Category: Joe Guzzardi

Employers Voice Annual False Lament About Labor Shortage 

By Joe Guzzardi

People may be fleeing New York and Chicago for sunny Florida, but not many are looking for jobs once they arrive. Or so goes the claim. The Census Bureau identified Florida, whose population between 2021 and 2022 increased by 1.9 percent to 22,244,823, as the nation’s fastest growing state. New arrivals, which include the 3.1 million that relocated to Florida during the last decade, were unevenly distributed among the state’s 67 counties. A third of the newcomers settled in Orange, Hillsborough, Lee, Polk and Palm Beach.

Despite so many new residents, CareerSource Palm Beach County officials said that their analysis of 2023 H-2B foreign worker visa applications showed that a record 52 employers, including hotels, clubs and resorts, are seeking to bring people from other countries to fill an also record number of positions, 3,123. President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago and other ritzy golf clubs are among the visa petitioners.

Companies filing requests this year include The Breakers in Palm Beach, BallenIsles Country Club also in Palm Beach Gardens and The Polo Club of Boca Raton. Listed too are 111 positions for the Mar-a-Lago club that serves as the former president’s main residence and another 51 jobs for Trump’s golf clubs in Jupiter and suburban West Palm Beach.

The notion that the nation’s most exclusive resorts can’t find employees, and must import workers, simply doesn’t compute. In addition to the millions of newcomers, Florida has 13 state universities, 26 community colleges and 32 private colleges with tens of thousands of students willing to work to earn money to contribute to their tuition and living costs. But the probability is that those coveted jobs at upscale locations will go to H-2B workers because employers prefer cheap foreign-born, nonimmigrant visa holders to Americans. The White House is onboard with subverting U.S. workers too. Last year, the Biden administration made 55,000 additional visas available on top of the annual 66,000 allotment, the largest H-2B visa increase since 2017.

Every year, the media promotes the false idea that employers can’t find workers and that the only solution is more H-2B visa workers. But a quick look at the southern border proves that plenty of people are available to work, and their totals increase every day. Millions of migrants have crossed into the U.S., with the vast majority having received parole, a classification that includes work permission. Numerous studies published by liberal-leaning Washington think tanks have determined that, despite Chamber of Commerce and other corporate lobbyists’ insistence, the U.S. doesn’t have a labor shortage. After studying the top 15 H-2B occupations that include the leisure industry, the Economic Policy Institute concluded that persistently flat wages undermine the claim that labor shortages exist.

Nevertheless, Congress’ House Appropriations Committee proposed expansions in both the H-2B and the related H-2A guest worker programs for fiscal 2024. Behind closed doors, these increases also might be slipped into a House continuing resolution. Any guest worker visa increase, especially during this extended and ongoing open border period, is a harmful if not devastating blow to low-skilled black and Hispanic Americans who have low worker participation rates and are experiencing rising unemployment. As reported in The Hill on July 7, the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed that “black Americans make up nearly 90 percent of those who are unemployed in the U.S. since April.”

Even though blacks and Hispanics are the demographic that Democrats court and depend on for their re-election, Congress’ annual behind-the-scenes maneuvering for increases in H-2As and H-2Bs stacks the deck against their long-time voting base. The U.S. labor market needs a pause in employment-authorized immigration whether its paroled migrants or congressionally approved visa hikes. In the meantime, if employers sincerely believe that the labor market has a worker shortage, they could adopt the historic, tried-and-true solution – offer higher wages.

View Online

Joe Guzzardi is a Project for Immigration Reform analyst. Contact him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com.

Employers Voice Annual False Lament About Labor Shortage 

RFK Jr Is Biden’s Biggest Problem

By Joe Guzzardi

The biggest threat to Joe Biden’s 2024 reelection is not the opposition GOP, but rather fellow Democrat Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

If Biden allows Democratic primary debates to take place, and as of early July, neither the president nor the DNC has indicated that they would permit them, Kennedy would have a direct opportunity to challenge the administration’s open border policy that has prevailed since Day One. Under normal circumstances, the incumbent’s party doesn’t hold primaries, but Kennedy is polling at 31 percent in a Newsweek poll taken among 2020 Biden voters, and a Washington Post-ABC poll found that 62 percent of Americans said they would be “dissatisfied” or “angry” if Biden were reelected.

