At Least 34 Years of Immigration Debate, Loopholes and Dollars

Posted on June 15, 2017June 15, 2017 by Denise Simon

The proposed Department of Justice budget request for 2018 for the Executive Office of Immigration is $421.5 million and includes 2600 employees with 831 lawyers. Judges assigned to immigration courts are being hired, shuffled around the country and have in some areas have a five year base backlog.

Image result for immigration court FoxLatino

The Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) was created on January 9, 1983, through an internal Department of Justice (DOJ) reorganization which combined the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA or Board) with the Immigration Judge function previously performed by the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) (now part of the Department of Homeland Security). Besides establishing EOIR as a separate agency within DOJ, this reorganization made the Immigration Courts independent of INS, the agency charged with enforcement of Federal immigration laws. The Office of the Chief Administrative Hearing Officer (OCAHO) was added in 1987. In 2013, EOIR observed its 30th anniversary.

EOIR is also separate from the Office of Special Counsel for Immigration-Related Unfair Employment Practices in the DOJ Civil Rights Division and the Office of Immigration Litigation in the DOJ Civil Division.

As an office within the Department of Justice, EOIR is headed by a Director who reports directly to the Deputy Attorney General. Its headquarters are located in Falls Church, Virginia, about 10 miles from downtown Washington, DC.

New York City Law Creates Loophole To Avoid Deporting Criminal Illegal Immigrants

A New York City law that reclassifies several low-level offenses as non-criminal went into effect Tuesday, allowing citizen offenders to keep clean records and illegal immigrant offenders to potentially avoid deportation.

The law, passed by the city council and signed by Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2016, allows police to classify trial summonses for petty crimes as civil summonses, rather than criminal summonses. The change would affect crimes including public urination and drinking and staying in the park after dark, DNA Info reports. The change critically affects the impact of an executive order from President Donald Trump this spring ordering the deportation of illegal immigrants convicted of crimes.

Under the new law, illegal immigrants convicted of these crimes would receive a civil rather than criminal summons, which frees local law enforcement from the obligation of reporting the offender’s immigration status to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The law would affect cases such as Alejandro Luna, a former gang member and an illegal immigrant caught in central park after dark June 5 who now faces deportation. This would be Luna’s second deportation, the first came in 2006 after he was convicted of home-invasion and robbery. He then illegally entered the country again only to be detained on the June 5 park offense. More here.

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Illegals presently have access to government funded healthcare. However:

The ‘Verify First Act’ by Rep. Lou Barletta (R-PA) would subsequently end American taxpayer-funded money going to illegal aliens in the form of healthcare insurance credits. The plan is being supported by NumbersUSA, a group which has staunchly advocated for Trump’s America First agenda.

“We applaud Rep. Lou Barletta for introducing the Verify First Act to ensure that illegal aliens cannot qualify for taxpayer-funded health insurance credits,” NumbersUSA Peter Robbio said in a statement. “We are grateful that the Ways and Means Committee and House Republican Leadership agreed to move this important bill forward.”

Since Obamacare’s enactment, illegal immigrants received more than $700 million in healthcare insurance credits by 2015, according to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

In Barletta’s plan, healthcare insurance recipients through the American Health Care Act (AHCA) would have their citizenship and immigration statuses verified by the Social Security Administration (SSA) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). More here.

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In part: Traditional sanctuary policies are often described as falling under one of three categories. First, so-called “don’t enforce” policies generally bar the state or local police from assisting federal immigration authorities. Second, “don’t ask” policies generally bar certain state or local officials from inquiring into a person’s immigration status. Third, “don’t tell” policies typically restrict information sharing between state or local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities. This report provides examples of various state and local laws and policies that fall into one of these sanctuary categories. The report also discusses federal measures designed to counteract sanctuary policies. For instance, Section 434 of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) and Section 642 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) were enacted to curb state and local restrictions on information sharing with federal immigration authorities.

