President Joe Biden delivers remarks on the COVID-19 response and the state of vaccinations in the South Court Auditorium at the White House complex in Washington, on March 29, 2021. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images) Executive Branch
As President Joe Biden is slated to unveil a sweeping infrastructure bill Wednesday, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said that the way it would be funded—via an increase in taxes—is “dangerously misguided.”
“Properly done, a major investment in infrastructure today is an investment in the future, and like a new home, should be paid for over time—say 30 years—by the users who benefit from the investment,” the lobbying group said. “We strongly oppose the general tax increases proposed by the administration which will slow the economic recovery and make the U.S. less competitive globally—the exact opposite of the goals of the infrastructure plan.”
Biden’s proposal, which is known as the American Jobs Plan, will be revealed Wednesday in Pittsburgh. Details of the plan have been leaked to the press in recent days, including investments in “green” energy sources, more Internet access, more highways, and housing. A tax increase would target corporations.
“The hard work of achieving bipartisan consensus is the best and only realistic path to enactment of historic infrastructure legislation,” the Chamber of Commerce said. “While today’s action, coupled with continued efforts to find consensus from bipartisan groups in both the House and Senate is encouraging and a start in a long process, we urge both Democrats and Republicans to avoid further partisan gridlock and provide productive solutions to get an infrastructure bill passed this year.”
The White House released a fact sheet on the plan Wednesday morning.
“Alongside his American Jobs Plan, President Biden is releasing a Made in America Tax Plan to make sure corporations pay their fair share in taxes and encourage job creation at home,” the White House said. It added: “Another study found that the average corporation paid just 8 percent in taxes. President Biden believes that profitable corporations should not be able to get away with paying little or no tax by shifting jobs and profits overseas. President Biden’s plan will reward investment at home, stop profit shifting, and ensure other nations won’t gain a competitive edge by becoming tax havens.”
The corporate tax rate lowered from 35 percent to 21 percent under former President Donald Trump by Republicans who said it would help businesses grow and spur job creation efforts.
Another change would apply a new tax on foreign subsidiaries of American companies.
“Right now, the tax code rewards U.S. multinational corporations that shift profits and jobs overseas with a tax exemption for the first ten percent return on foreign assets, and the rest is taxed at half the domestic tax rate,” the White House fact sheet stated.
The Epoch Times has contacted the White House for comment.
Quick report on the last meeting …. but first a disclaimer of sorts. Personally I have been quite torn the last year or so because of the complete failure of “the system” to provide public information regarding the hi-jacking and reconfiguration of our former surface water treatment plant into a subsidized groundwater substitution facility to circumvent restrictions in water license 11395 for LAFCO annexed property owners and my sincere appreciation and admiration for current GM McGowan for tackling many issues that have languished for proper attention for decades due to the past mismanagement and misdirection of this CALIFORNIA SPECIAL DISTRICT into further violations of the water license. All in the pursuit of a massive subsidized special benefit “blended” water service for third party LAFCO annexed land owners through the intentional fabrication of government documents to achieve the goals for this proposed “foothill water empire” funded by the mandatory LDPCSD customers of the victimized residential subdivision and misused grant money. But I digress.
Although impressed with, and thankful for, the GM’s addressing long overdue issues (most having to do with proper maintenance of facilities and equipment) I am never-the-less still suspicious of the connection with the Merced Irrigation District which worked with former GM Peter Kampa and his board……..
(twice “former GM” is the kicker to the story as the board that re-hired Kampa in 2014 knew exactly what they were paying for and expected Kampa to do….. supply water to properties our district had no legal duty or moral obligation to provide water service that Kampa had set up 20 years ago without board permission or approval)
…….and McGowan’s clear intention of following Kampa’s 20 year involvement with the CSDA (California Special Districts Association) which only assisted Peter Kampa with the exploitation of our special district for third party special interests of LAFCO annexed property. Just one big state lobbying organization assisting another State entity which fails to follow its own regulations and goals for the public good. Old news yeah? Oh well, just wanted to clarify that GM McGowan appears to be getting long over due and necessary work done. What the trade off is, if any, I don’t know but will always question ANYTHING INVOLVED WITH PETER KAMPA – especially his outrageously WRONG fabricated maps and documents! Gosh, sense any pressured thought patterns here? lol Anyway, here’s the meeting with my blah, blah, blah.
Recording begins with continuing discussion about the weather and some snow fall. President Dan Hankemeier started to open the meeting at 1:02PM at which time the Board Secretary reminded him to announce who was present: President: Dan Monastadt (sp?) a guest speaker. The secretary explained she meant district officials… Oh. 3 directors present Danny, and …….(couldn’t recall name) Emery Ross……. Pledge of allegiance. Emery Ross raises a point of order in regards to the weather and meeting agenda…. President, any public comment? Secretary announced Director Sperry had just arrived, pubic comment regarding selling solar services to the district again…. speaker wanted board to instruct GM to provide district power use information for his presentation in the future so as to demonstrate (perhaps next month) how much the district could save in electric costs going with his solar proposal.