Would-be voters who hope for a more above-board, democratic process got a rude awakening when the DNC rearranged the primary voting states. New Hampshire and Iowa, where Biden did poorly, were pushed back behind South Carolina which essentially sewed up the president’s nomination. For voters who think that the fix may be in, canceling debates and rescheduling primaries that favor Biden give credence to their suspicions.

Unlike Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the border czar, Kennedy has visited the border at hotspot Yuma, Ariz., a town with a population of fewer than 100,000 that is flooded with 6,000 migrants weekly. Officials in the border town say the unsustainable scenario has driven the community to the brink of collapse. Illegal crossers have created $22 million in unreimbursed hospital expenses, and the gotaways trapsing across pathogen-tested agricultural acreage endanger Yuma’s crops, valued at $4 billion annually.

Kennedy shared his first-hand Yuma experiences with Manchester, N.H.’s WMUR9, and brought to light facts, some gruesome, that have been hidden by the establishment media. Kennedy said that he expected to see mostly Central American crossers, but that the first busload was mostly military-age Africans from Senegal. More busloads included families from Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Tibet, Kazakhstan, Nepal, China, Pakistan and other countries. After a cursory interview with Customs and Border Protection, Kennedy watched illegal immigrants board airplanes provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. While he was in Yuma, Kennedy learned that pregnant migrants occupied 32 of the 35 available hospital beds. Local women have traveled to San Diego or Phoenix to have their babies delivered.

The cartels “control all the immigration,” Kennedy said, and “recognized a huge profit opportunity.” They communicate broadly via videos and social media to recruit people worldwide. The business-savvy cartels have lawyers who work with them in various countries to tell prospective recruits exactly what to do to get into the U.S.: get on a plane to Mexico City where the cartel will help secure a visa, and then get passage on an internal Mexicali-bound plane. Once at Mexicali, the cartel arranges for parking lots full of buses to take migrants on the final leg of their journey.

Meanwhile, for the 1 million-plus legal immigrants who arrive every year, and the millions more who have waited in line for years, Kennedy said that Biden’s border mess is “a stick in the eye.” For citizens who want to maintain a sovereign America, Kennedy stated the obvious: “No country can survive if it can’t control its borders.”

To emphasize the humanitarian crisis that Biden permits, if not encourages, Kennedy spoke of the “rape tree…where the cartels extract their final payment from women who come across.” Human traffickers hang the undergarments of women and young girls as a trophy display and challenge to other cartel members. Amnesty International reported that 60 percent of all women and girls trafficked north to be brought over the open U.S.-Mexican border are raped along the way. Parents send their minor-age girls off with morning-after pills, knowing that rape is probable.

In the end, Kennedy said that the border is “a humanitarian crisis that we’re creating through government negligence. And we need to end it for everybody’s sake.” Assuming Kennedy were to make immigration a campaign focal point, a logical conclusion given what he saw at the border, Biden would have little to say in defense of his persistent disregard for immigration law, as U.S. communities like Yuma have paid the price for his disdain.

View Online

Joe Guzzardi is a Project for Immigration Reform analyst. Contact him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com.

Like The Old Gray Mare, All Star Game ‘Ain’t What She Used To Be’

By Joe Guzzardi

Time was when the Major League Baseball All-Star Game was a special event. Fans were eager to see the superstars of the National League and American League compete on one field in one special game. But interleague play, which began in 1997, put the kibosh on that. Here’s Philadelphia Phillies’ outfielder Ron Gant’s reaction, shared by many, to interleague play: “To match the Phillies and Orioles in the regular season is to store your milk in the cupboard. The game is curdling. It has already curdled! What once was a special pastime is now a soulless contrivance….”

Interleague baseball killed the ASG, and the commissioner’s office buried it with pointless add-ons like the Futures Game, the Home Run Derby and poor taste’s nadir, the Red Carpet Show. None of the gimmicks that segue into the game help viewership which has been in freefall for years. The 2022 Midsummer Classic drew an all-time low of 7.5 million viewers. During the 1990s, the television audience routinely exceeded 20 million.