State or local measures limiting police participation in immigration enforcement are not a recent phenomenon. Indeed, many of the recent “sanctuary”-type initiatives can be traced back to

activities carried out by churches that provided refuge—or “sanctuary”—to unauthorized Central American aliens fleeing civil unrest in the 1980s.13 A number of states and municipalities issued declarations in support of these churches’ actions.14 Others went further and enacted more substantive measures intended to limit police involvement in federal immigration enforcement activities.15 These measures have included, among other things, restricting state and local police from arresting persons for immigration violations, limiting the sharing of immigration-related information with federal authorities, and barring police from questioning a person about his or her immigration status.16

Still, there is no official definition of a “sanctuary” jurisdiction in federal statute or regulation.17 Broadly speaking, sanctuary jurisdictions are commonly understood to be those that have laws or policies designed to substantially limit involvement in federal immigration enforcement activities,18 though there is not necessarily a consensus as to the meaning of this term.19 Some jurisdictions have self-identified as sanctuary cities.

The federal government’s power to regulate immigration is both substantial and exclusive.23 This authority is derived from multiple sources, including Congress’s Article I powers to “establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization” and “regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states,”24 as well as the federal government’s “inherent power as a sovereign to conduct relations with foreign nations.”

The Supreme Court’s 2012 ruling in Arizona v. United States—which invalidated several Arizona laws designed “to discourage and deter the unlawful entry and presence of aliens and economic activity by persons unlawfully present in the United States”28 as preempted by federal law—reinforced the federal government’s pervasive role in creating and enforcing the nation’s immigration laws.29 “The Government of the United States,” the Court said, “has broad, undoubted power over the subject of immigration and the status of aliens.”30

Yet despite the federal government’s sweeping authority over immigration, the Supreme Court has cautioned that not “every state enactment which in any way deals with aliens is a regulation of immigration and thus per se preempted” by the federal government’s exclusive power over immigration.39 Accordingly, in Arizona the Supreme Court reiterated that, “[i]n preemption analysis, courts should assume that the historic police powers of the States are not superseded unless that was the clear and manifest purpose of Congress.”40 For example, in Chamber of Commerce of the U.S. v. Whiting, the Supreme Court upheld an Arizona law—related to the states’ “broad authority under their police powers to regulate the employment relationship to protect workers within the State”41—that authorized the revocation of licenses held by state employers that knowingly or intentionally employ unauthorized aliens.42 Even though the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) expressly preempted “any State or local law imposing civil or criminal sanctions … upon those who employ, or recruit or refer for a fee for employment, unauthorized aliens,” the Supreme Court concluded that Arizona’s law fit within IRCA’s savings clause for state licensing regimes and thus was not preempted.43

Accordingly, based on current jurisprudence, federal measures that impose direct requirements on state or municipal authorities appear most likely to withstand an anti-commandeering challenge if they (1) are not directed at a state’s regulation of the activities of private parties; and (2) apply to the activities of private parties as well as government actors.

Finally, Congress does not violate the Tenth Amendment when it uses its broad authority to enact legislation for the “general welfare” through its spending power,62 including by placing

conditions on funds distributed to the states that require those accepting the funds to take certain actions that Congress otherwise could not directly compel the states to perform.63 However, Congress cannot impose a financial condition that is “so coercive as to pass the point at which ‘pressure turns into compulsion.’”64 For example, in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, the Supreme Court struck down a provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA) that purported to withhold Medicaid funding to states that did not expand their Medicaid programs.65 The Court found that the financial conditions placed on the states in the ACA (withholding all federal Medicaid funding, which, according to the Court, typically totals about 20% of a state’s entire budget) were akin to “a gun to the head” and thus unlawfully coercive.66

violations of federal immigration law may be criminal or civil in nature, with alien removal understood to be a civil proceeding.71 Some immigration-related conduct potentially constitutes a removable offense and also may be subject to criminal sanction. For example, an alien who knowingly enters the United States without authorization is not only potentially subject to removal,72 but could also be charged with the criminal offense of unlawful entry.73 Other violations of the INA are exclusively criminal or civil in nature. Notably, an alien’s unauthorized immigration status makes him or her removable, but absent additional factors (e.g., having reentered the United States after being formally removed),74 unlawful presence on its own is not a criminal offense.

Some jurisdictions have adopted measures that restrict or bar police officers from making arrests for violations of federal immigration law. In some jurisdictions restrictions prohibit police from detaining or arresting aliens for civil violations of federal immigration law, like unlawful presence.75 Other jurisdictions prohibit police from making arrests for some criminal violations of federal immigration law, like unlawful entry.76 Still others prohibit assisting federal immigration authorities with investigating or arresting persons for civil or criminal violations of U.S. immigration laws.77 And some other jurisdictions have prohibitions that are broader in scope, such as a general statement that immigration enforcement is the province of federal immigration authorities, rather than that of local law enforcement.

