As Abenomics approaches the five-year mark, expect the government to toss out loads of sunny figures and declare victory. But the two most important numbers 0.7 and 72 tell a gloomier story.

Japans potential growth rate 1,631 days into Prime Minister Shinzo Abes tenure is an unmuscular 0.7 percent and inflation is essentially flat. The three arrows of his economic policy monetary easing, fiscal loosening and deregulation flew wide of the target even though Abe is armed with rare majorities in both houses of the Diet and reasonably buoyant approval numbers. Good luck spinning that as victory.

Abes second number, 72, is Tokyos press-freedom ranking by Reporters Without Borders. When Abe took office in December 2012, he inherited a ranking of 22, ahead of the United Kingdom and Australia. Today, Japan stands 50 spots lower, neighbored by Malawi and Croatia, and only barely besting Hong Kong, where China is forging shackles to hobble media autonomy. A coincidence? Try spinning this one, too.

Its important to recognize how connected these two numbers really are.

Japans press-freedom shortcomings have been very much in the news thanks to reports from United Nations staffers. David Kaye, the U.N.s special rapporteur on press matters, discerns significant worrying signals that require attention lest they undermine Japans democratic foundations. Another U.N. staffer, Joseph Cannataci, worries about undue restrictions on the right to privacy and freedom of expression.

Now, Tokyo could just roll its eyes at non-binding remarks from officials living 11,000 km away and move on. Instead, Abes team threw an epic hissy fit, the fury of which smacked of a guilty conscience. Such defensiveness doesnt alter the fact the U.N.s concerns jibe with those of Reporters Without Borders.

Abes administration has taken two very public steps to muzzle reporters. His state secrets act a draconian 2014 law that could put journalists and whistleblowers in jail for 10 years sent Japans press-freedom grade plunging. The next blow is a chillingly broad conspiracy law. I use quotation marks because very few understand this ambiguously-worded effort to penalize plots even if theyre not carried out aspirations U.S. President Donald Trump shares. Not surprisingly, copies of George Orwells book Nineteen Eighty-Four are flying off the shelves in Japan.

Rather than pushing back at critics, Abes Cabinet should indulge in a moment of self-awareness. Its not that overseas rapporteurs and reporters dont get Japan or are trafficking in fake news. Japan really does have a media problem, and its holding back the economy and undermining Abes goal of raising Tokyos status among global leaders.

Even before Abes state secrets act, Japans media cared more about access, institutional loyalty, social harmony and coddling advertisers than policing the government or companies. Its kisha clubs are more about keeping the press in line than holding the powerful accountable, morphing all too many reporters into repeaters of the party line. A prime example: the 2011 Fukushima nuclear crisis, when local journalists deferred to government talking points and foreign reporters didnt.

This policy direction risk making a media system already predisposed to self-censorship downright subservient. In late 2013, Reports Without Borders admitted what Japanese scribes generally wont: Abes Liberal Democratic Party is making investigative journalism illegal, and is trampling on the fundamental principles of the confidentiality of journalists sources and public interest. New legal risks make major news organizations less inclined to report on true radiation risks in Fukushima. It discourages exposes on 2020 Olympic spending and graft. It encourages reporters to pull punches while writing about alleged scandals involving school operators Moritomo Gakuen and Kake Gakuen. It tamed scrutiny of efforts to revise the pacifist postwar Constitution that most Japanese revere.

The chill in the media air undermines Abenomics. For starters, policy priorities since 2012 have media outlets turning their tendency for self-censorship up to 11. One of the key planks of Abes upgrades, at least in theory, is strengthening corporate governance to boost competitiveness and wages. Yet most of the most aggressive reporting on Takatas deadly air bags, Toshibas accounting shenanigans, Mitsubishi Motors fuel-economy scandal, Sharps opacity, the Bank of Japan cornering the stock market and the dark sides of devaluating the yen came from foreign media outfits.

