Category: Guest Authors

Paul Krugman Or Getting Away With Lies

Paul Krugman Or Getting Away With Lies is being published with the permission of Maria K. Fotopoulos. The original can be found here.

By Maria K. Fotopoulos

During the Bush (“W”) regime, my husband and I attended an event at the UCLA campus with featured speaker Paul Krugman, a New York Times columnist. That we committed the time to attend the speaking engagement was an indicator of the value we thought Krugman brought to the discussion on the state of the world post the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. The coordinated terrorism perpetrated against the U.S. by 19 terrorists from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and Egypt, who commandeered four passenger jets and turned them into weapons of mass destruction, killing 3,000 people, resulted, under W, in a U.S. attack on Iraq, a country not involved in the attack on our country.

At the UCLA event conclusion, Krugman signed his new book, and we got our 30 seconds with the author to commiserate on what a bad direction the Bush administration had taken, as Neocon Central dominated, with the talking head Bill Kristol, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Paul Wolfowitz, Chairman of the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee and Prince of Darkness Richard Perle, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, buttressed by Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, bringing their own special gravitas to false narratives.

At the same time, the credibility of The New York Times was shredding. The publication’s reporter Judith Miller had been a reliable water carrier (yellowcake, yellowcake!) for the Bush administration and/or the CIA, helping build the case, based on lies, for an invasion of Iraq.

The newspaper that has used the line, “All the News That’s Fit to Print,” since 1897, perhaps should have revisited that in recent years, maybe adding, “And a Bit of Propaganda Too.” Miller is just one of the failed products of The New York Times. Jill Abramson, the former executive editor of The New York Times, was called out in 2019 for plagiarism in her book, ironically called “The Merchants of Truth.” And how can we forget the infamous Jayson Blair story? His multiple infractions and fabrications/outright lies committed as a reporter at The New York Times were legendary.

Then last year, in a tremendous display showing how cojones-less The New York Times has become, senior management caved to the “woke” they’ve allowed into the publication and accepted the resignation of their editorial page editor, James Bennet, who had the audacity to run a reasonable and sound viewpoint by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.). But to the zombified woke, they saw “The Horror.” One of the woke among the Times staff wrote: “Running this puts Black @NYTimes staff in danger.”

Good grief. The exaggeration, the hyperbole and the mindlessness stagger the rational mind.

The Times then added a lengthy editor’s note at the front of Cotton’s commentary. Given the extent of the newspaper’s descent into the abyss and the world of State-Run Media, it’s surprising they didn’t pull the piece.

Paul Krugman Or Getting Away With Lies
Paul Krugman

This brings us back to Paul Krugman. In addition to his Times duties as a scribe, Krugman now fronts a “MasterClass” in which students can learn: “Really good economics has a kind of beauty to it, and it comes down to just two principles. $100 bills don’t lie in the street very long. The other is every sale is also a purchase — things add up.”

Oy vey!

Towards the end of the promo teaser for the class, Krugman says, “Don’t let the crazies grind you down.”

Krugman is wholly unaware that he has become one of the crazies — not because of his MasterClass silliness, but for a variety of other missteps, to be explained, that put him squarely on the list of New York Times failures.

But before getting to his most egregious recent Proof of Madness, let’s revisit a few of his misses in his chosen field: economics.

Krugman was one of, granted, many cheerleaders for globalism. I’d wager, however, that the average American who works for a living understood that outsourcing jobs and importing labor offer no silver lining for American workers. Yet, a Yale graduate and Nobel Prize winner in Economics couldn’t figure that out. Journalist and author William Greider outlined many of Krugman’s failings in a piece for The Nation, “Why Was Paul Krugman So Wrong?”

Read too David Harsanyi’s Nov. 19, 2019, piece, “Paul Krugman: Always Wrong, Never in Doubt,” and you might start to think that the economist is an economist in name only, and that his prime directive has been to serve as a propagandist for Democrats, with the 2016–2020 goal of criticizing anything coming from the Trump administration. Wrote Harsanyi, “One of the nation’s leading doomsayers has been The New York Times’ perpetually mistaken Paul Krugman, who warned shortly after the 2016 election that Trump’s victory would trigger a global recession ‘with no end in sight.’”

Until the COVID-19 pandemic gripped the country and the world in 2020, “Trump’s economy” was booming.

Last year, Laurence B. Siegel, in a piece for Advisor Perspectives, “The Wisdom and Folly of Paul Krugman,” wrote in his review of Krugman’s book, “Arguing with Zombies,” that he couldn’t “in good conscience recommend this book, despite its occasional flashes of brilliance.” Siegel wrote:

“Winston Churchill has been quoted as saying, ‘A fanatic is someone who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.’ Along with Mark Twain and Albert Einstein, Churchill is claimed to have said just about everything worth saying. I don’t know if he said it, but it applies to Krugman, whose Johnny One-Note approach to political discourse is deeply annoying. Because of his obvious talent for a certain kind of economic analysis (he revolutionized economic geography in the 1980s), I just know he has the ability to discern good arguments from bad. Yet, in Arguing with Zombies, he mixes them with wild abandon.”

In a bit of a non sequitur, moving from the world of economics, last year Krugman said that child pornography being downloaded from his IP address “could be an attempt to Qanon me.”

With that as some backstory on Krugman, let’s move to Twitter, April 2021; wherein, we see the complete devolution of Krugman (@paulkrugman) into the truly crazy zone.

