Thursday, July 13, 2017

Political Cartoons from TownHall





Chinese trade with North Korea jumped more than 10 percent in first half of year, official says


China’s trade with sanctions-riddled North Korea increased more than 10 percent in the first half of the year from last year, a Chinese official said Wednesday.
China’s customs spokesman Huang Songping said China’s trade with North Korea rose by 10.5 percent to $2.55 billion in the first six months of 2017. While imports from North Korea dropped 13.2 percent to $880 million in the period, exports to North Korea rose 29.1 percent to $1.67 billion, Huang said.
"As neighbors, China and North Korea maintain normal business and trade exchanges," he said.
Huang also said the exports were driven by textile products and other traditional goods not on the U.N. embargo list.
Being its largest ally, Beijing has been under pressure from the U.S. to do more to rein in North Korea, according to Reuters.
President Trump denounced China’s trade with North Korea last week, saying it grew almost 40 percent in the first quarter and questioned how much it was doing to help counter the growing threat from Pyongyang.
While China has contended it is doing nothing wrong by continuing normal trade operations with the isolated regime, U.S. is reportedly preparing to go after Chinese banks accused of funneling cash to North Korea.
The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that recent unsealed court filings show that the White House is ready to constrict cash flow to North Korea. The Justice Department pointed to “offshore U.S. dollar accounts” associated with a handful of companies linked to Chinese national Chi Yungpeng.
The Justice Department said the Chi’s network hid transactions which helped fund North Korea’s military and arms programs, the newspaper reported. While the network is not under U.S. sanctions, analysts believe can be cutoff the same way a separate Chinese firm last year.
Meanwhile, the U.S. is also said to be preparing to unilaterally tighten sanctions on North Korea.
The U.S. circulated a draft resolution that would impose new sanctions on North Korea following its first test of an intercontinental ballistic missile, two U.N. diplomats told the Associated Press on Monday.
The resolution has been circulated to China, as well as the three other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council – Russia, Britain and France, the diplomats said.

Sanders draws Democratic challenger tired of his 'Robin Hood shtick'


Bernie Sanders’ enduring popularity across Vermont for decades has scared off political challengers, but the independent senator is facing competition in his 2018 reelection bid from a Democrat who thinks his “Robin Hood shtick” must end.
“It’s shamefully arrogant when you’re more interested in being a celebrity than honoring your progressive agenda,” challenger Jon Svitavsky told Fox News. “This wonderful, political ‘I am Robin Hood shtick’ can only last for so long.” 

The longshot bid comes from a first-time candidate even more anti-establishment than the democratic socialist incumbent and, in his words, "far more liberal."
An advocate for the homeless who claims to have some name recognition in the state, Svitavsky not only questions the sitting senator's commitment to Vermont voters but argues he used and undermined the Democratic Party for his 2016 presidential bid.
'He’s not a Democrat. That was a joke.'
- Jon Svitavsky, on Sanders' White House bid
Svitavsky contends Sanders joined Democrats to seek their nomination, then damaged frontrunner Hillary Clinton enough to give then-candidate Donald Trump the edge in the general election -- only to once again become an independent.
He also suggests an FBI investigation into a commercial real estate loan orchestrated by the senator’s wife, Jane Sanders, has left Sanders vulnerable.
FBI PROBE OF SANDERS' WIFE BASED ON 'FACTS,' GOP OFFICIAL SAYS
While his curmudgeonly manner has long alienated Capitol Hill colleagues, Sanders, a self-styled champion of the poor and middle class, continues to be immensely popular among voters.
A Morning Consult survey released Tuesday showed him with the highest approval rating among all 100 senators, 75 percent, based on interviews with registered voters in their respective states.
However, the poll was conducted from early April to mid-June, largely before reports of the loan started attracting national attention.