If were serious about taking on the bureaucracy, identifying wasteful spending, attacking public corruption or shaming wayward executives, a free and aggressive media is an ally. How can antiquated and clubby corporate and political systems change if theyre immune to scrutiny?

Japan doesnt have a monopoly on press-freedom concerns, but its a glaring outlier among Group of Seven nations. Reporters Without Borders ranks all six of Japans G-7 peers well within the top 50 countries. Observing the amazingly dogged journalism afoot in the U.S., where New York Times and Washington Post reporters take Trump to task daily with scoop after scoop, its hard not to lament the state of media affairs here and how it holds Japan back.

If Abes team had put one-tenth as much energy into modernizing taxes, encouraging entrepreneurship and empowering women as muzzling the press, the economy might be making global headlines. Sadly, Japans global edge is eroding on both scores. Bad news, indeed.

William Pesek is a Tokyo-based journalist.

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Why Japan's poor media grade matters - The Japan Times

Both repelling and wallowing in a manufactured crisis are surefire ways for the Capitol to put itself in the headlines. Thats why some fresh drama fabrication is getting underway, even before the lawmakers have decided if their response will be crisply responsible or melodramatically craven.

This morality play will be about the federal debt, which is not going anywhere except up in the near term, no matter what anyone in Washington says or does to the contrary.

But that inevitability wont forestall an enormous amount of political jawboning. And given the Seinfeld nature of the season ahead its still shaping up to be a policymaking summer about nothing rhetoric about the debt ceiling will draw more notice than at any time in the past six years.

The Republican majorities in the House and Senate have two possible storylines to advance.

They can sound the alarm about the looming catastrophe of the United States defaulting on its loans from creditors across the globe, then take credit for pushing through broadly bipartisan legislation defusing that threat maybe even with plenty of time to spare.

Alternatively, they can impose all manner of blame on those previously in power, Barack Obama alone at the head of the list, asserting that they wont bail out the Democrats and their perpetual addiction to red ink unless they can secure some ironclad future fiscal discipline in return.

GOP leaders look to keep that second scenario on the table for as long as possible, because it appeals to a swath of the partys electoral base around the country; to many lawmakers who describe themselves as fiscal hawks on a theoretical level; and to that finite but intense group of confrontational conservatives propelled to power by the tea party wave.

But holding the governments checkbook hostage to a unachievable goal will likely be abandoned in the end, because that hostile action is as politically risky and economically dangerous as it is apples-to-oranges inappropriate.

Last week, President Donald Trump, the real estate wheeler-dealer who proclaimed himself the King of Debt during last years campaign, essentially endorsed the keep-it-clean scenario.

The declaration was especially unusual given his stated interest in defying establishment Washington thinking. And, to be sure, this is a president with a well-demonstrated interest in changing his position whenever he imagines the situation calls for it.

Still, his initial taking of sides was almost entirely overlooked by a public transfixed with the legal and ethical clouds quickly thickening over his presidency, and so it could well get ignored by Republicans on the Hill eager to go their own way while Trump remains preoccupied by the constellation of problems that have put his White House under siege.

This is the centennial year of an anachronistic statute requiring Congress to set a cap on how much the government can have in outstanding obligations the so-called debt ceiling. That means lawmakers are compelled to revise the law and increase the cap, or raise the debt ceiling, whenever borrowing reaches the limit.

Increasing the limit on borrowing has nothing whatsoever to do with deciding to spend more.

When Congress votes to raise the debt ceiling, its declaring its understanding that another wave of government bills are due then making a commitment to paying them all on time and in full. But those invoices are all for government services dictated, and entitlement benefits approved, by Congresses controlled by both parties and endorsed by presidents of both parties over the course of many years.

Thats because national debt, at a basic level, is the sum of all the borrowing necessary to cover the annual deficits the government has run in all but four of the previous 50 years, times when spending has exceeded tax revenue and the Treasury has had to sell interest-bearing bonds to bridge the difference.

So raising the debt limit is when todays politicians promise to make good on the commitments of their predecessors.

