Friday, August 4, 2017

Snowflake and Whiner Cartoons





Despite uproar, Trump's immigration proposal resembles 10 other merit-based policies


President Trump's call Wednesday for a merit-based immigration system sent critics and much of the media into a tizzy, but what he proposed is common in many parts of the world.
The proposed system, contained in a Senate bill, would replace one largely based on extended family ties with one that prioritizes education, English language proficiency, age, vocational skills and high-paying job offers as well as considering any criminal record and possible national security risks.
"The idea of using a point system to select immigrants is a completely conventional idea," Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Immigration Studies, said.
"The idea of using a point system to select immigrants is a completely conventional idea."
The proposal resembles policies in Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea and the United Kingdom.
But despite that, it didn’t take long for the critics to weigh in.
"Once again White Nationalists are pushing their ethnic cleansing agenda, scapegoating immigrants for their own inability to create a labor market that works for everyone," Sulma Arias, a spokesperson for the Fair Immigration Reform Movement, said in a statement.
"Today’s announcement ... is a direct attack on all immigrants, on our legal immigration system, and on one of the core principles that drives immigration — family reunification."
Supporters of the bill stressed how mainstream the proposed policy is.
"How you pick the immigrants is a separate question from how many people you take," Krikorian told Fox News. "It is just a scurrilous lie to say that somehow is it racist to use a point system to select immigrants," he said.
NumbersUSA said the bill reflects popular sentiments.
“Our polling confirms that American voters overwhelmingly want far less immigration because they know mass immigration creates unfair competition for American workers,” Roy Beck, the group’s president, said in a statement.
“Seeing the President standing with the bill's sponsors at the White House gives hope to the tens of millions of struggling Americans in stagnant jobs or outside the labor market altogether.”

U.S. ban on visiting North Korea a ‘sordid’ limit on exchanges: KCNA


SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea has criticized Washington’s decision to ban U.S. passport holders from visiting the North, with state media describing it on Friday as a “sordid” attempt to limit human exchanges.
The North’s KCNA news agency, citing an unidentified spokesman for the foreign ministry, said there was no reason for foreigners to feel threatened while in North Korea and that citizens from around the world were encouraged to visit.
“Our doors are always open for all Americans who visit our country out of good will and wish to see our reality,” the spokesman said.
The U.S. State Department said earlier this week the ban would take effect on Sept. 1, although some, including journalists and humanitarian workers, may apply for exceptions.
The ban will make reclusive North Korea the only country to which U.S. citizens are banned from traveling.
It follows the death in June of U.S. student Otto Warmbier, who was sentenced in North Korea last year to 15 years’ hard labor for trying to steal an item bearing a propaganda item from his hotel.
Warmbier was in a coma when he was released by the North on humanitarian grounds and circumstances of his death remain unclear.
KCNA did not name Warmbier in Friday’s report but said the North had delivered “just punishment” to some U.S. citizens who had carried out acts against the regime.
North Korea is currently holding two Korean-American academics and a missionary in addition to a Canadian pastor and three South Korean nationals who were doing missionary work.
“There is no country in the world that would let foreigners who commit this sort of crime be,” the spokesman said. “Ruling criminals by the law is exercising our confident right as a sovereign state.”
The report said the ban reflects Washington’s view of Pyongyang as an enemy and reiterated that President Donald Trump’s administration should abandon its hostile policies towards the North.
Republican U.S. Representative Joe Wilson, who introduced the bill to ban Americans from traveling to North Korea this year, has said hundreds of Americans are among the roughly 4,000 to 5,000 Western tourists who visit the North each year.
Aside from the threat of incarceration, North Korea’s growing nuclear and missile threat is perhaps Trump’s most serious security challenge.
The North test-launched an intercontinental ballistic missile last month that experts believe had the range to reach Alaska and Hawaii, and perhaps the U.S. Pacific Northwest.