Some states and localities have restricted government agencies or employees from sharing information with federal immigration authorities, primarily to prevent federal authorities from using the information to identify and apprehend unlawfully present aliens for removal.88 For instance, some jurisdictions prohibit law enforcement from notifying federal immigration authorities about the release status of incarcerated aliens, unless the alien has been convicted of certain felonies.89 Similarly, other jurisdictions prohibit their employees from disclosing information about an individual’s immigration status unless the alien is suspected of engaging in illegal activity that is separate from unlawful immigration status.90 Some jurisdictions restrict disclosing information except as required by federal law91—sometimes referred to as a “savings clause”—although it appears that the Department of Justice has interpreted those provisions as conflicting with federal information-sharing provisions. For the full summary and context with access to footnotes, go here.

Obamacare Rising Costs Here and Details of New Proposal

Posted on June 1, 2017June 1, 2017 by Denise Simon

Brady: “Obamacare is imploding, and we’re just seeing prices skyrocket”

Our health care system continues to deteriorate under Obamacare. Americans are facing fewer choices, higher costs, and less access to the care they need. Just look at the news from last week:

Premiums have more than doubled under Obamacare. According to data from the previous Administration, millions of Americans are now paying twice as much—on average $3,000 more—for insurance on the individual marketplaces than they were in 2013.
25 more counties will have zero Obamacare insurance options. The last Obamacare insurer in parts of Missouri, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas City, announced its decision to withdraw from Obamacare’s individual marketplace in 2018. That leaves hundreds of thousands more Americans with few, if any, places to turn for coverage.

Describing the urgent need to repeal and replace Obamacare, economist Stephen Moore wrote in The Washington Times:

“If we stay with Obamacare, within a few years tens of millions will have no insurance at all that is even remotely affordable. Aetna, Humana, and other major insurers in just recent months have fled Obamacare. The Titanic has hit the iceberg and it is rapidly sinking … Here’s a prediction: by the end of the year we could have nearly half the country without insurers if this spiral continues.”

House Republicans took action to rescue the American people from this failing law by passing the American Health Care Act, which the Congressional Budget Office confirmed:

Lowers average premiums in the individual marketplace by 4 to 30 percent or more, depending on the state.
Delivers nearly $1 trillion of relief from Obamacare taxes.  
Provides individuals and families freedom to choose a health care plan that is right for them.Obamacare keeps wreaking havoc across the country:
- Major insurers continue to abandon the individual insurance market in different states, making it more difficult for Americans to access coverage.
- Humana and Aetna announced they would withdraw from Obamacare’s individual exchanges entirely in 2018.
- The last remaining insurer in Iowa could exit the exchanges next year—leaving families in 94 out of 99 counties without a single insurer to turn to for their coverage.
- Connecticut, Maryland, New York, Oregon, and Virginia have already projected double-digit premium rate increases for next year.
As Ways and Means Republicans explain, Obamacare’s latest failures underscore the urgent need for the American Health Care Act—legislation passed by the House to fix our broken health care system:

On Delivering Relief from Obamacare

Rep. Diane Black (R-TN), Budget Committee Chairman, in RealClearPolitics: “Obamacare is a disaster, and in Tennessee, its collapse is creating dire circumstances for our citizens. Massive premium increases are making insurance unaffordable for more and more Tennesseans and rising deductibles are making it harder to get health care, even for those who have insurance. Doing nothing is not an option. Congress has taken the first step to keep our promise of repealing and replacing Obamacare.”

Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX), Ways and Means Committee Chairman, in the Conroe Courier: “Although this is just the first step, it is a giant pivot in the right direction so that Americans no longer have to struggle under the $1 trillion in tax hikes brought on by Obamacare. Under the bill, Americans, especially small businesses, will no longer be forced to buy healthcare they do not want or cannot afford.”

Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-IN) in the South Bend Tribune: “Obamacare came with a lot of promises. But these promises were broken, and now many Hoosiers face higher premiums, fewer options, and a collapsing system … [AHCA] rescues Americans from the instability of Obamacare and begins a stable transition to a better system. It will lower premiums and strengthen markets so patients have real options they can actually afford. It will empower patients, not bureaucrats, to make health care decisions.”