Here are three Krugman tweets of April 22:

“In the past few days I’ve been noticing a lot of what I think of as delusional whataboutism. It runs like this: ‘OK, maybe police are killing an innocent Black person every day or so, but what about all the killing and looting by BLM mobs?’ 1/

“This would be terrible even if the premise were true — the police, empowered by the law, are supposed to behave better than rioters. But the reality is that BLM protests were overwhelmingly peaceful 2/

“Yes, there were bad actors. There are always bad actors in any situation. But not many. The idea that our big cities were under threat is pure malevolent fantasy; BLM may have been the best-behaved protest movement in history 3/”

“Peaceful protests.” Uh, right. How many times has that lie been uttered? Add the famous Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman to the count! And when a reporter is standing in front of a burning building set ablaze by rioters, uh, “peaceful protestors,” that’s just one more example of a peaceful protest.

Paul Krugman Or Getting Away With Lies
‘Peaceful protests’ like this occurred throughout the U.S. in 2020.
Paul Krugman Or Getting Away With Lies
Paul Krugman Or Getting Away With Lies

Dear Reader: How many times can you say, “factually incorrect,” as you read the tweets above?

In 2020, there were 1,021 fatal police shootings. Of those, 457 were white, and 241 were black. In “The Truth About Police Shootings in America,” Dan O’Donnell and Daunte Wright write: “Nearly every single person police officers have shot and killed since The Washington Post started its comprehensive database has been armed, yet the popular misconception persists that law enforcement is killing unarmed black men at a staggering rate.”

One might think an economist would have a better grasp of data! And to think the Left and Rasputin over at Twitter HQ were concerned about Trump’s tweeting. What about this guy Krugman?

Hrrrm!

Paul Krugman Or Getting Away With Lies
Twitter’s Jack Dorsey.
Getting Away With Lies
Rasputin.

In response to another April 22 Krugman tweet, “In reality, given that GOP supporters believe that rampaging mobs burned and looted major cities — somehow without the people actually living in those cities noticing — getting them to see facts about something as abstract as the deficit is a hopeless cause,” National Review Online contributing editor Deroy Murdoch said, “Either this guy is lying, or he’s got some sort of clinical level state of denial, in which case I really recommend he go see a psychiatrist as soon as possible.”

But, it gets worse. On April 23:

“This is what right-wing politics is down to. It’s all false claims about evil liberals, which the base is expected to believe because it’s primed to believe in liberal villainy. They’re not even trying to engage on actual issues 3/

“With ‘replacement theory’ gaining ground, I thought I’d do some quick and dirty number crunching to confirm what I thought I knew. Using PRRI data on % saying undocumented immigrants should be deported, the most anti-immigrant states are those with few immigrants 1/

“This may be bc actually interacting with immigrants you tend to see them as human beings. It may also be bc tales of murdering rapists fly less where ppl can see they aren’t true 2/

“Similar to another thing I’m pretty sure is true: belief that BLM mobs sacked our cities prevails mainly in rural areas, where the reality isn’t in front of ppl’s noses 3/”

Krugman manages to disparage Americans, while pretending that no murders and rapes have been committed by illegal aliens and that riots resulting in property destruction and bodily harm did not occur in many cities across the country for most of last year!

Amazing denial of reality by Mr. Krugman! Or, perhaps there’s more at play. As author Upton Sinclair wrote, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

More amazing to believe is that 4.6 million folks follow this guy on Twitter. But, if we’re to believe that 80 million people put a man of obviously diminished mental capacity and a woman who dropped out of the presidential race early, polling at only 3 percent, in the White House, I guess we can believe anything is possible — no matter how horrifying. Again, “The Horror.”

If we weren’t living in some alternative universe now, Paul Krugman would be fired for lying. That’s because in the real world The New York Times would practice ethical journalism and be a standard-bearer for high-integrity journalistic endeavors. Being fired is the right outcome for an employee who has put forth lies, not once, but repeatedly.

Yes, in a United States that hadn’t become a dystopian morass, Krugman would have been fired by now. But, alas, we are a dystopian mess.

The Nobel Prize folks should consider retracting his prize too.

But, alas, to repeat, we are a dystopian mess. And, the Nobel folks now are as woke as The New York Times, or maybe more woke … woker?

The Nobel descent begins at least with the President Obama nomination for the 2009 Peace Prize. Obama was nominated for the prize 11 days after he took office. In other words, he had done nothing as President to advance peace and presumably to be nominated for the prize.

Advance to 2020, and the Nobel brain trust nominated the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement for the Nobel Peace Prize. There are so many examples that we are living George Orwell’s “1984.” But this nomination is a primo example. “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” Black Lives Matter, a Marxist movement that’s caused massive social erosion, hatred, destruction and violence is labeled a peace movement.

Getting away with lies
BLM’s early work: shutting down one of America’s busiest freeways.

Among BLM’s early disruptions were shutting down the 101 and 405 freeways in Southern California and intersections in Beverly Hills. The results: PO’d drivers. Wow. That was really productive. And 2020 was BLM’s crown jewel year, as the movement produced chaos, anarchy and social unrest across the country. BLM also advanced the brilliant idea to “defund the police,” and got woke “leadership” in the Democrat party to “bend the knee.” Among the first was one of many feckless Democrat mayors, Eric Garcetti, the legacy mayor of Los Angeles, who indeed did whack the police budget on a force that already was too small for the size of the city.

And Krugman chooses to ignore the reality of BLM. Who is this guy’s master?

The BLM name itself, however, is pretty brilliant. It has a built-in element that one can’t say “no” to. If anyone rejects the organization — “No, I don’t support Black Lives Matter” — the default position is, “You are a racist!” Of course, that has become the default position on many topics, so the “r” word is becoming fairly meaningless, but the woke among us seem unaware of the word’s diminishing power.

The Nobel may become a case study one day in “brand destruction.” If the Nobel continues on its trajectory, at the current rate of destruction, will most people put any stock in this prize? Alfred Nobel started the prize, it’s been written, because he was criticized for his profiteering in arms. This ignited his altruistic side, and he left his fortune for the Nobel Prize. Wonder what Alfred would think of today’s awarding process, including an award to an economist who now appears detached from reality?

