US Politics Thread 2016-2020

[ikalugin]

Ok, just to confirm, there is nothing in it regarding searches of third party vessels going in and out third party ports?

[Rockstar]

Not sure if this is the Bill that got Russian news media panties in a wad https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-...%22%5D%7D&r=14. I think its the latest one but has only made it as far as the House, the Senate still has to vote on it. Doesnt mention anything about blockades just enhanced inspections of suspect vessels bound for U.S. ports. But thats nothing new.

H.R.1644 — 115th Congress (2017-2018)All Bill Information (Except Text)

Introduced in House (03/21/2017)

Korean Interdiction and Modernization of Sanctions Act

This bill amends the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act of 2016 to modify and increase the President's authority to impose sanctions on persons in violation of certain U.N. Security Council resolutions regarding North Korea.

The President shall report to Congress regarding: (1) measures to deny specialized financial messaging services to U.N.-designated North Korean financial institutions, (2) foreign countries whose seaports and airports fail to inspect or seize the cargo of North Korean ships or aircraft as required by Security Council resolutions, (3) North Korea-Iran weapons and nuclear cooperation, (4) foreign government implementation of Security Council resolutions regarding North Korea, and (5) whether North Korea is a state sponsor of terrorism.

The bill requires U.S. financial institutions to ensure that no correspondent accounts are being used by foreign financial institutions to provide financial services indirectly to North Korea.

A foreign government that provides defense articles or services to, or receives from, North Korea is prohibited from receiving certain types of U.S. foreign assistance.

The Department of State shall report to Congress regarding foreign compliance with curtailing North Korea's arms trade.

The Department of Homeland Security may implement enhanced screening of cargo bound for or landed in the United States that: (1) has been transported through a sea port or airport that has repeatedly failed to comply with applicable Security Council resolutions; (2) is aboard a vessel, aircraft, or conveyance that has entered North Korean territory, waters, or airspace, or landed in any of its seaports or airports, within the last 365 days; or (3) is registered by a country whose inspection compliance is deficient.

The Ports and Waterways Safety Act is amended to prohibit any foreign vessel from entering or operating in U.S. waters or transferring cargo in any port under U.S. jurisdiction if such vessel is owned by North Korea or owned or operated on behalf of any country not complying with Security Council resolutions.

Goods produced in whole or part by North Korean labor are prohibited from entering the United States unless U.S. Customs and Border Protection finds that they were not produced with convict, forced, or indentured labor.

The President shall impose U.S. property-based sanctions on foreign persons that employ North Korean forced laborers.

The bill amends the State Department Basic Authorities Act of 1956 to authorize the State Department to offer cash rewards for information on violations of North Korean sanctions.

Congress.gov

[ikalugin]

(2) foreign countries whose seaports and airports fail to inspect or seize the cargo of North Korean ships or aircraft as required by Security Council resolutions

Ok I am looking at the text of the third version of the law and it appears to be very confusing to me (understandable as the law appears to be still in the works?). So what I see:

Section 104 a) which describes that US executive branch must report regarding any perceived violations of the resolution and then:

Specific findings.—Each report required under subsection (a) shall include specific findings with respect to the following ports and airports:
(3) The ports of Nakhodka, Vanino, and Vladivostok, in the Russian Federation.

Where we see the Russian ports being mentioned specifically and then:

Seizure and Forfeiture.—A vessel, aircraft, or conveyance used to facilitate any of the activities described in section 104(a) under the jurisdiction of the United States may be seized and forfeited, or subject to forfeiture, under—

“(2) part V of title IV of the Tariff Act of 1930 (19 U.S.C. 1581 et seq.).”.

which states:

Any officer of the customs may at any time go on board of any vessel or vehicle at any place in the United States....... or at any other authorized place, without as well as within his district

I aint a lawyer or even a knowledgeable US citizen but it appears to be at this moment that it may be possible or even required to for the US authorities to stop and search vessels going in and out of select Russian ports which would constitute a naval blockade. Please do clarify those matters.

[vienna]

"Na na na na, na na na na,
Hey hey hey, goodbye..."

The non-partisan political analysis site, The Cook Report, has just revised its projections for the November 2018 Mid-Term Elections, shifting twenty (20) House seats out of the GOP column:

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefi...istricts-after

http://cookpolitical.com/story/10342

The GOP Senate may be able to save the GOP House's bacon by either 'fixing' the flawed GOP House ACA bill or by just voting the bill down. This loss is the result of a poorly drafted, poorly managed, poorly vetted piece of legislation whose sole purpose seems to be trying to give a 'win' to the "sad, weak" occupant of the White House. The currently enacted ACA does need to be repaired or replaced, but the ridiculous Keystone Kops fire drill that passes for GOP House leadership and their 'solutions' is not the way to do it; it will be interesting when the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) releases its report on the GOP House's just recently passed version of the ACA; the very fact the GOP House leadership desperately wanted to pass the bill without a final CBO report on the financial ramifications (an extremely irregular and ill-conceived action) makes one wonder what they were trying to hide or avoid...