Viewed that way, its easy to understand the position that fighting over future fiscal priorities should never be permitted to violate the trust that lenders around the world have put in the United States for decades in the past. In the same way, when a couple cannot agree whether giving up movie night or letting the lawn go unmowed is necessary to pinch a few pennies from their expense base, it makes no sense for them to express their anger at the impasse by refusing to pay their mortgage or keep current on their student loans. They have to service their debts to the banks every month, no matter how long theyre at loggerheads over corralling their creature comforts.

Trump effectively sided with those who would decouple the bill-paying from the budget-setting when he told GOP leaders at the White House that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin would be the administrations single point man on the debt. Mnuchin is pushing for a clean debt ceiling before investors start getting worried duty-bound as he is to prevent a repeat of six years ago, when a debt standoff between Obama and House Republicans was bridged hours before a potential default, but the United States was punished with a credit rating downgrade anyway.

One of the congressmen in the vanguard of holding the debt hostage to legislated spending reductions that year was Mick Mulvaney, whos now the White House budget director and has publicly advocated reprising that fight now.

Trumps statement to the Hill leadership essentially pushed Mulvaney out of the debate, and the next day, his Cabinet colleague who had been a House soul mate in the 2011 budget wars, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, told Congress he was totally behind a straightforward debt boost.

Speaker Paul D. Ryan told reporters last week that he has not committed to either the quick-and-clean or the confrontational approaches.

Im not foreclosing any option at this time, he said, in part because GOP leaders have not concluded they can assemble a package of budget cuts that would secure support from 218 House Republicans.

As the health care debate showed, what the Freedom Caucus is demanding from the right is sometimes too much for the comparably-sized bloc of mostly suburban GOP lawmakers in the center.

And besides, whatever might get pushed through along party lines in the House would have even more trouble in the Senate. The debt ceiling can be increased by simple majorities in both the House and Senate as part of a budget resolution, but drafting a viable version of that document is proving highly problematic.

So its highly likely that a debt bill, with or without strings attached, would have to advance past a filibuster. That means support from eight Democrats, and theres no sign those votes exist.

Whatever draws the support of that many Democratic senators in the current climate would probably win over another 30 of them, too. And thats probably only one thing: a straightforward increase in the borrowing limit, one that also promised to draw a big bloc of GOP votes.

Almost every other country allows its debt to increase without any required affirmation from the government. And a persistent drumbeat from academics and some in Congress says the United States should join them, removing at last one balky piece from the already cumbersome budget machinery and one that, should it fail and spawn a default, could produce economic havoc and raise the governments cost of borrowing for generations.

But the countervailing argument has always won the day: If lawmakers are made to confront the consequences of past decision-making, they may get scared straight and adopt policies that start slowing the need for so much red ink.

The accumulated debt has steadily increased since 1969 and is now above $19.9 trillion. The Treasury is currently using some complex but legal accounting maneuvers to keep the government under the cap for several more months September at the earliest, according to Mnuchin. It might even be later except for an unusual kink in the governments cash flow: Tax revenue this year isat least $60 billion, or 2 percent, below projections a consequence, most likely, of the wealthiest Americans deferring their IRS payments in the hopes of a tax cut before their extensions run out.

Trump and the GOP now see their health care aspirations idling in the Senate, their tax overhaul proposals stuck in first gear, their infrastructure plan still in the garage and the routine appropriations process in shambles in the body shop. A bill raising the debt limit with much less drama than usual stands a chance of becoming the first meaningful, and bipartisan, legislative vehicle to cross the 2017 finish line.

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Will GOP Settle for a Clean Debt Limit Win? - Roll Call

Detroit police officer Danon Bell directs traffic at Comerica Park this month. Police work hours are capped at 17 hours in a 24-hour period.(Photo: Robin Buckson / The Detroit News)Buy Photo

The number of overtime hours worked by Detroit police officers has skyrocketed in recent years, costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars but Detroits mayor and top cop say its worth it, insisting theres a price to sustaining double-digit crime reduction.

