Mary Gay Scanlon Fears Debate With Alfe — Pennsylvania’s 5th District incumbent Congresswoman Mary Gay Scanlon is ducking a debate with her challenger Alfe Goodwin.
This is despite Mary Gay being a trained lawyer who had worked forBallard Spahr, one of the nation’s most prestigious law firms, and Alfe being a retired working class Philadelphia cop.
Journalist Studs Terkel, who wrote “Working,” the classic oral history of Americans’ on-the-job lives, called Marvin Miller “the most effective union organizer since John L. Lewis,” the United Mine Workers president for forty years and Congress of Industrial Organizations’ founder. Miller took over a failing group that represented the nation’s most exploited but irreplaceable workers —the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA)—- and converted it into the country’s most powerful union.
Miller’s introduction to labor negotiations came when he worked for the United States Steel Workers Association (USWA). In the early 1950s, the USWA, along with the United Auto Workers (UAW), for whom Miller also worked, represented America’s union strength. USWA, with 2,300 North American locals, had more than one million members. But an internal USWA shake-up prompted Miller to seek new employment. He turned down a faculty position at Harvard University when Hall of Fame pitcher Robin Roberts asked him to consider becoming the MLBPA’s executive director. Miller, a baseball fan who admired Roberts’ sterling career—286 wins and 305 complete games over a 20-year career—agreed. After the owners tried to persuade the unconvinced players that Miller would lead them into a strike that few of them could afford —a scare tactic— in 1966, the tenacious labor leader eventually got the job.
Miller had to overcome numerous efforts made by the owners to block his ascendancy. The owners hoped that by repeatedly stalling they would force Miller, who still had no fixed plan to fund the union, to give up. Instead, the owner’s heavy-handedness infuriated the players, and they unified their support behind Miller, who in 1966 they unanimously elected their executive director. By 1968, Miller had negotiated MLBPA’s first collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with the team owners that won the players a whopping increase in their minimum salary from $7,000 to $10,000 plus larger expense allowances that covered the 1968 and 1969 seasons. Miller advised superstar outfielder Curt Flood in the historic 1972 Flood versus Kuhn case which reached the Supreme Court. At stake was coveted free agency. The court ruled against Flood 5-3-1; nevertheless, Flood’s lawsuit opened the door for other MLB players to challenge the reserve clause.
On December 23rd, 1975, Peter Seitz, the neutral arbitrator, awarded Major League Baseball players, both present and future, the greatest Christmas present they would ever receive. He ruled that clause 10(a) of a player’s contract, reserving an unsigned player to his current team, was only valid for one year. After that, a ballplayer could become a free agent if the contract remained unsigned. Free agency, resulting from the 1974 case of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Andy Messersmith and the Baltimore Orioles’ Dave McNally who Miller encouraged to sit out a year, was on the horizon. After filing a grievance, Messersmith and McNally won free agency and signed new contracts with the Atlanta Braves and the Montreal Expos.
During Miller’s MLBPA executive director tenure, baseball suffered through strikes and lockouts that angered fans. But the average player’s annual salary rose from $19,000 in 1966 to $326,000 in 1982, the year Miller left the MLBPA. Miller died in 2012 and didn’t live long enough to see the explosion in player salaries. Too bad; he would have been proud of the groundbreaking work he did decades ago. In 2024, Los Angeles Dodgers’ two-way player, Shohei Otani will earn $70 million, the average player salary is $5 million, and the minimum player income, $750,000.
After being rejected six times in Hall of Fame voting, four times by the Veterans Committee, and twice by the Expansion Era Committee, both dominated by owners and baseball executives, in 2020, the Modern Baseball Era Committee inducted Miller. In 2008, four years before his death at age 95, Miller told the Boston Globe that he held the HOF in contempt and was indifferent to his induction. Calling the vote “rigged” and the members “handpicked to reach a particular outcome,” Miller said, “At age 91, I can do without the farce.”
Miller was among baseball’s three most impactful figures, sharing the honor with Babe Ruth, who changed the way the game is played and Jackie Robinson who paved the way for black players to enter the Major Leagues.
Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research member. Contact him at guzzjoe.com@yahoo.com
Cd bpiitg wdl wxvw p qxgs uaxth, xi wph id rdbt sdlc udg lpitg. Ydwc Fjxvv
Answer to yesterday’s William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit quote puzzle: Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble. 1 Peter 3:8
Biden And Harris Silent On Historic American Space Achievement — SpaceX, an American, completed the historic first private space walk as part of its Polaris Dawn mission on Sept. 12.
No government employees were involved.
It was also the furthest from Earth in 50 years.
You would have thought President Biden — or whoever is running the country — would have offered congratulations.
Fhcrefgvgvba vf gur eryvtvba bs srroyr zvaqf.
