When Biden took office, one of his first acts was the elimination of our border security. Like a power-hungry dictator, Biden simply decided to ignore our immigration laws. His catastrophic border policy resulted in untold millions of unidentified foreign citizens from around the world pouring into our country. Its impact is now being felt in cities across the country. The worst is yet to come. PETER LEMISKA - AND WE'RE ALREADY THERE!!!
Saturday, May 23, 2020
AAA - RECORD-LOW NUMBER TRAVELING MEMORIAL DAY EVEN AS GAS IS CHEAP EXCEPT IN CALIFORNIA WHERE GAS PRICES ARE RIGGED AT $4. PER GALLON
AAA: Record-Low Number of Americans Traveling Memorial Day Weekend — but Gas Is Cheap
AAA Mid-Atlantic is not issuing a Memorial Day travel forecast for the first time in two decades but speculated on its website that due to the coronavirus this year’s holiday weekend could mark a record low number of Americans traveling. This comes after last year’s record-high number of more than one million Americans taking a trip on the three-day weekend.
AAA Mid-Atlantic posted an article about the contrast of pre- and post-coronavirus travel plans:
This Memorial Day, Americans may harken back to the “See the USA in a Chevrolet” halcyon “road trip” days of yore. For those who opt to venture out on a one-day road trip over the upcoming holiday weekend, they will experience the cheapest holiday gas prices around Memorial Day in two decades. Although “traveling in the age of COVID-19 can be tricky,” yet with gas prices this low, some Washingtonians may set out on shorter jaunts by car to vistas along the rolling northern Virginia countryside or the Shenandoah Valley, or to Civil War sites in Maryland, or to the peaks of West Virginia, or to a wide array of other venues.
Locally, Washington D.C., remains under a stay at home order until Monday, June 8. In Maryland, Prince George’s County will remain under a stay at home order through June 1 and Montgomery County is under a stay at home order without a current end date. Several Northern Virginia counties also remain under a stay at home order until May 28.
“Gas prices around Memorial Day have not been this cheap in nearly 20 years. However, as the country continues to practice social distancing, this year’s unofficial kick-off to summer is not going to drive the typical millions of Americans to travel,” John B. Townsend II, manager of public and government affairs for AAA Mid-Atlantic, said. “Despite inexpensive gas prices, AAA anticipates this year’s holiday will likely set a record low for travel volume.”
The average price for gas nationally is $1.89, with the cheapest in the region at $1.70 in Virginia.
CURRENT AND PAST GAS PRICE AVERAGES
Regular Unleaded Gasoline (*indicates record high)
5/19/2020
Week Ago
Year Ago
National
$1.89
$1.86
$2.86
Washington, D.C.
$2.17
$2.18
$2.94
D.C. Metro
$1.97
$1.96
$2.77
Maryland
$1.95
$1.88
$2.77
Virginia
$1.70
$1.68
$2.59
Courtesy of AAA Mid-Atlantic
The report noted that Memorial Day 2009 (toward the end of the Great Recession) currently holds the record for the lowest travel volume at nearly 31 million travelers.
The number of suicides documented by a hospital in Northern California during the ongoing lockdown has exceeded the number of Chinese coronavirus deaths, doctors in the city of Walnut Creek revealed this week as they called for an end to the region’s lockdown order.
In an interview with the Los Angeles-based ABC7 news outlet aired on Thursday, doctors from the John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek stressed that there had been an unprecedented rise in suicides, noting that there have been more attempts over the last month than in most full years.
“We’ve never seen numbers like this, in such a short period of time,” Dr. Mike DeBoisblanc, the head of trauma at the Walnut Creek hospital, told the local ABC outlet. “I mean, we’ve seen a year’s worth of suicide attempts in the last four weeks.”
“What I have seen recently, I have never seen before,” Kacey Hansen, a trauma nurse at the medical center for over three decades, added. “I have never seen so much intentional injury.”