Union officials disagree, pointing to a steady loss in staffing over the years that has forced officers to work extra shifts. They say that puts overworked cops and citizens at risk, although Police Chief James Craig said theres a cap on how much overtime officers may work.

Detroit officers from the rank of lieutenant down who are eligible for overtime logged 765,881 overtime hours during fiscal year 2015-16, according to data obtained by The Detroit News under the Freedom of Information Act. Thats a 69 percent increase from 2012-13, when officers logged 454,136 hours of OT.

Detroit taxpayers annual cost for police overtime rose from $16.9 million in 2012-13 to $28.34 million last year. In 2012, overtime represented 5.2 percent of the $322 million police budget; in 2016, overtime was 8.9 percent of the $318 million budget.

The spike in overtime has been accompanied by a drop in crime: From 2013, when Craig became police chief and enacted policies he said have led to the increase, to 2016, violent crime dropped 11.8 percent, while property offenses plunged 27 percent, according to Detroit Police statistics.

Theres a cost of doing business, and when you talk about improving service and driving down crime, which weve done during this time period, I say its worth it, Craig said.

Craig said there is an ongoing internal affairs investigation into overtime abuse by Detroit cops. The probe was launched in November 2014 after a supervisor in the departments Homicide Section, Lt. Joseph Tiseo, reported officers were charging the city for time they hadnt worked.

Seven officers are under investigation for falsely reporting overtime, Craig said. I dont think its a widespread problem, he said. Seven cases is a drop in the bucket.

They ... need downtime

Union officials insist a staffing shortage is the main reason for the overtime spike. The police officer ranks fell from 1,986 in 2012 to 1,590 in 2016, a 20 percent drop. The force has about 1,700 officers, although only about 1,500 are on the street, with about 200 recruits still in the police academy, said Mark Diaz, president of the Detroit Police Officers Association.

The bulk of our overtime issue is due to the need for more officers, and to stop the bleeding from people leaving the department for better pay and benefits, Diaz said, adding the department loses about 20-25 officers per month in large part because Detroit pays its officers a starting annual salary of $36,000.

The overtime issue wont be remedied until we fix the pay and benefits issue, he said.

Mark Young, president of the Lieutenants and Sergeants Association union, said working too much overtime can pose a safety risk.

Some overtime is good, because it allows the officers to make extra money, and they need to with the salaries they make, Young said. But they also need downtime theyre human beings working a highly stressful job. When you have tired officers, thats a danger to them and the citizens.

Police Commissioner Willie Burton also expressed concern too much overtime might pose a danger. Working all that overtime is a temporary solution to the reduced manpower, and its working for now, but long-term, the officers wont be able to keep it up because theyll get burned out.

Craig said hes taken measures to ensure that doesnt happen. Most of the overtime is voluntary, he said. And weve put a cap on how many hours officers can work. Craig said officers may not work more than 17 hours in one 24-hour period.

Craig also noted if a shift needs to be filled, he relaxed the rules to allow officers from all precincts to volunteer for the extra time, meaning officers arent ordered to work overtime.

Setting staffing priorities

The departments overall staff, which includes all ranks, fell from 2,570 in 2012 to 2,255 in 2016.

Craig said as of June 2, the department was short 126 budgeted positions. Thats good news because were closing the gap, he said. Last year, we were down 300.

John Roach, spokesman for Mayor Mike Duggan, said in a statement: We agree with the chiefs approach on this and believe the increased overtime is necessary. DPD is adding about 30 officers a month to the force and has the budget to add a total of 300 more officers in the next year. As staffing levels increase, the department will continue to track overtime and manage it to an optimal level based on public safety needs.

Its also important to understand that despite the additional overtime, DPDs expenses this year are projected to fall within its budgeted amount and the city is projected to have an overall budget surplus for the third consecutive year when the fiscal year ends on June 30th.

Craig acknowledged the staff shortage is one element thats contributed to the overtime increase, but said a number of other factors are driving it.

