Category: Joe Guzzardi

Jim Bunning Dad To Nine Threw Perfect Game On Father’s Day ’64

Jim Bunning Dad To Nine Threw Perfect Game On Father’s Day ’64

By Joe Guzzardi

On Father’s Day, 1964, Philadelphia Phillies’ right-hander Jim Bunning pitched a perfect game against the New York Mets in Shea Stadium. Bunning’s two-hour, 10-minute masterpiece – 90 pitches, 10 strike outs – during a double-header’s first game had special significance. At the time, Bunning and his wife Mary Theis had seven children. Eventually, the Bunnings, married 60 years, would have nine children, 35 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

Few in baseball history have lived as rewarding a life as Bunning who represented Kentucky as a U.S. representative from 1987 to 1999, and then as a two-term U.S. senator from 1999 until 2011. Bunning’s baseball achievements put him in the Hall of Fame. Along his way, Bunning racked up 224 wins, 2,855 strike outs and was chosen to participate in nine All-Star Games. The fire-balling righty led the league in strike outs three times, and when he retired Bunning ranked second among all-time strikeout leaders behind Walter Johnson of the Washington Senators.

Jim Bunning Dad To Nine Threw Perfect Game On Father's Day '64
Perfect on Father’s Day 1964

In 1955, Bunning debuted with the Detroit Tigers, and in 1958, he threw a 3-0 no-hitter against the Boston Red Sox. Bunning was then traded to the Phillies, his second stop in a career that also included brief stints with the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Long after Bunning hung up his glove, he recalled in detail how he set down 27 consecutive Mets, the first National League perfect game since 1880 when John Montgomery Ward, throwing underhand and from 45 feet, defeated the Buffalo Bisons, 5-0. After attending Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and eating a hearty sausage and egg breakfast, Bunning headed out to Shea where the temperature and humidity would hit 90 by game time. Although Bunning said that he felt no better or no worse than usual as he warmed up, Phillies’ manager Gene Mauch disagreed. Mauch told Sport Magazine’s Larry Merchant, “We knew when he [Bunning] was warming up that this was something special. The way he was throwing so live and as high as he was. Not high with his pitches. High himself.”

For nine innings, Bunning was so relaxed that he rejected the long-standing baseball tradition which forbade pitchers to talk to teammates about no hitters in progress – considered a jinx. “Dive for the ball,” Bunning laughingly told his infielders. “Don’t let anything fall in.” With one out in the bottom of the ninth, Bunning called catcher Gus Triandos to the mound and asked him to tell him a joke. Triandos shook his head in dismay and went back behind the plate. Bunning then struck out the last two Mets and pounded his glove as his teammates rushed to share his joy in his 6-0 win. Bunning’s was the fifth perfect game in major-league history and the first in the regular season since the Chicago White Sox Charlie Robertson blanked the Detroit Tigers, 2-0.

Later, Bunning said about his flawless performance: “Everything has to come together, good control, outstanding plays from your teammates, a whole lot of good fortune on your side and a lot of bad luck for the other guys. A million things could go wrong, but on this one particular day of your life none of them do.”

But when Bunning looked back at his 1964 season, disappointment superseded his perfect game’s thrills. By September 20, the Phillies led by 6½-games with 12 to play. But then the wheels fell off. The Phils lost ten in a row; Bunning, overworked by Mauch, was charged with three losses. The St. Louis Cardinals eked out the pennant by a game over the Phils and the Cincinnati Reds.

Before he died at age 85, Bunning said, “I am most proud of the fact I went through nearly 11 years without missing a start. They wrote my name down, and I went to the post.” In today’s era, Bunning’s consistency would be a marvel.

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

Jim Bunning Dad To Nine Threw Perfect Game On Father’s Day ’64

Racial Turmoil At Meta As Company Favors Foreigners

Racial Turmoil At Meta As Company Favors Foreigners

By Joe Guzzardi

Meta Platforms, until October 2021 known as Facebook, is in turmoil. Infamous for its commitment to employing H-1B workers, and simultaneously undermining qualified U.S. tech workers’ careers, the Silicon Valley titan is finally getting its just rewards.

Sheryl Sandberg, a Facebook fixture for 14 years, and as Chief Operating Officer the No. 2 behind Mark Zuckerberg, will be leaving this fall. Some analysts have been long-critical of Sandberg, net worth $1.6 billion, and have pushed for at least two years for her ousting. Zuckerberg and Sandberg disagreed over Metaverse’s vision.

Since Sandberg’s COO replacement, Julian Oliver, has been named, her departure is unlikely to have further measurable negative effect on Meta. But, Oliver will have to assume the responsibility for pulling Meta out of the steady, deep decline the company is struggling with.

Meta Platform’s key Facebook products have grown old. The number of young people actively using Facebook and Instagram has drifted to TikTok which users see as more compelling. Today, TikTok, dominates the social media industry in screen time, and Amazon has become a leading player in the advertising industry.

