Morning Jolt . . . with Jim Geraghty July 15, 2014 'We're All Becoming Border States Now' Hundreds of illegal-immigrant children reach . . . Massachusetts? DARTMOUTH, Mass. Bristol County Sheriff Tom Hodgson said Monday that he's dealing with a problem in Dartmouth that shouldn't be his responsibility. It's not a new theme for him. He's sounded the alarm about illegal immigrants before, but now he says it's getting closer and closer to home.
Illegal immigrants come across the border in the American Southwest. When they are detained, the wave of humanity has overwhelmed local capacity. The illegal immigrants are being sent all over the country, including Massachusetts. "We're all becoming border states now. We want to know, what are the trends? What's happening? What can we expect? We know there are going to be more coming here from Texas. We've already got two groups coming off the planes here," Hodgson said. It's not just in Bristol County; Essex County north of Boston is also affected: Lynn is a municipality on the brink. Key department officials say a recent influx of illegal immigrant children and families in the city is stressing almost every service from trash collection to healthcare. "We have been aware of the unaccompanied children issue for quite a while, and we were able to absorb a lot of these children early on," said Lynn Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy. "But now it's gotten to the point where the school system is overwhelmed, our health department is overwhelmed, the city's budget is being sustainably altered in order of accommodate all of these admissions in the school department." Flanagan Kennedy says the first contact for immigrant arrivals in the city is the school system. The amount of new foreign born student admissions has nearly doubled in the last two years. This school year alone saw more than 600 new admissions. Among those students, 248 were from Guatemala. Flanagan Kennedy says of those 248 children, 126 were illegal, undocumented minors. And apparently not all of them are actually under 18: "Some of them have had gray hair and they're telling you that they're 17 years old and they have no documentation," Jamie Cerulli, the Lynn mayor's chief of staff, tells NRO. "If my children went to the public schools, I'd be very uncomfortable with all of these unaccompanied minors [that] are placed in the ninth grade." We have a lawless administration that is ignoring state governments: Nebraskans are anxious to learn what Gov. Dave Heineman finds out about the approximately 200 children from Central America illegally being housed in the state. Heineman tells Nebraska Radio Network affiliate KFAB in Omaha that this issue came as a surprise to him. Heineman says he immediately started making calls and learned that once the children leave the Department of Homeland Security they are handed over to the Department of Health and Human Services. Heineman says he spoke with a key policy advisor with that department and asked who they were, where they were staying and who is paying their bill. He was told they have no intention of sharing any information with him.
"I can't believe in America that we have a federal government who is essentially secretly transporting them to Nebraska, they are illegal immigrants, and they won't tell us who they are," Heineman tells KFAB. Look, citizens of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. We thought our president would send this message to you, but apparently he's too busy with his fundraisers, issuing statements on LeBron James signing with the Cavaliers, golfing with sportswriter Michael Wilbon Saturday and looking forward to his Martha's Vineyard vacation. So somebody has to say this: You have to take care of your own kids. You may have heard us complaining that our federal government is becoming a nanny state, but we didn't mean that our government is actually running a nanny service.