Fans disappointed in Commissioner Rob Manfred’s heavy-handedness in altering how for decades the traditional game had been played — the universal designated hitter and the ghost runner in extra innings are two glaring examples — should brace themselves. Within the next few years, Manfred, determined to drive a stake into traditional baseball’s heart, envisions a complete MLB overhaul.

The San Francisco Giants and Los Angeles Dodgers would no longer be in the same division. Ditto the Boston Red Sox and the Baltimore Orioles. Manfred’s scheme is dependent on the Oakland A’s moving to Las Vegas and Tampa Bay building a new stadium. Once those two steps are completed, Charlotte and Nashville will be awarded new franchises. They’ll be uncompetitive for years. As Manfred sees baseball, revenue is everything, and the game’s rich history is inconsequential. The average team’s value is $2.1 billion; the New York Yankees’ value tops the list at $6 billion.

To appreciate lost history, turn the calendar back to 1946 when a baseball-starved nation welcomed back World War II heroes, many of them future Hall of Famers, who would play in Fenway Park’s ASG, the site of the canceled 1945 tilt. The National League’s squad included Johnny Mize, Stan Musial, Enos Slaughter and Pee Wee Reese. On the American League roster were the DiMaggio brothers — Joe and Dom — Bob Feller and Ted Williams.

All 35,000 eyes were on Williams, a Marine Corp Naval Aviator. Fans wondered if “The Kid,” Williams’ preferred nickname, could pick up where he left off in 1942, his last year before his active service began. Williams’ 1942 Triple Crown statistics set a high bar; BA, .356; HR, 36 and RBI, 137. Although Williams’ 1946 year-end stats were a few points shy of his 1942 totals, his ASG performance ranks as one of the best-ever. Williams went four for four, and became the first player to drive in five runs in a single game as the American League dominated, 12–0. The Kid’s two home runs, two singles and a walk accounted for 10 total bases, a still-standing ASG record. One of Ted’s blasts came off of the Pittsburgh Pirates’ Rip Sewell’s eephus pitch, a soft, parabolic lob that soared 30 feet off the ground before it floated back to earth. Sewell’s pitch and Ted’s homer provided the fans with comic relief during the rout.

Out in Ted’s hometown of San Diego, his mother May and her Union Street neighbors listened to Mel Allen call the game. When asked how she felt about her son becoming the first player to drive in five runs in an ASG, the devoted Salvation Army volunteer said: “All my prayers were answered. The game was perfectly marvelous…Ted’s a wonderful boy.”

May’s prayers, however, didn’t prevent 1946 from ending on a sour note for the Red Sox and Ted. In the World Series, the St. Louis Cardinals bested the Sox 4–3, and in his only World Series appearance held The Kid to a measly .200 batting average. A humiliated, humbled Williams looked back on the World Series as the lowest point in his otherwise glorious career.

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

George M Cohan Was Yankee Doodle Boy

By Joe Guzzardi

George M. Cohan, the son of Irish immigrants – often described as the man who owned Broadway – dominated American theater from 1901 until 1940. During that four-decade period, the man born on the Fourth of July produced 80 Broadway shows, many of which he wrote himself, and wrote more than 1,000 songs. Although Cohan liked to describe himself as “just a song and dance man,” he was a skilled actor, playwright and a director who once advised Spencer Tracy: “Spencer, you have to act less,” counsel that guided the great screen actor to his many understated performances.

Cohan got his start as one of the four Cohans, a late 19th century vaudeville act that included his father Jere, mother Nellie, George’s sister Josie and George. First carried onto the stage when he was four months old, in 1900 George and his family left hometown Providence, R.I., and headed for Broadway’s bright lights.

Soon after, Cohan met Sam Harris who became George’s friend and partner. For decades, the team paired up for dozens of unqualified stage successes, the first of which, Little Johnny Jones, came in 1904. The play opened in Hartford, Conn., where, upon hearing Cohan sing the words:

“I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy

 A Yankee Doodle do or die

 A real live nephew of my Uncle Sam’s

 Born on the Fourth of July.”

The electrified audience jumped out of their seats, applauding feverishly. The patriotically stirring, flag-waving tune reflected Cohan’s unflinching devotion to his country. Cohan had three loves: his family, the theater and the United States.