“Social isolation has a price and I know why we’ve done it,” she also said. “It just has a bigger price tag than I thought.”
Hansen reportedly noted that the Walnut Creek hospital is unable to save as many patients as usual due to a near single-minded focus on coronavirus.
Other doctors, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins, have acknowledged that there is a clear and present danger that lockdown measures may fuel mental health issues like suicide.
Lockdowns have “not been necessary to save lives but instead inflicted devastating harm on tens of millions of people,” hundreds of doctors wrote in a letter to the White House.
Contra Costa County’s Walnut Creek is in the eastern region of the San Francisco Bay area.
Dr. DeBoisblanc and Tom Tamura, the executive director of the Contra Costa County Crisis Center, noted that most of the suicides involve young adults who are “worried about the stress that isolation and job loss can bring as this quarantine continues.”
In a statement to ABC7 responding to the trauma team’s concerns about the rise in suicides amid the lockdowns, the county’s crisis center proclaimed:
We strongly encourage everyone in distress to seek help from mental health professionals and local resources such as 211 (the Crisis Center).
We understand that this is a very difficult time for many people, and it can feel very isolating to practice social distancing. We want to stress that the shelter-in-place order is saving lives at the same time.
Noting that the region’s shutdown order is having a devastating impact on mental health, Dr. DeBoisblanc declared:
Personally, I think it’s time. I think, originally, this [shelter-in-place order] was put in place to flatten the curve and to make sure hospitals have the resources to take care of COVID patients.We have the current resources to do that and our other community health is suffering.
Nevertheless, the John Muir Medical Center stressed that it is supportive of the shelter-in-place order in the Bay Area, saying in a statement to ABC7:
We realize there are a number of opinions on this topic, including within our medical staff, and John Muir Health encourages our physicians and staff to participate constructively in these discussions. We all share a concern for the health of our community, whether that is COVID-19, mental health, intentional violence, or other issues.
The shelter-in-place order in the region will expire by May 31. Every state in America has begun a phased reopening process as conditions across the country improve, particularly a drop in COVID-19 hospitalizations and new cases.
Coronavirus pandemic spreads across the US South
Hospitals overwhelmed in California and Alabama as national death toll approaches 100,000
Hospitals in Montgomery, Alabama and El Centro, California have been forced to restrict admission of new coronavirus patients after caseloads of COVID-19 spiked during the week. The situation in both cities developed as the number of confirmed cases in the US passed 1.6 million, and the death toll approached 100,000.
Margot Bloch of Takoma Park, Md., stands in Lafayette Park near the White House as she protests President Donald Trump's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic Wednesday, May 20, 2020, in Washington. She is surrounded by "body bags" representing those who have died. (Photo: AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
The situation in both cities was summed up by Montgomery Mayor Steven Reed, who said yesterday at a press conference, “Right now, if you are from Montgomery and you need an ICU bed, you are in trouble.” Of the state capital’s four regional hospitals, one is short three ICU beds, two have no available ICU beds, and one has just a single ICU bed remaining. Excess patients are being transferred to Birmingham, a trip for those infected of more than an hour.
Reed also warned that the hospitals are “at a capacity that is not sustainable,” and that, “Our health care system is maxed out.”
In El Centro, the increased caseload came from both sides of the US-Mexico border in the wake of relaxed physical distancing rules enacted two weeks ago. According to the CEO of the El Centro Regional Medical Center, Dr. Adolphe Edward, the surge is largely from US citizens who live in Mexicali, a border town in Mexico with a population of 690,000, who were turned away from Mexican hospitals as a result of rising coronavirus infections there.
More than two dozen patients had to be transferred to hospitals in San Diego and other nearby cities, Reuters reports.
This reality did not stop President Donald Trump from declaring on Friday, “I am identifying houses of worship, churches, synagogues and mosques, as essential places that provide essential services,” and demanding that “governors … allow our churches and places of worship to open right now.”