So it’s unlikely with the level of wokeness at the Nobel HQ that they will “cancel” Krugman. But aren’t there still some normal folks at The New York Times? Are there no ramifications anymore for lying? Surely yes? If so, it’s time for The New York Times to acknowledge that Krugman’s red button has popped out. He’s done.

Maria Fotopoulos writes about the connection between overpopulation and biodiversity loss, and occasionally about other issues (such as media failure) so outrageous they drive her to write in the tradition of her training — journalism. Contact her on FB @BetheChangeforAnimals.

Paul Krugman Or Getting Away With Lies

Biden Hikes Refugee Cap to 125,000

Biden Hikes Refugee Cap to 125,000

By Joe Guzzardi

The annual refugee resettlement kerfuffle is underway. As usual, on one side are the immigration expansionists: President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, congressional Democrats with, for good measure, the predictable GOP defectors, immigration lawyers who see $$$ in their futures, resettlement agencies who also profit disproportionately, and the tirelessly active pro-immigration lobby.

Biden Hikes Refugee Cap to 125,000

On the other side are American voters who want to see an admission cap that’s consistent with the nation’s ability to absorb refugees, the current economy and, in 2021, the possible consequences from a still-threatening COVID-19 that refugees might carry. Americans also want to maintain the country’s well-deserved image as a compassionate, caring nation.

For decades, refugee admissions have been a political hot potato. Until President Trump set the annual level at 15,000, the previous levels ranged widely. Under former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the U.S. resettled an average of 81,000 refugees annually. Then, President Trump gradually cut back to his final 15,000 cap – from 45,000, to 30,000, and to 18,000 during successive fiscal years. Although President Trump set his 2020 cap at 15,000, the administration admitted only 12,000 refugees, a cautionary response to the coronavirus. The caps represent an upper limit on how many refugee applications the State Department is willing to review during a fiscal year, and not a mandated goal.

Since Biden entered the White House, however, the refugee debate has taken on another antagonistic dimension: Biden’s waffling. Biden, a cosponsorwith Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) of the Refugee Act of 1979, initially committed to extending former President Trump’s 15,000 cap, a decision he said was “justified by humanitarian concerns and is otherwise in the national interest.” But after getting intense blowback from influential Democrats like Illinois’ Dick Durbin, the Senate’s second-ranking Democrat, immigration lawyers and resettlement profiteers, Biden quickly reversed his course, and signed an Executive Order that committed to a 125,000 refugee ceiling in fiscal year 2022.

Biden relented under heavy pressure from Durbin who had sharply reprimanded Biden, calling a 15,000 ceiling “unacceptable.” Biden also came under attack from immigration lawyers who scorned his “cowardly” failure to fulfill his campaign promise to lift President Trump’s annual cap from 15,000 to 125,000. One immigration lawyer questioned why Biden is “perpetuating Trump’s racist, anti-immigrant legacy.”

Most craven among Biden critics were nine taxpayer-funded refugee resettlement agencies: Church World Service, Ethiopian Community Development Council, Episcopal Migration Ministries, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, International Rescue Committee, U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and World Relief Corporation. The International Rescue Committee whole-heartedly endorsed Biden’s Executive Order. The agencies have a keen interest in maximizing resettlement. In 2012, a critical analysis from the General Accounting Office found that agencies’ annual federally funded budgets are determined by the number of refugees they resettle.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) published a reportthat quantified for taxpayers precisely how much refugee resettlement costs. FAIR’s study found that the cost of resettling refugees is about $1.8 billion per year, with about $867 million representing welfare payments. Other resettling costs include processing, education and housing assistance. That works out, FAIR research found, to a per refugee cost to taxpayers of nearly $75,600 during the refugee’s first five resettled years.

Biden’s backers insist that increasing refugee resettlement will preserve the U.S. position as the world’s most welcoming nation for migrants. But America’s status as the world’s most charitable – with or without admitting more refugees – cannot be challenged. In 2020, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees compiled data which showed that the U.S. was the top 2020 donor to UNHCR’s global refugee activities. The nearly $2 billion in U.S. contributions is about four times the total contributed by the source that ranked second, the entire European Union which gave an aggregate $522 million.

Refugees qualify for immediate work permission. With millions of Americans unemployed, underemployed or COVID-19 furloughed, more employment-authorized refugees create unnecessary competition for increasingly scarce jobs that citizens and lawfully present residents deserve.

Biden’s original reaction – to hold steady at 15,000 refugees for the upcoming fiscal year – was correct. Unfortunately, Biden didn’t have the courage of his convictions, and folded under the pressure Democratic extremists put on him.

Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

Biden Hikes Refugee Cap to 125,000

Despite High Unemployment, White House Invites More Foreign Workers

Despite High Unemployment,White House Invites More Foreign Workers

By Joe Guzzardi


No sooner had employers wailed that a dire worker shortage might put their businesses on the brink than President Biden rewarded them with 22,000 new employment-based visas. The I-can’t-find-workers is employers’ annual lament, and superficially at least, this year they lay blame on the coronavirus pandemic. Frenzied media reporting may have scared some workers away from the labor markets. Others on the sideline are reaping the benefits from Biden’s financial largesse in the form of stimulus relief checks.

Despite High Unemployment, White House Invites More Foreign Workers

With lightening-like speed, the Department of Homeland Security, acting in conjunction with the Department of Labor, announced that the 22,000 bump in H-2B visas for temporary, nonagriculture workers would ensure that American businesses have easy access to the labor pool they allegedly need to recover successfully and to contribute to the economic health of local communities. Included under the H-2B umbrella are jobs in landscaping, construction and hospitality – work that Americans will perform.

While the DHS swamp-speak sounds convincing, the harsh reality is that employers want more cheap labor, and they know that Biden is the soft touch who will provide it. Added to the 66,000 H-2B visas already authorized for the current fiscal year, employers will have the flexibility to hire 88,000 foreign-born workers.

