Category: Guest Authors

Sanctuary City Mayors Unbending in Defending Lawless Policies  

By Joe Guzzardi

On March 5, four of the tough-talking big city mayors appeared before the Republican-led House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. New York’s Eric Adams, Chicago’s Brandon Johnson, Denver’s Mike Johnston and Boston’s Michelle Wu faced probing questions from Committee Chair James Comer and other members about their sanctuary policies which allow inadmissible aliens to seek and receive harbor. Sanctuary cities also block Immigration and Customs Enforcement from carrying out immigration laws.

Comer opened by asking the four if they considered their city “a sanctuary.” Only Adams answered yes. The others deflected. Johnson said Chicago is a “welcoming city,”; Wu, Boston is “a safe city,” and Johnston offered a word salad. Wu repeatedly claimed that Boston is the nation’s safest city, but in the FBI’s newly released 2023 crime data, Boston ranked 16th safest of the nation’s 50 largest cities when measured against total violent crime

The defiant mayors made familiar but misleading talking points to support their unbending sanctuary city status. They maintained that without illegal immigrants their local work force would evaporate, that their “welcoming” posture is consistent with America’s open-arms immigration history. They also insisted that the answer to their problems is “comprehensive immigration reform,” code words for amnesty. Wu leaned heavily on her family’s history as the child of non-English speaking Taiwanese who raised their daughter on Chicago’s Southside. Johnson made repeated efforts to blame Texas Governor Greg Abbott for sending busloads of illegal immigrants to Chicago.

Under direct questioning, Wu did poorly. Missouri’s U.S. Rep. Eric Burlison dug in and asked Wu if there is an “acceptable number” of illegal aliens before she feels the city is overrun. Wu replied that she doesn’t decide who comes into the country or where they go, only how they are treated when they get to Boston. Wu ordered Burlison to do his job and pass legislation, another reference to amnesty. When asked several times to provide hard figures for the taxpayer expense to care for illegal aliens, Wu couldn’t provide a number. She said no cost data is available because Boston doesn’t inquire about immigration status. Neither Wu nor Chicago’s Johnson would explicitly answer Comer’s question about whether they would turn over illegal immigrant criminals to ICE.

Johnson drew Republican lawmakers’ ire for limiting his cost estimate at roughly 1 percent of his city’s budget while Denver’s and New York City’s Johnston and Adams provided concrete numbers at $79 million over the past two years and $6.9 billion, respectively. Wu was hammered for saying Boston doesn’t keep track. “You don’t ask how much money the city of Boston has spent on illegal immigration — are you out of your mind? Do you manage your budget?” asked Florida U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds.  She does not, as evidenced by her hiring of a legal team to coach her, the Washington D.C. law firm Cahill Gordon & Reindel, which charges $950 an hour, according to the Boston Herald.  In all, Wu spent $650,000 on legal fees and to transport eight staffers and her one-month-old infant to the hearing.

Adams came under intense fire from his fellow Democrats for his alleged deal making with the Trump administration. New York Democrats Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez and Laura Gillen along with California’s Robert Garcia demanded that Adams resign for his purported quid-pro-quo deal to cooperate with ICE in exchange for DOJ ordering federal prosecutors to drop corruption charges against the mayor. Adams vigorously denied any type of deal.

The Cato Institute’s David Bier, the minority witness, was on hand to give the pro-mayor, pro-sanctuary city testifiers a helping hand. Bier presented only the positive side of the sanctuary city debate—illegal aliens pay taxes but no mention of the services they consume, states have limited power to cooperate with the federal government, but no citation of the Supremacy Clause, Congress should follow the guidelines recommended by the Major City Chiefs Association, not those that National Border Patrol Council established, etc.

After six hours of contentious testimony, the next step is in the administration’s hands. AG Bondi has sued Chicago, Illinois and New York State for their sanctuary policies. Bondi called Wu “an insult to law enforcement,” and promised to intensify her efforts in Boston. Before the hearing, Wu sent condolences to Lemark Jaramillo’s family; police identified Jaramillo as the perpetrator who attempted to stab Chick-fil-A patrons and was then shot to death by an off-duty police officer.

