Category: Joe Guzzardi

Marvin Miller Made Baseball Players Millionaires

By Joe Guzzardi

Journalist Studs Terkel, who wrote “Working,” the classic oral history of Americans’ on-the-job lives, called Marvin Miller “the most effective union organizer since John L. Lewis,” the United Mine Workers president for forty years and Congress of Industrial Organizations’ founder. Miller took over a failing group that represented the nation’s most exploited but irreplaceable workers —the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA)—- and converted it into the country’s most powerful union.

Miller’s introduction to labor negotiations came when he worked for the United States Steel Workers Association (USWA). In the early 1950s, the USWA, along with the United Auto Workers (UAW), for whom Miller also worked, represented America’s union strength. USWA, with 2,300 North American locals, had more than one million members. But an internal USWA shake-up prompted Miller to seek new employment. He turned down a faculty position at Harvard University when Hall of Fame pitcher Robin Roberts asked him to consider becoming the MLBPA’s executive director. Miller, a baseball fan who admired Roberts’ sterling career—286 wins and 305 complete games over a 20-year career—agreed. After the owners tried to persuade the unconvinced players that Miller would lead them into a strike that few of them could afford —a scare tactic— in 1966, the tenacious labor leader eventually got the job.

Miller had to overcome numerous efforts made by the owners to block his ascendancy. The owners hoped that by repeatedly stalling they would force Miller, who still had no fixed plan to fund the union, to give up. Instead, the owner’s heavy-handedness infuriated the players, and they unified their support behind Miller, who in 1966 they unanimously elected their executive director. By 1968, Miller had negotiated MLBPA’s first collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with the team owners that won the players a whopping increase in their minimum salary from $7,000 to $10,000 plus larger expense allowances that covered the 1968 and 1969 seasons. Miller advised superstar outfielder Curt Flood in the historic 1972 Flood versus Kuhn case which reached the Supreme Court. At stake was coveted free agency. The court ruled against Flood 5-3-1; nevertheless, Flood’s lawsuit opened the door for other MLB players to challenge the reserve clause.

On December 23rd, 1975, Peter Seitz, the neutral arbitrator, awarded Major League Baseball players, both present and future, the greatest Christmas present they would ever receive. He ruled that clause 10(a) of a player’s contract, reserving an unsigned player to his current team, was only valid for one year. After that, a ballplayer could become a free agent if the contract remained unsigned. Free agency, resulting from the 1974 case of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Andy Messersmith and the Baltimore Orioles’ Dave McNally who Miller encouraged to sit out a year, was on the horizon. After filing a grievance, Messersmith and McNally won free agency and signed new contracts with the Atlanta Braves and the Montreal Expos.

During Miller’s MLBPA executive director tenure, baseball suffered through strikes and lockouts that angered fans. But the average player’s annual salary rose from $19,000 in 1966 to $326,000 in 1982, the year Miller left the MLBPA. Miller died in 2012 and didn’t live long enough to see the explosion in player salaries. Too bad; he would have been proud of the groundbreaking work he did decades ago. In 2024, Los Angeles Dodgers’ two-way player, Shohei Otani will earn $70 million, the average player salary is $5 million, and the minimum player income, $750,000.

After being rejected six times in Hall of Fame voting, four times by the Veterans Committee, and twice by the Expansion Era Committee, both dominated by owners and baseball executives, in 2020, the Modern Baseball Era Committee inducted Miller. In 2008, four years before his death at age 95, Miller told the Boston Globe that he held the HOF in contempt and was indifferent to his induction. Calling the vote “rigged” and the members “handpicked to reach a particular outcome,” Miller said, “At age 91, I can do without the farce.”

Miller was among baseball’s three most impactful figures, sharing the honor with Babe Ruth, who changed the way the game is played and Jackie Robinson who paved the way for black players to enter the Major Leagues.

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

Marvin Miller Made Baseball Players Millionaires

CBO Explains Bad BLS Reports: Over-Immigration

By Joe Guzzardi

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has a message for disaffected citizens who have watched legal and illegal workers replace Americans: Get used to it! Since 2021, the onset of Joe Biden’s presidency, 9.3 million people have entered the United States, more than three times the net number that arrived in the country during the previous decade. Using cautious, politically correct prose, CBO identified the biggest net increase of 6.5 million as “other foreign nationals,” which includes “people who entered the U.S. undetected, as well those who were paroled into the country and are awaiting proceedings in immigration court.” In plain language, the arrivals are low-skilled, under-educated, non-English-speaking illegal aliens. The largest sending countries are Venezuela, an avowed enemy of the U.S., Mexico and Honduras, 14%, 13%, and 8.5% respectively. In addition, CBO estimates that the non-immigrant population which includes employment-based visa holders has increased by about 230,000 since 2020. Among the 6.5 million illegal aliens, CBO concluded that “most of them work.”