In 1905, in his play George Washington, Jr., Cohan wrote another American tribute, “You’re a Grand Old Flag.” Sitting next to a Civil War veteran who had been active during Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg, Pa., Cohan listened as the old man, who tenderly stroked the U.S. flag he held in his lap, said, “She’s a grand old rag.” Recalling the veteran’s words, Cohan originally named his song “Grand Old Rag.” But listeners, not knowing the backstory, objected, so he changed the title. In his lyrics, however, Cohan kept the reference intact:

“You’re a grand old rag, you’re a high-flying flag

 And forever in peace may you wave

 You’re the emblem of the land I love

 The home of the free and the brave.”

At World War I’s outbreak, Cohan penned another patriotic song, “Over There,” the era’s most popular tune:

“Over there, over there

 Send the word, send the word over there,

 That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming

 The drums rum-tumming everywhere.”

In 1936, Congress awarded Cohan the Congressional Gold Medal, not only because of his songwriting and acting talent, but also because his work instilled in Americans’ hearts a loyal and patriotic spirit and projected the grandeur that the U.S. represented to people around the world.

Six years later, in 1942, Jimmy Cagney portrayed Cohan in “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” his Oscar-winning, Best Actor role. The same year, surrounded by friends and family at his home, Cohan lost his battle with intestinal cancer. Cohan’s funeral, a Solemn Requiem Mass attended by thousands, was held at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. For the first time in St. Patrick’s history, the organist played a secular song. In a slow, soft funeral march tempo, “Over There” overwhelmed mourners who sobbed uncontrollably. The funeral procession up Fifth Avenue proceeded to the Bronx where Cohan was laid to rest in Woodlawn Cemetery with his mother, father and sister. The burial marked the last stop in the Four Cohans’ journey.

Toward the end of Cohan’s life, long-time friend George Buck reminded him that no one had ever matched George’s theatrical triumphs. “Doesn’t that make you proud?” Buck asked. Cohan replied: “No complaints, kid. No complaints.” His daughter Mary, at his bedside, said that she was certain that George M. died a happy man, a fitting final act for an artist who delighted so many for so long.

Joe Guzzardi is a nationally syndicated columnist. Contact him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com.

George M Cohan Was Yankee Doodle Boy

Students Want Tech Jobs, But Americans Need Not Apply

By Joe Guzzardi

After decades of frustration in their efforts to make major employment breakthroughs in the IT industry, black tech workers may have found a valuable ally. Nex Cubed founder and Chief Executive Officer Marlon Evans has identified tech as an industry where talented individuals affiliated with Historically Black College and Universities (HBCUs) might land well-paid jobs.

Nex Cubed describes itself as a global accelerator that invests in diverse founders dedicated to solving the nation’s most pressing problems. The venture firm’s website states that its goal is to provide seed capital that will empower startups and investors to develop new technologies.

Recently, Nex Cubed announced that, backed by Costco Wholesale’s $5 million financial assistance, the venture capital firm would launch the Historically Black College and University Founders Fund (HBCUFF). This $40 million accelerator will invest in startups where at least one founder is a student, alumni or faculty member of an HBCU.

Led by North Carolina A&T State University, Howard University and Spelman College, HBCUs are responsible for 25 percent of all African-American STEM graduates. With the layoffs of both directly employed and contracted tech workers, Nex Cubed sees openings for black students currently untrained, unrecruited and unemployed in their chosen field.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s data shows that big tech’s demographic mix is 68 percent white and 64 percent male, statistics that the “Stem News Chronicle” noted. A McKinsey report predicted that the gap in tech employment – the total of black IT workers compared to white – will widen over the next decade. Across all industries, technology jobs – those in data science, engineering, cybersecurity and software development – are expected to grow 14 percent by 2032, but over the same time period, the black tech workers’ percentage is expected to grow only 8 percent.

Nex Cubed understands the reason why U.S.-born tech workers struggle to get gainful employment. From its bulletin: “One of the biggest myths surrounding the [H-1B] program is that it fills labor shortages. While this was Congress’ intent for the program, the U.S. Department of Labor has botched its implementation so badly that H-1Bs are regularly used to replace U.S. workers.”

But understanding what’s going on in the tech employment market – the displacement of skilled, experienced American workers by less qualified, cheaper H-1B visa holders – and affecting a positive pro-U.S. IT employment market are two different things.