Racial Turmoil At Meta As Company Favors Foreigners

Then, to the dismay of its shareholders, the Meta stock price’s plunge in recent weeks has slashed the market cap by about 50 percent to $529 billion from an all-time high, and has cut Zuckerberg’s net worth to about $84 billion. As of June 7, Meta stock has stabilized at $196 per share, 14 percent above its low for the year.

In February, Facebook agreed to pay $90 million to settle a privacy lawsuit which claimed that it impermissibly tracked users after they logged out, and sold their personal information to enrich the company. Along the same lines, in January, the British watchdog group, Financial Conduct Authority, sued Meta for $3.2 billion on behalf of individuals who used Facebook in the UK between 2015 to 2019. The lawsuit claims that Facebook made its users submit personal data in order to access the platform and thereby earned billions of dollars from the tactic, Reuters reported.

For Meta, the bad news keeps piling up. Qualified black applicants have charged Facebook with shutting them out of key positions because they aren’t a “culture fit,” a possible reference to the large number of Chinese and Indian H-1B visa employees on the staff. Multiple reports allege that hiring managers confirmed to black candidates during interviews that they “could do the job” before using the “culture-fit” excuse to reject the candidate.

Facebook pledges to add 30 percent more people of color in leadership positions by 2025, but it has a long way to go. Despite incessantly touting the company’s commitment to diversity, Facebook’s 2020 Diversity Report showed little progress. Blacks and Hispanics in key technical roles increased year-over-year, from 1 percent to 1.7 percent for blacks and from 3 percent to 4.3 percent for Hispanics. Moreover, since last summer, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is investigating bias claims against Facebook and has recently upgraded its inquiry into a systemic probe that could lead to broader charges.

Meta not only denies middle-management jobs to blacks and Hispanics. The company prefers cheaper, more subservient foreign-born H-1B workers to U.S. tech graduates, a constant in its hiring practices. Zuckerberg, both directly through his congressional testimony and also through FWD.us, the pro-amnesty group he created, staunchly supports higher immigration.

Last year, the Department of Labor and the Department of Justice settled employment discrimination suits against Facebook. Although the settlement sums were paltry for the tech giant, $4.75 million, a DOL civil penalty payable to the federal government and, from the DOJ, up to $9.5 million due the injured parties, Facebook should assume that the charges against it are a warning to clean up its anti-U.S. tech worker bias.

Meta needs a public relations overhaul. An easy place to begin would be to hire U.S. tech workers. Figuratively, Facebook’s image has taken a bigger hit than its net worth. With more than a half-trillion current net worth, even after the stock market blood bath, Meta Platforms/Facebook can afford to hire skilled U.S. tech workers.

Joe Guzzardi is a PFIR analyst who has written about immigration and its consequences for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

Racial Turmoil At Meta As Company Favors Foreigners

Ike Only Prez Who Played Pro Ball — And It Was A No No

Ike Only Prez Who Played Pro Ball — And It Was A No No

By Joe Guzzardi

Since baseball’s earliest years, U.S. presidents have been big fans of the national pastime. Among the most avid baseball fans were William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson and Richard M. Nixon. After his political career ended, the players’ union lobbied to have Nixon appointed to head the Major League Baseball Players Association.

Only Dwight Eisenhower played professional baseball, and therein lays a tale. Eisenhower grew up in rural Abilene, Kan., starred as a right end in football and excelled in center field on his 1908 high school baseball team. Ike’s brother Edgar played fullback and first base. Since the Eisenhower family couldn’t afford to send both boys to college, the brothers struck a deal. Edgar went to the University of Michigan, while Dwight worked at a local creamery and sent his wages to his brother.

Ike Only Prez Who Played Pro
I have a secret

At age 21, Ike won an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy in West Point and became a star running back alongside another future WWII general, Omar Bradley. The New York Times called Ike “one of the most promising running backs in Eastern football,” but a knee injury ended Eisenhower’s football days. And to what Eisenhower called “one of the greatest disappointments of my life…maybe the greatest,” he didn’t make the Army baseball team.

But Ike had a baseball secret, one that could have altered his life’s course had it become known while he was at West Point. The year before Ike enrolled, and using the pseudonym “Wilson,” he played professional baseball in the Class D Central Kansas League as the Junction City Soldiers’ center fielder. Ike once told the Associated Press that he played poorly and was paid little. But setting off for college, Ike needed even the small sums he earned.

Years later, at a game Ike attended between the New York Giants and the Boston Braves, managers Mel Ott and Bob Coleman asked General Eisenhower to confirm whether he had played professionally, and if so, at what position. Ike half-kiddingly replied, “That’s my secret.”