Another category that must be considered are the two million gotaways that the House Homeland Security Committee estimates have slipped undetected into the U.S. and may be working in the $3 trillion underground economy. The arriving illegal immigrants, noted CBO, “are younger [about 78%] and more likely to be of working age…” Among the recently arrived illegal immigrants aged16 or older, 68% are either employed or looking for employment, a total of about five million individuals. CBO analysts determined that, based on U.S. Census data, illegal immigrants who arrived since 2020 are more than twice as likely than U.S. workers to have dropped out or never attended high school. Those without high-school diplomas earn less than their American-born contemporaries; their willingness to work for a lower income is attractive to unscrupulous employers. Cheap labor is always in vogue. Their occupations are concentrated in jobs that Americans, especially under-employed Americans, can and would do. They include construction, carpentry, landscaping, drivers, housekeepers, and janitors. Their low education achievement prevents them entering the skilled labor field.

The August BLS establishment survey showed that the economy created a tepid 142,000 jobs. But the big story is August’s Household Survey that collects comprehensive employment data including demographic facts. CBO suggested that the illegal alien population might be larger than the August BLS Household Survey indicated. First, unlawfully present residents may be hesitant to share personal information with the Census Bureau representative who, on behalf of BLS, interviews them. And second, the report does not count the number of newly arrived Biden-Harris open border illegal immigrants who are employed. The dramatic increase in the immigrant population includes 2.6 million lawful permanent residents who receive employment authorization.

Recent Household Surveys have reflected a growinggap between native-born and foreign-born employment. In August, the number of U.S. born employees fell by 1.3 million and the number of foreign born employees increased by 635,000. Over the past 12-months, native born employment has contracted from 131 million to 129.7 million, a loss of 1.3 million natives from payrolls. The number of foreign-born employees has grown from 30.4 million to 31.6 million, a gain of 1.2 million. Since October 2019, native-born U.S. workers have lost 1.4 million jobs; over the same period foreign-born workers have gained three million jobs.

An estimate of the illegal alien population published in June 2023 put the total at a record high 16.8 million. That highest-ever total is significantly greater than the January 2022 illegal alien population estimate of 15.5 million, and the 2024 count, when it is released will be higher still. The unprecedented surge in legal and illegal immigrants, which the CBO report identified, has changed the U.S. labor force in ways that are likely to reverberate throughout the economy for decades. Given the trend that started in 2019 and continues today, Americans’ unemployment crisis will do more than “reverberate.” The demographic shift will create an earthquake of more unlawfully present workers who take citizens’ jobs. The great displacement is no longer theory but established, cold fact as published government statistics confirm.

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

CBO Explains Bad BLS Reports

Viewers Learned Nothing From Debate

By Joe Guzzardi

Viewers who tuned in to the highly anticipated Donald J. Trump versus Vice President Kamala Harris debate were, regardless of their favorite candidate, disappointed. Harris’ supporters wished that she had taken the opportunity to clear up why she has U-turned on so many issues like fracking, the border wall, universal health care, and her mandatory gun buy-back program. The pro-Harris contingent would also like to have seen their preferred presidential choice face the tough questions more forthrightly rather than bob and weave, a show of weakness when what’s required of a president is strength.

ABC Co-host David Muir posed the first question to Harris: “…are you better off than you were four years ago? When it comes to the economy, do you believe Americans are better off than they were four years ago?” Harris completely dodged the question and instead launched into a long non-response that included references to her middle-class upbringing, her plan for an “opportunity economy,” and her “love for small businesses.” Such an abstract reply that evaded the question entirely converted no on-the-fence voters.

The pro-Trumpers hoped that the former president would have consistently reverted to Americans’ top two concerns, and the issues that polls show him leading Harris comfortably. Among probable voters who said jobs and the economy were “very important” issues, 86 percent said they planned to vote for Trump, compared to 64 percent who said they intend to vote for Harris, an Economist/YouGov poll taken Aug. 25-27 found. Trump had an even more substantial lead on immigration. Trump led Harris by fifty-one points among adults who said immigration was “very important” in the same Economist/YouGov poll, with 83 percent saying they planned to back Trump compared to just 32 percent who said they will vote for Harris.

Instead of hammering Harris with hard data about his strengths, Trump got suckered into silly back and forth squabbling about whose campaign events drew larger audiences or defending his J6 behavior. A survey that Pew Research conducted found that J6 does not appear in any of Americans top sixteen concerns. The same poll showed that probable voters felt that the GOP was more likely to resolve what they considered “very big problems” like inflation, illegal immigration, international terrorism, and violent crime. Moderators Muir and Linsey Davis asked only a handful of immigration-related questions. In all, slightly more than five minutes was spent discussing immigration even though it worsens a host of serious problems like a weak economy, education, housing, and crime.

Trump failed to bring the economy back into his spotlight even though the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports provide him with ample fodder. Measuring average hourly earnings from February of the first year of each presidency through July of their fourth year, specifically wage gains for production and non-supervisory workers, Trump’s gains were 6.54%; Biden-Harris gains, 0.00%. What’s more, immigration-driven population growth has displaced American workers or helped prevent recent college graduates from entering the work force. Foreign-born workers as a percentage of all employment under Trump, 17.4%; under Biden-Harris, 19.6%. Under Trump, foreign-born employment growth increased 7.5%; under Biden-Harris, 14.2%. Another voters’ worry: inflation. Cumulative inflation during Trump’s administration, 5.9%; in the Biden-Harris White House, 19%.

