) view the government as burdensome
and 37 percent view it as primarily helpful. Latinos and
African-Americans are evenly divided, with slightly more Latinos
viewing government as burdensome (50 percent) than helpful (46
percent).

Although majorities of young Americans agree there is more
government should be doing, 53 percent view government as primarily
burdensome and 43 percent view it as helpful. These numbers are
similar to older Americans who feel government impedes people by a
margin of 55 to 40 percent.

Government employees are also slightly more likely to view
government favorably, with 51 percent who believe government is
primarily helpful. However, 56 percent of private sector employees
say government primarily impedes people from improving their
lives.

Nationwide telephone poll conducted Dec 4-8 2013 interviewed
1011 adults on both mobile (506) and landline (505) phones, with a
margin of error +/- 3.7%. Princeton Survey Research Associates
International executed the nationwide Reason-Rupe survey. Columns
may not add up to 100% due to rounding. Full poll results,
detailed tables, and methodology found here. Sign
up for notifications of new releases of the
Reason-Rupe poll here.

The government’s creeping encroachment into the world of bitcoin
and bitcoin transmission claims a cool scalp, as reported
in Wired:

Mike Caldwell ran a business called Casascius that printed
physical tokens with a bitcoin digital key on it, key hidden behind
a tamper proof strip. He’s charge you $50 worth of bitcoin to print
a key of a bitcoin you sent him via computer on this token. Cool
stuff–a good friend of mine found one sitting unnoticed in her tip
jar from an event at which she sold her artisan lamps from 2011 and
was naturally delighted given the nearly 1000x increase in value of
a bitcoin since then.

So, you’re making something fun, useful, interesting,
harmless—naturally the federal government is very concerned and
wants to hobble you.

Just before Thanksgiving, [Caldwell] received a letter
from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FINCEN, the arm
of the Treasury Department that dictates how the nation’s
anti-money-laundering and financial crime regulations are
interpreted. According to FINCEN, Caldwell needs to rethink his
business. “They considered my activity to be money transmitting,”
Caldwell says. And if you want to transmit money, you must first
jump through a lot of state and federal regulatory hoops Caldwell
hasn’t jumped through.

Caldwell has stopped taking orders for his popular Casascius
bitcoins….[he]argues that sending the coins through the
mail is not a way of transmitting money. He thinks the coins should
be viewed as collectibles.

But, clearly, that’s not how the federal government sees things.
If he doesn’t verify or have a way of knowing whether the owner of
the bitcoins is the same person he’s sending the coins to, that’s a
problem….

Caldwell says there’s no Casascius bank account for
authorities to seize. But he adds that he has no desire to anger
the feds, whether he agrees with them or not. So he’s cranking out
his last few orders and talking to his lawyer. He says this may
spell the end of Casascius coins. “It’s possible. I haven’t come to
a final conclusion,” he says.

He’s already been forced to spend $5,000 lawyering up
since receiving that helpful letter from the feds.

I wrote back in May on
FinCEN beginning to sniff around the world of
bitcoin.

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Beginning February 9, 2014, you’ll embark on a seven-day cruise
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• Author and former Reason Editor in Chief
  Virginia Postrel

• Reason Editor in Chief Matt
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• ReasonTV Editor in Chief Nick
  Gillespie, 

• Reason Science Correspondent Ron
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• Reason Senior Editor Jacob
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We’ll be traveling in style on the Celebrity Silhouette, and
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The latest Reason-Rupe poll finds
that 52 percent of Americans disagree with President Obama’s views
on the proper size and power of the government, while 37 percent
generally agree with the president on these issues.

Sixty-eight percent of Democrats agree with the president, and
20 percent disagree with him on the size and power of government.
In contrast, a majority (59 percent) of independents disagree with
President Obama, while 31 percent agree. Less surprisingly, 86
percent of Republicans say they disagree with Obama on government’s
role while 9 percent agree.

Private sector workers are more likely to disagree with Obama on
government’s proper role by a margin of 54 to 35 percent, while
public sector workers are evenly divided.

While younger millennials are slightly more likely to agree with
Obama, older millennials are not. Among 25-34 year olds—the
millennials first energized by Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign—a
majority says they disagree with Obama by a margin of 53 to 35
percent. Younger millennials (18-24) are evenly divided with a
plurality (48 percent) who agree with the president, while 43
percent disagree.