In the fiercely competitive arena of most fraud-ridden among the employment-based visas, the H-2B is near or at the top. A few years ago, the Government Accountability Office reviewed several closed cases that involved employers who had hired H-2B employees. The GAO’s findings showed employers’ blatant disregard for labor rights and human dignity.

In South Dakota, hotel owners who employed H-2B workers were found guilty of nine counts of conspiracy, holding people in peonage, making false statements and visa fraud. In Louisiana, 87 Indian nationals paid at least $20,000 each for H-2B visas to work in construction, but were never employed by the construction company. The construction company owner plead guilty to conspiracy, and others were found guilty of conspiracy, money laundering and 14 counts of encouraging and inducing illegal immigration.

In Virginia, hospitality industry employers, later linked to organized crime, fraudulently obtained 3,800 H-2B labor certifications but leased the workers to undisclosed businesses not listed on the visa petitions. The criminals defrauded the Internal Revenue Service of $7.4 million in payroll taxes, and eventually plead guilty to conspiracy, visa fraud and tax evasion.

A subsequent Economic Policy Institute analysis found that in the vast majority of H-2B visa occupations, Americans’ wages were stagnant or declined, a direct consequence of more overseas employees in the domestic labor market. Despite the year-after-year outcry from employers, no evidence exists of a labor shortage.

And as the economy slowly climbs out from the pandemic lockdown, employer shortage claims to which Biden has given credence by offering more H-2B visas ring hallow. The U-6, or real unemployment rate, which includes the underemployed, the marginally attached and discouragedworkers, is 10.7 percent, which represents about 17.4 million Americans.

As Biden’s DHS announced the H-2B visa increase, small towns across America are engulfed in what one journalist described as “a permanent atmosphere of despair.” Most people, if they work at all, earn barely enough to eke by. USA Today profiled such a town, tiny and poor Ogdensburg, New York. Even before COVID-19, life in Ogdensburg was a struggle. Census Bureau data showed that the median house in the city of 10,000 people sold for $68,000; the average family earns $42,000 a year, and 2,300 residents live below the family-of-four $26,500 federal poverty guideline.

Ogdensburg’s poverty rate is 75 percent higher than the rest of New York. Post-pandemic, the city coffers are near-empty; the hospital furloughed 174 staffers, and restaurants, grocery stores and the few local businesses are hanging on by a thread. Other American small towns are undergoing similar prolonged periods of economic strife from which they are unlikely to ever emerge.

Ogdensburg isn’t on the White House’s radar. Instead, the 22,000 lucky H-2B visa recipients are, and they will come from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala – the Northern Triangle countries – as part of the Biden administration’s futile effort to offset what it labels as “the root causes of migration.”

Ninety days into the Biden administration, neither the president nor his inner circle has given the slightest indication that they’re concerned about small-town America. Their exclusive focus is on adding immigrants to the U.S. population which will make economic recovery evermore elusive for America’s embattled poor.

Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

Despite High Unemployment, White House Invites More Foreign Workers

Biden Removes Visa Freeze, More Workers to Enter U.S.

Biden Removes Visa Freeze, More Workers to Enter U.S.

By Joe Guzzardi

With so much media focused on the accelerating border emergency, another immigration-related development has gone largely unnoticed – President Joe Biden’s commitment to admit more employment-based visa holders into the still-tight U.S. labor market.

Biden Removes Visa Freeze, More Workers to Enter U.S.

At the border, Biden’s team shows no interest in slowing the influx of Northern Triangle aliens who know that they can turn themselves into immigration officials, and soon be on their way into the U.S. interior. Last month, U.S. Customs and Border Protection apprehended a 20-year record high 168,000 foreign nationals, a total that included 19,000 minors. Biden deftly handed Vice President Kamala Harris the responsibility for bringing the border chaos under control. But Harris has responsibility avoidance skills equal to Biden’s.

Since being delegated the White House’s go-to border person, Harris has traveled to Middletown, Connecticut, where she explored the state’s former juvenile detention center as a possible migrant housing facility. She also traveled to Los Angeles and Chicago, but not to McAllen, Texas, a crisis point in the border fiasco. Neither Biden nor Harris have announced future plans to journey South.

Meanwhile, back in Washington, D.C., in a move that will harm already struggling U.S. workers, Biden allowed former President Donald Trump’s temporary pause on some employment visas to expire on March 31. Effective April 1, tech workers – most notably H-1Bs, F-1 visa holders that may be enrolled in Optional Practical Training work-study programs and seasonal hospitality workers – will once again be able to enter the U.S. to compete with, or displace, American workers. The Trump administration issued the ban to protect Americans’ employment opportunities for those who, because of the coronavirus-related furloughs or firings, lost their jobs.

Also on April 1, USCIS announced that the agency would no longer automatically reject incomplete asylum or immigration benefit applications even though it’s unlawful to process them. When USCIS accepts a partially blank form, it violates legal requirements in the Code of Federal Regulations. From the USCIS policy manual: “In order for USCIS to accept a benefit request, a submission must satisfy all applicable acceptance criteria.” The no-blank-space guideline was put into place in October 2019 to deter widespread immigration fraud, a safeguard the Biden administration is unconcerned about.

The following day, April 2, the State Department announced that visa hopefuls previously denied because of Trump’s freeze could reapply by submitting a new application. Visa applicants not interviewed earlier will have their applications prioritized. Similar to his practice with the developing border turmoil, Biden had no comment on his administration’s relaxed revisions.