Establishing the HBCUFF and emphasizing the underutilized talent that HBCU graduates offer to tech employers are steps in the right direction. But a Net Cubed goal must be to encourage Congress to reform the H-1B visa so that American tech workers, black and white, get the first shot at filling tech jobs. Before COVID-19 and the recent layoffs, the Silicon Valley tech workforce was three-quarters foreign-born. Hundreds of thousands of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services-authorized-to-work nonimmigrant H-1B visa holders are doing jobs that U.S. tech workers are fully qualified to fill.

Because of tech’s mass layoffs – more than 200,000 with more firings anticipated, and possible fraud charges pending against CEOs for improprieties related to the annual H-1B visa lotteries to import H-1B foreign-born contract workers – job openings should be plentiful for HBCU graduates. The CEOs who oversee many of the second- or third-tier white-collar subcontracting firms may face federal investigation. Consequently, the firms in question, many based in India, are closing  up shop, and the executives are fleeing to the home country just ahead of federal prosecution.

Every stakeholder in the battle to put American workers first needs to enter the fray and lobby Congress for meaningful H-1B visa reforms that place U.S. tech workers at the top of the hiring line. The H-1B is the arch enemy of high-skilled but unemployed or underemployed young Americans. In the name of fairness, the visa must either be revised or, better yet, eliminated.

View Online

Joe Guzzardi is a Project for Immigration Reform analyst. Contact him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com.

Biden Speaks With Forked Tongue About Migration

By Joe Guzzardi

Only the most trusting among the general population believe a single utterance from establishment Washington, D.C. In fact, an inverse relationship exists between an issue’s importance and the likelihood entrenched D.C. speaks about it honestly. The more important, the less probable that the public will hear the truth.

The best the populace can hope for is that decades after the damage has been done, architects of the ruinous policies will make half-hearted apologies. A sampling: in the mid-1990s, 20 years after 58,000 American soldiers died in Southeast Asia, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, the war’s chief prosecutor, confessed, “We [President Johnson, Secretary of State Dean Rusk and McNamara] were wrong, terribly wrong.” The war cost $168 billion, or adjusted for inflation, $1 trillion in today’s dollars

Then, in March 2003, speaking from the White House, President George W. Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction that Iraq allegedly kept at the ready. Bush ominously added that those WMDs could “kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country, or any other.” But in January 2004, David Kay, a former U.N. Weapons Inspector, told Bush that his intelligence was wrong; Iraq had no WMDs, and he resigned. Nevertheless, and largely on Bush’s bad information, the Iraq War lasted from 2003 until 2011, and cost $2 trillion. About 4,700 U.S. and allied troops were killed, as well as more than 100,000 Iraqi citizens. In 2022, Bush sheepishly admitted that the Iraq invasion was “unjustified and brutal.”

The 20-year war in Afghanistan, 2001-2021, purportedly launched to beat back the Taliban, ended in a humiliating withdrawal, but not until the Department of Defense squandered $2.3 trillion, and 243,000 U.S. soldiers, allies and citizens died, exclusive of fatalities by disease, inadequate diet, dehydration and other indirect consequences. Two decades, apparently, isn’t long enough for Presidents Bush, Obama or Trump to apologize for their collective misjudgment in sustaining the Afghan war that the nation could never have been won.

The Biden administration has kept Washington’s commitment to dishonesty alive and well, this time as it mischaracterizes the Southwest border invasion. To hear Biden and his Department of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas describe conditions, agents have operational control of the border; asylum seekers have been thoroughly vetted, and the president’s open borders largesse reflects Americans’ generosity. The inconvenient truth is the opposite of the official narrative.

Since Biden took office, Customs and Border Protection has encountered 6.2 million illegal immigrants and releasedmore than two million of them into the interior. Another estimated 1.5 million gotaways, those who escaped CBP’s detection, are also now part of the general population. Although the official patter is that the border crossers are vetted, the statistics tell a different story. A significant portion of arriving migrants have criminal convictions for rape, assault and murder. A 2021 Department of Justice report revealed that 64 percent of federal arrests in 2018 involved illegal aliens, despite then comprising only 7 percent of the population.

Biden’s open border has lured hundreds of migrants to their deaths. For example, 38 illegal aliens were killed after a fire broke out in a Ciudad Juárez holding facility, and last year, more than 850 illegal aliens died while trying to traverse rough southwestern terrain into the U.S.