Ike’s desire for secrecy is understandable. The NCAA has strict rules that prohibit student athletes from playing professionally. If found to have received compensation, the consequences, as Olympic decathlon star Jim Thorpe discovered, are severe. Thorpe was stripped of his two 1912 Olympic gold medals when the committee learned that he had played two seasons of semi-professional baseball and had therefore violated the amateurism rules. For Eisenhower, his punishment would have been immediate expulsion from West Point.

It’s likely Eisenhower knew that he had broken the West Point Code of Honor when he signed a 15-question legibility card attesting to his amateur status. As years passed, Ike stopped talking about his baseball-playing years, instructing his staff to dodge questions. A memo found among Ike’s presidential papers at the Abilene Eisenhower Library read: “As of August 1961, DDE indicated inquiries should not be answered concerning his participation in professional baseball – as it would necessarily become too complicated.”

Had West Point expelled Eisenhower, he might never have become the general who led the Allied forces to victory in World War II, might never have presided as Columbia University’s president and might never have served two U.S. presidential terms.

From his earliest days, Ike truly loved baseball. His favorite story recalls the time when, on a warm Kansas afternoon, he and a young friend went river fishing and fantasized aloud about their futures. The friend told Ike that one day he wanted to be the U.S. president. Dwight said that “he wanted to be a real major league baseball player like Honus Wagner.” In the end, Ike concluded, “Neither one of us got our wish.”

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

Ike Only Prez Who Played Pro Ball — And It Was A No No

Uvalde Schools Shutdown 48 Times Due Illegal Immigration Issues

Uvalde Schools Shutdown 48 Times Due Illegal Immigration Issues

By Joe Guzzardi

Among three ongoing wars, the Biden administration concerns itself with only one, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. That faraway conflict, which has no national interest associated with it, spawned an inflation-spiking $53 billion U.S. taxpayer infusion into corrupt Ukraine. Biden rode roughshod over Congress, demanding that the final bill get to his desk “in the next few days,” and added that “we cannot afford to delay in this vital war effort.”

Two other incursions, both on U.S. soil, aren’t on Biden’s radar. The first is the Southwest Border war, a different battle than the Ukraine conflict since no bombings or tanks are involved. Nevertheless, the invasion of foreign nationals from more than 150 nations is a war against U.S. sovereignty, and Biden isn’t interested enough to travel to witness first-hand the nation-busting events that he has allowed to develop. In his January 2022 story, Washington Timesreporter Stephen Dinan wrote that “more than 44% of encounters with unauthorized migrants in December were with people from beyond Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. A year ago, that number was just 11%.”

Second is the war against the communities – and specific to this analysis – waged against the local school districts along the border. The establishment media has devoted extensive, merited print coverage and hours of broadcast updates on the Robb Elementary School massacre. Little coverage, however, has been given to Uvalde Mayor’s Don McLaughlin’s statement to Texas Department of Emergency Management officials that, as of Oct. 21, 2021, the academic year’s first few months, Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District officials had to lock down schools “48 times this year due to high-speed pursuits and migrants fleeing from law enforcement.” Mayor McLaughlin had previously said that Biden’s border neglect created a series of robberies and car thefts that further stained his economically depressed city.

Uvalde Schools Shutdown 48 Times Due Illegal Immigration Issues

For children subjected to school shutdowns, their experience is traumatic. In the late 1980s, the period which included the Stockton, Calif., Cleveland School shooting that killed five school children and wounded 32, I taught at a Stockton primary school. During that era, Asian gang drive-by murders and home invasion robberies that often included gun violence were widespread as were the subsequent lockdowns. The school’s front office issued an intercom alert, and teachers gathered their students, directing them to move as far away from the classroom door as possible. There they huddled together in the dark until the alert was lifted, about an hour later. Since the children lived in the neighborhood, they knew the potential consequences could be fatal. Lockdowns in what should be safe places like neighborhood schools is what Biden’s border agenda has brought to Uvalde’s children – American kids living in an American city in Texas, an all-American state.

Biden makes no effort to hide his scorn for border enforcement. Even though off-duty Customs and Border Protection agent Jacob Albarado killed the Robb Elementary gunman Salvador Ramos, and thereby doubtless saved dozens of lives, Biden insultingly disinvited 73 of 80 CBP, mostly from the tactical BORTAC unit, to a photo-op with the president. The event was scheduled for a large open-space facility, but administration officials cited space as a reason for the retracted invitations.

Biden is back in the White House, and Capitol Hill is making angry noises about tough gun control legislation. As for the border, no changes will be forthcoming. Once the memorials and burials are over, Uvalde and other border cities will continue, for at least the duration of Biden’s presidency, as stop-overs for illegal alien invaders. Citizens whose lives have been inexorably damaged because of Biden’s criminal disregard for his oath of office are, to him, inconsequential, collateral damage incurred on the woke path to destroying America.

PFIR analyst Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org and joeguzzardi.substack.com.