On Protecting Patients with Pre-Existing Conditions

Rep. Erik Paulsen (R-MN) in the Minneapolis Star Tribune: “Nothing in this bill would allow an insurance company to deny someone coverage, including to those with a preexisting condition. Nothing would allow an insurance company to cancel someone’s insurance policy should they become sick. Despite claims from opponents, the bill does not classify sexual assault as a preexisting condition. For those who maintain continuous coverage, the bill does not allow insurance companies to charge an individual more simply because they have a preexisting condition. It’s also worth noting that this bill includes $138 billion to assist states in making sure everyone, including those with preexisting conditions, has access to high-quality, affordable health care.”

Rep. Adrian Smith (R-NE) in the Grand Island Independent: “I firmly believe we can protect access to care for those with preexisting conditions while lowering costs for the millions of Americans currently facing premiums and deductibles they cannot afford. Passing the American Health Care Act in the House was the first step, and we will continue our work in Congress to revive the health care marketplace.”

Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-IN) in the South Bend Tribune: “This bill maintains critical protections for patients with pre-existing conditions. I have always said any replacement must protect these patients, and we make sure no one can be denied coverage due to a pre-existing condition. States can obtain a waiver of some individual and small group insurance regulations to help lower premiums or increase the number of people with coverage, as long as they implement plans—such as high risk pools—to ensure affordable coverage for those with costly medical conditions. Under these waivers, insurers can only charge high-risk patients more if they have a two-month lapse in coverage, and the bill dedicates $8 billion to help patients in such situations.”

On Putting the American People Back in Control of Their Care

Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-FL) in the Miami Herald: “I made a promise that I would fight for better healthcare for our country, for a market-based system where Americans, not special interests, are in control and can make the best healthcare choices for themselves and their families. The legislation before Congress today gets us closer to such a system.”

Rep. Erik Paulsen (R-MN) in the Minneapolis Star Tribune: “[This debate] is about Nyla, a recently widowed mother of four who saw her premiums jump to $1,000 per month with a $13,000 deductible… this debate is about Taryn, who, after being diagnosed with a brain tumor, suddenly had her plan canceled when her insurer pulled out of the market … [AHCA] is aimed at addressing many of the shortcomings of the ACA by stabilizing insurance markets and beginning to bring down premiums. Rather than the one-size-fits-all Washington approach, we can empower states and consumers to take control of their own health care outcomes.”

CLICK HERE to read Ways and Means Committee Chairman Brady’s statement on the AHCA.

CLICK HERE to read a summary of the AHCA.

CLICK HERE to read the section-by-section description of the AHCA.

U.S. of Paris Accord, will take 3 Years However

Posted on June 1, 2017June 1, 2017 by Denise Simon

Paris Accord – TALKERS

Topline: The Paris Accord is a BAD deal for Americans, and the President’s action today is keeping his campaign promise to put American workers first. The Accord was negotiated poorly by the Obama Administration and signed out of desperation. It frontloads costs on the American people to the detriment of our economy and job growth while extracting meaningless commitments from the world’s top global emitters, like China. The U.S. is already leading the world in energy production and doesn’t need a bad deal that will harm American workers.

UNDERMINES U.S. Competitiveness and Jobs

 According to a study by NERA Consulting, meeting the Obama Administration’s requirements in the Paris Accord would cost the U.S. economy nearly $3 trillion over the next several decades.

 By 2040, our economy would lose 6.5 million industrial sector jobs – including 3.1 million manufacturing sector jobs

 It would effectively decapitate our coal industry, which now supplies about one-third of our electric power

The deal was negotiated BADLY, and extracts meaningless commitments from the world’s top polluters

 The Obama-negotiated Accord imposes unrealistic targets on the U.S. for reducing our carbon emissions, while giving countries like China a free pass for years to come.

 Under the Accord, China will actually increase emissions until 2030

The U.S. is ALREADY a Clean Energy and Oil & Gas Energy Leader; we can reduce our emissions and continue to produce American energy without the Paris Accord

 America has already reduced its carbon-dioxide emissions dramatically.

 Since 2006, CO2 emissions have declined by 12 percent, and are expected to continue to decline.

 According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), the U.S. is the leader in oil & gas production.

The agreement funds a UN Climate Slush Fund underwritten by American taxpayers

 President Obama committed $3 billion to the Green Climate Fund – which is about 30 percent of the initial funding – without authorization from Congress

 With $20 trillion in debt, the U.S. taxpayers should not be paying to subsidize other countries’ energy needs.