Harris exceeded her low expectations, and Trump missed several opportunities to put distance between him and his rival. Having to debate not only Harris but the meddlesome moderators Muir and Davis, Trump had to deal with three rivals at once. Muir and Davis continuously “fact checked” Trump but let Harris’ misstatements stand, unchallenged. Trump, who won the pre-debate coin flip, chose to deliver the last words. He asked why Harris, during her 3-1/2 years in the White House, had not accomplished “all the wonderful” things she promised to do during the debate. Harris could, Trump noted, proceed directly back to the White House and “do the things you [said] want to do.”

When the debate ended, Harris’ team emailed the Trump camp to ask for a second debate. Trump waffled, claimed that he won the Philadelphia face off, and said “Let’s see what happens.” The Vice-Presidential candidates Tim Walz and J.D. Vance will face off on October 1.

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

Viewers Learned Nothing From Debate

BLS Admits Jobs Overstated, Gives Phony Boost to Bidenomics

By Joe Guzzardi

The Bureau of Labor Statistics delivered an unpleasant Labor Day surprise earlier this year when it confirmed that it overstated the jobs created total from March 2023 to March 2024 by at least 818,000. The gross miscalculation, the largest in 15 years, makes President Joe Biden look foolish. Biden frequently but falsely proclaims that the U.S. has the world’s strongest economy, that he has created 15 million jobs, 800,000 manufacturing jobs which, he insists, proves that Bidenomics is a rip-roaring success. The adjustment brings the total employment growth for the 12-month period, not including farm jobs, from 2.9 million to about 2.1 million, knocking average monthly growth during that time from about 242,000 to about 174,000. To determine the new estimates, the government relied on the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), which tracks employment and wages that employers report and covers more than 95% of all U.S. jobs.

BLS and its dozens of economists inflating the aggregate jobs total by 818,000 is an error akin to a field goal specialist lining up for a five-yard boot but kicking the football fifty yards to the right of the goal post. Economists that work on the monthly reports have one job—to accurately count and report the number of jobs created. But if the numbers crunchers’ assignment was to purposefully put the most positive spin on the data to deceive Americans, specifically likely voters, and to give the Biden administration cooked reports to boast about, then everything becomes clear. BLS’ reports are a valuable information source that voters and analysts use to gauge the economy’s health. If they are patently dishonest, then Americans are right to question what other official documents are also purposely fabricated. Even Fed Chairman Jay Powell is suspicious. In June, when the government reported May’s unlikely job creation total of 272,000, Powell said, “they may be a bit overstated.”

Skeptics but realists at Zero Hedge noted that beginning during the summer of 2022, BLS, in its determination to show job growth regardless of the quality of those jobs, started to tinker with the labor market’s make up. ZH found that month-to-month gains were going to low-paid, part-time workers while the number of full-time workers declined or remained flat. Detailed data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services suggests that non-farm payroll growth to date for FY24—which started 1 October 2023—comes from illegal aliens who have received an Employment Authorization Documents, EADs, granted via parole.

The usual pro-growth suspects shrugged off this year’s downward adjustment. Yardeni Research founder and Yale University Ph.D. Ed Yardeni wrote that, “We’re not sweating this report.” Yardeni called the revision “old news” because it tracked employment data from months ago. Goldman Sachs economist Ronnie Walker labeled the revision “erroneous” and “misleading” because it excludes many of the jobs that illegal immigrants hold, a group that he noted contributes significantly to job growth. Walker understated illegal immigrants’ participation in the labor market. Since about 2019, native-born Americans have lost 1.4 million jobs; over the same period foreign-born workers have gained three million jobs. That is more than a significant contribution, the words Walker used. Instead, it’s a complete displacement of American workers.

Goldman Sachs advocates for more immigration and more non-immigrant visas like the H-1B visa, even if higher immigration levels deny U.S. workers an opportunity to get jobs in a tight economy. A Partnership for Public Service poll sampling of U.S. adults this spring found just 23% trust the government, compared to 35% in 2022. The results show more Americans consider the federal government to be incompetent, and just 15% believe it to be transparent. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is both incompetent and non-transparent.

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

BLS Admits Jobs Overstated

Feds Piling On US Workers

By Joe Guzzardi

The establishment media has mostly ignored one of the most devastating, avoidable developments in modern U.S. economic history. Since 2019, according to federal data, almost all job growth has gone to legal and illegal immigrants. The government’s Household Survey shows that there were only 971,000 more U.S.-born employees in May 2024 compared to pre-pandemic May 2019, while the number of employed immigrants during the same period increased by 3.2 million. Adding to working families’ pain, most of the jobs created in recent months are part-time, offer no health, no 401k, and no paid vacation benefits. Retail prices are at an all-time peak, and real wages are declining, a devastating one-two punch. Part-time workers are subject to immediate layoffs, their jobs offer few protections. For the marginally employed, marketplace conditions are tough. The news that Americans have been largely displaced by foreign nationals should be a clarion call for reforms to bring U.S. workers back to their proper place atop the employment queue. Instead, the major force that suppresses American workers—namely, the federal government —keeps piling on.

