Government tax revenue is often more than double the budget, and, like Kuwait, Macau distributes occasional checks to its residents under a program named the Wealth Partaking Scheme. (Last year: eight hundred and seventy-five dollars per person.) Unemployment is below three per cent.

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Likewise, the notorious clash-for-clunkers program was nothing if not a scheme to stimulate auto consumption.

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Similar to U.S. Social Security, the national pension scheme has essentially been an insurance program.

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But U.S. citizens can also join by applying for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Global Entry program -- a "trusted traveler" scheme in which individuals sign up to be vetted in order to expedite the customs process on arrival into the country from abroad.

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Another Cuban defector, geophysicist Tose Oro, observed that the complete absence of the sophisticated human and technological infrastructure needed to support a safe nuclear reactor program seriously compounded the risks inherent in the Soviet-Cuban scheme.

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He was widely suspected of having ties to organized crime, and is currently being kept in the Witness Protection Program after helping the FBI wrap up a major corruption sting shortly after his scheme collapsed.

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As evidence, they cite a 12-week scheme using weights that helped women 64 and above to double their leg strength and a walking program that reversed decades of declining lung function in a group in their seventies.

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Gallardo, a San Fernando Valley real estate agent who held herself out as a real estate investor was charged with running a million-dollar Ponzi scheme from September 2007 through September 2008 that victimized dozens of investors through a bogus real estate investment program.

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