The GOP: playing right into the hands of the DEMs, and no one to blame but themselves...




<O>

[Bilge_Rat]

Originally Posted by vienna

The GOP: playing right into the hands of the DEMs, and no one to blame but themselves...

<O>

That is just political spin. If Dems are so good at predicting the future, why is the Party in the worst shape it has been in 90 years...

The truth is that Dems got caught with their pants down because they did not think the GOP would pass the AHCA and now they are ramping up their rhetoric to near-apocalyptic tones to try to stop it in the Senate.

The whole thing is a political circus. The ACA had some good points and some bad points and is nowhere near as bad as the GOP says. OTOH, the AHCA has some good points and some bad points and is nowhere near as bad as the Dems say.

[MaDef]

Originally Posted by Bilge_Rat

That is just political spin. If Dems are so good at predicting the future, why is the Party in the worst shape it has been in 90 years...

The truth is that Dems got caught with their pants down because they did not think the GOP would pass the AHCA and now they are ramping up their rhetoric to near-apocalyptic tones to try to stop it in the Senate.

The whole thing is a political circus. The ACA had some good points and some bad points and is nowhere near as bad as the GOP says. OTOH, the AHCA has some good points and some bad points and is nowhere near as bad as the Dems say.

what do you expect? Congress as a whole couldn't find it's collective ass with both hands and a map. Any "good" those nitwits do is entirely by accident.

[Rockstar]

"Seizure and Forfeiture.—A vessel, aircraft, or conveyance used to facilitate any of the activities described in section 104(a) under the jurisdiction of the United States may be seized and forfeited, or subject to forfeiture, under—
“(2) part V of title IV of the Tariff Act of 1930 (19 U.S.C. 1581 et seq.).”.

The key to the whole thing is "jurisdiction". Our customs waters jurisdiction extends 24 miles from our shores. We also claim a 200 miles exclusive economic zone. We dont have jursidiction in foreign waters or ports and if a vessel is operating in international waters we need the flag state's permission to board it and only to enforce international law not U.S. law, unless we can prove the vessel is bound for the U.S.

Cant count the number of times we sighted a foreign flagged boat in international waters and we would follow it and as soon as it crossed into our waters we were on like white on rice.

[vienna]

Originally Posted by Bilge_Rat

That is just political spin. If Dems are so good at predicting the future, why is the Party in the worst shape it has been in 90 years...

The truth is that Dems got caught with their pants down because they did not think the GOP would pass the AHCA and now they are ramping up their rhetoric to near-apocalyptic tones to try to stop it in the Senate.

Oh, its more than just political spin and the DEMs are in far better shape than you think; they really haven't had to do anything but stand by the sidelines and watch the GOP and its Congressional leadership keep fumbling the ball, each time its had possession. The main GOP party leadership is very aware of the danger of losing their hold on the House, and less likely, the Senate and are taking what you, and the Trump apologists, refer to as "spin" in mind; they see the problems and are taking them seriously. The GOP Far Right has been virtually writing the campaign literature for the DEMs for the 2018 Mid-Terms. Every time Trump makes an ineptly inane (if not actually insane) action or spouts some absurd gibberish or tweet, the DEMs are just banking it for the Mid-Terms; the GOP Congress is amply assisting in the effort by acting like they have no concept of how the government even actually works (we all know Trump is clueless on the subject). They passed their version of the AHCA without even waiting for the CBO to make public its findings on the House bill. It could be said this very highly irregular action was taken in order to give both the GOP House and Trump some semblance of a 'victory' before Congress went into recess, after having failed twice with their previous efforts; it could also be said the GOP House was extremely concerned, after a previous CBO report on the prior version of the bill showed some very serious detrimental financial, social, and political ramifications, the 'new!! improved!!' version would fare even less well under the CBO's scrutiny and sink the bill yet again. The fact the House GOP leadership was only able to pass the bill by the minimal margin of one (1) vote and, in the process, had twenty (20) of its own party members vote against passage is a strong indicator all is not well in the Congressional GOP, particularly the GOP House. Compounding this is the fact several senior and influential Senate GOP members have expressed grave reservations of the abbreviated, abortive, GOP House actions and have publicly indicated there will be extreme scrutiny and vetting of the GOP House bill, something of which the GOP House leadership is very afraid. The Senate, unlike the House, has far less wriggle room when it comes to any party assembling a sufficient majority to pass/approve House bills in their own chambers; the number of Senate members being even less than a quarter of the total House membership means every single vote does count in a much more important manner than a single vote normally counts in the House. There is also the added nature of the difference in the constituencies between a Senator and a Congressman; House members are elected by a relatively small pool of voters and they tend to pander to whatever are the needs of that pool; Senate members, since each state is only allowed two (2) Senators each, and the Senators are elected, at large, from a pool of all the voters in their state, have to find a means of addressing the need to give the greatest benefit to the largest number of voters in the pool, regardless of whether all the districts lean towards or against their party, not just a smaller fraction like a Congressman. When a Senator looks at what he needs to keep his seat, and/or achieve his goals, the narrowness of strict party adherence is less of an influence...