The deal also accomplishes LITTLE for the climate

 According to researchers at MIT, if all member nations met their obligations, the impact on the climate would be negligible. The impacts have been estimated to be likely to reduce global temperature rise by less than .2 degrees Celsius in 2100.

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The Legal and Economic Case Against the Paris Climate Treaty

Canceling U.S. Participation Protects Competitiveness and the Constitution

President Trump should keep his two-part campaign promise to cancel U.S. participation in the Paris Climate Agreement and stop all payments to United Nations global warming programs. The Paris Agreement is a costly and ineffectual solution to the alleged climate crisis. It is also plainly a treaty, despite President Obama’s attempt to implement it without the Senate’s advice and consent. Failure to withdraw from the agreement would entrench a constitutionally damaging precedent, set President Trump’s domestic and foreign policies in conflict, and ensure decades of diplomatic blowback.

For those and other reasons, the Paris Agreement imperils both America’s economic future and capacity for self-government.

The Paris Agreement and the 1992 treaty it purports to modify, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, both contain provisions for withdrawal. Concerns about diplomatic blowback if President Trump withdraws from the Agreement or submits it for the Senate’s advice and consent actually confirm the wisdom of exercising one of those options. The Paris Agreement is designed to institutionalize a running campaign of diplomatic blowback unless the U.S. submits to ever-tightening constraints, ratcheting up every five years. If Trump withdraws, any diplomatic blowback would largely be a muted one-off event, without the economic, political, and security costs that staying in the Paris Agreement entails.

To safeguard America’s economic future and capacity for self-government, President Trump should pull out of the Paris Agreement. There are several options for doing so, which are discussed in this paper. Regardless of which option Trump selects, his administration should make the case for withdrawal based on the following key points:

The Paris Climate Agreement is a treaty by virtue of its costs and risks, ambition compared to predecessor climate treaties, dependence on subsequent legislation by Congress, intent to affect state laws, U.S. historic practice with regard to multilateral environmental agreements, and other common-sense criteria.

In America’s constitutional system, treaties must obtain the advice and consent of the Senate before the United States may lawfully join them. President Obama deemed the Paris Agreement to not be a treaty in order to evade constitutional review, which the Agreement almost certainly would not have survived.

Allowing Obama’s climate coup to stand will set a dangerous precedent that will undermine one of the Constitution’s important checks and balances. It will allow a future president to adopt any treaty he and foreign elites want, without Senate ratification, just by deeming it “not a treaty.”

The Agreement endangers America’s capacity for self-government. It empowers one administration to make legislative commitments for decades to come, without congressional authorization, and regardless of the outcome of future elections. It would also make U.S. energy policies increasingly unaccountable to voters, and increasingly beholden to the demands of foreign leaders, U.N. bureaucrats, and international pressure groups.

The United States cannot comply with the Paris Agreement and pursue a pro-growth energy agenda. Affordable, plentiful, reliable energy is the lifeblood of modern economic life. Yet, the Paris Agreement’s central goal is to make fossil fuels, America’s most plentiful and affordable energy source, more expensive across the board. Implementing the agreement’s progressively more restrictive five-year emission-reduction pledges—called Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)—would destroy U.S. manufacturing’s energy price edge.

The Agreement entails more cost and risk than the country is willing to bear. A majority of states have sued to overturn the Obama Environmental Protection Agency’s end-run around Congress, the Clean Power Plan, which is also the centerpiece of the U.S. NDC under the Paris Agreement. Yet, the CPP is only a start. All of Obama’s adopted and proposed climate policies would only achieve about 51 percent of just the first NDC, and the Paris Agreement requires parties to promise more “ambitious” NDCs every five years.

The Agreement has no democratic legitimacy. President Obama kept mum about climate change during the 2012 elections. Only after being reelected did he unveil a climate agenda featuring an EPA-redesigned electric power system and the most “ambitious” climate agreement in history.

Withdrawing from the Paris Agreement is a humanitarian imperative. The Agreement will produce no detectable climate benefits. Instead, it will divert trillions of dollars from productive investments that would advance global welfare to political uses. Worse, the Agreement’s mid-century emission-reduction goals cannot be achieved without drastically reducing energy-poor countries’ current access to affordable energy from fossil fuels.