The obvious culprit that pushes American workers to the sidelines are the millions of illegal aliens that have surged the border and, in some cases, received parole from the Biden administration. Parole, as defined in immigration law, allows individuals to enter the U.S. temporarily to provide “significant public benefit,” requirements that the White House routinely ignores. Illegal immigrants who don’t receive work authorization often enter the underground economy, or the so called under-the-table or off-the-books economy. Estimates vary widely, but some put the underground economy between 6.4% and 12% of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP). In the second quarter of 2024, U.S. GDP was estimated at $28.06 trillion, which would put the underground economy somewhere between $1.8 trillion and $3.4 trillion.

Not only is the federal government, specifically the Department of Homeland Security, allowing millions of employment-aged males to enter the interior, but an agency with DHS, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, has moved aggressively to assure that illegal aliens can still get jobs. Last year, USCIS extended the valid period for some non-citizens from two years to five years. USCIS’ generosity extends even to illegal aliens in deportation proceedings. The complete list of five-year work authorized aliens: refugees, non-citizens paroled as refugees, asylees, asylee applicants, recipients of withholding of removal, applicants for adjustment of status, and applicants for suspension of deportation or cancellation of removal. Amazing but true; being in deportation proceedings is not a deterrent to qualifying for employment.

Beginning in October 2023 and continuing through July 2024, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas extended for 18-month periods Temporary Protected Status that includes work permission for the following nations, some hostile to the U.S.: Syria, Burma, Ethiopia, Haiti, Yemen and Somalia. Other countries whose TPS is still current but that will assuredly get renewals when their authorizations expire are Afghanistan, Nepal, Sudan, South Sudan, and Venezuela. Most of the work permits extend into 2025 so the percentage of foreign-born in the labor market will remain high for, at a minimum, more than a year. Another danger looms for prospective U.S. workers that could further depress their job prospects. Governors and mayors from the approximately 300 sanctuary states and cities are lobbying the federal government to issue work permits to the illegal aliens that have overwhelmed them. New York Governor Kathy Hochul has partnered with employers to find asylum seekers jobs, a generous gesture she never made to unemployed citizens.

These recently arrived illegal immigrants are shutting out of the job market a key sector; specifically, young men without a college degree. The decades-long decline in U.S.-born men’s labor force participation emphasizes the problem. Today, the labor force participation rate of U.S.-born men without a bachelor’s degree, ages 18 to 64, is 75.6%. — still below the fourth quarter of 2019’s 76.3% rate. And both those percentages are far below the 2006 and 2000 rates, 80.6% and 82.6%, respectively. Back in the 1960s, an era before unchecked immigration, 90% of prime employment aged men were in the labor force. Adopting policies like mass immigration that prevent young U.S. workers from employment is national suicide, a path that the Biden administration is determined to follow even in the waning days of his presidency.

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

Feds Piling On US Workers Feds Piling On US Workers

Harris-Walz Weakest Border Security Ticket In History ?

By Joe Guzzardi

Tradition calls for the presidential candidate to tack to the middle and to choose a vice president who will capture a state which the opposition might otherwise win. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’ choice as running mate, does neither. Walz is a less-well-known version of California Governor Gavin Newsom, an ultra-progressive who is aligned with Harris on every radical position she supports. And 1972 was the last time a Republican presidential candidate captured Minnesota, when Richard Nixon defeated George McGovern. Although the GOP has made inroads in recent years, the state should remain safely blue.

Among U.S. residents, 71% have neither heard of Walz nor are sure how to evaluate him. But Walz has been in politics since 2006, when he began the first of six terms serving in the U.S. House of Representatives and before being elected and re-elected Minnesota’s governor in 2018 and 2022. Walz’s 26 years in public office should give concerned voters ample insight into his views on their top priority—immigration—and other controversial social issues like his handling of the 2020 BLM riots that cost Minneapolis-St. Paul taxpayers $2 billion.

On open borders and advocacy for more taxpayer funded benefits for illegal aliens, Walz is a carbon copy of Harris. He supports how Biden and Harris have stood idly by and watched millions of unvetted illegal aliens, including at least 99 from Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia and other nations on the terrorist watch list, cross into the U.S. and disappear into the interior. A sampling of his votes while he was in Congress shows that Walz is all-in on supporting more illegal immigration and providing them with more benefits. Walz was only one of ten co-sponsors on H.R. 2940 which would make it easier for Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to waive grounds of inadmissibility related to terrorism. Walz also voted for H.R. 392, the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act, which would remove the per-country caps for employment visas and flood the country with even more foreign labor that would take American jobs from U.S. tech workers. As governor, Walz continued and intensified his illegal immigration advocacy. Walz sent a letter to congressional leaders in 2021 which urged them to pass amnesty legislation for “essential workers, Dreamers, Temporary Protected Status holders, and their families.” In the letter, Walz referred to amnesty as “the right thing to do” for the country. He promoted sanctuary state status for Minnesota, the North Star Act, signed a law that gave illegal aliens free public college tuition, and another law that gave drivers licenses to illegal aliens making it easier for them to get to jobs that are illegal for them to hold.

Walz has more heavy baggage that, if it ever becomes nationally known, would hurt Harris’ presidential bid.