Uvalde Schools Shutdown 48 Times Due Illegal Immigration Issues

D-Day Hero Morrie Martin Pitched For The Philadelphia A’s

D-Day Hero Morrie Martin Pitched For The Philadelphia A’s

By Joe Guzzardi

Baseball fans who came of age during the 1950s, the National Pastime’s Golden Era, remember Morrie Martin as a journeyman left-handed pitcher who had limited success during his ten-year career. Pitching mostly for the basement-dwelling Philadelphia A’s, Martin’s career record was 38-34. Martin was credited with 23 wins as an A’s; the remaining 15 were spread out among the Brooklyn Dodgers, the Chicago White Sox, the Baltimore Orioles and the St. Louis Cardinals. The stout lefty from Dixon, Mo., made brief appearances for the Chicago Cubs, but didn’t earn a decision.

Martin was much more than a middling MLB hurler who walked more batters, 252, than he struck out, 245. Before Martin was inducted into the U.S. Army on June 2, 1943, he compiled above-average minor league credentials, 16-7, in Grand Forks, N.D., with the Class C Chiefs and in St. Paul, Minn., with the American Association’s Saints, two Chicago White Sox affiliates. Martin’s pitching stints with the Saints represented the last times he touched a baseball until his return home from WWII in 1945.

As Gary Bedingfield reported on his “Baseball in Wartime” website and pursuant to information drawn from Stan Opdkye’s Society of American Baseball Research essay, “Morrie Martin,” Martin entered military service with the Army at Jefferson Barracks, Mo., and then served overseas with the 49th Engineer Combat Battalion where he took part in amphibious landings as part of Operation Torch at North Africa, Operation Husky at Sicily and Omaha Beach on D-Day, June 6, 1944.

D-Day Hero Morrie Martin Pitched For The Philadelphia A's

As an engineer, Martin was among the first to reach shore. Shortly after the D-Day landing, and while on guard duty near Saint-Lô, France, Martin was hit by shrapnel in his neck, left hand and arm. Despite his injuries, Martin remained on the front lines. Late in 1944, he was engaged in the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes Mountains of Belgium and suffered frostbite in the bitterly cold temperatures. Nevertheless, Martin remained with his unit until 1945 when he suffered serious, near-fatal injuries.

After Martin took two more rounds of shrapnel wounds, he was buried alive in Germany when the house he took shelter in was shelled. Left for dead, Martin and two other soldiers clawed their way out to rejoin their battalion. At the Battle of the Bulge, Martin suffered a bullet wound to the thigh, and nearly lost his leg when gangrene set in.

Evacuated to a hospital in Saint-Quentin, France, Martin caught a big break. A nurse looked at his chart, saw that he was a professional ball player, and urged him to reject the doctors’ advice that he give his permission to amputate his leg. Instead, more than 150 penicillin shots saved Martin’s leg from amputation, and he slowly worked his way back to the big leagues. Discharged from the Army in October 1945, Martin joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1946, and worked his way up through Branch Rickey’s fiercely competitive minor league system.

On April 25, 1949, Martin made his first MLB start against the Boston Braves, the 1948 National League champions. Martin pitched seven quality innings, but his opponent, Bill Voiselle, who pitched a complete game shutout, was better. For the balance of his career, Martin shuffled back and forth between the majors and the minors. Martin peaked in 1951 with the A’s when he compiled an 11-4 record.

On May 25, 2010, in Washington, Mo., Martin died from lung cancer at age 87. For his service in World War II, he was awarded two Purple Hearts, four battle stars and an Oak Leaf Cluster. Prior to his death, Martin told a newspaper reporter how much he valued his wartime service to his country: “We had a job to do, and we did it. I don’t have regrets about the time I missed in baseball. I’m proud of what we did. I’d do it again.” Until that interview, Martin, like most of the Great Generation, was always willing to talk about baseball, but refused to speak about his war heroism.

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

D-Day Hero Morrie Martin Pitched For The Philadelphia A’s

Harvard Eddie Grant Was MLB’s First Fatality In WWI

Harvard Eddie Grant Was MLB’s First Fatality In WWI

By Joe Guzzardi

Eddie Grant, a Harvard Law School graduate and former Cleveland Indians, Philadelphia Phillies, Cincinnati Reds and New York Giants third baseman, was the first major league baseball player killed in World War I. In all, seven other major league players lost their lives in the Great War. They are Lt. Tom Burr, plane crash; Lt. Harry Chapman, illness; Lt. Larry Chappell, influenza; Pvt. Harry Glenn, pneumonia; Cpt. Newton Halliday, hemorrhages; Cpl. Ralph Sherman, drowned, and Purple Heart winner Sgt. Robert “Bun” Troy, shot.
 