Above: These guys are not babysitters. We understand gang violence, drug cartels, and other criminals are making your countries terrible places to live. We're really sorry to hear that. We've also given your government quite a bit of money to make life better down there. Honduras, we gave you $83 million in foreign aid in 2013. El Salvador: $46.8 million. Guatemala: $106 million. If the money wasn't spent well, take it up with your government. Some of you might say that's not enough, but we're not obligated to give you anything. There are a hell of a lot of Americans who think that money could be better spent back here. You have to fight to make your country a better place to live so that your fellow countrymen will want to stay there. We can't fight your battles for you. In fact, this is a particularly bad time to ask. You may have heard, twice in the past 13 years we went into far-off countries with unstable governments and warlords and drugs, determined to give the oppressed locals a better future. We spent way too much in blood and treasure, the populace turned out to be a bunch of ingrates, and the local leadership ran the place into the ground. Alternately, we can try the Semisonic "Closing Time" approach: You don't have to go home but you can't stay here. There are 202,000 square miles in Central America. Great: VA Workers 'Not Dealing' with 32,000 Electronic Inquiries from Vets The VA isn't in the headlines anymore, but we still hear new revelations of fraud, mismanagement, and callous disregard for veterans: In spot checks in several VA benefit offices, investigators found more than just issues about date manipulation, saying there is evidence that sometimes veterans' claims aren't acted on at all. In Philadelphia, officials "found mail bins full of claims and associated evidence that had not been scanned into Virtual VA since 2011," Halliday will tell lawmakers. Other possible troubles included VBA staffers "inappropriately shredding or destroying" mail, staffers hiding incoming mail, workers not dealing with over 32,000 electronic inquiries from vets about the status of their claims and evidence of improper payments. The VA wants to "not deal" with Vets; now that the president's appointed a new VA Secretary nominee, the national media wants to "not deal" with the story. Rest Easy, Americans; President Obama Is Enjoying His Dinner Parties More A lifetime ago — 1998 or so — Julie Hirschfeld Davis attempted to take me under her wing and teach me a thing or two about covering Congress back at Congressional Quarterly. I don't think I was a particularly good learner. Now she's covering the White House for the New York Times, and she lays out how President Obama is spending his evenings: In a summer when the president is traveling across the country meeting with ordinary Americans under highly choreographed conditions, the Rome dinner shows another side of Mr. Obama. As one of an increasing number of late-night dinners in his second term, it offers a glimpse into a president who prefers intellectuals to politicians, and into the rarefied company Mr. Obama may keep after he leaves the White House. Sometimes stretching into the small hours of the morning, the dinners reflect a restless president weary of the obligations of the White House and less concerned about the appearance of partying with the rich and celebrated. Freewheeling, with conversation touching on art, architecture and literature, the gatherings are a world away from the stilted meals Mr. Obama had last year with Senate Republican leaders at the Jefferson Hotel in Washington. In Paris, the president was up again until nearly midnight enjoying, among other things, Drappier Champagne. "Bonsoir," Mr. Obama said as he entered the small Restaurant Helen, according to Frédéric Pescatori, an investment manager who was dining next to the president's party. Mr. Pescatori added that the president "seemed quite relaxed and glad to be with friends, without stress." I'm glad he can get away from the stress of the job. (If you're wondering, Drappier Champagne isn't particularly expensive.) A shame he's so "weary of the obligations of the White House"; a lot of us put a lot of effort trying to free him from those obligations in 2012. An Extra 1 Percent in Ohio? Sure, We'll Take It. Our Fred Schwarz runs the numbers and calculates that holding a convention in a particular state does help your party — about one percentage point's worth, which may or may not be enough to help win the state. My first reaction is that I wish I'd started with 1992 instead of 1988, to get rid of that Georgia outlier. I could still cut the survey off at 1992 and come up with some retroactive rationale for why that's the natural starting point, but I'll leave that sort of thing to the climate scientists. Anyway, if you include 1988, the Democrats average a tiny 0.2 percentage-point gain in their convention states; exclude 1988 and it's an average gain of 1.8 points. For the Republicans, it's an average gain of 1.2 points (or 1.6 if you exclude 1988). Looking at the data impressionistically (since this is hardly the sort of large, randomized trial from which one can draw firm statistical conclusions), it seems plausible to suggest that the state you hold your convention in will probably give you a boost of about 1 percentage point in the popular-vote margin. Since Ohio has usually been within 3 or 4 points in recent elections, and since it has gone with the winner in every election from 1964 to 2012, the convention site might have more influence in 2016 than it usually does. And this would be a great time for the GOP to break its convention-site losing streak. ADDENDA: I'm scheduled to appear on Greta's panel tonight . . . . . . Go figure: Israel accepts a cease-fire deal, Hamas rejects it. Why, it's almost as if one side doesn't want peace! . . . Um . . . okay: The favorite son of Riverdale in comic-book America will meet his end Wednesday in Life with Archie, when he takes a bullet for his gay friend, Kevin Keller, Archie Comics' first openly gay character and a U.S. senator-elect. Wait a minute — what? Nothing in the above sentence would make sense to zillions of Baby Boomers who grew up on the comical adventures of forever-teens Archie and Veronica and Betty and Jughead, et. al. Instead, Archie's death, first announced in April, marks the end of the series that focuses on the Riverdale gang as adults. Don't worry. Archie will be avenged. And we know just the guy to punish Archie's murderer: 
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