For all the foregoing reasons, President Trump should stick to his campaign promises to end America’s participation in the Paris Climate Agreement and stop payments to the U.N. Green Climate Fund.

Remember ACORN? They are Back

Posted on May 31, 2017May 31, 2017 by Denise Simon

From their website in part:

CPD now has 51 staff, offices in New York City, Washington, DC, and Oakland, CA, and staff in Minnesota, Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, and Chicago. We work with a remarkably strong cohort of 11 national partners and 43 state partner organizations in 30 states.

CPD’s model for change draws from the successful base-building and policy advocacy of partner organizations such as Make the Road New York (MRNY), CASA de Maryland, and PCUN in Oregon, as well as New York Communities for Change (NYCC), Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) and Action Now in Illinois, among many others. Around the country, base-building organizations are demonstrating that it is possible to grow to scale, with strong institutional infrastructure and innovative organizing models, and leverage that strength to win cutting-edge policy victories at the federal, state and local levels. CPD grows out of this experience, to bring a range of additional capacities to the field to help base-building organizations scale up even further, to deepen and grow the progressive movement infrastructure, and to advance a pro-worker, pro-immigrant, racial and economic justice policy agenda nationwide.

New $80M Anti-Trump Network Spearheaded by Soros-Funded Org With Former ACORN Employees

Network will focus on pushing back against voter laws leading up to the 2018 and 2020 elections

A new $80 million anti-Trump network is being led by an organization whose top funder is liberal billionaire George Soros and which employs former members of the controversial and now-defunct Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).

The Center for Popular Democracy Action Fund, the 501(c)(4) sister organization of the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD), a New York-based nonprofit that receives the bulk of its funding from George Soros, announced at their spring gala Tuesday that they will be heading up the new $80 million anti-Trump network that will span 32 states and have 48 local partners, CNN reported.

The network will seek to mobilize new voters and fight voter identification laws. It will also focus on gerrymandering and automatic voter registration programs with an eye on the 2018 and 2020 election cycles.

Rep. Keith Ellison (D., Minn.), the deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee, backed the new effort.

“This national network, led by working class people of color and immigrants, will supply the power and the fight we need to resist the Trump administration’s all-out assault on American values,” Ellison told CNN. “I look forward to standing with CPD Action’s leaders in the streets and in Congress to win real progressive change.”

The Center for Popular Democracy, which was founded in 2012, consists of old chapters of ACORN, the community-organizing group that was forced to close after being stripped of its federal funds following controversy in 2010.

Andrew Friedman, a co-executive director at the Center for Popular Democracy, co-founded Make the Road New York, a Latino immigrant group that has worked alongside CPD on a number of anti-Trump campaigns. Friedman serves on the board of Make the Road New York (MRNY) and Make the Road Action Fund, which are closely linked to CPD and contain many overlapping staffers.

Others in leadership roles at CPD have come directly from ACORN.

Brian Kettenring, the other co-executive director of the CPD, was an organizer for ACORN from 1995 to 2010.

Steve Kest, a senior advisor at CPD, worked for ACORN for 35 years and served as its national executive director.

Christina Livingston, a board member of CPD, is the executive director of the Alliance for Californians for Community Empowerment. Livingston previously organized for ACORN out of Los Angeles.

Steve Dooley, the director of partnerships at CPD, began his career at ACORN in D.C. Dooley later directed ACORN’s offices in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.

Greg Basta, the director of sustainability initiatives at CPD, worked as the statewide canvass director for the New York ACORN for five years.

Basta was a founding staff member of New York Communities for Change (NYCC), an ACORN offshoot that was founded in 2010.

The groups, which have combined to receive millions in funding from George Soros, funnel money to each other.

From 2012 to 2014, New York Communities for Change provided $81,700 to the Center for Popular Democracy, according to the group’s Form 990s up to 2014, the last available year. NYCC also passed $358,533 to the Make the Road New York Action Fund during this time.

The Center for Popular Democracy gave New York Communities for Change $406,667 between 2012 and 2014. CPD additionally gave Make the Road New York $173,955. CPD’s Action Fund added another $100,000 to New York Communities for Change.

The Center for Popular Democracy did not respond to inquiries on the new $80 million anti-Trump network. New York Communities for Change and Make the Road New York also did not return requests for comment.

CPD and MRNY have been extremely active in the anti-Trump arena, using protests and pressure campaigns.