Auditor presentation – records were very organized. Opinion only on financial statements. Page by page explanation of the report. 1: 12PM Director Warren arrives. Presiding officer’s report: president nothing to report. GM Report: Water rate increase postponed until the COVID19 matter is more secure. USDA intake grant…planning done, moving forward. Grant discussion, denied CAL OES grant, barge is complete (mostly paid for) waiting to find out where and how much for storage fee. The original cost of $60,000 turned into $100,000+ …..Removed motor for security during eventual storage. Ground wells working. State required PH monitoring system being installed. Looking for a used hydraulic valve turning tool. If valves are not exercised routinely they will seize up in time. Fire hydrants are all working. Fencing company working on tank sites. All equipment working properly. District asphalt damage being caused by the garbage truck making turns within compound. Site inspection of all wells. Audit was good. Replacing meters with manual read meters. approximately 200 manual read meters. (Meter “tricks” being used by customers?) Replacing AMCO with Badger meters.
QUESTIONABLE WATER SERVICE SHUTOFFS REQUESTED BY MARIPOSA COUNTY Discussion between GM and county regarding illegal cultivation sites. Shutting off water to properties with illegal grows. These are not residential properties, but vacant lots with a meter. Mariposa County is going after the property owners because they do not have building permits. Johnson asked what the difference was with planting regular trees in preparation for future construction, will that now be illegal? Does the county have a legal right to demand water shut off to such properties which are legally paying their water bill? Going to check with our attorney for potential liability issues. Warren stated they needed an ordinance by the county to that effect.
Apparently Director Emery Ross was involved with one of the illegal grows while searching for some stray cows on another property and stated the people that were there ran away and probably won’t come back. He said it was legal to have 26 plants per person in the county but not thousands (and thousands). Johnson suggested the county might be overstepping their authority and the district should make sure there is no liability for us. GM was only trying to work with the county on good terms. Crops already cut and burned. SECRETARY SUGGESTED GOING BACK AND APPROVING THE AUDIT RESOLUTION Secretary suggested backing up to page 18 in the audit report for the motion to accept the audit. (Moved to next item without accepting the audit report,.) Unanimous approval. Discussion regarding the 42 service requests – changing meters, re-reads, final reads on meter where the property sold, etc. Hazard mitigation grant paperwork (emergency preparedness) apparently confused and the appropriate entity did not have the correct signed documents. GM working to clarify the information with the appropriate entities. Discussion regarding MARTEK Company and some confrontation that had occurred with owner/employee. ??? Water loss is down and likely the result of multiple issues being corrected. 15% or less is the industry standard for water loss. CONSENT AGENDA The Board President questioned Page 11 and how the purchase of water could be a negative number? Discussion….. Secretary questioned whether it was a prior mistake by MID which had been acknowledged and corrected. (A billing had been sent to the wrong address.) PG&E had also been paid for the $20,000 claim for damages but due to insufficient funds a difficulty developed there and a check had to be reissued……) Consent Agenda approved, unanimous. DISCUSSION OF ALAMO VALVE, PAGE 47 Intake was the priority at the time but now the Alamo valve can be addressed and repaired (only 6 feet of water can be stored in that tank because of this malfunctioning valve) Need to replace the pilot and main valve. Main valve has a large leak….15 years leaking! (Years of green healthy weeds during the summer is a clue) Gravity vs hydromatic valves. GM recommends accepting a proposed remedy (repair/replacement) for the valves. Passed unanimous. 4-6 weeks after ordering parts and a report will be made to the board. DISTRICT FAILURE Pump was leaking – for years and years… valve does not work now due to lack of maintenance…. no money set aside for repairs…. A director asked is this site inspected on a regular basis? Why just now reported by a concerned citizen? GM advised the citizen stated he has told staff about this leak for years. GM advised now he was aware of the problem he would address the situation. GM says there is a nice flow running from the back side. South Arbolada – bottom of the hill. Not by the tank. Johnson asked what was the point of “site inspections” if such long time leaks are not being reported for maintenance? WHy have inspections? Just wait for something to stop working. GM said every site is unique and a check list cannot cover everything. Only way to know if a valve was nonoperational is to shut down the system and check it to determine status. Why not take photos for a current record of each site for comparison purposes? Green weeds are a clue. Should have been corrected 10 years ago. Why is there always a “spring” near our tank? Test for chlorine in the “spring water”. Unanimous approval for expense that is not in budget, approximately $7,000. PLANT SEPTIC UPGRADES When GM first came here he was told leach field had been crushed and was backing up. Distribution boxes cleaned, company said the septic tank had never been cleaned, – cleaned and hydro flushed, one of the distribution boxes was completely clogged. Removed a lot of sludge (very nasty stuff). No obstructions according to camera inspection which is good news. If continued problems GM will have another leach line added. Emphasized once again, that all of this was caused by a lack of routine maintenance. Peculation was not working at all due to sludge buildup over the years. Finally taken care of and will be maintained in the future.