The GOP finds itself between a rock and a hard place and all the DEMs have to do is watch the pressure grow. The pressure seems to be getting to not a few of the GOP House members; some faced with a very strong backlash from their districts, have indicated they will not seek reelection and a couple, notably Rep. Jason Chaffetz, Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, have actually announced they will not stand for reelection; Chaffetz is notable because he has come under fire, from all sides, over his 'handling' of investigations into the Trump conflicts of interest and the allegations of Russian influence in the 2016 Presidential election. I guess he doesn't want to be anywhere on the bridge when the House ship hits the iceberg...

Some may have noticed or heard the GOP House AHCA bill exempted Congress from having to abide by the provisions of the Act, unlike the rest of the citizens of the US. This is widely acknowledged as a very risky move on the part of the GOP House, but the reason was not self-serving in the sense of being above the law to be followed by the rest of the nation: it appears the GOP is seeking to avoid a situation where they will need a majority of sixty-one (61) out of one hundred (100) votes, rather than a simple majority of fifty-one (51) votes in order to pass the AHCA through the Senate; just as the GOP Senate was willing to use the politically unpopular "nuclear option" to eke out the votes to confirm Gorsuch to the SCOTUS, the GOP House is willing to take a political hit, in desperation, just to try to ensure any chance of passage in the Senate:

http://www.businessinsider.com/congr...plained-2017-5

So, the GOP's rush to put a "W" in the win column is very much premature:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...re-celebration

If this is a political circus, it seems the GOP are both the 'Elephants' and the clowns...

Originally Posted by Bilge_Rat

The whole thing is a political circus. The ACA had some good points and some bad points and is nowhere near as bad as the GOP says. OTOH, the AHCA has some good points and some bad points and is nowhere near as bad as the Dems say.

I do agree with your comments on the ACA/AHCA (surprised, eh?). Something has to be done about the state of health care in the US and the rising costs of medical services and products; the ACA is/was not the best solution, but it was, for the first time in a very long (and long overdue) time, a step in the right direction; the AHCA, in its present GOP House form, is/will not be a perfect solution; somewhere in the middle is a solution meeting the best interests of providers and patients; whichever party fnally realizes that simple fact will have much to gain, but as long as each of the parties is more intent on scoring 'brownie points' against each other than actually doing the work of government, we are probably doomed to more gridlock and misery; a very big reason I don't adhere to any party...




<O>

[ikalugin]

Originally Posted by Rockstar

The key to the whole thing is "jurisdiction". Our customs waters jurisdiction extends 24 miles from our shores. We also claim a 200 miles exclusive economic zone. We dont have jursidiction in foreign waters or ports and if a vessel is operating in international waters we need the flag state's permission to board it and only to enforce international law not U.S. law, unless we can prove the vessel is bound for the U.S.

Cant count the number of times we sighted a foreign flagged boat in international waters and we would follow it and as soon as it crossed into our waters we were on like white on rice.

Ok, just to clarify, so there is nothing in the bill that implies searches outside of the U.S. territorian waters/EEZ?

Would gathering information for the reports (on ships going in and out of the specified ports) imply such searches?

[vienna]

Found this article on the possible AHCA minefield facing the GOP:

Fundraising surged nationwide as new recruits stepped up to challenge vulnerable Republicans who backed the plan. Among the vulnerable: two-term Rep. Tom MacArthur, R-N.J., who helped revive the bill by authoring a key amendment on pre-existing conditions.


"We have an opportunity to take down the person who was the author of Trumpcare 2.0," said Democrat Andrew Kim, an Obama White House national security adviser, who said he's now more likely to challenge MacArthur next year. Kim raised more than $43,000 online over the last week for a possible run.


"He owns every part of this," Kim said of MacArthur.