The two groups recently “partnered” on a “Corporate Backers of Hate” campaign that targeted JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, Boeing, Disney, IMB, Uber, Blackrock, and Blackstone, corporations they say could profit from President Trump’s policies.

The “mass lobbying” campaign consists of directly pressuring higher ups at each company through emails and has been called “unprecedented” by corporate responsibility experts.

Make the Road was also reported to have organized the “spontaneous” protests at New York’s JFK Airport following Trump’s Muslim travel ban. However, it was later discovered that the protests had been planned since the day after the presidential election.

Uber, which had continued to pick up passengers from the airport during the event, found themselves in the center of the #DeleteUber pressure campaign following the protests. The CEO of Uber, Travis Kalanick, later stepped down from Trump’s advisory council.

The group is also behind the #GrabYourWallet campaign, which targets retailers for carrying Trump family products. Nordstrom ultimately pulled Ivanka Trump’s products, although the store had claimed they had dropped her brand due to declining sales.

The Center for Popular Democracy’s new multi-million dollar network falls in line with a number of major liberal groups who have reorganized to fight back against voter laws following Donald Trump’s victory.

Demos, a New York City-based progressive public policy group chaired by Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D., Mass.) daughter, has been assisting unions in pushing back against election lawsuits in number of states after counties had failed to properly maintain their voter rolls. Demos received hundreds of thousands in funding from Soros’ groups.

Marc Elias, Hillary Clinton’s former top campaign lawyer, recently joined the board of Priorities USA Action, a major Democratic super PAC that received $9.5 million from Soros during the 2016 election cycle.

Elias was tapped as the group shifts its focus on pushing back against state-level Republican efforts on voting laws. Every Citizen Counts, a nonprofit founded by Clinton allies focused on mobilizing African American and Latino voters, was absorbed into Priorities USA.

Elias will spearhead challenges against state voting laws from the organization’s nonprofit arm, which is building a national database to be a “one-stop inventory of restrictive voting measures” that they will share with other progressive groups.

Elias previously engaged in a multi-state effort to overturn voter ID laws leading up to the 2016 presidential election. The challenges were backed by millions of dollars from Soros.

Soros has a goal of enlarging the electorate by 10 million voters by 2018, the Washington Free Beacon discovered after a trove of hacked Soros documents were released last year by DC Leaks.

The plan to grow the electorate by millions of voters and combating “suppression” was listed as a top priority in a 220-page guide from his Open Society Foundations.

“The Open Society Foundations supports efforts to encourage wider participation in U.S. elections, and opposes measures used to try to suppress voter participation,” a spokesman from the Open Society Foundations told the Free Beacon at the time.

Govt in Healthcare Causing Critical Doctor Shortage

Posted on May 31, 2017May 31, 2017 by Denise Simon

Affording medical school, impossible, paying back college loans, impossible, paying all the administrative/paperwork labor costs in practice, impossible, relying on prompt payments from government on Medicare, impossible, care by government compliance standards, impossible.

Burnout = Probable

Image result for obamacare doctor shortage

Blame Obamacare and Congress for the coming drought of doctors

When you go to the Internet or phone book today, there are hundreds of physicians listed in most urban areas. But in the next two decades, you can expect more difficulty finding a physician in your hometown — a major physician shortage is looming, thanks to Obamacare and Congress.

In the last year, I have seen many mid-career physicians leaving the practice of medicine. While the growth of mid-level hospital administrators has ballooned by nearly 3,000 percent in the last 30 years, fewer students are entering medical school. In fact, according to Compdata surveys, hospital administrators now account for a large proportion of the costs of healthcare.

The pending physician shortage will affect both primary care as well as numerous essential subspecialties. When I was in medical school, I was told that specialists, such as cardiologists, would be in abundance and I would not be able to get a job. My classmates and I were pushed towards jobs in primary care.

However, many of us chose to pursue our passions — for me, it was cardiovascular medicine. I have been a practicing cardiologist for almost 17 years now — I never had any issue with finding a job in my chosen field.

Based on a new report from the Association of American Medical Colleges, it is expected that we will see a shortfall of nearly 100,000 doctors by the year 2030. A closer look at the predictions show that we will have a shortage of 40,000 primary care physicians, as well as a shortage of nearly 60,000 physicians in specialties such as allergy and immunology, cardiology, gastroenterology, and infectious disease. In general surgery, the report predicts that there will be 30,000 fewer surgeons than are needed to provide care to those who need it.