LEW VIEW AGAIN: THE DISTRICT’S FOCUS FOR DECADES WAS ON ILLEGALLY EXPANDING WATER SERVICE OUTSIDE THE MERCED IRRIGATION DISTRICT PLACE OF USE FOR MERCED RIVER WATER PER WATER LICENSE 11395 RATHER THAN MAINTAINING OUR SURFACE WATER TREATMENT PLANT FOR THE SUBDIVISION AND GOLF COURSE FOR WHICH IT WAS DESIGNED, CONSTRUCTED AND INTENDED TO SERVE. THE WATER PLANT WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO SERVE THE ENTIRE REGION BASED ON TUOLUMNE AND MARIPOSA COUNTY LAFCO ANNEXATIONS INTO A CALIFORNIA SPECIAL DISTRICT THAT COULD NOT LEGALLY PROVIDE THE NECESSARY WATER FOR ALL THE LAFCO APPROVED AND PROPOSED NEW DEVELOPMENTS. (SEVERAL PROPOSED RESIDENTIAL SUBDIVISIONS – WITH ONE APPARENTLY CONCEALED FROM THE PUBLIC VIEW FOR OVER TWENTY YEARS WHICH LAFCO NOW CLAIMS WAS ANNEXED IN 1995 WHEN KAMPA WAS HERE THE FIRST TIME. WHAT?????)
THE LAST PROP 218 WAS SUPPOSED TO SAVE OUR DISTRICT FROM BANKRUPTCY BUT THAT SAVED MILLION IN CASH WAS GIVEN TO PETER KAMPA IN ORDER TO LEVERAGE GOVERNMENT GRANTS WITH WHICH TO DEVELOP GROUNDWATER WELLS IN ORDER TO PROVIDE A BLENDED MERCED RIVER WATER/GROUNDWATER PRODUCT TO CIRCUMVENT WATER LICENSE RESTRICTIONS UNDER 11395 REGARDING WATER OUTSIDE THE SUBDIVISION/GOLF COURSE APPROVED AREAS. OUR SURFACE WATER TREATMENT PLANT WAS ONCE AGAIN IGNORED WHILE ESSENTIALLY RECONFIGURED INTO A GROUNDWATER SUBSTITUTION FACILITY FOR LAFCO ANNEXATIONS INTO THE LDPCSD. PROPERTIES WHICH OUR DISTRICT HAD NO LEGAL DUTY OR MORAL OBLIGATION TO PROVIDE SQUAT – MUCH LESS WATER SERVICE or A GROUNDWATER BLENDED SERVICE. OTHER DEVELOPMENTS ARE FINE BUT THOSE RECEIVING A SPECIAL BENEFIT WATER SERVICE SHOULD PAY FOR THAT SPECIAL BENEFIT! THE ADDITIONAL COSTS SHOULD NOT BE “BLENDED” INTO A SHARED EXPENSE BY THE MAJORITY OF “MANDATORY LDPCSD CUSTOMERS” WHO DO NOT REQUIRE SUCH SPECIAL BENEFIT. YES, ALL THE WHILE THE MANDATORY LDPCSD CUSTOMERS OF THE SUBDIVISION (MR WECS – MERCED RIVER WATER ENTITLED CUSTOMERS) WERE DESIGNED AND DESIGNATED THE PERFECT DEEP POCKET TO SUBSIDIZE THIS FOOTHILL WATER SCAM BY THE SAME LAFCOS THAT FIRST CREATED THE SPECIAL DISTRICT AND THEN BEGAN ANNEXING PROPERTIES FOR DEVELOPMENT OUTSIDE THE WATER LICENSE PERMITTED PLACE OF USE!
NO WONDER VALVES WEREN’T BEING EXERCISED AND PROPERLY MAINTAINED, YEAH? CONSIDER….AND NOW? ONLY A COMMUNIST CHINESE CREATED PANDEMIC PREVENTED CURRENT LDPCSD EFFORTS TO CAJOLE AND CHARGE MR WECS EVEN MORE FOR THE DECADES OF BETRAYAL, DECEIT AND NEGLIGENCE. WHERE IS THE ACCOUNTABILITY? SAME EVERYWHERE? LOOK AT OUR LAST ELECTION AND WHO IS IN THE WHITE HOUSE DESTROYING AMERICA WITH EXECUTIVE ORDERS DEFYING COMMON SENSE. THIS IS CALLED A CLUE FOLKS. NOW BACK TO OUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED NIGHTMARE…….
ITEM E: SEWAGE FACILITY PROPOSED TRANSFER TO LDPCSD BY COUNTY
BUT FIRST….. (lol) WE DON’T WANT THAT LOSER! COUNTY SAYS IT DOESN’T HAVE THE RESOURCES TO RUN IT? HELL THE LDPCSD HASN’T RUN THE WATER COMPANY CORRECTLY IN 40 YEARS BUT THE COUNTY WANTS US TO TAKE ON THEIR SANITATION FACILITY MISTAKES? COUNTY CAN NOT FORCE THIS CHANGED “ROTTEN DEAL” ON THE LDPCSD AND ITS ALREADY VICTIMIZED “MANDATORY CUSTOMERS”. THE COUNTY CREATED THE PROBLEM IT SHOULD BE THE ENTITY TO MANAGE AND DEAL WITH IT.
LOOK WHAT THE COUNTY AND MARIPOSA LAFCO HAS ALREADY DONE TO WATER SERVICE OUTSIDE THE LEGAL PLACE OF USE IN THIS AREA. APPROVING DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS LEFT AND RIGHT WITHOUT FOLLOWING THEIR OWN REGULATIONS FOR DETERMINING THERE WAS EVEN ADEQUATE WATER AVAILABLE! LOOK AT THE 1987 SOI (SPHERE OF INFLUENCE) REPORT REGARDING LIKELY WATER SERVICE EXPANSION IN THE FUTURE. ALL THE FACTS, FIGURES, PROJECTIONS, AND NOT ONE WORD ABOUT THE WATER RESTRICTIONS IN THE WATER LICENSE…..OUR ONLY SOURCE OF WATER! WAS THIS WHOLE SPECIAL DISTRICT ONLY FORMED FOR THE EXPLOITATION POTENTIAL?