A year after I got here (in 2013), we created a minimum staffing deployment, he said. We wanted to make sure we were meeting our response-time goals. In order to do that, we had to ensure that we met minimum staffing.

Staffing was dictated by priority calls handled, crimes, geographic footprint of a particular precinct; we came up with a formula for each precinct. When we created that which is the way policing is done theres a cost. If a command does not meet minimum staffing, theyre authorized to fill that car with overtime.

Minimum staffing requirements werent in place when I got here; thats why we had a one-hour response time.

The chief said response time has been whittled to 12 minutes, although the decrease is partially due to Craig changing the way response time is calculated.

A $75 million budget cut to the police department in the 2012-13 fiscal year which represented 18 percent of the total budget forced the department to shed 380 officers. In 2012, then-Mayor Dave Bing tried to offset the cuts by closing police precincts from 4 p.m.-8 a.m., creating virtual precincts and requiring officers to work 12-hour shifts.

When Craig assumed command of the police department the following year, he was given the power to make unilateral decisions by Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr. Among the new chiefs first moves was to restore police precincts to 24-hour service and put officers back on eight-hour shifts.

Craig also got rid of police districts, a model implemented in 2005 by former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, in which multiple precincts were combined to cut costs. Craig restored the 12 individual precincts, which he said better serve the community.

I didnt think the district model facilitated neighborhood policing, so we went back to what I refer to as neighborhood precincts, Craig said. And the 12-hour days were killing morale among the officers.

Craig also created new ranks, including detective and corporal, which he said is a morale-booster because it gives cops a chance to advance.

Since I got here, Ive done 822 promotions, he said. Prior to his arrival, the department hadnt offered a promotional examination for eight years.

Police officers want advancement, but they werent getting the opportunity before, he said. Well, all that costs money.

Craig said officers on mandatory standby now are paid overtime, which he said wasnt being done when he took over.

Its the law: If you want someone on mandatory standby youve got to pay them one hour of overtime for every eight hours theyre on standby, Craig said. When I got here, the way it was done was, if you wanted to work in those specialty units like homicide, you didnt get that money, and if you wanted to stay in those units, you didnt complain.

Diaz said only a small number of officers are on standby duty. I dont think thats a big factor, he said.

Craig said restructuring the police department has resulted in officers working more overtime but he said its also helped lower crime, a trend he said continues.

We had a good year last year, and so far this year, were trending below that, Craig said. As of June 4, overall crime is down 9 percent. Thats phenomenal. But theres a cost to sustaining that downward trend. Its worth the tradeoff.

ghunter@detroitnews.com

(313) 222-2134

Twitter: @GeorgeHunter_DN

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Detroit police overtime hours, costs soar - The Detroit News

Last Friday (June 9) was Tax Freedom Day, marking the day the average Canadian family has made enough income to pay all its taxes for this year, according to the Fraser Institute.

If families had to pay its total tax bill up front, they would have worked until June 8 to pay the total tax bill imposed on them by all three levels of government. Its not until June 9 that families start working for themselves, not the government, according to the institute.

"Tax Freedom Day helps put the total tax burden into perspective and helps Canadians understand just how much of their money they pay in taxes every year," said Charles Lammam, director of fiscal studies at the Fraser Institute.

It comes a day later this year, as the average familys taxes are expected to increase at a faster rate this year (2.4%) compared with income growth (2.2%).

The institute used $108,674 as the average annual household income for its calculations and found that families will pay, on average $47,135, in total taxes. This is compared with respective figures of $105,236 and $45,167 reported last year.

That's 43.4% of its annual income going to income taxes, payroll taxes, health taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, fuel taxes, carbon taxes, and "sin" taxes like alcohol and tobacco.

"It's difficult for average Canadians to add up all the taxes they pay in a year because the different levels of government levy such a wide range of taxes, said Lammam.

That's why we do these calculations to give Canadians a better understanding of exactly how much they pay to government."

syoon@biv.com

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Tax Freedom Day comes a day later this year due to inflation: Fraser Institute - Business in Vancouver