Why Are Doctors Leaving Medicine?

A 2016 report from the Physicians Foundation found an alarming growth in burnout and dissatisfaction among practicing physicians — 47 percent of respondents in the survey indicated plans to “accelerate” their retirement and move into areas outside of clinical medicine.

The most common reason for leaving medicine included regulatory burdens and electronic health records. Nearly 63 percent indicated that they have negative feelings about the future of healthcare and only half of all physicians would actually recommend a career in medicine to their children. Many of my colleagues feel they have no voice and have no way to impact healthcare policy — even in their own institution.

As regulatory requirements and non-clinical tasks continue to mount, physicians are finding themselves spending less and less time with patients. According to 2016 research from the Annals of Internal Medicine, most doctors only spend 25 percent of their day engaging with patients — the bulk of the time is spent on non-clinical electronic and regulatory paperwork. In fact, for every hour of direct patient contact, physicians have an additional 2 hours of electronic paperwork.

Most of this is due to either mandatory electronic medical record coding (to help the hospital systems bill at the maximal levels) or due to government-mandated documentation (such as asking about gun use during office visits — most of which has never shown a survival or outcome benefit).

What Is the Solution?

These statistics should be incredibly troubling for all Americans seeking healthcare. With access already an issue in the healthcare system for many and more reforms on the way, we must do more to entice bright young minds to medicine—and retain those that are currently delivering care to millions of patients.

While the AAMC argues that the answer to averting a shortage lies in creating more training spots and allowing advanced practice nurses and physician assistants to do the work of trained physicians, the real answer to the pending crisis lies in Washington.

Congress must act to save healthcare. Years of Obamacare and the resulting increase in regulations applied to physicians have begun to erode the very core of medical care — the doctor-patient relationship. Physicians are now tasked with checking boxes and filling out forms rather than bonding with patients.

Congress has spent the first 6 months of this year simply posturing and grandstanding about healthcare rather than actually working on meaningful reform. Once again, no real physician input into the creation of a workable healthcare reform bill has been sought by those in Washington (reminiscent of how Obamacare was created). Those in Congress must listen and act now:

1. Limit Meaningless Electronic Paperwork

Currently doctors spend far too much time with electronic medical records. Electronic records, while touted to be a patient safety tool, are nothing more than a way for hospitals and healthcare systems to ensure that they are billing patients at the highest levels — capturing all possible charges. Physicians are forced to click through myriad pathways in the record in order to document their care and work and all of these pathways are carefully designed to maximize billing codes. Most doctors take home two or more hours of electronic documentation nightly in order to keep up with patient care loads.

We must streamline paperwork and balance documentation with patient care. Doctors should not be billers and coders for the healthcare system.

2. Remove Hospital Administrators from the Care Equation

In some institutions, there are more mid-level managers than physicians. These executives are not physicians and are not trained in the practice of medicine. Their primary focus is to increase market share for the healthcare system and to “manage” healthcare professionals by creating algorithms of care and regulations. Administrators will claim that their activities will help with quality improvement and patient safety. However, most of these individuals are highly compensated and I am not aware of any data that suggests their activities have ever been shown to improve patient outcomes. For most physicians, administrators are a mechanism for increasing cost of care.

Physicians should be part of the decision-making process in any healthcare system and should have a voice — currently there are very few physicians in the C-suite.

3. Remove Barriers to Patient Care

Nothing frustrates doctors more than not being able to provide care to patients. We must make healthcare more accessible and provide physicians with the resources they need to efficiently provide high-quality affordable care. We must promote the use of telemedicine and digital tools to enhance the doctor-patient interaction.

We must allow physicians and patients to build long term relationships and facilitate and promote engagement. No longer can we allow networks and insurers to dictate which doctor a patient can see — “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.”

4. No Longer Allow Insurance Companies to Dictate Care

As a practicing physician, I spend a great deal of time battling with insurance companies over appropriate care for my patients. I find myself spending hours each week on the phone with an insurance company bureaucrat arguing that a particular test or therapy is indicated (even though these are supported by clinical guidelines) rather than caring for patients. We must not allow insurers to dictate how highly-trained physicians should care for their patients.

Insurers must abide by the practice guidelines and indications for tests and procedures that have been approved by major national organizations, such as the American College of Cardiology, for example.