LET’S TAKE A LOOK AT THE OFFICIAL COUNTY AND LAFCO ANNEXATION RECORDS…..OOPS!
HELL, PLANNING AND LAFCO ANNEXATION RECORDS for this area HAVE BEEN CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC FOR OVER A YEAR NOW COMING UP ON TWO YEARS …. WHY? GOSH. KIND OF SOUNDS LIKE OUR LAST 2020 ELECTION IN SOME RESPECTS.
THE DEMOCRAT LEFT CALLS IT A “BIG LIE” THAT THE ELECTION WAS RIGGED AND STOLEN – BUT WHAT TRUTH IS ACTUALLY LEAKING OUT? THEN LEFTIST SOCIAL MEDIA DE-PLATFORMS THOSE WHO SPEAK OUT AGAINST THE ELECTION CORRUPTION TO “CANCEL THE OBJECTING VOICE” WHEREAS MARIPOSA COUNTY AND ITS LAFCO “STRONG ARM” SIMPLY CLOSE THE RECORDS OF THEIR CULPABILITY WHILE TRYING TO FORCE YET ANOTHER LOSER LOCAL FACILITY ON THE ALREADY VICTIMIZED PROPERTY OWNERS WITHIN THE LAKE DON PEDRO SUBDIVISION.
THIS “NEW SEPTIC FACILITY” THAT MARIPOSA COUNTY WANTS THE LDPCSD TO TAKE OVER WAS BUILT OUTSIDE THE DISTRICT BOUNDARY (AND MID WL11395 PLACE OF USE FOR MERCED RIVER WATER) SO IT MUST BE FURNISHED EXPENSIVE GROUNDWATER SUBSTITUTION TO FUNCTION. FROM WHERE IS THAT WATER PRODUCED? FROM OUR GROUNDWATER WELLS THAT WERE SUPPOSEDLY DEVELOPED WITH GRANT MONEY INTENDED TO ASSIST EXISTING CUSTOMERS DURING AN EMERGENCY DROUGHT AND WAS PROVIDED WITH THE EXPLICIT PROHIBITION OF CREATING NEW SERVICE CONNECTIONS!
MR WECS HAVE BEEN BETRAYED SINCE THE FORMATION OF THE LDPCSD IN 1980 AND IT CONTINUES INTO 2021! OPEN THE RECORDS AND LET’S SEE HOW MARIPOSA AND TUOLUMNE COUNTIES CREATED THIS ENTIRE NIGHTMARE AND PASSED ON THE EXPENSES TO UNSUSPECTING MR WECS! (JUST LIKE TRADITIONAL DEMOCRAT “BIG GOVERNMENT” PRETENDS TO HELP WHEN ACTUALLY ONLY THROWING GOOD MONEY AFTER BAD AND TAXING THE ALREADY VICTIMIZED CITIZENS MORE TO COVER THE GOVERNMENT’S SPECIAL INTEREST IRRESPONSIBILITY AND FROLICS AND DEPARTURES FROM COMMON SENSE. KAMPA? BIDEN? WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE? ONLY THE SCALE OF DUPLICITY!) ITEM F: DROUGHT PLAN DISCUSSION Danny Johnson: pro active? or wait and see? …. CREATE more wells? (Good grief.) Director Emery Ross suggested a policy of NO LAWNS due to the potential for water shortage…. unreal coming from a commercial cattle rancher who has been supplying treated water intended for domestic residential consumption to HIS bovines for over twenty years. Open Meeting adjourned: 2:52 CLOSED SESSION – 3:20 CLOSED SESSION REPORT OUT: nothing to report
A federal appeals court on March 26 reversed a lower court decision, ruling that an Ohio professor’s First Amendment rights may have been violated when his university tried forcing him to refer to a biological male student using female pronouns.
A three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said philosophy professor Nicholas Meriwether “has plausibly alleged that Shawnee State violated his First Amendment rights by compelling his speech or silence and casting a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom.”
Shawnee State University, in Ohio, has employed Meriwether for 25 years.
The case centers around a 2016 rule change that requires faculty to refer to students by their “preferred pronoun[s].”
When Meriwether, a Christian, sought clarification on the rule, a university official claimed that Christians are “primarily motivated out of fear” and should be “banned from teaching courses regarding that religion.” She also said she thought even the “presence of religion in higher education is counterproductive.”
Two years later, on the first day of his class, Meriwether was using the Socratic method to lead a discussion and addressed, as he normally does, students using gender references like “Mr.” He called one person “sir,” not knowing the biological male identifies as a female.
After class, the individual approached Meriwether and demanded the professor refer to him as a she and use feminine titles and pronouns. Meriwether said he wasn’t sure he could and was threatened in response, according to court filings.