Strong U.S. jobs report seen in July; wages likely rose


WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. employers likely maintained a strong pace of hiring in July while raising wages for workers, signs of labor market tightness that could clear the way for the Federal Reserve to announce next month a plan to start shrinking its massive bond portfolio.
According to a Reuters survey of economists, the Labor Department’s closely watched employment report on Friday will probably show that non-farm payrolls increased by 183,000 jobs last month after surging 222,000 in June.
Average hourly earnings are forecast to have risen 0.3 percent after gaining 0.2 percent in June. That would be the biggest increase in five months. But the year-on-year increase in wages will probably slow to 2.4 percent as last year’s sharp rise drops out of the calculation.
Average hourly earnings increased 2.5 percent in the 12 months to June and have been trending lower since surging 2.8 percent in February. Lack of strong wage growth is surprising given that the economy is near full employment.
“This will be another encouraging labor market report for the Fed in their anticipated plans for gradual monetary policy tightening into the second half of the year,” said Sam Bullard, a senior economist at Wells Fargo Securities in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Economists expect the Fed will announce a plan to start reducing its $4.5 trillion portfolio of Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities in September.
Sluggish wage growth and the accompanying benign inflation, however, suggest the U.S. central bank will delay raising interest rates again until December. The Fed has raised rates twice this year, and its benchmark overnight lending rate now stands in a range of 1 to 1.25 percent.
Wage growth is crucial to sustaining the economic expansion after output increased at a 2.6 percent annual rate in the second quarter, an acceleration from the January-March period’s pedestrian 1.2 percent pace.
The unemployment rate is forecast to have dropped one-tenth of a percentage point to 4.3 percent, a 16-year touched in May. It has dropped four-tenths of a percentage point this year and matches the most recent Fed median forecast for 2017.
Still, some slack remains in the labor market, which economists say is restraining wage growth.
“We still have a lot of potential workers who are working part-time; there is still slack in the labor market which hasn’t been fully worked through,” said Mike Moran, head of economic research, the Americas, at Standard Chartered Bank in New York.
July’s anticipated employment gains would be close to the 180,000 monthly average for the first half of the year. The economy needs to create 75,000 to 100,000 jobs per month to keep up with growth in the working-age population.
SOLID DYNAMICS
Republican President Donald Trump, who inherited a strong job market from the Obama administration, has pledged to sharply boost economic growth and further strengthen the labor market by slashing taxes, cutting regulation and boosting infrastructure spending.
But after six months in office, the Trump administration has failed to pass any economic legislation and has yet to articulate plans for tax reform and infrastructure as well as most of its planned regulatory roll-backs.
“Labor market dynamics remain very solid and we think that payroll gains in the coming months will continue to be strong enough to reduced the unemployment rate,” said Harm Bandholz, chief U.S. economist at UniCredit Research in New York.
The jobs composition in July likely mirrored June’s. Manufacturing payrolls are forecast increasing by 5,000 jobs. But employment in the automobile sector probably fell further as slowing sales and bloated inventories force manufacturers to cut back on production.
U.S. auto sales fell 6.1 percent in July from a year ago to a seasonally adjusted rate of 16.73 million units. General Motors Co and Ford Motor Co have both said they will cut production in the second half of the year.
While further job gains are likely in construction, homebuilders probably laid off more workers in July. Investment in homebuilding contracted in the second quarter at its fastest pace in nearly seven years.
Retail payrolls are expected to have increased for a second straight month in July as hiring by online retailers more than offset job losses at brick-and-mortar stores.
Companies like major online retailer Amazon are creating jobs a warehouses and distribution centers. This week it held a series of job fairs to hire about 50,000 workers.