After the hearing ended, Florida’s Anna Paulina Luna wrote on X, “I just referred the sanctuary city mayors to the Department of Justice for CRIMINAL investigations based on evidence from their own comments and policies, proving that they were breaking federal law.” Four other Republicans indicated that they too would file charges against the insolent mayors. Criminal charges, along withholding federal funds from the rebellious mayors’ cities, is the best way to end the illegal sanctuary city quagmire. The law is clear: Title 8, U.S. Code § 1324 is a federal law that makes it illegal to bring in and harbor illegal aliens and prohibits the unlawful employment of aliens. 

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org

Sanctuary City Mayors Unbending in Defending Lawless Policies  

LA Was Once Largest Farming County

By Joe Guzzardi

For the lucky few among us who grew up during the 1950s in Southern California, and specifically around the Pacific Palisades/Malibu area, the non-stop video coverage of the massive wildfire was impossible to watch. My thoughts took me back to when the state lived up to its golden image. In their book “From Cows to Cement,” authors Rachel Surls and Judith Gerberk documented Los Angeles County’s agricultural history which was once America’s largest farming county. Today, L.A., once a silkworm center, is the U.S.’ largest urban county. After World War II, around 1945, people moved to Los Angeles in waves to build factories, large office buildings, cookie cutter housing and other edifices that drove land prices ever-upward. Values slowly but inevitably rose; land boom followed land boom. As property assessments soared, farmers couldn’t resist the lucrative opportunity to cash in. A less esthetic L.A. survived, with farmland replaced by cement. By 2023, Los Angeles County had become the nation’s most populous, with nearly 10 million residents, more than about 25% of California’s total population. In 1950, the county’s population was 4.2 million. Today, L.A. County is one of the nation’s largest, covering more than 4,000 square miles. If it were a state, it would be the country’s eighth largest.

Underneath Los Angeles’ urban cement nightmare lay thousands of acres of once-productive farmland. Farming was Los Angeles’ hub from its 1781 founding into the mid-twentieth century. Over the four decades between 1909 to 1949, Los Angeles grew from a farming community into an agricultural powerhouse. Farmers experimented with a multitude of crops, from fruits and vegetables, to hemp, cotton, and flowers. Livestock was important too, with major stockyards that competed with Chicago and Omaha. Hundreds of dairy and poultry farms flourished.

Intrastate transplants went west for more than business opportunities. The sunny and warm weather was a lure. To mid-western arrivals, the beaches were unparalleled. California’s coastline which stretches out over 840 miles has over 420 public beaches, the star gem of which is Malibu. Beach Boys’ songs and movies like “Beach Blanket Bingo” drew a picture of non-stop fun in the sun. All age groups that in-migrated to California found their way to the beach to suntan, fish off the pier, dine in one of the popular just-caught fish restaurants or to hang out, but also to build homes as close to the beaches as their pocketbooks could afford. The celebrities and other wealthy elite built on the ocean’s edge unconcerned about the mudslides that heavy precipitation brings.

The recent Palisades fires followed by pounding rains have created an ecological threat to the Pacific Ocean. Debris and toxins released from the fires will damage kelp forests and lead to destructive algae blooms that snuff out ocean life. The much-needed rain will mark the beginning of the worst effects in the ocean. “The Malibu coastline is extremely unique,” said Dan Pondella, Occidental College biology professor and Southern California Marine Institute research director, “It’s probably the highest density of fishes throughout Southern California.” When rain mixes with debris from burn scars, a slurry of mud, rocks and rubble pour into ocean, which Pondella said acts like both sandpaper and a blackout curtain for the fragile kelp forests. “You’ll see anything from reduced light, which limits photosynthesis in plant and algal growth, to reefs actually being completely buried in ash,” he said. The ash layer remains in the environment for a long time. When the Woolsey Fire tore through Malibu in 2018, it dumped thousands of tons of ash into the ocean, which Pondella’s team was still finding in reefs five years later. More bad news: Wildlife officials reported that a toxic algae outbreak has left as many as 50 sea lions sickened and stranded on Malibu beaches in the past week.

For the next few years as clean up and rebuilding continue, Malibu’s good times are over. When friends ask what it was like to grow up near California’s beaches, I can’t come up with a description that would do my experience justice. I simply say, “I wish you’d been there with me to appreciate it.”

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org

LA Was Once Largest Farming County

When Clemente And Mays Roamed The Same Outfield

By Joe Guzzardi

During the seven-plus decades that I’ve been a baseball fan, I’ve watched games at all levels— Little and Pony League World Series, high school, the NCAA World Series and countless major and minor league games. When friends ask about my most memorable baseball moments, I answer going to Puerto Rico Winter League (PRWL) games. I’m not alone in my judgment. Dick Young, a New York-based columnist who wrote about the Yankees, Giants, Mets and the Brooklyn Dodgers for more than 50 years said that the most exciting games he ever covered were between the San Juan Senators against its neighbor, the Santurce Crabbers.