In 2022, fentanyl overdose deaths hit 110,000, a record, and are climbing daily. About 150 people O.D. every day from the drug that smugglers bring across the poorly defended Southwest Border. The administration’s welcome-the-world approach to immigration has spawned other crises – sex trafficking, migrant child labor abuse, overwhelmed school districts and hospital overcrowding.

Comparisons between the fallout from long foreign wars and today’s border crisis are not exact. But the similarity is that when a subject affects all Americans – wars and sovereignty-busting open borders – people are lied to. The border mess is still in its earliest stages; Biden has been in office 30 months with 18 months remaining, and possibly four more years if he is reinstalled for a second term. The annual taxpayer cost per the ever-mounting illegal immigrant population including its U.S.-born children is $8,766 per illegal alien. Americans oppose everything about Biden’s law-breaking immigration agenda. A quick rule of thumb: when the subject is immigration, the administration speaks in forked tongues.

View Online

Joe Guzzardi is a Project for Immigration Reform analyst who has been writing about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com.

Biden Speaks With Forked Tongue About Migration

Ruth And Cobb Battled On The Greens

By Joe Guzzardi

When the U.S. Open field tees off at the Los Angeles Country Club, June 15, the golfers should give a hat tip to the man who made their $20 million purse possible – Babe Ruth, the sport’s pioneer. The “Big Bam” took up golf in 1914 when he was a rookie left-handed pitcher and played the Scottish Game all his life. Ruth recalled that one year he played 365 rounds, and wished for more. As Ruth said, “You never get anywhere in golf playing only four times a week.” His countless golf trophies housed in the Cooperstown Hall of Fame attest to Ruth’s command of the sport.

During the 1920s, excellent golfers like Bobby Jones and Walter Hagen played tournaments before sparse crowds. But when the Associated Press documented that Ruth, playing in Newton, at Massachusetts’ Woodland Golf Club, drove the ball more than 395 feet, the word got out, and interest in golf exploded. Until the 1900s, professionals refused to give golf lessons to left-handers. But because Ruth was the Babe, Scottish pro Alex Morrison, who also instructed Bing Crosby, Jack Dempsey and Charlie Chaplin, persuaded the New York Yankees’ home run king to abandon his baseball swing and adopt a more mature approach to his overall game. Ruth steadily improved, most noticeably his short game.

Ruth took up golf full-time after his baseball days ended, and he whittled his handicap down to 5. Ruth was a determined amateur golfer who loved to bet against his opponents. He won $100 a day wagers from fellow Hall of Famer Dizzy Dean and preeminent journalist Grantland Rice. When he retired, the Bambino was more available than ever to raise money for charity. Throughout his active playing days and after leaving baseball, Ruth always was ready to lend a hand to good causes.

In 1937, Ruth teamed up with Babe Didrikson Zaharias, a 1932 Summer Olympic three-metals winner, to fundraise for New York’s needy children. “Little Babe” and “the Big Babe,” as Zaharias called her childhood hero, set off pandemonium among the unheard-of 10,000-strong crown at Fresh Meadow Country Club in New York. The AP, again on the scene, reported that “the wildest and craziest crowd that ever stampeded through a sand trap” disrupted the event after Babe and Babe sewed up a win. Big Babe had a shirtsleeve torn off and was knocked to his feet. Little Babe bulldozed her way to safety.

Ruth played dozens of events, some at elite country clubs where food, drink and lodging were comped; others at municipal courses. At Ohio’s Acacia Country Club, while playing in The True Temper Open, Ruth drew Cleveland’s largest-ever crowd; at the Lakeside Country Club in California, Ruth played with celebrities Bing Crosby, Oliver Hardy and W.C. Fields. Then, on the 1939 inaugural Baseball Hall of Fame weekend and while at the Leatherstocking Golf Club in New York, Ty Cobb issued a golf challenge to Ruth, his bitter diamond rival: “I can beat you at the Scottish game any day of the week and twice on Sunday.” In 1941, after Cobb spent two years backpedaling, Ruth forced his hand: “If you want to get your brains knocked out, come right ahead.”