Trump’s comments follow his remarks Thursday that the country’s reopening will not be stopped even if the pandemic regains the momentum it had in the previous two months. “Whether it’s an ember or a flame, we’re going to put it out. But we’re not closing our country.” This campaign has added fuel to the record rise of the stock market since its collapse in March, at the expense of tens of thousands of lives and tens of millions of livelihoods.
The spike in cases in such divergent areas of the country is another indication that, contrary to official policy, the spread of the coronavirus pandemic is not slowing but increasing. States including Texas, Florida and Louisiana have joined Alabama and California in seeing an increase of new COVID-19 cases in recent days.
Both the 7- and 14-day moving averages of daily case counts in Alabama are increasing and now stand at above 500 new cases per day. The number of new cases in California has stayed above 2,000 for the past four consecutive days. Texas, where the stay-at-home order expired April 30, saw its new case count on May 21 double to 1,856, as compared to the previous day.
The number of new cases in Florida has also begun to rise, with a sharp increase to 1,204 on Thursday. On that day, the number of new cases in Louisiana increased more than four-fold from the day before, to 1,188 new infections. Total deaths in these states also continue to rise, to 537 in Alabama, 3,682 in California, 1,501 in Texas, 2,190 in Florida and 2,668 in Louisiana.
Texas, Florida and Alabama are also among the states predicted to have even more coronavirus infections over the next four weeks, as modeled by the PolicyLab at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Using cellphone data to track mobility in an attempt to forecast the pandemic, the researchers have found that those states are some of the most at risk for an increased pandemic caseload as their economies continue to reopen.
Another state that has seen a sharp rise in cases is Arkansas, where the number of new infections increased by 228 percent over the past 14 days, bringing the total number of coronavirus cases to 5,612. This is largely due to outbreaks among poultry workers across the state, which now includes 136 active cases.
Across the country, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the reopening is driving the spread of the deadly pandemic.
Forcing states to allow religious services to take place will only exacerbate this crisis. Every state now allows some form of public gatherings, including restaurant dining, retail stores, barbershops and salons, beaches and gyms. Some states, such as Louisiana, have even opened movie theaters, museums, zoos and casinos, while Florida has already allowed houses of worship to reopen.
Many of these reopenings are taking place in advance of the Memorial Day weekend. In Wisconsin, the state Supreme Court has allowed bars, clubs, wineries, restaurants and campgrounds to collectively host 158 live music events. While none of these will be in Milwaukee or Madison, due to the large number of cases in those cities, they are expected to draw large crowds, and public health officials are concerned about a resurgence of cases and deaths as a result.
This is particularly concerning in the current pandemic because of the incubation period of the coronavirus. It takes 2-14 days before symptoms appear and even longer before a patient gets tested and possibly hospitalized. “We’re looking at potentially a month or two later that we’re going to see the impact” of the reopening, said former Baltimore health commissioner Leana Wen to the Washington Post. “You have not seen the impact of reopening yet. I think there’s going to be a very significant lag.”
U.S. Census Launches Weekly Coronavirus Report: 47% Jobless, 38% Delayed Medical Treatment
The U.S. Census Bureau announced this week that each Wednesday it will post online a survey of American households to measure how people are doing during the coronavirus outbreak on a number of issues, including employment, “food security,” and access to health care.
“The survey is intended to provide crucial weekly data to help understand the experiences of American households during the COVID-19 pandemic,” the announcement of the survey said.
The announcement said:
In this initial release, the Household Pulse Survey Interactive Tool provides data for select indicators at national and state levels. National data also are available in table format. We plan subsequent weekly releases through late July, and will include additional estimates for states and the 15 largest metropolitan statistical areas.
For the April 23-May 5 period, invitations to take part in the survey were sent to 1,867,126 households and a total 74,413 responded (63,003 complete interviews and 11,410 partial interviews).