Thomas E. Van Hyning’s new book, “The Caribbean Series: Latin America’s Annual Baseball Tournament, 1949-2024,” transported me back to those wonderful days in the mid-1950s through the early 1960s, when as a Puerto Rico resident, I watched some of MLB and the Negro National League’s (NNL) best “peloteros,” as the fans referred to them. Among the league batting champions were Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente, and Orlando Cepeda; NNL stars Willard Brown and Buster Clarkson won the runs batted in titles. Crabbers’ mound stalwarts were the Giants Ruben Gomez, a 28-year regular in the PRWL and Chicago Cubs ace and Sam “Toothpick” Jones, the first black pitcher to toss an MLB no-hitter. Santurce fielded the most successful PRWL teams of the 1950s. Author Van Hyning compared Santurce to the New York Yankees, “a franchise with a rich history and a winning tradition.” The Crabbers were all of that and more in the first season I watched them, 1954-1955. Most thrilling of all, in the Crabbers’ outfield, Clemente played left field with Mays in center, a fans’ delight as the duo roamed the deepest recesses of magnificent Sixto Escobar Stadium to snag long line drives. Well-traveled fans called Sixto Escobar the Fenway Park by the ocean. Clemente and Mays played together in numerous All-Star games, but the only time they played side-by-side continuously was as Santurce teammates.

Clemente respected Mays, with whom he had friendly competition, but Roberto didn’t worship the 1954 NL MVP. Instead, Clemente admired Monte Irvin, his childhood baseball hero who played for the Giants and, earlier, the NNL’s Newark Eagles. Mays played only one season with the Crabbers, 1954/1955, but what a season it was: batting average, .395, with 12 HRs and 33 RBIs in truncated season. “Ole, mira,” came the chants for Mays, the Spanish translation of, “Say, hey.” Clemente captured the 1956/1957 batting crown with the decade’s highest average, .396. During his 15-years-long PRWL career, Clemente played for the Crabbers, the Caguas Criollos, and the agaSenators, and against topflight MLB pitching, had career total of hitting .323, with thirty-five homers, and 269 RBIs. Clemente also had two managing stints with the Senators and guided the team to the playoffs twice.

Clemente was destined for stardom from the day that Brooklyn Dodgers scout Al Campanis, who had managed Cuba’s Cienfuegos Elephantes that winter, attended a tryout at Sixto Escobar. Campanis graded Clemente, then 18, as either A or A+ in the essential five-tools category—hitting, hitting for power, fielding, throwing, and speed. In his report to Dodgers’ management, Campanis wrote, “Has all the tools and likes to play. A real good-looking prospect.” On Nov. 22, 1954, the Pirates selected the 20-year-old Puerto Rican prospect from the Brooklyn Dodgers in MLB’s Rule 5 Draft. The Dodgers didn’t need Clemente that first season — outfielders Duke Snider and Carl Furillo hit .309 and .314 respectively, combined to hit sixty-eight home runs and helped Brooklyn win the 1955 World Series. But letting Clemente get away was an obvious Dodgers’ mistake when he won the ’66 NL MVP Award, four NL batting crowns and led the Pirates to World Series championships in ’60 and ’71. Over the course of his 18 MLB seasons, Clemente slashed .345/.382/.466 against the Dodgers with seventeen triples and twenty-one home runs in 291 career games. He didn’t hit higher than .330 against any other MLB team and is the only Hall of Famer to have been selected in the Rule 5 Draft.

The Crabbers, led by Mays’ .440 average and Clemente’s series-leading eight runs scored, topped off an excellent season by winning the 1955 Caribbean World Series. I moved back to the mainland before I would have seen a long string of Cooperstown Hall of Famers like Bob Gibson, Frank Robinson, Jim Palmer, Robin Yount, and Reggie Jackson. As I read Van Hyning’s book, thoughts of those great evenings I spent in Sixto Escobar Stadium, enjoying the warm Caribbean trade winds and top-flight baseball came back to me as though they happened yesterday.

Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research member. Contact him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com

When Clemente And Mays Roamed The Same Outfield

Dems’ Roadmap Out of Their Funk

By Joe Guzzardi

If the Democrats are as battered, bruised and confused as has been repeatedly written, then the party should act immediately to remove Senator Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). After the 2024 drubbing that Democrats were on the short end of, and with defeated presidential candidate Kamala Harris permanently out of DC politics, Schumer is an omni-present reminder of the party’s failure. When last seen, Schumer was protesting in front of the Treasury Building alongside Maxine Waters (R-Calif.), “We will win. We won’t lose,” a reference to Elon Musk’s DOGE. Yelling and arm-waving is a bad image for Waters, age 86, Schumer, 75, Elizabeth Warren (D-MA.), another shrieking protester, age 75, and the floundering Democratic Party. Waters has been a congressional fixture for 36 years, Schumer, 45 years, and Warren, 10 years although she has been hanging around Washington in various capacities for 30 years. Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), 80, Senate Minority Whip, is a 42-year congressional veteran who will assumedly run for a sixth term in 2026. Durbin’s signature issue, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the unpopular and unconstitutional DACA, has been stuck in legislative quicksand for two decades.  Some DACAs are now over forty, have protection from deportation, work authorization, jobs, and families that include American citizen children.

When the American Federation of Government Employees gathered on Capitol Hill and rallied “to save the civil service” and to oppose President Trump’s push to reduce federal government’s workforce size, Maxine Dexter, (D-Ore.) said, “…we have to f… Trump.” Free speech rights may protect Dexter, an M.D. and first term U.S. Representative, but her vulgar comment could be construed as a threat to the president, a felony that carries a maximum jail sentence of up to five years and a fine not to exceed $250,000. As President Teddy Roosevelt said, “Profanity is the parlance of the fool.”

Whether engaged in free speech or felonious behavior, the Democrats’ strategy is wrong. Insistence that the Trump administration represents a “constitutional crisis” does not resonate with voters, too reminiscent of the endless pre-election assertion that fascist DJT would be a “threat to democracy.” Tennis players’ comportment could help guide Democrats to get over their automatic hysterics of all-things Trump. In tennis, after the match, the loser and winner meet at the net, shake hands, and pat each other on the back. The loser returns to the locker room, not grousing but committed to reviewing the match tapes, identifying strategically what led to his loss, and dedicating himself to practicing longer and harder to win next time. Before the upcoming tournament, the loser fires his coach, his trainer, and his dietician; he sheds deadwood. Getting rid of power-obsessed, entrenched Schumer and Durbin would be hard unless former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is summoned. Pelosi put the skids to President Biden, her friend of 50 years, to end his re-election bid. Even if Schumer and Durbin retire or are pressured to resign, New York and Illinois will remain blue, but the rest of the 2026 Senate election calendar looks grim for Democrats, especially after Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and Tina Smith (D-Minn.) announced their retirements

Looking back at November, woeful Kamala Harris deserves the lion’s share of the blame for her landslide defeat. Harris was a bad candidate who ran a horrible campaign. Her candidacy was, as Democratic strategist James Carville said, like starting the seventh string quarterback in the Superbowl. But the Democrats’ bench is wafer-thin. California Governor Gavin Newsom, Senator Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) or any of the other possible candidates would have fared worse than Harris. They all shared the impossible task of winning while saddled with President Biden’s burdensome baggage—an open border that admitted more than 10 million unvetted illegal aliens, national debt increases of more than $6 trillion, and brazen disregard for the Supreme Court’s ruling that he could not forgive student debt, a decision he disobeyed when he subsequently discharged  multiple billions in indebtedness, and then bragged about his defiance of SCOTUS.  Not for nothing did President Biden have a 35% approval rating among likely voters.

On a nationally televised interview, the host asked his guest Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson if Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries had knocked on his door to present the Democrat plan. In the imaginary conversation, Jefferies would say to Johnson, “We agree that government waste and fraud must be eliminated. But we have produced a better plan you should consider.” Johnson replied to the interviewer that no one from the aisle’s other side had, at any time, reached out to him. The Democrats undertaking—to forget about President Trump, he won, you lost. Make a sound plan, promote it nationwide, sell it to the voters, a task that is within your reach. Statistics compiled in 2024 show that of the 210 million registered voters 38.8 million are Republicans and forty-nine million are Democrats. The new and improved Democratic roadmap should be to stop harping about President Trump and instead explain why Americans deserve your party’s vote.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org