      *A pesky 1995 DUI charge has resurfaced. Walz, living in Nebraska, was stopped for driving 96 MPH in a 55 MPH zone. He had a blood alcohol level of 0.128, well over Nebraska’s legal limit of 0.1 Ultimately, after telling several versions of the incident, Walz plead guilty to a reckless driving misdemeanor. His contradictory statements raised questions about his honesty.

     *As the Black Lives Matter riots swept through Minnesota, Walz’s leadership came under intense scrutiny. Critics argue that his failure to call the National Guard immediately allowed the chaos to escalate, and ultimately destroyed neighborhoods and small businesses. Harris’ involvement didn’t help matters; she was busy soliciting bail money for arrested protesters through the Minnesota Freedom Fund, which added fuel to the fire.

     *The governor changed the Minnesota flag to more closely resemble Somalia’s even though Somali gangs had terrorized shoppers at the Mall of America and at other Twin-Cities locations.

     * In January 2023, Walz signed into law Minnesota legislation that includes no limitations on when a woman may end the life of her unborn baby, abortion.

     *In March, 2023, Walz signed an executive order that affirmed gender affirming health care for Minnesota’s LGBTQ community.

     * Signed a bill that took effect on January 1 that required public schools to provide free menstrual products in boys and girls bathrooms. Co-sponsor Sandra Feist hailed Walz’s bill and said, “Not all students who menstruate are female.”

     *Finally, Walz signed an executive order ensuring that Minnesota children have access to irreversible transgender surgeries and sterilizing hormone treatments, which proponents call “gender-affirming care.”

Walz and Harris’ immigration and societal perspectives are far outside of the mainstream but, to date, the complicit media has kept their extreme policies under wraps. Since her coronation, Harris has gone seventeen days without taking a single question, a strategy that’s been working for her. A poll taken just after Biden dropped out, for example, showed that voters trusted her and Trump equally to bring down prices. She’s avoided, in the public’s eye at least, being tied to Biden’s inflationary policies, his open border agenda and warmongering administration. In Harris’ Philadelphia speech and Walz’s acceptance, neither mentioned the words “inflation” or “border.”  Her website is a fundraising vehicle that offers no policy proposals from which voters may review and draw their own conclusions.

Critics claim that the Harris-Walz ticket is the most radical in presidential history, a conclusion that well-informed voters may disagree with but should decide for themselves before they cast their votes.

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

Harris-Walz Weakest Border Security Ticket In History ?

The Kamala Conundrum

By Joe Guzzardi

Throughout her career, Kamala Harris has benefited from the support of friends in high places. Michelle and Barack Obama’s recent endorsement of Harris for president, despite Barack’s original fear that she couldn’t beat Donald Trump, is the latest example. An insider revealed that Obama withheld his Harris endorsement because “he knows she can’t win,” and he said that, in Obama’s opinion, “she can’t navigate the landmines that are ahead of her.”

The Obamas’ backing gives Harris’ campaign a needed boost. But, looking back, Harris’ political ascendancy is directly tied to her two-year dalliance with Willie Brown in the 1990s while he was Speaker of the California Assembly. The speakership is one of the state’s most powerful positions whichcontrols the legislative flow of bills that either do or don’t reach the governor’s desk. Married but separated, Brown was twice Harris’ age; he was 60 and she, 29. Brown appointed Harris to two coveted state panels—the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board and the California Medical Assistance Commission—that together reportedly earned her more than $400,000 over five years, $825,000 today.

But Brown’s most valuable favors were to connect Harris to the Democrat party’s elites and deep-pocketed donors. Brown also actively promoted Harris’ campaigns, first for San Francisco attorney general, then California’s attorney general, and finally the U.S. senate. Days after Senator Barbara Boxer announced that she would not seek re-election in 2016, Harris jumped into the fray. Antonio Villaraigosa, a prominent, popular Hispanic politician and former Los Angeles Mayor, hinted that he was poised to enter the race also. But Brown cut Villaraigosa off before he could get started. With endorsements from Brown, Boxer, Obama, Senator Dianne Feinstein, and Governor Jerry Brown, Harris cruised over Orange County’s U.S. Representative Loretta Sanchez, winning 66 percent of the vote.

Immediately after her victory in one-party California, the always-friendly media began touting her as 2020 presidential timber. Harris’ announcement that she would compete for the presidential nomination originally generated enthusiasm, but the excitement soon fizzled out; Harris’ campaign was a complete bust. Her abrasive personality created constant staff turnover, and Harris dropped out without winning a single delegate. She blamed her failure on the lack of financial resources, which translates to an inability to convince donors that she would be a winner. Looking back over her record, analysts conclude that, on her own, she has never won anything and least of all the 2024 Democratic primary.

Harris is in the midst of a lovefest with the media which is furiously withholding the truth about her radical left record which, according to GovTrack. earned her the dubious most liberal senator title—further left than even Senator Bernie Sanders  and Elizabeth Warren. Shortly after Harris entered the presidential race by default, GovTrack took its ranking down, one of the many coverups that will mark her presidential quest.