Some of the key findings include:
• Among the population of adults 18 and over, 47 percent either lost employment income or another adult in their household had lost employment income since March 13. Thirty-nine percent of adults expected that they or someone in their household would lose employment income over the next four weeks.
• About ten percent of adults reported that they did not get enough of the food they needed some of the time or often. Another 32 percent report getting enough, but not the kinds of food they needed. On average, households spent $196 a week to buy food at supermarkets, grocery stores, online, and other places to be prepared and eaten at home.
• Adults who responded reported feeling anxious or nervous more than half the days last week or nearly every day 29.7 percent of the time. They reported not being able to stop or control worrying more than half the days last week or nearly every day 22.8 percent of the time.
For measures related to depression, 18.6 percent of adults report feeling down more than half the days or nearly every day last week, and 21.4 percent reported having little interest or pleasure in doing things more than half the days or nearly every day last week.
• 38.7 percent of adults report that over the last four weeks, they delayed getting medical care because of the coronavirus pandemic.
• When asked about the likelihood of being able to pay next month’s rent or mortgage on time, 21.3 precent reported only slight or no confidence in being able to pay next month’s rent or mortgage on time. Another 2.5 percent reported next month’s mortgage is or will be deferred.
• In households with children enrolled in public or private school (K-12), adults spent 13 hours on average on teaching activities during the last seven days.
"Eligibility would be determined by the same rules of Medicaid, based on annual income. As many young illegals are working off the books, for cash, they will have no official reported income regardless of how much they actually earn, insuring their eligibility for Medi-Cal." BRIAN C. JOONEPH
The promise of unlimited free stuff from the government isn't just an unfunded liability. It’s also a magnet for illegal immigration. California already faces a border catastrophe. In the past year, its San Diego and El Centro border sectors have seen respective increases of 611% and 345% in family unit apprehensions. MediCal expansion creates incentives that will make that problem much worse.
State and Local Politicians Move to Grant Coronavirus Relief to Illegal Aliens
More than 7-in-10 households headed by immigrants in the state of California are on taxpayer-funded welfare, a new study reveals.
The latest Census Bureau data analyzed by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) finds that about 72 percent of households headed by noncitizens and immigrants use one or more forms of taxpayer-funded welfare programs in California — the number one immigrant-receiving state in the U.S.
Meanwhile, only about 35 percent of households headed by native-born Americans use welfare in California.
All four states with the largest foreign-born populations, including California, have extremely high use of welfare by immigrant households. In Texas, for example, nearly 70 percent of households headed by immigrants use taxpayer-funded welfare. Meanwhile, only about 35 percent of native-born households in Texas are on welfare.
In New York and Florida, a majority of households headed by immigrants and noncitizens are on welfare. Overall, about 63 percent of immigrant households use welfare while only 35 percent of native-born households use welfare.
President Trump’s administration is looking to soon implement a policy that protects American taxpayers’ dollars from funding the mass importation of welfare-dependent foreign nationals by enforcing a “public charge” rule whereby legal immigrants would be less likely to secure a permanent residency in the U.S. if they have used any forms of welfare in the past, including using Obamacare, food stamps, and public housing.
The immigration controls would be a boon for American taxpayers in the form of an annual $57.4 billion tax cut — the amount taxpayers spend every year on paying for the welfare, crime, and schooling costs of the country’s mass importation of 1.5 million new, mostly low-skilled legal immigrants.
As Breitbart News reported, the majority of the more than 1.5 million foreign nationals entering the country every year use about 57 percent more food stamps than the average native-born American household. Overall, immigrant households consume 33 percent more cash welfare than American citizen households and 44 percent more in Medicaid dollars. This straining of public services by a booming 44 million foreign-born population translates to the average immigrant household costing American taxpayers $6,234 in federal welfare.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
Donald Trump Shuts Huge Migrant Pipeline Run by Coyotes, Federal Agencies
President Donald Trump and his deputies have shut down the coyote-run smuggling pipeline that has used federal agencies to deliver almost 500,000 youths and children to their illegal-alien parents living in northern cities.