Rqzhaq Ohexr
Answer to yesterday’s William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit quote puzzle: I’m not the smartest fellow in the world, but I can sure pick smart colleagues.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Black Cat On Friday The 13th — For our rare reader who happens to be superstitious forgive our bit of sadism and enjoy this photo of a black cat on Friday the 13th.
Pennsylvania Phyllis Schlafly Awards Ceremony Is September 19 — Journalist Scott Kesterson who won an Emmy in 2007 for his videography shorts of combat in Afghanistan will be among the honorees of this year’s Pennsylvania Phyllis Schlafly Eagles 2024 Awards.
It’s 5 p.m. to 10 p.m.., Sept. 19 at Blue Bell Country Club, 1800 Tournament Drive, Blue Bell, Pa. 19422.
Also being honored are Col (Ret.) John R. Mills the author of War Against the Deep State and The Nation Will Follow and a regular contributor to Newsmax and Epoch Times; Mark Weaver is a Pennsylvania native and former deputy attorney general of Ohio who has been called one of the top political strategists in America; and Pennsylvania State Rep. Stephanie Borowicz (R-76).
Vivek Ramaswamy will deliver a message via video.
Weaver is a graduate of Abington High School.
Pennsylvania Phyllis Schlafly Awards Ceremony Is September 19
The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has a message for disaffected citizens who have watched legal and illegal workers replace Americans: Get used to it! Since 2021, the onset of Joe Biden’s presidency, 9.3 million people have entered the United States, more than three times the net number that arrived in the country during the previous decade. Using cautious, politically correct prose, CBO identified the biggest net increase of 6.5 million as “other foreign nationals,” which includes “people who entered the U.S. undetected, as well those who were paroled into the country and are awaiting proceedings in immigration court.” In plain language, the arrivals are low-skilled, under-educated, non-English-speaking illegal aliens. The largest sending countries are Venezuela, an avowed enemy of the U.S., Mexico and Honduras, 14%, 13%, and 8.5% respectively. In addition, CBO estimates that the non-immigrant population which includes employment-based visa holders has increased by about 230,000 since 2020. Among the 6.5 million illegal aliens, CBO concluded that “most of them work.”
Another category that must be considered are the two million gotaways that the House Homeland Security Committee estimates have slipped undetected into the U.S. and may be working in the $3 trillion underground economy. The arriving illegal immigrants, noted CBO, “are younger [about 78%] and more likely to be of working age…” Among the recently arrived illegal immigrants aged16 or older, 68% are either employed or looking for employment, a total of about five million individuals. CBO analysts determined that, based on U.S. Census data, illegal immigrants who arrived since 2020 are more than twice as likely than U.S. workers to have dropped out or never attended high school. Those without high-school diplomas earn less than their American-born contemporaries; their willingness to work for a lower income is attractive to unscrupulous employers. Cheap labor is always in vogue. Their occupations are concentrated in jobs that Americans, especially under-employed Americans, can and would do. They include construction, carpentry, landscaping, drivers, housekeepers, and janitors. Their low education achievement prevents them entering the skilled labor field.
The August BLS establishment survey showed that the economy created a tepid 142,000 jobs. But the big story is August’s Household Survey that collects comprehensive employment data including demographic facts. CBO suggested that the illegal alien population might be larger than the August BLS Household Survey indicated. First, unlawfully present residents may be hesitant to share personal information with the Census Bureau representative who, on behalf of BLS, interviews them. And second, the report does not count the number of newly arrived Biden-Harris open border illegal immigrants who are employed. The dramatic increase in the immigrant population includes 2.6 million lawful permanent residents who receive employment authorization.
Recent Household Surveys have reflected a growinggap between native-born and foreign-born employment. In August, the number of U.S. born employees fell by 1.3 million and the number of foreign born employees increased by 635,000. Over the past 12-months, native born employment has contracted from 131 million to 129.7 million, a loss of 1.3 million natives from payrolls. The number of foreign-born employees has grown from 30.4 million to 31.6 million, a gain of 1.2 million. Since October 2019, native-born U.S. workers have lost 1.4 million jobs; over the same period foreign-born workers have gained three million jobs.
An estimate of the illegal alien population published in June 2023 put the total at a record high 16.8 million. That highest-ever total is significantly greater than the January 2022 illegal alien population estimate of 15.5 million, and the 2024 count, when it is released will be higher still. The unprecedented surge in legal and illegal immigrants, which the CBO report identified, has changed the U.S. labor force in ways that are likely to reverberate throughout the economy for decades. Given the trend that started in 2019 and continues today, Americans’ unemployment crisis will do more than “reverberate.” The demographic shift will create an earthquake of more unlawfully present workers who take citizens’ jobs. The great displacement is no longer theory but established, cold fact as published government statistics confirm.
Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org