Ending Trump’s visa pause and accepting watered-down asylum applications help prospective asylees and a wide range of industries that profit from an expanded labor pool. In addition to the asylees who will now have virtually an unobstructed path to work permission and affirmative benefits, other winners are Silicon Valley, landscapers, resort and restaurant owners, and families who hire au pairs. The Chamber of Commerce, long-time advocates for more cheap labor, and immigration lawyers also come out ahead under Biden’s more expansive and permissive immigration views. The American Immigration Lawyers Association and more than 100 trade associations and immigration advocacy groups wrote a letter to Biden which demanded that the president reverse Trump’s temporary ban. By complying, Biden is facilitating a wealth transfer from U.S. labor to U.S. industry.

Whether looked at from the border perspective or from an interior jobs market viewpoint, nothing Biden has done during his administration’s early days helps average U.S. citizens. Biden’s ending of Trump’s employment-based visa ban is hard to justify in light of his $2.3 trillion American Jobs Plan that he claims will, along with the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, create 19 million jobs. In no sane world is it logical to import high- and low-skilled workers, as Biden has authorized, while millions of Americans are unemployed or underemployed, and at the same time advocate for spending $4.2 trillion – the rescue and jobs bills’ total cost – to create jobs.

For a president who has long embraced the myth that he’s just “plain folk” – old Blue-Collar Joe, the working man’s friend – his actions contradict his image.

Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

Biden Removes Visa Freeze, More Workers to Enter U.S.

Biden Violates Environmental Policy Act With Border Wall Stop

Biden Violates Environmental Policy Act With Border Wall Stop

By Joe Guzzardi

Responding to the consequences of President Biden’s wildly out-of-control border mess, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich sued the administration in the U.S. District Court of Arizona. At issue is Biden’s unilateral decision to stop border wall construction, and to end the policy which requires asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while their petitions are reviewed. The wall and Mexican Migration Protocols are among former President Trump’s signature immigration accomplishments, and helped to slow population growth in Arizona and other states.

Biden Violates Environmental Policy Act With Border Wall Stop

Biden’s irresponsible, illegal border permissiveness violates the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) which President Richard Nixon signed in 1970 and which recognized that population directly affects the environment. Today, 90 percent of that growth is caused by immigration. NEPA requires that every agency considering an action that will affect the environment must analyze and publicize those outcomes before going forward. The published analysis is officially called an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).

Yet the Department of Homeland Security and, before it, the Immigration and Naturalization Service have steadfastly refused to comply with NEPA even though it’s federal law. Environmentalists like Julie Axelrod, Center for Immigration Studies Director of Litigation and a former Trump administration senior Environmental Protection Agency policy advisor, who have testified before the Council on Environmental Quality, had their logical arguments fall on deaf ears.

From the Arizona complaint which lays out the indisputable truths:

“Migrants (like everyone else) need housing, infrastructure, hospitals, and schools. They drive cars, purchase goods, and use public parks and other facilities. Their actions also directly result in the release of pollutants, carbon dioxide, and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, which directly affects air quality. All of these activities have significant environmental impact which, as discussed above, courts have recognized as cognizable impacts under NEPA.”

On April 15, Brnovich told Tucker Carlson Tonight that the average border crosser carries about 6-8 pounds of trash. Using the best estimate of 2 million aliens illegally entering the U.S. this year, Brnovich said that translates to “about a million of pounds of trash each month.” Brnovich insisted that the so-called environmental movement, which includes the hypocritical Sierra Club, cares only about raising money, not safeguarding America’s beauty.

U.S. immigration-driven population growth is dire, and should be a matter of grave concern to Congress. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that immigrants and births to immigrants represent more than 80 percent of the nation’s population growth. Yet Congress refuses to develop a responsible immigration policy that would provide a better quality of life for the nation’s native-born and settled immigrants.

Instead, Congress is intent to let unchecked population increases propel the nation, figuratively speaking, off a cliff. In 2016, respected environmental scientist and natural resources planner Leon Kolankiewicz, working with Progressives for Immigration Reform, completed a three-year study which led to a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS), an analysis of the long-term, cumulative effects of immigration on America’s environmental resources.

Summarized, the study assessed three alternative immigration scenarios, all projected out to 2100: 1) the No Action Alternative, in which current immigration rates of approximately 1.25 million per year would be maintained; 2) the Expansion Alternative, or 2.25 million annual immigration; and 3) the Reduction Alternative, 250,000 annual immigration, the historic level.

As of Earth Day 2021, the U.S. population stands at slightly more than 330 million. In approximate numbers, the No Action Alternative would lead to a U.S. population of 524 million in 2100; the Expansion Alternative, the option the Biden administration is committed to, would create a 669 million U.S. population in 2100, and the Reduction Alternative would lead to a 379 million U.S. population in 2100, not ideal but the most manageable of the three options.

Assessing each of the three possible immigration levels’ outcomes and their potential environmental impacts on urban sprawl and loss of farmland, habitat loss and impacts on biodiversity, water demands and withdrawals from natural systems, carbon dioxide emissions and resultant climate change, and energy demands and national security implications, the results are widespread, ominous and highly adverse.

Congress has a long way to go to make up for ground lost since Wisconsin’s former U.S. Senator and Governor Gaylord Nelson founded Earth Day more than half a century ago. As Nelson’s daughter Tia said, her father would be “deeply distressed” by the lack of progress on environmental causes. And, immigration is intimately related to environmental issues. As the Earth Day founder said, “… (I)t’s phony to say, ‘I’m for the environment but not for limiting immigration.’ It’s just a fact that we can’t take all the people who want to come here.”

Arizona’s lawsuit puts environmentalists back in the game in a manner earlier suggested by PFIR in the PEIS and the “Let’s Make America Green Again” campaign.

If other border states, such as Texas and New Mexico, joined Arizona, then environmentalists’ important goal – to preserve America’s magnificence – could start to be within reach.

Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

Biden Violates Environmental Policy Act With Border Wall Stop
Biden Violates Environmental Policy Act With Border Wall Stop

Union Hates Charter Schools, Parents Love Them

Union Hates Charter Schools, Parents Love Them

By Leo Knepper

Public charter schools empower parents by giving them options for their children’s education. Because most charter school teachers decide against forming a union and provide competition for traditional public schools, teachers’ unions and their allies have made charter schools into a boogeyman. Since becoming Governor, Tom Wolf has been openly hostile to charter schools and attempted to reduce their funding at every turn.

Union Hates Charter Schools, Parents Love Them

On last week’s CAPitalist Cast, which you can find below, CAP CEO Leo Knepper had a chance to talk with Lenny McAllister about how charter schools are funded and how they’ve handled the challenges created by COVID 19. Mr. McAllister is the CEO of the Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools. It was a fantastic opportunity to explore the role these schools play in educating the next generation of Pennsylvanians.

Mr. McAllister has written several opinion columns recently. We found some of the information they included fascinating. Below are excerpts and links to the articles. 

The first article from Mr. McAllister, co-authored by Amber Northern and published by the Daily Signal, details the funding myths pedaled by teachers’ unions and their political allies (emphasis added):

“Contrary to charter critics’ preferred narrative, total revenues per pupil increased in most states as the percentage of local students who enrolled in charter schools rose…Simply put, charter schools in Pennsylvania receive less money than district schools. For example, a recent study estimated that Pennsylvania charter schools received $12,175 per pupil, while traditional public schools would have received $17,989 for those same students…

“According to University of Arkansas researchers, “The state funding formula for charter schools begins with the same amount of funding as a charter school’s home district, but then subtracts up to 21 categories of prior-year district expenditures,” resulting in a funding disparity that favors districts.

“In other words, the host districts get to keep the subtracted funds…districts were actually being paid more to educate fewer students.” 

On the subject of cyber-charters from GoErie (emphasis added):

“A report showed that roughly one-fourth of the third through eighth grade cohort, including a disproportionate number of socioeconomically challenged students, did not take specific annual academic assessments.

“In Pennsylvania, these issues have cropped up for months in school districts despite district officials telling lawmakers for years that they could provide online academic instruction better and cheaper than public cyber charter schools. The pandemic has proven otherwise — here at home and around America.

“In contrast, public cyber charter families didn’t miss a beat.

“Pennsylvania’s cyber charters have been teaching online for more than 20 years. These schools know how to use technology to educate large numbers of students at home. As a result, thousands of families exercised their right under Pennsylvania law to choose a public cyber charter school for their children...The “blame game” has ramped up from school district officials and education unions. They complain that their money is lost to public charter schools — especially cyber charter schools. However, it’s not their money. It’s state funding allocated for education in Pennsylvania, regardless of where a student attends a public school.

“Public charter schools are public schools – just like those in local school districts, but simply operating at roughly three-fourths of the cost.“

On the importance of school choice to ensuring racial equality, from USA Today:

“Families who have chosen to enroll their children in public charter schools deserve to know with certainty that the new [Biden] administration understands, values and supports their choice. These 7,500 unique public schools educate about 3.3 million children across the USA, mostly from Black and brown families.

“These children have the ability to thrive in innovative public schools that best suit their needs for life, with teachers who look more like them and curriculum that is malleable to fit diverse backgrounds and learning preferences. These schools are effective at teaching our nation’s nuanced history and developing students not only with strong academic foundations but also with self-esteem and civic awareness.”

The USA Today article also profiles three outstanding examples of Black educators working to improve educational opportunities in the communities.

The best way to counter Governor Wolf’s narrative about education funding is to be armed with the facts.

Mr. Knepper is executive director of Citizens Alliance of Pennsylvania.

Union Hates Charter Schools, Parents Love Them

Equality Amendment Is Racist; Fire Co Loans Is Scam

Equality Amendment Is Racist; Fire Co Loans Is Scam

By Donna Ellingsen

Apart from the two amendments dealing with limiting the Governor’s power to enact endless extensions of emergency lockdowns, there are 2 other ballot initiatives on the May 18th ballot in Pennsylvania.

  1. PROPOSED CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT 3 PROHIBITION AGAINST DENIAL OR ABRIDGEMENT OF EQUALITY OF RIGHTS BECAUSE OF RACE OR ETHNICITY
  2. STATEWIDE REFERENDUM MAKING MUNICIPAL FIRE AND EMERGENCY MEDICAL SERVICES COMPANIES ELIGIBLE FOR LOANS

The so-called, misleadingly named “Equality” amendment on the ballot in May 2021 is a trap, I believe. DO NOT FALL FOR IT! When the #Leftists use these sweet-sounding words, it really means the opposite! It will create a special class for other RACES AND ETHNICITIES so they will be able to give OTHERS (read: IlLLEGALS and NON-WHITES) more equality than you (read: WHITES, CHRISTIANS, CONSERVATIVES, etc.!). Don’t let them fool us again!
This bill is not about enshrining “Equality” in the PA Constitution. It’s about ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION!!!
Think about it: It will create a special class for other races and ethnicities, so then will it become illegal to treat illegals differently from citizens? After all, we are all created EQUAL, and even the PA Constitution will say so.

Equality Amendment Is Racist; Fire Co Loans Is Scam

There’s an “Equality HR Bill 5 in Congress right now, trying to do the same and enshrine it in the US Constitution. And look at how they are using the same sweet-sounding “equality” nonsense! We already have equal rights for all defined in the Declaration of Independence as well as the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. Equal protection under the law. Therefore, there is NO need to create protected classes – e.g. a crime is always a crime; no need to specify a “Hate crime” which now creates special protections if you are labelling it a “hate crime.” This is what this deceptive “EQUALITY” is meant to do. They touted equality when they said it was only to stop backyard abortions and do “rare, legal abortions,” so now we have genocide being committed on a mass scale and partial-birth abortions up to the day of birthing.