The success in closing the 12-year-old “Unaccompanied Alien Child”‘ pipeline was admitted by the New York Times:
Hundreds of migrant children and teenagers have been swiftly deported by American authorities amid the coronavirus pandemic without the opportunity to speak to a social worker or plea for asylum from the violence in their home countries — a reversal of years of established practice for dealing with young foreigners who arrive in the United States.
The deportations represent an extraordinary shift in policy that has been unfolding in recent weeks on the southwestern border, under which safeguards that have for decades been granted to migrant children by both Democratic and Republican administrations appear to have been abandoned.
The shutdown is allowed by the combination of China’s coronavirus and by Congress’s Title 42 law. The Title 42 law allows border agents to block any migrants coming across the border at the request of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and it trumps the 2008 law that created the coyote/agency pipeline.
On May 20, Chad Wolf, chief of the Department of Homeland Security, said that CDC had ordered the Title 42 barrier to continue indefinitly, “until it is determined that the serious danger from #COVID19 has ceased.”
The Associated Press showed May 14 how Trump’s 2020 changes surprised a Honduran mother in Mexico who had watched the UAC pipeline work for years:
When she lost an initial [aslum legal] decision, she decided [the 10-year-old boy] would be better off temporarily with her brother in the United States. She watched him swim across the Rio Grande.
The woman expected he would be treated the same as before, when such children were picked up by the U.S. Border Patrol and taken to Department of Health and Human Services facilities for eventual placement with a sponsor, usually a relative.
But the mother heard nothing until six days later, when her family received a call from a shelter in Honduras. “They had thrown him out to Honduras,” she said. “We didn’t know anything.”
The New York Times added a comment from the “shocked” uncle in Houston:
“I’m not going to tell you that we were going to shower him with riches,” Mr. RodrÃguez said. “We’re poor, but we were going to fight to support him. We were going to welcome him like he deserved.”
The two articles did not mention the child’s father. In all likelihood, he may have traveled illegally to his brother in Houston, while fully expecting the federal agencies to deliver his child to Houston.
Democrats, however, are fighting to reopen the UAC pipeline’s delivery of migrant youths and children to the illegal-immigrant parents and relatives:
Donald Trump is using a global health crisis as an excuse to deport children and continue separating families. It's heartless and un-American. People across the political spectrum rejected these policies before, and will do so again, because they know families belong together. https://t.co/xhd4PmvJsi
A 2008 law created the UAC pipeline. The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) law directed officials in the border agencies and the Department of Health and Human Services to safeguard and help trafficked children — such as youth prostitutes — until they could find sponsors to live and recover in the United States.
The U.S. generosity was quickly exploited by smugglers, who used the 2008 TVPRA law to safely deliver the children of illegal migrants into the United States. The illegal-migrant parents were happy to use the joint coyote-agency pipeline because it was a safe, cheap, and reliable way to reunite their families and transfer their kids into Americans’ K-12 schools.
President Barack Obama protected the UAC pipeline, and portrayed the smuggler-delivered children as “unaccompanied,” even as his agency officials were relaying the children from the cartel-backed coyotes to their illegal-alien parents throughout the United States. “The influx of unaccompanied alien children (UAC) across the southwest border of the United States has resulted in an urgent humanitarian situation requiring a unified and coordinated Federal response,” Obama declared in June 2014.
From 2007 to 2011, roughly 45,000 non-Mexicans were caught at the border each year. But the migration spiked in 2012 as the coyotes spread the news that Obama’s border agencies were turning a blind eye to migrants from Central America. By 2013, the migration inflow had reached 140,000 — and that inflow of working adults created a huge population of Latin American illegals who had the money and the desire to bring their abandoned children north via the UAC pipeline.