Known affectionately among his teammates as “Harvard Eddie,” Grant debuted in the majors in 1905 after he graduated from Harvard where he starred at baseball and was the basketball team’s top scorer. Grant eventually would play 990 games as an infielder through 1915. An average dead ball era hitter, neither spectacular nor a detriment, Grant’s career average was .249 with five home runs. Grant’s best big-league season came in 1909 when he hit .269 as Philadelphia’s leadoff hitter and finished second in the National League with 170 hits. Opposition players considered him an above average fielder and particularly adept at handling bunts. In the 1913 World Series which the Giants lost to the Philadelphia Athletics, 4-1, Grant saw limited action. He pinch-ran and scored in Game 2, and in Game 4, he hit a foul ball pop up that the A’s catcher easily snagged.

Harvard Eddie Grant Was MLB's First Fatality In WWI
Harvard Eddie Grant

On April 6, 1917, two years after his baseball career ended at age 33, and with his law practice barely underway, Grant enlisted in the U.S. Army, the first major league player to sign up. In a letter to a friend, Grant proudly wrote: “I had determined from the start to be in this war should it come to us…I believe there is no greater duty than I owe for being that which I am — an American citizen.’’
 
Tom Simon, writing for the Society for American Baseball Research, recounts Grant’s fateful demise in his defense of America against the advancing Germans. On October 2, 1918, Grant’s 307th Regiment launched an attack in France’s Argonne Forest, a rugged, heavily wooded area with thick underbrush, deep ravines and marshes. Soon, Grant’s superior officers were killed, and Eddie took command. By the morning of the third day, October 5, Grant was exhausted. He hadn’t slept since the offensive’s beginning, and his fellow officers noticed him sitting on a stump with a cup of coffee in front of him, too weak to lift the cup.
 
One of Grant’s troops, a former Polo Grounds policeman, remembered: “Eddie was dog-tired but he stepped off at the head of his outfit with no more concern than if he were walking to his old place at third base after his side had finished its turn at the bat. He staggered from weakness when he first started off, but pretty soon he was marching briskly with his head up.”
 
When the Germans pressed forward, Grant yelled at his men to seek cover while he remained standing, waving his arms to call for stretchers. Grant’s courageous effort to save his fellow soldiers cost him his life. Maj. Charles Wittlesey, Grant’s friend who led the 77th Division in the battle historians call “the Lost Battalion,” said: “When that shell burst and killed that boy, America lost one of the finest types of manhood I have ever known.’’ When the battle ended, Grant’s fellow soldiers, realizing their leader had been killed, were overheard saying, “The best man in the entire regiment is gone.”
 
Grant is interred at France’s Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery along with more than 14,000 American soldiers. World War I historian Mike Hanlon has led tours of the war’s battlefields and the cemetery where he talks about Purple Heart recipient Grant.
 
Then-MLB Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis wanted Grant added to the Hall of Fame for his service to the country. Although Landis’ fine idea was rejected, Grant had a Bronx highway named after him, and a ball yard in his hometown Franklin, Mass. The Giants, Grant’s last major league team, placed a bronze plaque in his honor on the center field fence of the Polo Grounds on Memorial Day 1921. The plaque identified Grant as Soldier – Scholar – Athlete, doubtless the order in which Eddie would like them listed.
 
 
Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research and Internet Baseball Writers Association member. Contact him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com.

All Ukraine All the Time, America Forgotten

All Ukraine All the Time, America Forgotten

By Joe Guzzardi

If only President Biden and Congress loved the U.S. with the same passion the federal government demonstrates toward Ukraine, then inflation-stricken, poorer-by-the-day taxpayers wouldn’t be saddled with $53.6 billion debt that has no ties to their national interest. While in South Korea, Biden signed a $40 billion emergency bill to help Ukraine defend its border against Russia’s incursion. The $40 billion, bumped up from Biden’s original $33 billion request, represents nearly three times the $13.6 billion that Congress approved in March for Ukrainian military and humanitarian aid.

Upon hearing the news that the huge U.S. funding package would be on the way, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, “The war will be bloody, there will be more battles,” which translates to “more U.S. taxpayer money will have to be sent.” One thing is certain: another round of funding for Ukraine will be rushed through Congress without a meaningful exchange with Americans who deserve to know what’s really in these bills, how Ukraine accounts for the billions of dollars, if at all, and the net cost to beleaguered taxpayers to fund a faraway war with no end in sight, and without a defined, tangible mission.

Examples of how rushing into foreign entanglements went awry in Iraq and Afghanistan should be burned into the memories of Biden and members of Congress. A fact sheet that congressional Democrats distributed said that the funding will be used to assist Ukrainian military, national security forces and to provide weapons, equipment, training, logistics and intelligence support. But, to repeat, no one truly knows how the billions of dollars will be spent or who’s accountable.