Grand jury issues subpoenas in connection with Trump Jr., Russian lawyer meeting: sources

Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya speaks during an interview in Moscow, Russia November 8, 2016. REUTERS/Kommersant Photo/Yury Martyanov
August 4, 2017
By Karen Freifeld and John Walcott
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A grand jury has issued subpoenas in connection with a June 2016 meeting that included President Donald Trump’s son, his son-in-law and a Russian lawyer, two sources told Reuters on Thursday, signaling an investigation is gathering pace into suspected Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election.
The sources added that U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller had convened the grand jury investigation in Washington to help examine allegations of Russian interference in the vote. One of the sources said it was assembled in recent weeks.
Russia has loomed large over the first six months of the Trump presidency. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia worked to tilt the presidential election in Trump’s favor. Mueller, who was appointed special counsel in May, is leading the probe, which also examines potential collusion by the Trump campaign with Russia.
Moscow denies any meddling and Trump denies any collusion by his campaign, while regularly denouncing the investigations as political witch hunts.
At a rally in Huntington, West Virginia, on Thursday night, Trump said: “Most people know there were no Russians in our campaign. … We didn’t win because of Russia. We won because of you.”
Mueller’s use of a grand jury could give him expansive tools to pursue evidence, including issuing subpoenas and compelling witnesses to testify. The Wall Street Journal earlier reported a grand jury was impaneled.
A spokesman for Mueller declined comment.
A grand jury is a group of ordinary citizens who, working behind closed doors, considers evidence of potential criminal wrongdoing that a prosecutor is investigating and decides whether charges should be brought.
“This is a serious development in the Mueller investigation,” said Paul Callan, a former prosecutor.
“Given that Mueller inherited an investigation that began months ago, it would suggest that he has uncovered information pointing in the direction of criminal charges. But against whom is the real question.”
A lawyer for Trump, Jay Sekulow, appeared to downplay the significance of a grand jury, telling Fox News: “This is not an unusual move.”
U.S. stocks and the dollar weakened following the news, while U.S. Treasury securities gained.
It was not immediately clear to whom subpoenas were issued and the sources did not elaborate.
Some lawyers said it would put pressure on potential witnesses to cooperate with Mueller’s investigation.
“When someone gets a subpoena to testify, that can drive home the seriousness of the investigation,” said David Sklansky, a professor at Stanford Law School and a former federal prosecutor.
In 2005, a grand jury convened by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald returned an indictment of Lewis “Scooter” Libby, a top aide to then-Vice President Dick Cheney.
“A special counsel can bring an indictment and it has happened before,” said Renato Mariotti, a partner at the law firm Thompson Coburn and a former federal prosecutor.
DAMAGING INFORMATION
News last month of the meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer who he was told had damaging information about his father’s presidential rival, Democrat Hillary Clinton, fueled questions about the campaign’s dealings with Moscow.
The Republican president has defended his son’s behavior, saying many people would have taken that meeting.
Trump’s son-in-law and White House senior adviser Jared Kushner and former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort also attended the meeting.
One of the sources said major Russian efforts to interfere in the election on Trump’s behalf began shortly after the June meeting, making it a focus of Mueller’s investigation.
Ty Cobb, special counsel to the president, said he was not aware that Mueller had started using a new grand jury.
“Grand jury matters are typically secret,” Cobb said. “The White House favors anything that accelerates the conclusion of his work fairly. … The White House is committed to fully cooperating with Mr. Mueller.”
John Dowd, one of Trump’s personal lawyers, said: “With respect to the news of the grand jury, I can tell you President Trump is not under investigation.”
A spokesman for Manafort declined to comment.
Lawyers for Trump Jr. and Kushner did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
‘NOT THINKING OF FIRING MUELLER’
Trump has questioned Mueller’s impartiality and members of Congress from both parties have expressed concern that Trump might dismiss him. Republican and Democratic senators introduced two pieces of legislation on Thursday seeking to block Trump from firing Mueller.
Sekulow denied that was Trump’s plan.
“The president is not thinking of firing Bob Mueller,” Sekulow said.
One source briefed on the matter said Mueller was investigating whether, either at the meeting or afterward, anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign encouraged the Russians to start releasing material they had been collecting on the Clinton campaign since March 2016.
Another source familiar with the inquiry said that while the president himself was not now under investigation, Mueller’s investigation was seeking to determine whether he knew of the June 9 meeting in advance or was briefed on it afterward.
Reuters earlier reported that Mueller’s team was examining money-laundering accusations against Manafort and hoped to push him to cooperate with their probe into possible collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia. It is not known if the grand jury is investigating those potential charges.

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