It was “only hate crimes” and now we have muzzled ourselves to where it’s illegal to point out that most murders of blacks are committed by other blacks. And when they said, “We just want to love each other and be able to get married, to get recognized legally,” now we have transgenderism, sex being taught to 8-year-olds, little girls sharing bathrooms with grown men, males competing in women’s sports, and drag queen story hours with toddlers in public libraries

How many times are we going to fall for this? As far as I can tell, the GOP Leadership is pushing for this as a “feel-good measure” to give to Wolf and the Democrats in exchange for voting for limiting the Governor’s emergency powers. But the Dems who really WANT this amendment, are letting the Republicans push it! We all see how that worked for us with Act 77 and Mail-in ballots!

Please DO YOUR RESEARCH. VOTE NO ON THE MISLEADINGLY-NAMED “EQUALITY” AMENDMENT.

And vote NO as well on giving yet another office the ability to tax and spend your dollars at will.

Please feel free to copy this post and post it everywhere on social media in every venue. And spread the word to every group you are in. This is really important! Two YES’s and two NO’s.

Democrats play the long game; conservatives can only see the next 2 steps in front of them.

Isn’t this interesting? Change the meaning of words and definition to suit the occasion. Who’ll notice or realize it’s been changed? If you really want to know the true meaning of a word, look it up in a dictionary printed before 1950’s or earlier, but even a more recent one (1990’s) might suffice.

Equality Amendment Is Racist; Fire Co Loans Is Scam

Rabbits And The Rhythm of Jazz In A City That Never Sleeps

Rabbits And The Rhythm of Jazz In A City That Never Sleeps

John W. Gilmore

The City that never sleeps awakes despite being bruised, beaten and injured by the Covid 19 Pandemic.  With fewer people in the streets some of the businesses have shut down as you walk up and down Broadway and along the streets of the upper west side.  Some of the restaurants have set up small seating areas open to the elements so people can sit in and eat.  Things are diminished.  The subway is on a different schedule The crowds aren’t as heavy, but life still goes on.

Rabbits And The Rhythm of Jazz In A City That Never Sleeps
View From Central Park River Walk by John Gilmore

People are walking the streets and picking up food to go most of the time.  Every so often a few people will pass you on a City Bike or bicycles of their own.  There seems to be more E-bikes flowing up and down bike lanes set aside solely for their use.  Some even have street lights set up for bicycles and the small, electric scooters that pass by every so often as people make it to their destinations. 

Everyone is wearing a mask.  Living together in the proximity of a city and caring about one’s neighbor has caught on as part of the milieu of the city and this city, where people are presented to the world as having citizens who are cold and uncaring, has proven itself, yet again, to care more for each other than groups of people located in many smaller cities, towns and rural communities when it comes to protecting them from the virus.  

Walking down 107th street passing many people wearing various types of face covers we come to the entrance of Central Park, one of the largest urban parks in the US.  We walk up a ramp and enter in.  A jazz band is playing funky tunes close to, but not quite, the type of music you would hear on the streets of New Orleans.  People are standing around tapping their feet, clapping.  Some are moved to dance.

A couple whirls and twirls touch dancing.  A few people find secluded corners where they dance with glee on this beautiful Easter Weekend. People are moved to share their time together to the beat of the saxophone, trumpet, trombone and a set of drums.  It is a light shining into the darkness and the fear of a pandemic bringing hope and majesty back to this dynamic world class city.

The park is grand and beautiful.  No matter what tragedy befalls the city and this nation, nature still stands out wonderfully with all of it’s winding trails, streams and rivers, birds and squirrels running free and doing the same things they have been doing for thousands or perhaps even millions of years.  One man stands still holding seeds in his hand as the bravest of the birds fly down and pluck them up and as the squirrels approach them.  People stand their watching, spell bound at the display of trust and comfort he had cultivated with these animals over a period of time.  The city is masked, but not dead, as one might expect.  People aren’t cowering in their homes.

Perhaps we all can learn a lesson from New York City.  Many people are leaving the city.  The Covid virus is still spiking.  The city has been devastated, but there is still a vital energy and power that exists at the core of this city.  In a class I took once at University of Creation Spirituality a teacher named Carl Anthony described it in a class on Urban Spirituality.  He explained it as the power of humanity and the power of possibility that existed in every city because of the diversity, the history, the closeness, and the ability of people all living so close to create the atmosphere they wanted to provide experiences that will take every person to a higher understanding of what it means to be human and to learn the true meaning of joyful living.

This spirit–this spirit of life and resiliency in the face of pandemic, was what we experienced during this weekend trip to the city that never sleeps.  It awakened the realization that no matter how dark and battered, no matter what experiences that we go through as we pass through the fire together, if we want to and if we will stay together, we will not only survive, but prosper.  Like the Easter Egg that promises the hope of new life, or the empty tomb that represents the power of life over death, new life coming forth out of desperate circumstances is always a possibility.  

Out of the egg, the shell of pain, suffering, and desperation holding the city in a tight grip of fear and despondency a new city can arise.  A new people can arise, but we need to nurture ourselves and our society and protect the shell that surrounds it, the very thing that holds it altogether, until what is inside is ready to crack through into a new world and new way of being.  That is what we need now, and that is what is happening as many people stand around a small jazz band in one of the largest urban parks in the country wearing masks, singing, dancing and remembering what the beautiful part of life really is.  Togetherness.  

Rabbits And The Rhythm of Jazz In A City That Never Sleeps
Rabbits And The Rhythm of Jazz In A City That Never Sleeps

Rabbits And The Rhythm of Jazz In A City That Never Sleeps

Protecting Livelihoods On Ballot May 18 In Pa

Protecting Livelihoods On Ballot May 18 In Pa

By Leo Knepper

Over the last year, Pennsylvanians have seen how unchecked power can impact every aspect of their daily lives. On May 18, voters will have an opportunity to ensure that checks and balances are added to the emergency declaration process. The primary election ballot will include two proposed constitutional amendments that will help protect lives and livelihoods in the future. 