All Ukraine All the Time, America Forgotten

Equally as troubling as the failure to learn from the past and a high likelihood of no accountability, the U.S. is sending money it doesn’t have. The nation’s current debt is $30.5 trillion or about $91,500 per every single person in the country. Not only is the U.S. “leadership” saddling its citizenry with an enormous debt burden, America’s Southwest border is wide open to all comers from countries near and far.

Taxpayers fund every aspect of the Southwest border invasion – housing, transportation and much more. While record-breaking 8.5 percent inflation has driven millions of low-income families to the brink, Americans watch on their nightly television news broadcasts the embarrassing spectacle of ranking congressional officials bowing and scraping to Zelenskyy. On separate trips, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell traveled to Ukraine with their respective delegations to express their support. Pelosi’s office sent what it described as an “unmistakable and resounding message to the entire world: America stands firmly with Ukraine.” McConnell spoke about Ukraine’s defense of its sovereignty and its unity, ironic when the U.S. border remains open to foreign nationals, fentanyl-pushing drug cartels and human traffickers that earn $150 billionannually preying on the vulnerable.

The huge Ukraine funding packages made the headlines and drew the attention of many concerned, weary Americans. But in related news that provides enormous insight into where Congress’ priorities lay – hint: not with American citizens – look at the fine print in the “Additional Ukraine Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2022” that authorized Ukraine’s $40 billion cash cow. Buried in the bill was a proposal to provide the 70,000 unvetted Afghan evacuees with green cards which would mean that, in all probability, they’ll never return home. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas improperly used parole to admit the unvetted Afghans into the U.S. The Immigration and Nationality Act permits parole to be granted only on a case-by-case basis, and not granted to 70,000 foreign nationals.

Green cards for Afghans were struck from the bill’s final language, but is certain to reappear in future legislation. In the meantime, another parole program, “Uniting for Ukraine,” sailed through. Congress allocated $900 million for a Ukrainian relief fund through September 20, 2023, for “Refugee Entrance and Assistance.” Tellingly, many Ukrainian parolees had already been safely resettled in Europe where they had received temporary immigration status, work permits and free healthcare. The Ukrainians had a good deal; now, the Biden administration has provided a better one.

Biden’s presidency is a bonanza for invading foreign nationals who Customs and Border Protection are forced to welcome. Drug traffickers and human smugglers, as well as Afghans and Ukrainians improperly paroled, are all welcome. Biden’s agenda excludes everyday Americans struggling to get along. Sixteen months into Biden’s presidency, most Americans would be encouraged to see the tiniest hint that the president cares about their futures, but they shouldn’t hold their breath.


PFIR analyst Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.
 

All Ukraine All the Time, America Forgotten All Ukraine All the Time, America Forgotten

Biden Is Bad Transformation

Biden Is Bad Transformation

By Joe Guzzardi

In March 2021, The New York Times published a commentary about President Joe Biden and referred to him as “transformational.” Columnist David Brooks heaped praise on Biden for his economic agenda, and concluded that the government’s role in American life is changing. However, Brooks continued, Biden isn’t causing the shifts in government philosophy, “but he is riding them.”

Today’s “Bidenism,” compared to the formerly moderate Biden, has spurred “large numbers of thinkers” to cast aside their concerns about inflation, as well as other pesky, nagging economic and emotional doubts about government’s place in the lives of citizens. If given the chance, and considering 2021’s rough ride, Brooks might pull back on his flattering column.

During his campaign, Biden promised the nation a transformational government, and he’s delivered, although not quite in the manner some envisioned. Revoking the Keystone XL oil pipeline, halting development of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, rejoining the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Accord, halting construction of the Southern border wall, signing the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 and signing the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure and Investment Act are doubtless transformational. But they were not, as pundits like Brooks had envisioned, universally embraced.

On his pledge to transform America, Biden has delivered, more successfully but with greater damage to his presidency than his most ardent supporters could have envisioned. An NBC poll taken in mid-May showed the president’s approval rating at 39 percent, largely because for the year-long period ended April 2022, the annual inflation rate was 8.3 percent.

Biden Is Bad Transformation

Biden’s transformative immigration developments are never-ending. On back-to-back days, May 16 and May 17, two immigration-related stories broke that demonstrate how porous the U.S. border is and how indifferent the White House is to enforcement. First, the Department of Homeland Security announced that in April U.S.-Mexico migrant encounters hit a new historic high of 234,088; 110,000 were released into the U.S., while under Title 42 about 97,000 were returned.

On May 20, Judge Robert Summerhays, Western District of Louisiana Judge, granted a preliminary injunction blocking Biden from ending Title 42 on May 23. But Biden is defiant in his determination to end Title 42. The Department of Justice immediately announced they will appeal the decision. As Biden and his Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas know, without Title 42, about 500,000 illegal aliens will overwhelm the U.S. border each month and then move into the U.S. interior.