GovTrack’s trickery aside, the Internet is packed with her radical statements that include endorsing the American Families Plan, a nearly $2 trillion pre-K childcare package, forgiving student debt, ending fracking, pushing climate change—she was an original co-sponsor of the Green New Deal—offering free four-year public college education for low-and middle income American students, continued funding for the unwinnable Ukraine-Russia war,  providing Medicare for all including illegal aliens, decriminalizing illegal immigration, abolishing the police, maintaining sanctuary cities’ status, “re-imagining” ICE, ending cash bail and eliminating the death penalty. While she likes to portray herself as tough on crime, four months after Harris was sworn in as AG, gang member David Hill shot and killed police Officer Isaac Espinoza in April 2004. Harris declined to charge the shooter with a capital offense, thus sparing him from the death penalty. Her decision rankled California’s political leadership including California’s senior senator Dianne Feinstein who called for Hill’s execution.

Harris, a San Francisco progressive, will have to do some slick talking to wiggle out of her advocacy for those costly and, among the majority, unpopular political proposals. On immigration and the border, however, Harris has no escape route. To make Harris more palatable to middle-of-the-road voters, her supporters insist that she was never the “border czar.” They falsely claim that Biden tasked her with identifying the root causes for the invasion. As the old political axiom goes, when candidates are explaining, they are losing. The indisputable fact remains that Harris never went to the border, had unproductive meetings with Northern Triangle leaders, and stood by to watch illegal immigration overwhelm major U.S. metropolises with murder, mayhem and fentanyl deaths. The root cause for illegal aliens’ journey north is Biden’s and Harris’ refusal to enforce immigration law.

Even conservative media has done a dismal job reporting on the criminality inherent in open borders. To allow and encourage illegal immigration, as Biden and Harris have, violates the Constitution and is an impeachable offense. During the three and a half years of keeping the border open to a global influx of illegal aliens and rewarding them with work permission and other perks, Biden, Harris and Department of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas have initiated America’s demographic overhaul which would continue with a four-year Harris term. Harris recommends that, to solve the border fiasco, illegal aliens residing in the U.S. be given “a meaningful path to citizenship” —an amnesty which would mean more chain migration. Princeton University scholars calculated that when immigrants become citizens, they petition on average three family members to join them in the U.S. Amnestied illegal aliens will either grow their existing families or start new ones-which means more urban sprawl, more natural resources depleted, and more competition for affirmative benefits.

Polling consistently shows that immigration is voters’ top concern. Harris’ election would mean four more years of the same open borders and the associated violent crime that has plagued the nation since Biden entered the White House.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org

The Kamala Conundrum

The Kamala Conundrum

The Kamala Conundrum

Trump-Vance Must Restore Fairness To Betrayed American Workers

By Joe Guzzardi

The Donald J. Trump-J.D. Vance ticket gives promise to working Americans who the Biden administration has maligned through its open border agenda, and improper granting of parole with work authorization to millions of illegal immigrants. The legal and illegal immigrants that have arrived since President Joe Biden’s first days in the White House have dominated job creation in the monthly Bureau of Labor Statistics report. Center for Immigration Studies Steve Camarota’s research into jobs data found that since 2019’s fourth quarter, the period just before COVID-19 devastated the U.S. economy, 2.7 million more people are working. The raw statistics give false credence to the Biden administration’s boast that the U.S. economy is strong.

But immigrants, not U.S. workers, led in job gains totals, an important fact omitted from the White House’s glowing economic press releases. Simply stated, since 2019, all the net job growth has gone to immigrants. The number of working immigrants since 2019 is up by 2.9 million, while 183,000 fewer U.S. citizens were employed during the same period.

The GOP ticket—Trump and Vance—have an opportunity to right three decades of wrongs perpetrated against American workers. Low-skilled Americans are forced to compete with under-educated illegal aliens for entry level jobs that would help them support their families and get a foot in the labor market, essential for moving up the socioeconomic ladder. Black American workers are the biggest victims of mass immigration, and not only on the hiring line. Kathleen Wells, Black America for Immigration Reform’ s Executive Director, observed that in New York City, America’s most expensive city in which to rent a hotel room, 135 of its 700 hotels provide taxpayer funded housing to illegal immigrants. Prepaid debit cards add to the generous benefits package available to illegal immigrants, but not to black Americans. Similar injustices play out across America—in Chicago, Boston, Denver, Los Angeles, and Portland.

Skilled U.S. workers are not immune from foreign labor job displacement. A wide variety of employment-based visas provide jobs for hundreds of thousands of professional employees that will work in tech, accounting, and education. The most commonly used visas are the H-1B, the J-1, and the L-1. The overseas employees—read, cheaper— take well-paying, white-collar jobs from more experienced American workers.

The time is overdue for American workers’ resumes that reflect their skills and experiences to return to their rightful position at the top of employers’ inboxes and not be cast aside in favor of candidates that unscrupulous employers will hire for the lowest wage. Trump and Vance are aware that new jobs must be filled by U.S. citizens. In his GOP convention address, Vance reminded the audience that he grew up in Middletown, Ohio, “a place that had been cast aside and forgotten by America’s ruling class in Washington.”

