Free Republic

Vaccinated Californians could win up to $1.5 million in a lottery Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Thursday, part of a $116.5 million effort to persuade more Golden State residents to get their COVID-19 shots. Ten Californians who got at least one dose will split a $15 million pot on June 15. Vaccinated Californians will also be automatically entered for chances to win $50,000, with 15 winners drawn June 4 and the rest drawn June 11. All Californians 12 years or older are eligible, except for those incarcerated as well as some state workers and their families. The money will be put...

SOURCE — REUTERS WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States is considering a conditional cash transfer program to help address economic woes that lead migrants from certain Central American countries to trek north, as well as sending COVID-19 vaccines to those countries, a senior White House official told Reuters on Friday. The possible cash transfer program would be targeted at people in the Northern Triangle region of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, Roberta Jacobson, the White House’s southern border coordinator, told Reuters in an interview, without saying who exactly would receive the cash. Roughly 168,000 people were picked up by U.S....

The Obama administration is acknowledging its transfer of $1.7 billion to Iran earlier this year was made entirely in cash, using non-U.S. currency, as Republican critics of the transaction continued to denounce the payments. Treasury Department spokeswoman Dawn Selak said in a statement late Tuesday that the cash payments were necessary because of the "effectiveness of U.S. and international sanctions," which isolated Iran from the international finance system. The $1.7 billion was the settlement of a decades-old arbitration claim between the U.S. and Iran. An initial $400 million of euros, Swiss francs and other foreign currency was delivered on pallets...

When it was announced late last week that the German government planned to set a €5,000 limit on payments with cash, it barely raised an eyebrow in our newsroom. Limits on cash transactions are standard in other large European countries, including Italy, France and the UK, and this seemed to be a case of conservative Germany slowly falling in line with its neighbors. We should have known better. The outcry came from all quarters, with the populist right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) just as vocal as the right-on left-wing Green Party and the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP). Economic weekly...