The situation escalated as various officials got involved. The professor’s attempt to reach a compromise—he offered to use the preferred pronoun, but would place a disclaimer in his syllabus noting that he was doing so under compulsion—was rejected, and he was ultimately reprimanded, receiving a written warning. A union appeal failed, dismissed by Provost Jeffrey Bauer, who allegedly “openly laughed” when the union representative tried to explain why Meriwether felt conflicted because of his faith.
Circuit Judge Amul Thapar, a George W. Bush nominee, writing for the appeals court panel, said that not only had the professor plausibly alleged a First Amendment violation, it violated his religious rights guaranteed in the free exercise clause.
Officials at the university exhibited hostility to Meriwether’s religious beliefs, and “irregularities in the university’s adjudication and investigation processes permit a plausible inference of non-neutrality,” Thapar wrote.
The panel also affirmed the lower court’s ruling in several other claims that the professor had made. The case was remanded to the lower court with instructions to conduct further proceedings consistent with the new ruling.
The university didn’t immediately respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.
John Bursch, senior counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, who represented Meriwether, said in a statement that “nobody should be forced to contradict their core beliefs just to keep their job.”
“We are very pleased that the 6th Circuit affirmed the constitutional right of public university professors to speak and lead discussions, even on hotly contested issues. The freedoms of speech and religion must be vigorously protected if universities are to remain places where ideas can be debated and learning can take place,” he said.
Former President Donald Trump’s social media platform will debut in three to four months, according to Corey Lewandowski, a former senior adviser with Trump’s 2020 campaign.
Lewandowski, in an interview with Newsmax aired on March 27, described the platform as “an interactive communication tool whereby the president is going to be able to post things that people will be able to report and communicate directly with him.
“What we’ve seen from Big Tech and the cancel culture is if you don’t agree with their philosophy, they’re going to cancel you, and we’re going to have a platform where the president’s message of America First is going to be able to be put out to everybody and there’ll be an opportunity for other people to weigh in and communicate in a free format without fear of reprisal or being canceled,” he said.
The new platform won’t rely on Amazon or Amazon servers, Lewandowski said in response to a question on what is being done to insulate Trump’s social media from suffering the same fate as Parler. That site had billed itself as a free-speech alternative to Twitter before it was simultaneously deplatformed by Amazon, Apple, and Google.
“It’s going to be built completely from scratch, from the ground up, and that’s going to give him the opportunity to control not only the distribution of it but also who participates in it,” Lewandowski said.
Lewandowski said that the former president has been working on the platform for “a long time.”
Jason Miller, a current Trump adviser, said last week that the president will soon set up a platform that will “completely redefine the game” and attract “tens of millions” of users.
Trump was banned from Twitter and Facebook following the Jan. 6 incident at the U.S. Capitol, cutting a direct line of communication between the commander-in-chief and tens of millions of his followers. Both companies alleged that the president’s messages could incite violence. The U.S. Congress later exonerated Trump on similar charges brought by Democrats.
Since then, a number of world leaders have expressed concern over the censorship. Twitter has said that its ban is permanent, while Facebook is deliberating whether to restore access to the former president.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) recently said he was “uncomfortable” with Twitter removing Trump and cautioned that people with a different view from Trump’s could be banned as well.
“Bernie Sanders, and I don’t agree with him very often, but he’s absolutely right. When you can cancel the president of the United States, the leader of the free world, from issuing First-Amendment rights and opinions then you can cancel anybody,” Lewandowski said. “Big Tech is out of control. They’re out of line.”
Kaylee Samantha, 7, who said she came alone from Mexico, gets off of a small inflatable raft onto U.S. soil after being delivered by a smuggler in Roma, Texas, on March 24, 2021. (Dario Lopez-Mills/AP Photo) Immigration & Border Security
The number of immigrant children in U.S. custody grew by over 1,500 in just two days, according to newly released federal data.
Just over 18,000 minors who illegally crossed the southern border of the United States without a parent or guardian were in the custody of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) or the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), as of March 25.
Roughly 5,500 were in CBP custody. That’s where children go initially after being apprehended, before being transferred to HHS.
The number of children in U.S. custody was 16,513 as of March 23.
America is dealing with a surge in illegal border crossings, as well as a sharp increase in the number of young immigrants arriving without responsible adults. Experts have told The Epoch Times that the rise is due to President Joe Biden rolling back key Trump-era policies, such as stopping the policy of sending unaccompanied minors back to their home countries.
“It’s driven by Biden’s rhetoric, his rollback of Trump administration restrictions at the border,” Andrew Arthur, resident fellow in law and policy for the Center for Immigration Studies, told The Epoch Times earlier this month.
“I think the real question is, why are they doing this?” added James Carafano, vice president of the Heritage Foundation’s Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute, in a recent interview. “And you could argue it’s actually a deliberate policy that they’re actually seeking to attract illegal aliens into the United States.”
To deal with the influx in minors, the administration has reached deals to convert three convention centers into holding facilities and opened at least five other locations to house the aliens.
A group of illegal aliens is apprehended by Border Patrol after crossing from Mexico into Yuma, Ariz., on April 12, 2019. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
The 12,551 children in HHS care is the most since June 2019, the tail end of another surge. The number dipped as low as 834 last year, after the Trump administration utilized Title 42 to expel the majority of immigrants because they might be carrying the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes COVID-19.
Under U.S. law, CBP is supposed to transfer immigrant children to HHS within 72 hours of their apprehension.
Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) said Friday during an MSNBC appearance that he’s been told some young girls have been at the CBP’s Donna, Texas, holding facility for more than 20 days.
“I asked HHS why, and they said ‘well, we just don’t have the capacity now to take the young girls.’ They take, for example, in Carrizo Springs, young boys from ages 13 and 17,” he said. “They are scrambling at HHS to find a place, a center, so they can take the young girls there.”
White House officials have repeatedly said that immigrants shouldn’t travel to the border but insisted that their policy of not fully utilizing Title 42 powers is more humane than that of the previous administration.
Biden’s “focus is on moving these kids out of these Border Patrol facilities and making sure it’s done in a way that keeps them safe and keeps everyone safe,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters in Washington Friday.
“We’ve dealt with this before. It is often seasonal. It is often cyclical,” she added.
U.S. Attorney John Durham speaks to reporters on the steps of U.S. District Court in New Haven, Conn., on April 25, 2006. (Bob Child/AP Photo) Crossfire Hurricane
Former President Donald Trump on March 26 questioned the progress of the investigation by special counsel John Durham into the origins of the Russia investigation and the conduct of the government officials involved.
“Where Durham? Is he a living, breathing human being? Will there ever be a Durham report?” Trump wrote in a statement released by his office.
Durham is purportedly investigating a broad range of issues tied to the surveillance of the Trump campaign by the FBI. The investigation has so far led to the sentencing of a former FBI attorney who forged an email used in the process of obtaining a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
The FBI spied on Page over the course of a year beginning in October 2016. An investigation by the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General (OIG) determined that the four FISA applications used to surveil Page contained 17 major errors and omissions implicating every official involved in the process, including then-FBI Director James Comey, then-Acting Director Andrew McCabe, and then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, among many others.
Former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page in New York on Aug. 21, 2020. (Brendon Fallon/The Epoch Times)
The findings by the OIG prompted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to issue a severe rebuke to the FBI, questioning why the bureau should ever be trusted with surveillance applications. The FBI has since committed to major reforms in how it vets the information used in FISA applications.
A dossier of unverified claims about Trump played a major role in the FBI’s decision to obtain the first FISA warrant on Page. All of the FISA applications contained claims from the dossier without disclosing that it was composed by a former foreign spy and paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. The bureau also failed to disclose that the dossier’s author, former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, had an overt bias against Trump and was determined to prevent Trump’s election in 2016.
Steele’s sentiments didn’t differ much from some of the key FBI officials running the investigation of the Trump campaign, codenamed Crossfire Hurricane. The agent who opened and led the investigation, Peter Strzok, exchanged messages with his extramarital mistress at the FBI, attorney Lisa Page, expressing hatred for Trump and disdain for his supporters. Strzok spoke about stopping Trump from becoming president, discussed an “insurance policy” in the unlikely event Trump was elected president and mused about impeachment around the time he joined then-special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe.
More than a dozen top FBI and Justice Department officials involved in Crossfire Hurricane have either resigned or been fired.
The Epoch Times sent Durham a request for comment.
Dr. Bandy Lee, who previously worked as an affiliated faculty member in the psychiatry department of Yale’s medical school, on Monday filed a First Amendment lawsuit against the university, reported student newspaper the Yale Daily News. She demands reinstatement and compensation for damages, including “economic losses” and “emotional distress.”
Lee has been questioning the mental health of Trump since 2017, when she became the editor of “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” a New York Times best seller in which a group of 27 medical professionals claimed that Trump was mentally unfit for his job. The book caused controversy at the time, since it broke a long-standing ethical standard known as the “Goldwater Rule,” which states that psychiatrists should never provide professional opinions in the media about public figures they have not personally examined.
In 2018, Lee was called by House Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) to a congressional hearing, where she laid out to lawmakers why she believed Trump had became mentally unstable to the point that he should be involuntarily committed to a hospital mental health program.
The lawsuit, however, mostly centers around Lee’s social media speech. According to court filings obtained by the Yale Daily News, Lee is alleging that Yale fired her in response to a Twitter post she made in January 2020, which characterized “just about all” of Trump supporters as suffering from “shared psychosis” and said that Alan Dershowitz, a lawyer on Trump’s legal team, had “wholly taken on Trump’s symptoms by contagion.”
Dershowitz refuted Lee’s claim, and wrote an email to Yale administrators over the psychiatry professor’s breaking of the Goldwater Rule and demanding she be disciplined.
“Dr. Bandy Lee of the Yale Medical School has publicly ‘diagnosed’ me as ‘psychotic,’ based on my legal and political views, and without ever examining or even meeting me,” Dershowitz wrote in the letter. “This constitutes a serious violation of the ethics rules of the American Psychiatric Association. I am formally asking that association to discipline Dr. Lee. By this email, I also formally ask Yale University, Yale Law School and its medical school to determine whether Dr. Lee violated any of its rules.”
According to court documents, Dershowitz’s complaint led the the psychiatry department leadership to warn Lee that she should stop making similar public statements, otherwise the department “would be compelled to terminate [her] teaching role.” Lee continued to write on Twitter about Trump’s mental stability even after the official warning.
Lee was fired in September 2020, with a psychiatry department letter explaining that the decision was mainly due to her “clinical judgement and professionalism,” rather than the “political content” of her statements.