Continuing, Vance said:” When I was in the fourth grade, a career politician by the name of Joe Biden supported NAFTA, a bad trade deal that sent countless good jobs to Mexico. When I was a sophomore in high school that same career politician named Joe Biden gave China a sweetheart deal that destroyed even more good American middle-class jobs.” For more than a quarter of a century, the craven, D.C. privileged has done the bidding of donors and consistently spurned working Americans in pursuit of their own narrow self-interests. Biden may be gone but whoever replaces him at the top of the Democratic ticket will have the same global agenda. Trump and Vance can end the harm done to American workers; reversing the anti-American sentiment must be their first priority.

Monday, January 20, 2025, Inauguration Day, is the time to for Trump and Vance to begin to keep their campaign pledges to U.S. workers.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst who has written about immigration for more thirty years. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org

Trump-Vance Must Restore Fairness To Betrayed American Workers

Lowering Political Temp Not Hard

By Joe Guzzardi

Every day for the last ten years, I’ve given daily thanks that I grew up when I did, in the 1950s, and where I did, Los Angeles County, at the time one of the nation’s leading agricultural producers. Those wonderful days are long-gone and will never return. Compared to today and considering the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, I have difficulty believing that such a time and place ever existed in America. I’ve lived through many presidential elections where hostility between the Republican and Democratic candidates ran high. But the rhetoric that one candidate and his media supporters directed at the opposition never reached the level that the Democrats have attained against Trump. Through his infamous Daisy ad, 1964 incumbent Lyndon Johnson inferred that his opponent, Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, would drop a nuclear bomb to end the Vietnam War. Goldwater’s name didn’t appear in the ad. Johnson’s campaign portrayed Goldwater as an unstable extremist, not only because of his Vietnam position but also for his opposition to the Civil Rights Act and for his support of a voluntary Social Security system. In private, Johnson called Goldwater “nutty as a fruitcake” while, at the same time, he projected himself “as this source of order and calm and composure” who would “keep everyone safe.” Johnson didn’t publicly direct personal attacks on Goldwater’s character.

Roughly 40 million Americans saw the “Daisy” ad the first time it aired and that, thanks to replays, 100 million Americans had viewed it by the end of the first week it aired. The spot was a long way from Eisenhower’s 1952 and 1956 tame “I like Ike” spots. In television’s ancient days, only three channels existed, ABC, CBS and NBC. To get the same market penetration today, advertising experts estimate that television stations would have to show Johnson’s ad 1,000 times. Because of lingering sympathy for the assassinated John F. Kennedy, Johnson was considered a shoo-in. But he exceeded expectations. Johnson won the election in a blowout, securing 61 percent of the popular vote and losing only Goldwater’s home state of Arizona and five southern states. The Democrats also gained congressional seats which gave Johnson a mandate to push forward with his war on poverty and his Great Society agenda

Johnson’s success encouraged more aggressive political spots, but again they centered on issues, not personalities. In 1972, with the nation’s citizenry still conflicted about Vietnam, President Richard Nixon’s campaign produced the “McGovern Defense” ad which pictured the Democratic challenger as weak on national defense. Nixon won in a landslide. In 1980, Ronald Reagan ran on “Morning in America” which promised voters that his administration would end rampant crime, high taxes, and double-digit inflation. Reagan’s victory over the incumbent Carter was an electoral vote rout. He tallied 489 votes to Carter’s 49. These were victories achieved on policy, not character assassination.

Significant parallels exist between Reagan and Trump. Both were outsiders, not part of the D.C. establishment, and Republicans. When inaugurated, Reagan was two weeks shy of his 70^th birthday, the oldest elected president until Trump, age 70 years, 220 days defeated Hillary Clinton. Both barely survived when would-be assassins shot them. Four months after Reagan’s inauguration, a deranged John Hinckley, Jr, shot the president in the chest.

The presidential elections I’ve observed have been largely devoid of the vicious invective that has been a cornerstone of Biden’s administration and especially his re-election campaign. Long-time observers of Washington are not surprised at the assassination attempt. Trump’s rivals have tried to neutralize him through impeachment and lawfare. For months, politicians, the media and talking heads have escalated reckless rhetoric. That includes claims that Trump is an authoritarian fascist, determined to kill democracy, unleash death squads and make homosexuals and reporters “disappear.”  The media routinely suggests that Trump is a Super-Hitler, the embodiment of everything evil. He must be stopped, demand his detractors. Even Biden’s most patently false statements about the border go unchallenged. At his July 11 press conference, Biden said: “Working with Mexico, border encounters have gone down over 50%. The current level is lower today than when Trump left office.” The truth: in June, CBP encountered 84,000 illegal aliens; when Trump left office, the total was 75,000. But Biden’s raw numbers are only part of the border story. Biden’s totals exclude illegal aliens who entered via the non-congressionally approved CBP One app, and were then paroled, also illegally. As the illegal aliens are processed, they receive notices to appear which are mostly disregarded. Yet reporters didn’t push back on Biden’s false narrative, even slightly.

Biden has stoked rage with his irresponsible oratory. In 2022, Biden delivered a vicious speech in Independence Hall where he vilified 50% of the nation, Trump supporters, as enemies of the people. He said: “MAGA forces are determined to take the country backward…Trump is a clear and present danger to democracy.” Biden recently referenced the Independence Hall speech and has embraced the claims that 2024 could be the nation’s last democratic election. Instead of outlining his vision for America’s future, he’s unrelentingly maligned Trump. The suspected assassin, Thomas Matthew Crooks, was 20 and had been listening to anti-Trump hysteria for half his adult life.