All told, the pipeline imported roughly 478,000 migrant youths and children between 2008 and 2019. Few were sent home, and most were teenagers, so boosting the current population of illegal workers seeking jobs in the coronavirus crash.
The pipeline was a boon for many Central Americans because it provided a means to move families out of Central American poverty into peaceful prosperity throughout the United States.
But those young migrants and their parents spiked rental prices across blue-collar America. Migrant parents felt less pressure to go home and their eagerness to work allowed employers to cut wage rates at many blue-collar jobs. Their children crowded into the schools used by the children of blue-collar Americans, forcing educators to divert time and money into English lessons.
Some of the migrant youths joined MS-13 and murdered other youths, but the establishment media sympathized with each new wave of migrant youths. But most quietly left the schools and blended into the blue-collar labor markets that are so disdained by the college-bound children of pro-migration progressives, journalists, and immigration lawyers.
The massive exit from Central America has also destabilized those countries, partly by reducing the labor force and slowing international investment.
Many legislators and experts in Washington quietly understood that the 2008 law allowed the coyotes to subcontract their child-delivery contracts to federal agencies. But Republican legislators also knew that companies wanted the illegal workers and the extra customers. In contrast, Democratic legislators recognized the pipeline was helping grow the population of illegals who would vote Democrat after getting citizenship.
The 2008 law made “the U.S. government a de facto co-conspirator with the smuggling organizations,” said a 2019 report by the Center or Immigration Studies.
Trump's citizenship dir. Ken Cuccinelli wants to fix an open secret in DC: The US Gov't cooperates with coyotes & cartels to import 200K+ children of illegal migrants from Central America. Naturally, the establishment media conceals this elite philanthropy https://t.co/P4HJ9HHVnv
Some of Trump’s deputies stated the obvious. Ken Cuccinelli told the Texas Public Policy Foundation on August 22:
The federal government has been the final link in the human trafficking effort up to this point. People put children in this pipeline with a certain degree of confidence — they’re obviously willing to risk their children –– that they will end up with the parents in the end. Weare helping them pull this off.”
Along the way, the 2014 rush of “unaccompanied children” sank Obama’s polling numbers and helped kill his “Gang of Eight” amnesty. It also set the stage for a New York TV personality to begin planning his successful run for the presidency.
The Title 42 rule is a capstone in a series of hard-nosed decisions by Trump, which largely blocked the migration of Central American migrants into tough, blue-collar jobs throughout the United States.
For example, Trump threatened to shut down trade with Mexico until the government allowed the U.S. to return migrants to Mexico until their court date. This policy prevents migrants from getting the jobs they need to pay their smugglers and to fund the travel of their wives and children up to the border.
Trump changed courtroom rules and asylum rules, so barring migrants from getting asylum by claiming threats from criminal gangs or abusive husbands.
Trump’s border wall blocks the migration of many young men, so minimizing the demand for children to be smuggled via the UAC pipeline.
But Trump’s deputies have still not managed to close two remaining gaps.
Trump’s agencies and foreign countries are blocking and deporting many of the “extra-continentals” migrants from African and Asia. The inflow continues partly because the illegal migrants can hide among the legally admitted populations of Chinese, Indian, and Africans, but also because China and other countries block the repatriation of their migrants.
Also, Trump and his deputies have yet to reduce the large populations of visa workers from China and India. The population of roughly 1.3 million white-collar workers includes many H-1Bs, as well as a large population of migrants with B-1 visas who arrive legally and then work illegally. Business groups are fighting strongly to preserve this inflow because the extra workers reduce salaries for American graduates and also allow U.S. executives to sideline U.S. professionals.
The inflow of India's visa-workers creates a huge 'bonded labor' workforce that empowers Fortune 500 CEOs & shrivels professionalism, say US/India tech-professionals. "We’ve lost our competitive, innovative advantage because of it," says US manager. #H1Bhttps://t.co/EgkcLsf4Xm
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