Buyers Are Trying To Steal Places

Letter: Chilling the American economy

When the elbows up movement started in Canada nobody knew if it would have an impact on the American economy or not. Under the threat of tariffs and annexation it was the only thing proud Canadians could do.

The first statistics are now out showing the impact of the Canadian elbows-up movement. A significant drop in Canadians travelling to the USA (70 per cent downturn in summer airline bookings, 900,000 fewer border crossing in March alone) has resulted in a monetary loss in tourism as well as food and alcohol sales in the U.S.

The boycotting has several states scrambling to entice Canadians back.

Palm Springs has Canadian maple leaf banners on the main street with slogans of ‘how much they love Canadians.’ The governor of California promises sunshine and beaches and asks Canadians to return. He is currently suing Trump on illegally imposing tariffs. Canadian snowbird condominium sales in the Trump states of Arizona, Carolinas and Florida are flooding the real estate market while the rental market is in decline.

Of course, there are many Americans disgusted with what Trump is doing to their own country let alone Canada. Some have even explicitly stated ‘they don’t blame Canadians for not spending their money in the USA — they would do the same.’

We, along with Europeans (travel from Europe to USA is down 17 per cent in March alone) are chilling the American economy by spending our money anywhere but the USA.

Summer is around the corner, and we should expect greater tourism as Canadians and Europeans (and even anti-Trump Americans) explore our glorious country.

Together, we have sent a message south. WE are making a difference. Let us keep the pressure on, elbows up for Canada!

Alla Marinow

Mill Bay

https://www.lakecowichangazette.com/opinion/letter-chilling-the-american-economy-7965903

Biden let California get creative with Medicaid spending. Trump is signaling that may end

In 2022, California made sweeping changes to its Medi-Cal program that reimagined what health care could look like for some of the state’s poorest and sickest residents by covering services from housing to healthy food. But the future of that program, known as CalAIM, could be at risk under the Trump administration.

In recent weeks, federal officials have signaled that support for creative uses of Medi-Cal funding is waning, particularly uses that California has invested in such as rent assistance and medically tailored meals. Medi-Cal is California’s name for Medicaid.

The moves align with a narrower vision of Medicaid espoused by newly confirmed Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services head Dr. Mehmet Oz, who said during his swearing-in ceremony that Medicaid spending was crowding out spending on education and other services in states with the federal government “paying most of the bill.”

“This one really bothers me. There are states who are using Medicaid — Medicaid dollars for people who are vulnerable — for services that are not medical,” Oz said.

“The messaging that we want to go back to the basics of Medicaid puts all of these waiver programs in jeopardy,” said John Baackes, former chief executive of L.A. Care, the state’s largest Medi-Cal health insurer.

CalAIM is authorized under a federal waiver that allows states to experiment with their Medicaid programs to try to save money and improve health outcomes. Under the waiver, California added extra benefits for high-cost users to help with food insecurity, housing instability, substance use and behavioral health challenges.

Roughly half of all Medi-Cal spending can be attributed to 5% of high-cost users, according to state documents.

But in March, the federal government rescinded guidelines supporting Medi-Cal spending for social services. It also sent states a letter in April indicating that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services would no longer approve a funding mechanism that helps support CalAIM, although that money will continue until 2026.

Together, these moves should worry states that operate programs like CalAIM, said Kathy Hempstead, senior policy officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

“Under the Biden administration states were encouraged to experiment with things like that: To prescribe people prescriptions to get healthy food, to refer people to community-based services,” Hempstead said. “This administration is not receptive at all to … that vision of the Medicaid program.”

In a press release, CMS said it is putting an end to spending that isn’t “directly tied to health care services.”

“Mounting expenditures, such as covering housekeeping for individuals who are not eligible for Medicaid or high-speed internet for rural healthcare providers, distracts from the core mission of Medicaid, and in some instances, serves as an overly-creative financing mechanism to skirt state budget responsibilities,” the press release states.

Paul Shafer, co-director of the Boston University Medicaid Policy Lab, said decades of public health research show that people have worse health outcomes that require more expensive treatment when their social needs aren’t met.

But, Shafer said, programs like CalAIM are relatively recent and the research hasn’t had enough time to show whether paying for non-traditional services saves money.

For example, California’s street medicine doctors who take care of people who are homeless say that their patients often cycle in and out of the emergency room — the most expensive point of service in the health care system. They have no place to recover from medical procedures, no address to deliver medications, and the constant exposure to the elements takes years off of their lives, doctors say.