“I have done this with a heavy heart, only because Yale refused all my requests for a discussion, much as the American Psychiatric Association has done,” Lee wrote in an email to the Yale Daily News. “I love Yale, my alma mater, as I love my country, but we are falling into a dangerous culture of self-censorship and compliance with authority at all cost.”
Yale University didn’t immediately respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comments.
Unaccompanied minors are loaded into a U.S. Border Patrol transport van after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, in Hildalgo, Texas, on March 25, 2021. (John Moore/Getty Images) Executive Branch
President Joe Biden’s administration is going to use a third convention center to house illegal immigrant youth.
The Freeman Expo Center in San Antonio is being converted to an Emergency Intake Center for children who cross the southern border without their parents.
Up to 2,400 kids can be housed at the facility, according to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and its Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).
“The Emergency Intake Site will provide ORR with needed capacity to accept children from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) into its care where they can be safely processed, cared for and either released to a sponsor or transferred to an appropriate ORR shelter for longer-term care. The Emergency Intake Site is intended for use as a temporary measure,” the agency said in a statement obtained by The Epoch Times.
The administration has already reached deals to house up to 1,400 immigrant youth in the San Diego Convention Center and up to 2,300 youth in the Kay Bailey Hutchinson Convention Center in Dallas.
Additionally, officials have opened at least five other locations to hold the children, and the Pentagon accepted requests to keep thousands of youth at Fort Bliss and another several hundred at Joint Base San Antonio Lackland. In total, ORR operates over 200 facilities and programs in 22 states. There’s also a plan to send illegal immigrant families to hotels, with taxpayers footing the bill.
Bexar County’s manager didn’t immediately return an inquiry. Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff, asked about facilities possibly being used to house immigrants, told reporters on Tuesday that no agreement had been reached yet.
“We do have facilities there. They’re climate control. They’re large. But we are talking about, how will we handle security? Who would be the food provider, who will actually be managing the place? It’d be pretty much our job to, if we do it, to coordinate with them and to make the space available, but no agreements been reached yet. We’re just now talking about a possible contract,” he said.
The United States saw a jump in illegal border crossings in February, including an increase of over 3,600 unaccompanied minors from the month before. Officials have struggled to deal with the increase, with overcrowded conditions in Border Patrol facilities exposed through leaked photographs.
An overflow facility in Donna, Texas, in an undated photo. (Courtesy of Rep. Henry Cuellar’s office)
Biden’s administration stopped expelling youth who cross into the country, a reversal of the Trump era utilization of Title 42 powers to send them back to their home countries. The powers are used in a bid to prevent COVID-19 from entering the country through immigrants.
Biden told reporters in Washington that under the previous administration, unaccompanied children would “starve to death” after being expelled from the country.
“No previous administration did that either, except Trump. I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to do it,” he added.
Stephen Miller, a top immigration adviser to Trump, called the accusation “spectacularly false” and “a grave smear on our border agents.”
Illegal border crossers were returned to Mexico and unaccompanied youth were returned to their countries of origin to be reunited with their families, Miller wrote on Twitter.
“This humane policy from President Trump brought unaccompanied minor numbers to record lows. Biden’s disastrous decision to exempt minors from Title 42, and to stop the at-home reunification process in favor of domestic resettlement, single-handedly created this crisis,” he wrote.
A reporter had referenced a 9-year-old boy who claimed to have traveled without adults to the United States from Honduras. The reporter said they reached the boy’s mother by phone. She said she sent her son to America because she believed Biden’s administration isn’t deporting unaccompanied minors.
Biden asserted some youth will ultimately be deported. “The judgment has to be made whether or not—and in this young man’s case, he has a mom at home; there’s an overwhelming reason why he’d be put in a plane and flown back to his mom,” he said.
People should be concerned about the Green New Deal because it includes the most radical policies that can transform the economy into a socialist one and allow the government to tighten control over society, according to Hayden Ludwig, Senior Investigative Researcher at the Capital Research Center.
“The Green New Deal, I would say, has nothing to do with climate change, it has nothing to do with global warming, the environment. Period. It’s everything to do with remaking the entire United States in the radical left’s own image,” Ludwig told The Epoch Times’ “Crossroads” program.
Saikat Chakrabarti, former chief of staff to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), told The Washington Post in 2019, “The interesting thing about the Green New Deal … is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all. … we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”
A campaign organizer for Friends of the Earth stated at a United Nations conference, “A climate change response must have at its heart a redistribution of wealth and resources,” according to Christopher Horner’s book “Red Hot Lies.”
The Democrats in the House of Representatives proposed an infrastructure package that would include roughly $1 trillion for roads, bridges, rail lines, electrical vehicle charging stations, and the cellular network, among other items. The stated goal is to facilitate the shift to cleaner energy while improving economic competitiveness.
A second component of the package would propose benefits for workers, including free community college, universal pre-kindergarten, and paid family leave.
“They published a proposal that was a sprawling proposal that pretended to be a highway bill. But it was really just a multi-thousand-page cousin of the Green New Deal,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said about the proposed package.
“We’re hearing the next few months might bring a so-called ‘infrastructure’ proposal that may actually be a Trojan horse for massive tax hikes and other job-killing left-wing policies,” McConnell said.