Protecting Livelihoods On Ballot May 18 In Pa

The Department of State, controlled by the Governor, has done its best to make the proposed amendments as incomprehensible as possible in an attempt to confuse voters. In simple English, the proposed amendments are asking voters to answer two questions. First, should disaster emergencies declared by the Governor be limited to 21 days unless the General Assembly approves an extension? Second, should a majority of the House and Senate be able to vote to end a declared disaster emergency?

By voting “YES” on the proposed amendments, Pennsylvanianians will be restoring checks and balances to the emergency declaration process. Voters will also ensure that future governors can protect lives in a disaster but will have to work with the legislature to address longer-term problems. These proposed changes will also ensure that future Governors must be able to justify the decisions they are making in the name of safety.

Governor Wolf has shut down businesses and entire industries at random under his authority to declare a state of emergency. He claimed that his administration would “follow the science” to develop policies. Data obtained by the Commonwealth Partners clearly shows that that wasn’t the case. For example, only 2.6% of COVID positive patients said they attended or worked at a Pre-K or K-12 grade school in the 14 days before testing positive for the virus. Yet, many schools still are not holding in-person classes. 

On livelihoods, fewer than 3% of individuals reported visiting a restaurant in the 14 days before showing COVID-19 symptoms. Yet, Governor Wolf had issued drastic reductions in occupation limits and shut down indoor dining entirely on two separate occasions. 

Many locally-owned bars and restaurants have shut their doors forever due to the Governor’s go-it-alone approach, and countless children have suffered severe disruptions to their education. By voting yes to the proposed amendments on May 18th, Pennsylvanians will ensure that local communities, small businesses, and our children’s education will be protected in the future.

Mr. Knepper is executive director of Citizens Alliance of Pennsylvania.

Protecting Livelihoods On Ballot May 18 In Pa

San Diego Teachers Betray Students

San Diego Teachers Betray Students

By Joe Guzzardi

Under the guise of “This is not who we are. America is better than this,” familiar elitist-speak currently spoken to excuse admitting thousands of Northern Triangle migrants, no accommodation is too generous for them. President Biden is the latest political potentate to unconvincingly utter the America-is-better-than-this refrain. But Biden has a long way to go before he matches former President Obama in his thinly disguised admonition of average Americans. Obama uttered the backhanded insult 46 times on issues ranging from the Affordable Care Act, voting and national security to immigration.

San Diego Teachers Betray Students

To gauge how much taxpayers are required to tolerate while underwriting an endless stream of affirmative benefits offered to recently arrived migrant noncitizens as they’re forced to play second fiddle, turn to San Diego, Calif. For more than a year, some 130,000 children enrolled in the San Diego Unified School District have been relegated to remote, online education. School administrators blame the COVID-19 pandemic, and have insisted that for the teachers’ personal safety, and in the best interests of their students, remote learning is mandatory.

Imagine, then, the shock parents must have experienced when they learned that SDUSD teachers would be instructing young migrants in person at the San Diego Convention Center where they’re currently housed. In other words, teaching in person is okay, but only if the students are foreign nationals and not San Diego’s kids. During his interview with the national media, Reopen California Schools founder Jonathan Zachreson said that the confirmed COVID-19 infection rate among the alien children the SDUSD teachers will be instructing is 9 percent. But among the San Diego students the teachers have betrayed, the infection rate is a microscopic .0018 percent.

In its statement to the press, the San Diego County Office of Education wrote, “We also have a moral obligation to ensure a bright future for our children,” an apparent reference to the migrants. The SDCOE didn’t mention concern for the San Diego students whose futures have been harmed, perhaps irreparably, by the county’s year-long stay-at-home order.

On April 12, San Diego schools will – tentatively – shift to hybrid learning while the in-person migrant program will remain active through July. Shortly after SDUSD officials confirmed the April 12 return date, teachers immediately pushed back. An internal union email that Voice of San Diegoobtained showed the teachers are hedging on the April 12 date, and suggested that classroom conditions are not yet safe for returning. The email read, in part, “Any date for a required return is a projection and not set in stone.” To restate the obvious: the teachers and their union throw up flimsy objections to educating San Diego’s citizen children, but don’t hesitate to sign up to instruct Mexican and Central American migrants.

The SDCOE stressed that its illegal immigrant education program will emphasize English as a Second Language and social-emotional learning opportunities, a direct slap in the face to San Diego’s enrolled thousands of limited English speakers and special needs students.

Statewide, California’s quality of education has been in freefall for decades. Within living memory, the 1960s, California had the nation’s most efficient and most admired K-12 public school system. But in 1978, Proposition 13cut property taxes and, as a result, slashed counties’ available funds for school construction and upkeep. Today, California has more than 6.1 million students enrolled in nearly 11,000 campuses. For more than a year, the majority have been denied an in-person public education, a lost school year that can never be recovered. But for frustrated, furious parents to realize that SDUSD teachers’ priority is educating unaccompanied, illegally present foreign national asylum seekers while their children’s academic needs are neglected is a burdensome reality to cope with.

In his press release, California U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa (R) sided with the parents. Said Issa: “The decision to provide in-person instruction to illegal migrants is outrageous and parents have every right to be angry.”

Summarizing, SDUSD teachers refused to return to their contracted jobs until, first, they were vaccinated; second, they received more money, and third, COVID cases fell. The teachers have been vaccinated; they and their California’s K-12 peers got $15.3 billion as their part of the American Rescue Plan Act, and cases have plunged. Yet, the teachers brazenly refuse to go back to their San Diego classrooms, but willingly will provide education to illegally present minors. Such is the state of things in California, and in today’s Washington, D.C., where the illegal immigrant is preferred to the citizen.

Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

San Diego Teachers Betray Students