CalAIM gives them options to help their clients find housing.

The federal government’s decision not to fund programs like this in the future is a “step backward,” Shafer said. “I think we can all read the tea leaves and say that that means they’re sort of unlikely to be renewed,” he said.

https://calmatters.org/health/2025/04/medicaid-waiver-calaim/

So they’ve been using medicare for all those wacky bum housing plans.

The ‘Bowel Movement Rental’ Agency & The Nightmare on Lakeview Avenue

The Baltimore Slum Lord is a particular beast. He practices apathy as a living commitment to owning property. But his property is old and hazardous. It wears lead paint as a house coat. The built-in microwave from 1940 remains crusted in tetanus and sixty-year grease. Nothing is replaced or up to code. The oven has a gas leak. The back door doesn’t close. Because of this the heating bill is high and the mice are as much of a roommate as the cold. Often not even living in the state of Maryland, he can’t manage his own property. Instead, he has someone else–rude and uncompromising–act as a figurehead, prattling rehearsed bits of lease legalese.

The day we went to see the property, I was hopeful. There was a sepia picket fence. There were steps. There was a porch the size of a classroom. And then there was the apartment– the bottom half of a multifamily home split into two.

The apartment opened to a foyer which led down a hallway. To the left was the front bedroom situated off the dining room. The bedroom was tiny, about the size of a Chipotle bathroom, but it faced the front of the house and in this way, grabbed the light from the deck like a fist collapsing a fly in its palm. The dining room doubled as the living room and was coated in a color offensive to pink. It was like a Pepto Bismol gurgled up, shat into a bottle of Orangeade and swirled with the dirty end of a tampon.

Back then, naivety was an old wisdom tooth I had yet to get extracted. Safety, to me, was constructed, a promise as simple as following the rules. If I pay to live here, I thought, then safety will meet me in return. Back then, it had never occurred to me that someone would allow two young girls to live in an uninhabitable apartment.

From the moment we moved in, the red flags sprung a hydra of heads. Sure, there were copious red flags I had ignored–for one, we had found the apartment on Craigslist; for two, BMR, the rental agency, accepted credit scores as low as 500. But never did I think that the cracks in the hardwood floor would metaphorically expand.

By month three, there was the microwave issue. Or rather, the lack thereof. The device was built-into the wall. And it seemed it and the walls were built in the same year. The light on the outside didn’t even wink. It was stone cold dead. When we told Fart that the microwave didn’t work, again, he didn’t believe us. When we showed him the microwave didn’t work, he said he’d send His Guy to check it out. What ensued was a 5-month back-and-forth in which His Guy would come over to our house for hours, tinker with the microwave, and then say, he needed to come back after ordering an obscure part. I fantasized about running Fart’s voodoo doll under scalding hot water.

That winter, my mom came to visit. Sleeping on our bright pink couch, she complained that she couldn’t sleep because all night, she’d heard mice playing Shoots and Ladders. By this time, we’d gotten a cat, but she saw the mice more as fidget toys to idly spin by her paws than as prey to consume.

You know it’s bad when your boomer up-hills-both-ways parent tells you your home reminds her of poor, Baltimore youth.

Housing is a human right. It is a basic need on the hierarchy. If I were Mayor Scott, I’d make housing free. In the meantime, all I can do is make sure I know how I want to live. And protect that at all costs.

https://baltimorefishbowl.com/stories/the-bowel-movement-rental-agency-the-nightmare-on-lakeview-avenue/

Nationalism surges in Mexico amid Trump threats

Today, Mexico is once again locked in battle with the United States, this time facing an American president who is hurling insults, tariffs and threatening U.S. drone strikes here. Many see it as just the latest chapter in an age-old tale of U.S. aggression.

“In Mexico there’s a perception that the United States is the villain of our story,” said historian Alejandro Rosas. “That’s the narrative you grow up with, it’s what they teach you in school. We’ve been victims of the United States forever.”

“It’s unfair,” said Monserrat Martínez Hernández, 20, a college student who snapped selfies alongside her mother, sister and two cousins.

“They already took away half our territory,” she said of the United States. “Now they want to abuse their power again, this time from an economic perspective.”

Since Trump took office in January, Mexico has been seized by a wave of nationalistic zeal.

On TikTok, users have demanded a boycott of American products, filming themselves pouring Coca Cola down the drain. Companies have embraced the red, green and white of the Mexican flag in ad campaigns.