The federal investigation apparently focuses on whether Jane Sanders, as president of the now-shuttered Burlington College in Vermont, overstated or overpromised financial pledges and grants to get at least $6.7 million in financing in 2010 for roughly 33 acres for a new campus.
There also have been unsubstantiated allegations that Sanders, now seeking a third Senate term, used his political office to either get the loan approved or at least OK’d swiftly.
The senator, in various interviews, has called such claims an "absolute lie" while describing the criticism of his wife as "pathetic" and political.
The self-described democratic socialist also has more than $3.8 million cash on hand in Senate accounts, according to OpenSecrets.org., which only adds to Svitavsky’s complications.
Svitavsky hopes to win the state’s Democratic primary and challenge Sanders in the general election.
In an interview Tuesday, he sounded undeterred by Sanders’ popularity and war chest, saying that his decades-long efforts in opening homeless shelters across the state has given him standing among voters.
“I think that resonates,” he said. “And I’m not unknown here. People might say I don’t have political experience but not that I’m insincere. … I’m far more liberal than Bernie, far more committed to making things happen.”
Svitavsky says he's getting strong grassroots support from across the state and country -- including a call from a guy who used to play with folk-singing legend Pete Seeger.
The Sanders campaign has declined to comment on Svitavsky’s bid.
Before Sanders was elected to the Senate in 2006, he served 19 years in the House and eight as mayor of Burlington. He was reelected to the Senate in 2012 with 71 percent of the vote, as proof of his political strength.
There has been no indication that the 75-year-old Sanders intends to retire before next year. And one source close to his 2016 presidential campaign recently told Fox News he wants to run for president again in 2020.
Right now, Sanders is still among the leading voices for national Democrats, even taking the spotlight from Democrat National Committee Chairman Tom Perez during a recent, multi-state tour that attempted to bridge the party’s lingering Clinton-Sanders divide.
“He’s not a Democrat. That was a joke,” said Svitavsky, who argues the Democratic Party was outfoxed by Sanders but is now coming to its senses. Svitavsky cannot officially file to run until next spring.
Sanders and his White House bid captured the political interests of tens of millions of voters -- particularly younger Americans -- with promises of a free college education, universal health care and legalized marijuana.
However, Svitavsky largely dismissed those promises as unrealistic because they would be too expensive for taxpayers, even if Congress approved them.
“This cannot go on forever,” he said.

'Everybody would do that': Trump downplays son's meeting with Russian lawyer


President Trump on Wednesday told Reuters that he was unaware of Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Russian lawyer until a “couple days ago,” and did not fault his son for accepting the meeting.
“It was a 20-minute meeting, I guess, from what I’m hearing,” Trump said. “Many people, and many political pros, said everybody would do that.”
The White House on Wednesday worked to try and go on the offensive, and change the conversation into what it sees as a Democrat double standard for their associates’ alleged coordination with foreign governments in 2016.
But one important issue is that Trump Jr. was did not immediately report that he met with the lawyer. The New York Times claimed that Trump Jr. only tweeted images of the emails after “he was told NYT was about to publish the contents of the emails.”
Trump Jr. acknowledged in an exclusive interview with Fox News' "Hannity" Tuesday night that he "probably would have done things a little differently"


"This [was] pre-Russia fever. This [was] pre-Russia mania," Trump Jr. told Fox News' Sean Hannity. "I don’t think my sirens went [off] or my antenna went up at this time because it wasn’t the issue that it’s been made out to be over the last nine months, ten months."
The president’s eldest son also described the meeting as "a nothing," adding, "I wouldn’t have even remembered it until you started scouring through this stuff. It was literally just a wasted 20 minutes, which was a shame."
The emails between Trump Jr. and Goldstone contain no evidence that the president’s son was informed of the larger alleged Russian effort to meddle in the U.S. presidential election.
Trump, for his part, said on Twitter that the White house was “functioning perfectly, focused on HealthCare, Tax Cuts/Reform & many other things. I have very little time for watching T.V.”

Florida Congressman Proposes Taxpayer Pension Disclosure Act




A Florida Congressman has introduced a bill to increase transparency of government pensions. Currently, the amount paid to former government employees after they retire is unknown by taxpayers footing the bill. It would take an act of Congress to force those records open.
Congressman Ron DeSantis (FL-R) is  looking to do just that with the Taxpayer Pension Disclosure Act. “Taxpayers have a right to know how their money’s being spent” DeSantis said.
Roughly 125 billion dollars is spent annually on federal pensions. Federal courts have consistently ruled that disclosing federal pension amounts of retired congressional representatives and senators violates  privacy rights.   
DeSantis is against Congressional pensions altogether, however the bill is not to get rid of them, but to lift the veil and let taxpayers know where and to whom their money is going. “Regardless of your political affiliation,” said  DeSantis,  “most voters and most taxpayers think they have a right to know how their money’s being spent. It should not be done in the dark.”
He used former director of the Exempt Organizations Unit at the I.R.S., Lois Lerner as one example as to why he believes taxpayers should have the right to pension information.
“There are certain offenses that if you get convicted of then your pension goes away. Then there are other offenses where it doesn’t like Lois Lerner.” Lerner became the center of controversy when she was accused of targeting conservative organizations. “[Lerner] was at the I.R.S. really at the center of that. She was allowed to retire and she’s getting a full pension. We know it’s a 6 figure pension but we don’t know exactly how much.”

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