“If you read the text of [the Green New Deal] from a few years ago you’ll find references, fig leaves, to global warming that immediately jump into things they really want to talk about,” Ludwig said. “And that’s about ‘combating rising income inequality,’ and ‘environmental justice’, which really is a way to say ‘reparations to black and brown communities because they’ve been systematically oppressed by white communities’ and this has nothing to do with the environment.”
Ludwig explained that “environmental justice” is the Marxist concept of oppressor and oppressed applied to global warming. “Rich polluters, right, those are people who own houses, people who own multiple cars, who are by the nature of their pollution, oppressing the oppressed people, and these are poor people who live in poor communities, who are ethnic minorities,” he said. This way “any sort of sweeping redistribution, reparations agenda [can be justified] by pointing out it’s all climate-related,” Ludwig added.
Creating conflict between “the oppressor” and “the oppressed” is at the core of Marxist doctrine. “Marxists basically see the world in terms of one oppressor class oppressing an oppressed class and that used to be the capitalist class oppressing the proletariat, the labor class,” Ludwig said. “That didn’t really work out.”
The same dichotomy of oppressor and oppressed was applied to races like white people and black people or other non-white people, or men and women, Ludwig said.
Environmentalism Leads to Population Control
Environmentalists hold a protest march from the U.S. Capitol in Washington on April 29, 2017. (Astrid Riecken/Getty Images)
Ludwig said that “true environmentalism leads to population control.” He said that he drew this conclusion after tracing “the origins of environmentalism back to the eugenics movement and the pro-abortion movement—in short, the population control movement of the 20th century.”
The Green New Deal allows the federal government to justify policies that will control how people travel, how they eat, and how many children they have, Ludwig said. “That’s why this is so dangerous. It’s an open-ended mandate for the most radical transformation we’ve ever seen proposed.”
“There’s a reason, I think, why the Democratic Party is pushing so much radical environmental policy right now, as opposed to anything else, like Medicare For All, and my theory is that they realize that this is the fastest way to get the amount of power that they want over people’s lives,” he added. “If you can sell somebody on, ‘If you don’t pass this measure, you die, the whole world goes up in smoke,’ so to speak—if you can pass that, you can justify whatever you want.”
Traditional socialism, like in China, seeks power over everything people do and “environmentalism is the only ideology I know of that goes even more beyond that; it gives the government power of your very genes, over what you get to breathe out—I mean, cellular-level kind of control,” Ludwig said. “It’s the most extreme thing we’ve ever seen,”
Ludwig cited filmmaker and activist Michael Moore, who in his 2019 documentary “Planet of the Humans” pointed out that if one seriously considers saving the planet through stopping climate change, yet excludes carbon-free nuclear power as an option, as many environmentalists have, “then what you’re left with is minimizing the number of humans left on the planet,” Ludwig said. “There’s no other way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions short of massive population control schemes.”
“We have to be wary of these things because they will ultimately end in controlling how many children you can have,” Ludwig said, noting there are organizations that have been advocating these policies since the 1960s, such as Population Connection.
Population Connection was founded in 1968 under the name of Zero Population Growth (ZPG) with a mission to “raise public awareness of the link between population growth and environmental degradation and, in turn, encourage people to have smaller families” limited to two children, according to its website.
The organization changed its name in 2002, but its “mission never changed,” the website states. The name change allowed the organization to get access to Capitol Hill, public schools, and attract younger members and supporters.
Originally ZPG targeted the white middle class because “the white middle-class majority use up more than their share of resources and do more than their share of polluting,” Paul Ehrlich, Bing Professor Emeritus of Population Studies at Stanford University wrote in 1970 in the ZPG National Reporter. Later, the organization decided to extend its message to “the rich, the poor, and the middle class.”
In February, Reps. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), with support from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I- Vt.), introduced The National Climate Emergency Act, which grants the president “enormous ability to respond to an emergency,” Ludwig wrote for Capital Research Center.
In January, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told MSNBC: “I think it might be a good idea for President Biden to declare a climate emergency. Then he can do many, many things under the emergency powers of the president that wouldn’t have to go through, that he could do without legislation.”
Solar panels are mounted atop the roof of the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles, Calif. on Sept. 5, 2018. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
Renewable energy sources such as wind turbines or solar panel arrays require an enormous amount of land, Ludwig said, adding that applying them on a large scale could lead to the total deforestation of the United States.
Wind turbines need foundations built of hundreds of tons of concrete embedded very deep into the earth, tons of steel, and tons of copper wiring, some of which need to be replaced after a decade and are not easily recycled, Ludwig said. “Things that are supposed to be saving the planet, in reality, they’re just polluting the planet with all sorts of excess materials, resources that could have been better used elsewhere.”
Renewable sources of energy such as wind power and solar power are notoriously unreliable because there are times when the sun does not shine or the wind does not blow, Ludwig said. Therefore any electrical power grid which uses solar or wind power needs to include steady reliable forms of energy such as nuclear power, natural gas, oil, or coal.
There is no technology so far that will allow the storing on a mass scale of the energy produced from intermittent sources, Ludwig said.
The electrical grid does not work like a light bulb dimmer, which can accept less power and give less. “It’s much more like a computer or television. If you don’t provide exactly the minimum amount of electricity to the grid that’s required at all times it simply shuts off.”