Democrats need to flip 24 seats between now and the 2018 elections to take control of the House. Of the 217 Republicans who backed the bill, 14 come from districts carried by Democrat Hillary Clinton last fall, and 24 serve in districts where Trump did not win more than 50 percent of the vote.


Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who is not seeking re-election next year, warned that the bill "has the potential to severely harm the health and lives of people in south Florida." Her open seat in Miami is considered a prime pick-up opportunity for Democrats.

(Bolding mine)


https://www.yahoo.com/news/trumpcare-gop-faces-political-fallout-063712749.html

Trump really likes to trot out that map of the US and boast about all the counties he won; the big problem is, in an awful lot of those counties he just scraped by, and, in many, he won (as in the general election tallies) with less than 50% of the vote: again, it is important to remember the majority of individual US voters did not vote for Trump and, in the Congressional elections, there is no 'Electoral College' mechanism to overrule the will of the voters; there, in the Congressional districts, when the voters speak, they have spoken...




<O>

[Bilge_Rat]

If we step away from pure politics for a moment, the problem with health care is that it is a ticking time bomb.

The biggest consumers of medical care are older people. When a lot of these programs were put in place in the 60s-70s, you had 8-10 persons of working age for each retiree. Now the ratio is 2-3 workers for 1 retiree and over the next 20-30 years, it is expected to go down to 1-2 workers for 1 retiree.

so costs are exploding, since the over 60 population keeps increasing while you have less and less taxpayers at the other end to pay for it.

So there is no magic formula, either you increase taxes or cut back on medical care.

Many on the left are extolling the single payer program or governement run and funded healthcare, but it also does not solve the basic problem.

Canada has had a single payer system for almost 50 years and you have the same issues. Around 1/3 of all taxes goes to fund health care and it is still not enough to keep up with costs.

In theory, everyone has access to "free" healthcare, but you have many informal barriers to access.

First, there is a lack of general practioners. It can be hard to find one and can take weeks to get an appointment. That is a barrier, since you need a note from a doctor to have access to a specialist.

second, if you need a specialist, after step #1, it can again take weeks or months to get an appointment.

Third, after step #2, if you need surgery in a Hospital, it can take months or years to get a date, if it is minor or non- urgent.

Of course, if you have cancer or something major, then there is a fast track system to get care, but for a lot of minor issues, people just go straight to a private clinic and pay for it out of their pocket/private health insurance.

So there is no perfect program, unless everyone is wiling to pay a lot more, it is impossible to provide excellent service to everyone.

The best cost/benefit compromise is to provide government funded coverage for major, expensive issues, basically catastrophic health insurance and let consumers buy their own insurance, if they wish, for minor issues.

[Rockstar]

Originally Posted by ikalugin

Ok, just to clarify, so there is nothing in the bill that implies searches outside of the U.S. territorian waters/EEZ?

Would gathering information for the reports (on ships going in and out of the specified ports) imply such searches?

I couldnt find anything.

Based on my experiences any nation with a sea going service can enforce international laws in international waters. However as far as we're concerned the nation under which the suspect vessel is flagged needs to be consulted before we could step aboard to and take action. No flag? Then we consider it a stateless vessel and would most likely board it. Might be too if we dont recognize the flag as legitimate we might board it.

Unless it is a case of force majeure we do not enter into someone else's territorial seas without their permission beforehand. To do so would violate their sovereignty and all hell would break loose as the offending nation would most likely have their ship seized and subject to the foreign powers internal laws.

It may be possible to patrol the area between the boundaries of sovereign nations (international waters) and gather intelligence on shipping traffic last port next port of call etc. etc. If we believed violations occured and could not get permission to board. I imagine the best we could do is file a complaint or sanction the offending nation. Which as one of the bills suggested may include preventing their ships from entering U.S. ports. Or shoot their planes out of the sky like we did when we challenged Libya's clear violation of international law when Kaddafi established the "line of death".

edit: boundary definitions and what kind of law enforcement within those boundaries can be done is found in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) of which the U.S. abides by.

[Von Due]

So... what's goin on?
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39866412

Anyone having the full story? Not a fan of Trump in the slightest but I find it hard to believe they are going full Turkey now. Something not coming through in the reports?

[vienna]

Hell, here in the US, even we don't know what the hell is going on in regards to Trump v. the press. I can only imagine what all this looks like to other nations. There has been a troubling number of such cases lately and they have raised more than a few eyebrows...

In the meantime, the official spokesperson for Trump seems to be losing it:

Sean Spicer literally hid in the bushes to avoid answering questions about James Comey's firing --

http://www.businessinsider.com/sean-...-firing-2017-5

Yeah, the Trump administration really has things under control and is running like a finely tuned Trabant...




<O>

Hey, nothing against the glorious Rennpappe!