Former Attorney General Bill Barr, no fan of his former boss, said “the Democrats have to stop their grossly irresponsible talk about Trump being an existential threat to democracy. He is not.” Toning things down wouldn’t be hard. Journalists should adhere to their profession’s standards of fairness and balance. Candidates for high office should tell the public what their vision for the future is and how they would achieve it. Nearly four months remain until the November election, time enough to change course and embark on civility while campaigning.

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

Lowering Political Temp Not Hard

Lowering Political Temp Not Hard

Legendary Bill Veeck Was Showman And War Hero

By Joe Guzzardi

No Major League Baseball franchise owner entertained his fans better than Bill Veeck, Jr, a true showman. Holiday doubleheaders, especially those played on Independence Day, provided Veeck with six hours to delight his fans. As owner of the Cleveland Indians, he gave away red-white-and-blue straw hats to every man who entered the ballpark, dressed ushers as founding fathers John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, and had them distribute copies of the Declaration of Independence. No cost was spared to put on pyrotechnic displays that were second to none. Veeck knew that for baseball fans young and old, Independence Day was better than Christmas. School was out, Mom and Dad had days off, the weather was warm, patriotic flag-waving parades with marching bands traversed Main Street. Independence Day didn’t begin with gifts around the Christmas tree, but, as pennant races heated up, everyone’s favorite team would play two games in a single, sun-drenched afternoon.

During his six decades in professional baseball, Veeck owned Major League Baseball’s Cleveland Indians, St. Louis Browns and Chicago White Sox. Veeck’s father, William, Sr, was the Chicago Cubs president from 1919 until 1933, and built two pennant winners in 1929 and 1933.  Bill, Jr liked to say: “I am the only human being ever raised in a ballpark.” At age 10, he worked as a ticket taker and popcorn vendor. When Veeck, 27, bought his first franchise, the AA Milwaukee Brewers, he launched what would be lifetime of gaudy baseball promotions. He gave away prizes almost every night and specialized in handing out animals: live lobsters, pigeons, chickens, guinea pigs, and his favorite, a swaybacked horse. Most of Veeck’s promotions were not announced in advance; he wanted arriving fans to wonder what the evening’s door prize would be. Veeck scheduled morning games for overnight war plant workers and served cornflakes breakfast to all the tired, hungry fans. Veeck believed trips to the ballpark should be fun, the fans, kings and queens. During World War II when nylons were hard to come by, Veeck distributed pairs to Ladies’ Day attendees. If Veeck couldn’t get nylons, he substituted orchids.

In 1951, after Veeck acquired the St. Louis Browns, he orchestrated his most memorable escapade. Browns’ manager Zack Taylor sent three-foot-seven-inch Eddie Gaedel to lead off against the Detroit Tigers. Gaedel crouched to create a non-existent strike zone as the Tigers’ pitcher dropped to his knees and delivered four straight balls. Five days later, Veeck displayed his ingenuity again with Grandstand Manager Night. Ushers handed out placards printed with “Yes” and “No” to cranks sitting behind the home dugout, and at crucial points they were asked to call the plays: Steal? Bunt? Hit-and-run? Manager Taylor watched from a rocking chair, puffing his pipe as the Browns beat the Athletics, 5-3. But Veeck shrewdly built winning teams and helped integrate MLB. His 1948 Cleveland Indians, led by former Negro Leagues’ stars Satchel Paige and Larry Doby—the American League’s first black players—won the World Series. Paige and Doby were eventually enshrined in the Cooperstown Hall of Fame.

Since Veeck had defended America during World War II, Independence Day had special importance to him. After the 1943 Brewers’ season, Veeck enlisted in the U.S. Marines Corp and was stationed in the Pacific on Bougainville Island, Papua New Guinea. Approximately 216,000 Japanese, Australian, and U.S. servicemen died during the 1942-1945 New Guinea campaign. During an intense battle, anti-aircraft gun recoil smashed Veeck’s right leg. Veeck spent the rest of the war in hospitals. A few years after Veeck returned from war, infection set in on his wounded leg and doctors amputated below the knee. When Veeck’s artificial leg arrived, he threw a party to celebrate. But the infection slowly spread up Veeck’s stump, and he required 36 more operations in all. Veeck received the Bob Feller Act of Valor Award bestowed on 37 Hall of Fame members for their military service.

Veeck, once he took over the Chicago White Sox, added names to players uniforms and introduced the exploding score board, innovations that endure today. On Opening Day 1976, Veeck revisited the Independence Day meme. Veeck presented a Bicentennial-themed “Spirit of ’76” parade, casting himself as the peg-legged fifer bringing up the rear. But by 1981, he realized that the White Sox couldn’t compete in the free agent, high salary era. Veeck sold the team, his last venture as an owner. Then, he dabbled in announcing and wrote three autobiographical books. A heavy smoker, Veeck underwent two lung cancer operations in 1984. The surgeries were unsuccessful and, two years later, Veeck passed away. In 1991, the Hall of Fame inducted Veeck, a fitting tribute to baseball’s most creative mind.

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

Legendary Bill Veeck Was Showman And War Hero