The two titans played opposite styles of baseball and golf. Ruth went for the long ball which Cobb, a small ball proponent, abhorred. In the never-ending debate about who the better player was, the “Georgia Peach” lorded over Ruth his higher inaugural HOF vote tally – 222-215. Now the famous duo would take to the links to decide who was better. Cobb’s 8 handicap versus Ruth’s 5 meant that an even-Steven match awaited enthusiastic fans. A best-of-three match play series was set for suburban areas around Boston, New York and Detroit, with the proceeds donated to children’s charities. The first two locations provided an edge for Ruth who played for the Red Sox and the Yankees, and the third venue favored Cobb, a Tigers great. The media hype rekindled the competitive juices between the adversaries. From Hollywood, Bette Davis wired the competitors: “May the best man win!” Match one went to Cobb, 3-2. After watching Cobb excel on the greens, Ruth called him “a putting fool.”

During a sweltering New York heatwave, Ruth won the second match on the 19th hole. In the tiebreaker, eternal bragging rights would be settled at Grosse Ile Country Club in Michigan. The golf was forgettable; Ruth shot 81, and Cobb 78. Cobb won the best of three 2-1 in what Ruth and he called “The Left-Handed Has-Beens Golf Championship.” Both winner and loser were gracious, and stayed close friends until Ruth’s 1948 death at age 53.

As Ruth described his looming demise from throat cancer, “the termites got me.” Later, when reminiscing about Ruth, Cobb said that he wished he could have been more like the Big Bam, friendly, outgoing and beloved. Cobb talked tearfully about how much he missed the man he called “a great, big kid.” Mellowed from his fiercely combative Tigers’ days, Cobb, a multimillionaire thanks to his Coca-Cola and General Motors investments, died in 1961 at age 74. The Georgia Peach took his MLB record .366 batting average with him to his grave.

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

Remembering Mark Vanderheld

By Joe Guzzardi

Mark Edward Vanderheid was born in Tonawanda, N.Y., on Feb. 11, 1949. Four months after his 20^th birthday, and only six months after he arrived in South Vietnam in 1968, Vanderheid, a U.S. Marine Corps Lance Corporal, lay dead on the Quang Tri battle field; mortar shell fragments had torn his body open. Young Mark was one of 58,222 who died in the Vietnam War. Among the enemy, an estimated 1.1 million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters were killed; 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers died, and more than 2 million innocent civilians were killed.

The futile war in Vietnam began in 1959 when the first U.S. soldiers were killed during a guerrilla raid on their quarters near Saigon; the war ended ignominiously in 1975. U.S. forces never had a chance. President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, the powers that escalated the war, had no exit strategy, and knew that Americans back home would be unwilling to make a sustainable commitment to victory. Such a pledge would mean higher taxes to support Johnson’s guns and butter economy, thousands more lost lives and more domestic turmoil. In 1997, during a meeting with McNamara, Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap told his foe that the U.S. could never have won. The Vietnamese, Giap said, were willing to fight for 100 years.

At different times and to different degrees, Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon – the war’s architects – realized that Vietnam was a morass, a disaster in the making, and defeat, inevitable. McNamara: “We were wrong, terribly wrong.” Their too-late awakening was cold comfort to Lillian and Edward Vanderheid, Mark’s parents, as well as to the other families whose loved ones, while defending a misguided, and ultimately failed cause, died too young.

Mark’s body was returned to Tonawanda in July, and he was buried with military services at Elmlawn Cemetery. On Dec. 19, 1968, the Tonawanda News published a letter from the Vanderheid family in which they shared memories of their hero son, and expressed gratitude for the two memorials that had recently been dedicated to Mark, one an award given in his name to the most spirited Tonawanda High School varsity football player. The other memorial, Lillian and Edward wrote, is the Payne Avenue Christian Church’s “beautiful stained-glass window.” The letter continued: “Words just can’t express the deep feeling within us as we sat in church listening to the memorial dedication service the young friends of Mark’s had to dedicate the stained-glass window that has been put in our church in memory of him. May God Bless you all.”