After the government announced a relaunch of the “Hecho en Mexico,” or “Made in Mexico,” seal on locally produced products, Grupo Modelo said it would print the slogan on its beer bottle caps.

Leading the way is Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, who has both stoked — and benefited from — the surge in national pride.

She seems to work the word for sovereignty — soberano — into almost every speech.

Tellingly, she has often invoked history in her effort to rally support.

This month she marked the anniversary of the sixth-month long U.S. occupation of the port city of Veracruz in 1914.

“Mexico is and always will be a great country,” Sheinbaum told a stadium filled with smartly dressed naval officers. “We are neither a protectorate nor a colony of any foreign nation.”

Recently, Sheinbaum used the word “traitor” to describe an opposition party member who voiced support for a U.S. effort to designate drug cartels as “terrorist” groups. She compared him with the conservative Mexicans who, in the 1850s, invited the French to help overthrow the liberal government of President Benito Juarez. The French ended up occupying Mexico for several years, briefly installing Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph, an Austrian duke, as emperor.

At the Niños Héroes monument, Mexicans reflected on that past and possible conflicts — economic ones — looming in the future.

Felix de la Rosa, 64, a chemical engineer from the state of Coahuila, which borders Texas, says he visits the monument every time he’s in Mexico City.

“As Mexicans, we have to unite for this new battle — which is a trade war,” he said. “But we shouldn’t bow our heads without fighting. I think the boy heroes are a great example, and that is how we should act, with great courage and dignity in the face of this new battle.”

But for some, the lesson of history is that Mexico may again suffer the fate of being neighbor to one of the most powerful countries in the world.

“The truth is, our country doesn’t have the economic strength they have,” said Gerardo Santos, a 33-year-old businessman. “Our country is weaker, and President Trump knows this and takes advantage of it.”

“In the end, the gringos will win again,” he said. “There’s nothing we can do about a man like Trump. The guy is crazy.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/the-united-states-is-the-villain-of-our-story-nationalism-surges-in-mexico-amid-trump-threats/ar-AA1DB9Ui

How the public’s shift on immigration paved the way for Trump’s crackdown

Since returning to the White House, President Donald Trump has launched an unprecedented campaign of immigration enforcement that’s pushed the limits of executive power and clashed with federal judges trying to restrain him. But unlike in his first term, Trump’s efforts haven’t sparked the kind of widespread condemnation or protests that led him to retreat from some unpopular positions.

Instead, immigration has emerged as one of Trump’s strongest issues in public polling, reflecting his grip on the Republican base and a broader shift in public sentiment driven in part, interviews suggest, by anger at the policies of his predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden.

The White House has seized on this shift, mocking critics and egging on Democrats to engage on an issue Trump’s team sees as a win.

The changing views are evident in places like northern New Jersey’s suburban Passaic County, one of the former Democratic strongholds where Trump overperformed in November.

Trump became the first Republican to win the county in more than 30 years. He carried the heavily Latino city of Passaic and significantly increased his support in Paterson, the state’s third-largest city, which is majority Latino and also has a large Muslim community. He drew 13,819 votes after winning 3,999 in 2016. Having lost New Jersey by nearly 16 percentage points to Biden in 2020, Trump narrowed that margin to 6 percentage points last year.

Paterson resident Sunny Cumur, 54, a truck driver who immigrated from Turkey in the late 1990s, describes himself as a Democrat who doesn’t usually vote. But he wanted Trump to win, he said, because he was concerned about the border under Biden.

While studies show immigrants are generally less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans, local news in New York and other cities frequently featured what Trump took to calling “migrant crime.”

“What Biden did, they opened all the borders and a lot of people come here for political asylum. Come on! They don’t even check if they are terrorists or not,” Cumur said. “Throw ’em out. I don’t want to live with criminals,” he said.

https://www.kob.com/news/us-and-world-news/how-the-publics-shift-on-immigration-paved-the-way-for-trumps-crackdown-2/

‘That was really alarming to see, because when you look 10 years from now, a monthly payment was going to be projected at over $4,000’

And that’s just the reserve thing John, you also have a whopping loan to pay back!

‘They’re being very unreasonable. They’re not answering our questions,’ Rodriguez said. ‘I wouldn’t recommend anybody move in and take on this HOA the way it is. I would tell them, run the other way’

I want to thank Maria for today’s HBB Pitfalls of Commie Urban Living™.