During a Texas border tour, Mayorkas admitted that the U.S. will continue to welcome aliens who make what he mistakenly called a valid claim of asylum protection under U.S. laws. But aliens who travel from around the world are, as an MIT study confirmed, overwhelmingly economic migrants and as such don’t qualify for asylum. The ultimate consequence of Biden’s willful refusal to enforce immigration law: Before his four-year term ends, millions of illegal immigrants will have been admitted, family reunification will begin, and a major demographic transformation of the nation will be underway.

In another recent immigration development, U.S. authorities discovered a tunnel equal to the length of six football fields that drug smugglers had used for an undetermined but doubtlessly lengthy period. When authorities located the tunnel, they seized nearly 2,000 pounds of cocaine, meth and heroin. Because of indifference to border enforcement, U.S. fentanyl deaths exceeded 100,000 in 2021. Cartels, confident that the federal government won’t interfere, also profit from human trafficking, including transporting underage girls for prostitution.

As enthusiastic as Democrats may have been during Biden’s presidential 100-day honeymoon period, today they’re proceeding with caution. Many involved in competitive mid-term elections this fall are hedging, as any watchful politician would, as to the feasibility of accepting the president’s offer to join them on the campaign trail. Giving the appearance of endorsing Biden’s unpopular American transformation will lead to their defeat.


PFIR analyst Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org and joeguzzardi.substack.com.

Biden Is Bad Transformation Biden Is Bad Transformation

Population Surges Drying West

Population Surges Drying West

By Joe Guzzardi

The grisly discovery of human remains at the bottom of Lake Mead is a grim reminder of the Southwest’s growing drought crisis. In early May, a family on a boating outing found, partially buried in Lake Mead National Recreation Area’s muddy banks, a four-decades-old skeleton of a man, a suspected homicide, stuffed into a rotted-out barrel. Skeletal remains were also discovered in May at nearby Callville Bay.

Asked if the victim might have been a mob hit, Geoff Schumacher, the vice president of exhibits and programs at Las Vegas’ Mob Museum, said: “I have a feeling that as this water continues to recede, we’re going to be finding more interesting things at the bottom of Lake Mead.” Schumacher may have been referring to the B-29 Superfortress wreckage found in 2015 in Lake Mead’s 130 feet of water; in 1948, when the bomber crashed, Lake Mead’s depth was 260 feet.

While Schumacher isn’t a climatologist, he like other Far West residents is aware of the inevitable and irreconcilable clash between too many people and dwindling natural resources, primarily water. Lake Mead is the largest reservoir in the United States and part of a system that supplies water to at least 40 million people across seven states and northern Mexico. Today, it’s dropped to its lowest level since the Franklin Delano Roosevelt era.

As of August 22, 2021, Lake Mead was filled to just 35 percent of its capacity, and now is at 30 percent. The low water level comes at a time when 95 percent of nine Western states’ land is affected by some level of drought; 64 percent is considered extreme or worse. Shrinking capacity continues a 22-year megadrought that some experts consider the worst in 1,200 years. Megadroughts are defined as droughts that last two decades or longer, but they are not measured by their intensity.

Population Surges Drying West

Snowfall in the Rocky Mountains is Lake Mead’s primary water source. But Audubon Southwest’s policy director Haley Paul said, “Even when the Rocky Mountains get to near-normal levels of snowfall and overall precipitation, what we’ve seen in the last few years is below average river runoff.” Paul explained that drought and heat mean thirstier soils and plants that soak up more water before the precious commodity ever reaches rivers – a compounding domino effect that, because the West is on year 22 of an extended megadrought, will take 22 wet winters to climb out of the hole.

An underreported variable in Lake Mead’s water levels is the population explosion – not an exaggerated expression – in California, Arizona and Nevada. In 1950, the population of Arizona, California and Nevada were, respectively, 750,000, 10 million and 158,000. Today, Arizona, California and Nevada have 7.6 million, 39.7 million and 3.2 million residents. Their principal cities, Phoenix, Los Angeles and Las Vegas have, over the same 70-year period, grown from 221,000 to 4.7 million, from 2 millionto 12.5 million and from 35,000 to 2.8 million. Taken alone, the three states in the aggregate have about 40 million more people since 1950 bathing in, cooking with and drinking water. Housing complexes, luxury hotels, golf courses and mega-mansions are major water devourers.

No end is in sight to irresponsible water usage. The best California Gov. Gavin Newsom has come up with is a tepid, ignored suggestion that his constituents voluntarily limit everyday water consumption. The State Water Resources Conservation Board said that per-capita urban water usage rose 7 percent in March compared to last year, and rose 18.9 percent when compared to March 2020.

Although political correctness forbids identifying immigration as population growth’s major driver, Census Bureau facts confirm the reality. In their Center for Immigration Studies analysis that drew exclusively from Census Bureau data, Steven Camarota and Karen Zeigler predicted that, by 2060, immigration will add 75 million people to the U.S. population. In 2017, the U.S. had 35.8 million legal and illegal immigrants. Those immigrants had 16.9 million U.S.-born children and grandchildren.