Although only a third of older millennials say they agree with
President Obama’s view on government’s power and size, 47 percent
of them also approve of his general job performance. This suggests
that while young people tend to be more supportive than older age
cohorts of President Obama, millennials are willing to disagree
with him on critical issues.

Another difference emerges among young nonwhite and white
millennials. Nearly two-thirds of white millennials say they
generally disagree with Obama on the power of government and 25
percent agree with him. However, among nonwhite millennials 58
percent agree with the president and a third disagree.

Sixty-one percent of white Americans disagree with Obama and 68
percent of African-American disagree with him on government’s
proper size and power. Latinos, however, are evenly divided.

 Nationwide telephone poll conducted Dec 4-8 2013
interviewed 1011 adults on both mobile (506) and landline (505)
phones, with a margin of error +/- 3.7%. Princeton Survey Research
Associates International executed the nationwide Reason-Rupe
survey. Columns may not add up to 100% due to rounding. Full
poll results, detailed tables, and methodology found here. Sign
up for notifications of new releases of the
Reason-Rupe poll here.

Pro-European protests centered around Kiev’s
Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square),
dubbed Euromaidan, have gripped Ukraine since November 21, when
the government
announced it would put a planned “association agreement” with
the European Union on hold.  After three weeks of protests,
punctuated by clashes with police and failed attempts to disperse
demonstrators that have only emboldened them, the Ukrainian
government says it’s ready to sign the association agreement with
the EU, but first it wants a promise of $27.5 billion
in financial assistance. That’s a more specific iteration of
the initial Ukrainian demand Europe compensate
it for perceived short-term economic losses that came with the
decision to scuttle the agreement in November. The Ukrainian
government considered the IMF’s loan conditions too harsh, and

blamed them too for the collapse of the agreement with the EU.
In the crisis of weeks of protest, the Ukrainian government found
an opportunity to try to use them to get a better deal from the
EU.

Ukraine’s November decision to suspend talks with Europe, the
Washington Post
reported then, had also been influenced by pressure from Russia
for Ukraine to join its own Customs Union (with Belarus and
Kazakhstan), and by European demands that the Ukrainian government
release former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko. She was targeted
for prosecution after Viktor Yanukovych was elected president
in 2010, and Tymoshenko was eventually charged and convicted for
abuse of office related to a gas deal with Russia. Currently in
prison, Tymoshenko was one of the leaders of the last mass protests
in the Ukraine, the so-called “Orange Revolution” in 2004 that
contributed to Yanukovych’s eventual loss in that year’s
presidential election. Yanukovych had in fact won the original
run-off, but those results were annulled by the Supreme Court for
being fraudulent. A  Moscow
Times write up compared the current protests and the
Orange Revolution, noting the similar West vs. East contours of
both, but also that while the Ukrainian government is in a stronger
position than it was in 2004, that the path toward integration with
Europe might already be irreversible.

For their part, EU leaders stress stronger relations with the
Ukraine don’t have to come at the expense of cooperation with
Russia. Russia’s tightening of border controls and trade
restrictions in response to the Ukraine’s work on an agreement with
the EU, unfortunately, indicate Russia is not interested in what
the EU describes as a “win-win” (as the taking down of trade
barriers
always is!). Unfortunately with trade deals between
governments, taking down trade barriers is rarely all it is, hence
the
scramble by the EU to find financial aid for Ukraine if it
signs a deal in part to cover for expected trade losses from
Russia.

A U.S.
military official has said that the military is expecting to begin
transporting Burundian troops to the Central African Republic
today. The troops are to take part in an African Union-led
intervention supported by the French which aims to stop sectarian
violence in the former French colony.

From
CNN:

(CNN) — The U.S. military expects on Thursday to begin
flying Burundi forces into the Central African Republic to help
stop the violence in that war-torn country, according to a U.S.
military official.

The United States has two C-17 aircraft in Uganda that will pick
up the forces in Burundi and unload them in Bangui, the capital.
The official emphasized the U.S. planes will remain on the ground
in Bangui for a very short period due to the violence there.

The official also said the United States believes its planes and
crews will be safe, because French forces control the airport
there. The airlift of Burundi forces is expected to last about a
week. Discussions about what additional assistance the United State
may provide continue.

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