Grieving Lillian and Edward remembered how Mark loved to play sports and teach other young boys how to play. He coached Little League and also umpired games. Lillian thought back to one day when Mark was home on leave and said, “Mom, someone has to help those people over there. Those kids have never known anything but war. If I can do even a small part to help them to someday just be kids and enjoy a childhood like I did, to be able to throw baseballs and footballs instead of hand grenades, I’ll have done my part.” Lance Corporal Vanderheid did more than his part, and deserved to live a full, rewarding life. The Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon Vietnam war-obsessed White Houses stole from Mark, and from other thousands, that basic privilege.

Mark’s name is on the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial in Washington, D.C., panel W54, line 8. His biography appeared in Gary Bedingfield’s “Baseball’s Greatest Sacrifice,” dedicated to the 500 players who died in service to America.

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

Child Labor Back In Vogue

By Joe Guzzardi

Even though the nation is divided about immigration and its consequences, on one point, unanimity must be reached. Immigration, whether legal or illegal, cannot be a vehicle for child labor. And yet, the Department of Labor has uncovered several incidents that involve under-age migrants working in slave labor-like conditions.

A DOL Tweet: “Packers Sanitation Services Inc. has paid $1.5 M after @WHD_DOL investigators found the company employed at least 102 children-aged 13-17 – in hazardous occupations and had them working overnight shifts in 13 meat processing facilities in eight states.” Furthermore, DOL accused PSSI of employing “oppressive child labor in perilous conditions.”

In a series of stories, NBC News provided the horrific details. PSSI, a company contracted to work at slaughterhouses and meatpacking facilities throughout the county, allegedly employed at least 31 kids – one as young as 13 – to work overnight cleaning shifts at three facilities in Nebraska and Minnesota, a Fair Labor Standards Act violation. Additional evidence indicated that the company may also have employed more under-age children in similar perilous conditions at 400 other sites nationwide. Identity theft is rampant and a major facilitator in underage migrant employment.

PSSI is a huge company that employs about 17,000 and has contracts with hundreds of meatpacking facilities. Toiling at PSSI wasn’t an after-school job at the soda parlor. During the graveyard shift and across three slaughter houses, when they should have been home in bed, minors literally slaved away, mopping up bloody floors.

Interviews with the minors, in their native Spanish language, revealed that several children began their slaughterhouse shifts at 11 p.m. and worked until dawn, some for six or seven days a week, and often for periods of up to 15 months. At least three victims suffered chemical burns.

The NBC News story skirted the central factor that abets minor children’s criminal employment – President Biden and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ open border. Don’t be misled. The media’s deceptive language about “unaccompanied minors” (UACs) is intended to deflect the truth – UACs are more accurately described as the victims of child smuggling rings and are tied into the Biden administration’s open borders policy. As the minors mature into adulthood, they become embedded in the permanent labor force. To most of them, any job is a good job. They need incomes to send remittances back home and to pay off their smuggling fees.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics show that after President Biden took office in January 2021, he acted immediately to eliminate effective policies, including categorically exempting UACs from Title 42. UAC encounters skyrocketed. Between FY 2020 and FY 2021, total UAC encounters at the Southwest border increased a staggering 342 percent, from 33,239 in FY 2020 to 146,913 in FY 2021. Those encounters increased to 152,057 in FY 2022 and are on pace to be at a similar level in FY 2023.

At a recent Senate hearing, Secretary Mayorkas couldn’t explain the child exploitation surge under his watch, a fact that The New York Times described as “ignored or missed.” Multiple veteran government staffers and outside contractors told the Health and Human Services Department, including in reports which reached Secretary Xavier Becerra, that children could be at risk. Critics had previously brought to Mayorkas’ attention that the DHS Office of Refugee Resettlement routinely releases minors into the custody of unvetted families, many of whom are illegally present, and likely also illegally employed. The Labor Department also issued news releases that noted an increase in child labor. Senior White House aides were shown proof of exploitation, like migrants working with heavy industrial equipment and caustic chemicals. The net result of multiple efforts to shine light on booming child exploitation: nothing.

Multiple felonies are committed on every step of the journey from the border to the slaughterhouse. Corrupt government and private sector employers hold the upper hand. Fines are meaningless. Hard jail time might make a difference. But if Congress can’t pass mandatory E-Verify, it’s unlikely to put its weight behind throwing the donor class behind bars.

Joe Guzzardi is a Project for Immigration Reform analyst. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

Child Labor Back In Vogue Child Labor Back In Vogue