In sum, immigration added 52.7 million people to the U.S. population between 1982 and 2017, accounting for a little over 56 percent of overall population growth. A related Camarota-Zeigler study, which also drew from Current Population Survey’s monthly data, found that in November 2021, 46.2 million legal and illegal immigrants lived in the U.S., the largest number of immigrants ever recorded in a federal government survey or census dating back to 1850.

No one controls rainfall, but the federal government can help alleviate the worsening water crisis by managing immigration to levels consistent with the available natural resources. If officials continue to shirk their responsibility, then an increasing number of West Coast communities will eventually run dry, and civil disruption over water’s absence will likely ensue.

PFIR analyst Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org and joeguzzardi.substack.com.

Population Surges Drying West

Ex Officials Lobby For More Foreign Stem Students

Ex Officials Lobby For More Foreign Stem Students

By Joe Guzzardi

In early May, nearly 50 former U.S. officials who held prominent federal government positions sent an urgent letter to Senate Majority and Minority leaders Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell, and to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. Also copied was the Bipartisan Innovation Act Conference Committee, a group that will reconcile differences in the Senate and House versions of separate bills which address America’s global competitiveness.
 
Included among the letter’s signatories are the former secretaries of the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense and the Department of Navy, as well as the former U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner, a CIA director, their assistants and undersecretaries and a two-term U.S. representative. The letter’s tone is alarmist.

Ex Officials Lobby For More Foreign Stem Students

Summarized, the letter bemoaned what the writers called “immigration bottlenecks” and their “self-inflicted drag…on American competitiveness.” Their predictable solution: more immigration in the form of attracting an ever-higher number of science, technology, engineering and math students, the so-called STEM fields. The House version, America COMPETES, exempts numerical limits and country cap quotas for green cards for international students with advanced STEM degrees. Without the green card lure, the writers warned, the U.S. will be unable to attract the “best and brightest” foreign-born STEM talent and will lose its innovative edge. The House bill also would create new but unnecessary visas which translates to more immigration, including the “W,” for start-up business owners, and the EB-4 for South Korean foreign nationals.
 
The bombastic letter indicates that none of the DHS, CBP, CIA or U.S. representative signatories have any concern that their panic to attract international students, including Chinese nationals. China is the U.S.’s leading rival for worldwide tech superiority, and importation of more Chinese nationals could lead to more national security breaches, intellectual property theft and stolen personal data. Evidence of China’s threat is abundant. A sampling: more than 24 Chinese nationals have been convicted of spying against the U.S., and the offices of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) have been infiltrated by People’s Republic of China subversives.
 
International students’ path to STEM degrees begins with an F-1 visa which allows them to enroll in a U.S. university. In the academic year 2020-2021, China was the leading contributor to overall international enrollment in U.S. schools with 317,299 students, a figure that COVID-19 reduced from the previous year’s 372,532 total. Nearly 40 percent of the Chinese 2020-2021 class studied STEM disciplines. A 2020 Center for Security and Emerging Technology study found that in pre-pandemic academic year 2018-2019, an estimated 122,000 Chinese nationals were pursuing STEM undergraduate, master’s and Ph.D. degrees.
 
How worrisome the high Chinese STEM enrollment depends on whether an analyst considers China friend or foe. President Biden has made conflicting statements about the China-U.S. relationship. On one hand, Biden called President Xi his “old friend.” On another day, however, Biden said that China believed it would eventually “own America” within 15 years.
 
If Biden believes China’s goal is to conquer America, then inviting thousands of Chinese nationals to study STEM at the nation’s most prestigious universities is self-defeating and would accelerate the nation’s demise. Chinese status as students gives potential agents cover, and if the PRC orders them to spy, they know that it’s in their best interest to comply.
 
But congressional elites are oblivious to the growing danger that Chinese international students represent to the homeland.
 
In 2020, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) proposed that Chinese nationals be banned from coming to the U.S. to study STEM. Cotton suggested that in the interest of world harmony, young Chinese would be better served reading Shakespeare and the Federalist papers instead of mastering skills that they could use against America. Cotton called granting foreign students STEM degrees from U.S. universities “a scandal” because they return to China “to compete for our jobs, to take our business, and ultimately to steal our property and design weapons and other devices that can be used against the American people.”
 
Cotton’s straight talk, ignored by his colleagues and mocked by his detractors, is irrefutable. Weaponizing the enemy is folly. Yet, the letter’s signatories, officials supposedly well-trained in homeland security and once entrusted by the electorate to protect them from harm, insist on aiding the enemy which would accelerate America’s decline.


PFIR analyst Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

Ex Officials Lobby For More Foreign Stem Students Ex Officials Lobby For More Foreign Stem Students